A thought provoking call to Midwives
A lament, a reckoning
They come to us wide-eyed, full of wonder.
Trembling. Brave.
Bellies swollen with promise, hearts swollen with questions.
Primips.
The first-timers.
The ones who’ve never done this before.
They are not broken, but they are cracked open.
Not complicated, but complex.
Not burdens, but becoming.
And yet; They are turned away.
Quietly.
Kindly.
"Not this time."
"I’m full."
"My bandwidth is low."
"My season is shifting."
And behind those words is the truth we don't want to say aloud:
First-time mothers are hard.
They take longer.
They ask more questions.
They labor through layers of fear.
They need presence; constant, steady, undivided.
And presence costs something.
So midwives begin to retreat.
For rest. For their children. For boundaries. For balance.
Valid. Understandable. Human.
But in their absence, a gap yawns open like a wound.
And it swallows women whole.
Because the system is waiting; not with arms of mercy, but with hands of steel, ready to hurry and slice and silence.
They walk into hospitals hoping for peace and come out carrying scars they were never told were optional.
Their bodies stitched.
Their spirits splintered.
Their stories rewritten without consent.
And in the grey area between the midwife who couldn’t and the system that wouldn’t
stands the doula.
Hands raised.
Heart open.
Trying not to drown in the ache of responsibility.
Because where there is no midwife,
the doula becomes the anchor.
The educator.
The emotional buoy.
The silent intercessor.
She walks a tightrope between service and liability,
between sacred support and systemic entanglement.
And still; we normalize this
We act as though it is enough.
But is it?
When the women who need the most support
are the ones left with the least,
what are we building?
Who are we protecting?'
We are not blaming midwives.
We honor their labor.
We bless their boundaries.
We understand the weight of it all.
But we must speak this truth:
Turning away the first-timers is turning away the future.
The regulations coming down on the birth community between midwives and doulas creates a need and an inability to fill that need. There is a growing lack of legal access for mothers seeking alternatives to the standard hospital model. And the options available are not expanding in ways that protect or preserve the sacred, physiological design of birth.
The first birth is the blueprint.
The origin story.
The soil from which a woman’s motherhood grows.
If we lose her there,
we risk losing her trust forever.
So what now?
We need a new kind of net.
One stitched with collaboration, creativity, and compassion.
Where midwives, doulas, educators, and community
gather not around what is easy; but around what is needed.
Because first-time mothers
deserve to be held.
With wisdom.
With reverence.
With presence that doesn’t flinch.
And until we make room for them,
we are not reforming the system.
We are repeating it.
So may we rise.
May we remember our call.
May we unlock the gates of true education and self agency
And may we make space for the ones
who haven’t done this before.