Manos Abiertas

I arrived here at Manos Abiertas in ciudad Vieja, Guatemala on Friday to spend the next two months apprenticing with Hannah Freiwald. I finished my formal Midwifery training at Maternidad La Luz spring of 2010 and wrote and passed the NARM exam this past February in order to become a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM).

I have been excited to start bridging the gap between the role of a student in a school environment to taking a lead role in births, learning to trust my skills and intuition and testing the boundaries of my comfort level.

On Monday night I had my first opportunity to do a birth as the primary licensed midwife. Yarlin was a first time mom and started contractions on Friday. We saw her for a labor check on Sunday afternoon but things didn’t really get going until the following afternoon at which point she hadn’t slept in a few days. She had such a sense of determination about her and it seemed to me labor was as much a process of giving birth as a process of emotional letting go.

It felt like forever since I had attended a birth and I felt nervous that somehow it would feel unfamiliar, like the eyes of my knowledge would have closed and slipped into a deep sleep but as I soon discovered the sensations of birth, the feeling, smells and sounds all came flooding back to me in a few flutters of the eyelids.

I feel so honored by the trust that Hannah has put in me and feel as though I have already made leaps and bounds in the short time that I have been here, even if it is just in my own way of thinking.