Certified professional midwives (CPMs) are non-nurse midwives who have training and clinical experience in childbirth, including childbirth outside of the hospital, and have passed a national exam. Not all states permit CPMs to practice.
There are lay (not certified) midwives, as well.
What Does Your Midwife Do?
Like a doctor or an OB, your midwife can provide care before, during, or after your pregnancy. Your midwife will:
Provide family planning and preconception care
Do prenatal exams and order tests
Watch your physical and psychological well-being
Help you make your birth plans
Advise you about diet, exercise, meds, and staying healthy
Educate and counsel you about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care
Provide you with emotional and practical support during labor
Deliver your baby
Make referrals to doctors when needed
How Your Midwife Works With Your Pregnancy Team
Midwives should have a relationship with an OB who provides council as needed. Your midwife may refer you to an OB for care if a problem happens during your pregnancy. They also may team up with another midwife or doula to help with your labor and delivery.
Why You Might Want to Choose a Midwife
You may want to consider working with one if:
You want your childbirth to be as natural as possible, preferably without things such as an episiotomy, fetal monitoring, labor induction, etc.
You want the emotional, practical, and social support that midwives provide.
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their lifespan; concentrating on being experts in what is normal and identifying conditions that need further evaluation. In most countries, midwives are recognized as skilled healthcare providers. Midwives are trained to recognize variations from the normal progress of labor and understand how to deal with deviations from normal. They may intervene in high risk situations such as breech births, twin births, and births where the baby is in a posterior position, using non-invasive techniques. For complications related to pregnancy and birth that are beyond the midwife's scope of practice, including surgical and instrumental deliveries, they refer their patients to physicians or surgeons.[3][4] In many parts of the world, these professions work in tandem to provide care to childbearing women. In others, only the midwife is available to provide care, and in yet other countries, many women elect to utilize obstetricians primarily over midwives.
Many developing countries are investing money and training for midwives, sometimes by upskilling those people already practicing as traditional birth attendants. Some primary care services are currently lacking, due to a shortage of funding for these resources.
According to the definition of the International Confederation of Midwives, which has also been adopted by the World Health Organization and the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics:
A midwife is a person who has successfully completed a midwifery education programme that is recognised in the country where it is located and that is based on the ICM Essential Competencies for Basic Midwifery Practice and the framework of the ICM Global Standards for Midwifery Education; who has acquired the requisite qualifications to be registered or legally licensed to practice midwifery and use the title midwife; and who demonstrates competency in the practice of midwifery.
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