UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Marton, Juliana Elizabeth
Dept./Program:
College of Education and Social Services
Year:
2012
Degree:
M. Ed.
Abstract:
In full essence, heart, and flesh, I am a homebirth midwife. I believe the birth of new-beings is a primal and organic moment in life cycles: humans cannot make it more perfect. As an apprentice homebirth midwife, I believe that to trust a woman to birth by her own strength empowers a woman to trust her self and body. The human species is the only species that has evolved believing childbirth necessitates intervention and management. For every other species on Earth, if its birth process is interrupted, the offspring is abandoned. It is birth that holds the foundation for the intact ability to love.
Midwifery births meaning to my life, and meaning midwifes me. This Scholarly Personal Narrative is a reflection upon how I flesh out myself as both a homebirth midwife and educator.
Similar to the marginalization and dissolution of traditional practices of midwifery, women's voices, personal narrative, and story-telling have also been excluded from authoritative knowledge. Like women's bodies, they too have been pathologized by scholarship. I use a blend of Scholarly Personal Narrative and Feininist Research Methodologies with intention, for voice, narrative, and story-telling, are universalizable and vital aspects of human growth, development, and ways of knowing. Homebirth midwifery continues to honor these qualities through the gestation, education, and birth of new midwives.
Within the first part of mynarrative, I describe my definition of a midwife, which is the midwife I am. The second part of my narrative describes five roots of myself-directed and interdisciplinary midwifery education that inform my personal definition of a midwife: midwifery as a form of being-within-relationship; intuition as a way of knowing and understanding in homebirth midwifery; body knowledge: communicating through movement and learning through kinesthetic processes; legitimate peripheral participation as a way of belonging in homebirth midwifery; and homebirth midwifery as a form of leadership and social activism.
Accredited and regulate Certified Professional Midwife pedagogy is increasingly incorporated into homebirth midwifery culture. It is my belief that to uphold the practice of the midwifery model of care and to protect the integrity of birth, emerging midwives and their educators mustretain and nourish self-directed learning processes.
Midwifery births meaning to my life, and meaning midwifes me. This Scholarly Personal Narrative is a reflection upon how I flesh out myself as both a homebirth midwife and educator.
Similar to the marginalization and dissolution of traditional practices of midwifery, women's voices, personal narrative, and story-telling have also been excluded from authoritative knowledge. Like women's bodies, they too have been pathologized by scholarship. I use a blend of Scholarly Personal Narrative and Feininist Research Methodologies with intention, for voice, narrative, and story-telling, are universalizable and vital aspects of human growth, development, and ways of knowing. Homebirth midwifery continues to honor these qualities through the gestation, education, and birth of new midwives.
Within the first part of mynarrative, I describe my definition of a midwife, which is the midwife I am. The second part of my narrative describes five roots of myself-directed and interdisciplinary midwifery education that inform my personal definition of a midwife: midwifery as a form of being-within-relationship; intuition as a way of knowing and understanding in homebirth midwifery; body knowledge: communicating through movement and learning through kinesthetic processes; legitimate peripheral participation as a way of belonging in homebirth midwifery; and homebirth midwifery as a form of leadership and social activism.
Accredited and regulate Certified Professional Midwife pedagogy is increasingly incorporated into homebirth midwifery culture. It is my belief that to uphold the practice of the midwifery model of care and to protect the integrity of birth, emerging midwives and their educators mustretain and nourish self-directed learning processes.