new here!! whats right for me?

[bnakol]

Hi ladies!

I have been doing a ton of research on becoming a midwife and I am a little overwhelmed with options lol

I am going to school to get my nursing degree but that wont take place for another at least 3 years...im currently a stay at home mom and Hubby is just starting to go through his nursing program..

Anyway :-) I know I want to get my nursing degree but I also want to be trained as a midwife and I would like to do a course that I can do at home for the most part, im okay with the occasional work shop and would love to get some hands on experience...

Sorry if this is all jumbled lol short version...my husband and I want to do medical missions..I want to have a focus of midwifery, what course would be right for me? I looked in to midwife to be and it just doesn't look like what im looking for...any tips and thoughts are appreciated!!

Thank you!!

[2littlebirds]

Welcome! It is really overwhelming at first, but I think its great to have so many options available. To start with, you have to decide what kind of midwife you want to be. Are you more medically/hospital minded? Or are you more into traditional, homebirth style midwifery?

If you are going to be a nurse, then I'm gonna guess want to be a nurse midwife (CNM), which does hospital births. I'm pretty sure to do a CNM program you have to have your RN first, and then you can do a CNM program. I'm going for my CPM so I'm not doing any nursing, so I don't know a lot of how all the schooling works out with that. I'm pretty sure it would take you a while to get it all done though as most CNM programs are around 3 years, as far as I know.

If you want to be a CPM or direct entry and do homebirths, there are many distance courses you can do to get your book work done. What kind of course are you looking for? Some other distance programs you could look into are:

www.midwiferycollege.org

http://instituteofholisticmidwifery.com/ 

http://www.ancientartmidwifery.com/ 

http://www.mercyinaction.com/academic-clinical-midwifery/ 

www.midwiferyinstituteofamerica.com

If you are doing nursing school, I doubt you would be able to complete your direct entry training until after since you would have to have an apprenticeship and be on call for births.

There are a lot of school choices, and I recommend taking your time and going over each on you are interested in thoroughly. A lot of schools tend to have varying views on issues in midwifery so you want to find one that fits in with who you are. Good luck!

[bnakol]

Thanks for responding...I actually don't want to get my cnm, I just want to ft the midwife training for home births and third world country visits as my husband and I aspire to do medical missions...I wont be starting nursing school for a few years so I thought I could get my midwifery stuff done in the mean time(most programs I've seen are about 2 years?)

I am trying to decide between mercy in action, midwife to be and midwifery institute of america...

[2littlebirds]

Originally Posted by bnakol 

Thanks for responding...I actually don't want to get my cnm, I just want to ft the midwife training for home births and third world country visits as my husband and I aspire to do medical missions...I wont be starting nursing school for a few years so I thought I could get my midwifery stuff done in the mean time(most programs I've seen are about 2 years?)

I am trying to decide between mercy in action, midwife to be and midwifery institute of america...

I hope to be able to use my midwifery skills for mission work too.

Most programs you can finish in 1-4 years depending on how quickly you go through it. I am going through Midwifery Institute of America and I really love it. I spoke to a graduate (who is doing mission work in Mexico) and she said she felt very prepared with what she learned and also that she finished the entire program in just one year. I doubt I'll finish that quickly since she was single with no kids when she did it, but my goal is to finish within 2 years. What are your plans for apprenticing? Are you going for CPM, or just wanting the experience to add to your nursing skills?

[bnakol]

I honestly don't know what all im supposed to do...im going to do the narm pep but I don't really understand what I need...and id love t apprentice, how do I go about doing this? It will probably take me a while too I have 2 kiddos 21 months and 3 months :-)

[2littlebirds]

Originally Posted by bnakol 

I honestly don't know what all im supposed to do...im going to do the narm pep but I don't really understand what I need...and id love t apprentice, how do I go about doing this? It will probably take me a while too I have 2 kiddos 21 months and 3 months :-)

To qualify to take the NARM exam through PEP, you'll have to document a certain number of births, prenatals, newborn exams, etc. Then you'll have to do a hands on skills exam along with the written exam. You have to apprentice to get all of the skills checked off. I would just email or call all the midwives in your area and see if and when they could apprentice, what they look for in an apprentice, etc. That is how I found my opportunities.  

The CIB from NARM lays out everything you'll need to do to get your CPM:
http://narm.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/cib.pdf

I have 2 small kids too so I know I wont be done with apprenticing very quickly, but I'm going to do everything I can to keep on keeping on lol. I know all of the info is overwhelming at first, but trust me you'll figure it out!

[bnakol]

hey! thanks so much for your help! i feel like my posts have been super short and not necessarily friendly lol but i have been using the internet on my phone and i hate trying to type long things on it! 

anyway =D i think that i have decided to go with the midwives institute of america...i feel like that is exactly what i am looking for and i am very excited to get started!! Are you really enjoying the program? what is the course work like? I emailed the program director and she sent me an extensive list of what is studied and i think it all looks amazing, but i was wondering how in depth every thing gets...like is it just a lot of topics that barely scratch the surface or is there sustenance to it? know what i mean? also, could you kind of describe what the course work is like? is it all reading and book reports? i have never done any type of correspondence work so i am not really sure what to expect. also, (=D) is there a time frame to finish? does NARM require a time frame? 

i am thinking about doing the MIA program and then maybe halfway through (or less depending on life) i am going to try and find a midwife that i can apprentice under...i have found a few in my area that i have emailed. after that i am thinking about doing the clinical outreach through mercy in action (if they allow people to go that have not completed their course, i still have to ask about that) to get some out of country experience. i had a hard time deciding between MIA and mercy because i absolutely love the opportunities through mercy but i dont so much love the price...BUT if they allow non students to attend some of their different things they hold for midwives then it will be the best of both worlds =D

sorry for all of my questions and thank you so much for taking the time to reply and help me out!! 

[2littlebirds]

You are very welcome! I love talking about this stuff and I was new to it all recently so I'm happy to help!

I am really enjoying MIA. I have been at it for a week and have completed 5 modules. My goal is to do one module a day during the week. There are estimated time amounts on each module...but I find that I'm getting done a lot quicker than what it says. But maybe thats because what I'm doing now is all basic/foundational stuff that is familiar to me. I'm sure once I get further into it, it will take longer. It is definitely the type of course that you will only get from it what you put into it. I like that about it though, because I didn't want a school that completely controlled my learning but I also didn't want the lack of structure that comes with self study. I think this gives me the perfect balance. So to answer your question about whether it just scratches the surface or has more sustenence, I honestly think that depends on the student. For me, I'm not depending on this school to be responsible for the amount that I learn. I look at it as more of an in depth guide for my learning. You can breeze through it and just copy down answers, or you can take your time and really absorb the information and go deeper with your work. I really like that because there are some subjects that we might already know a lot about, or maybe just have little interest in, and you can choose to get them done quickly. Or if there is a subject that really interests you or something you struggle with, you can spend as much time as you want on it. For the work, it is different with the different modules. For the midwifery modules, the first one is reading some chapters and answering some questions. You have the freedom to be as in depth as you want. I'm sure you could easily write a quick answer for each question and be fine, but I chose to really study the info and gave a 3-6 sentence paragraph for each question. So thats just an example of how you control what you get out of it. The second midwifery module is a book report. Other activities I have done are copy down scripture, take pulses on myself, family, and friends, and done exercises in the medical vocab work text. So you get a good variety of stuff.

There is no deadline with this school, which is another big reason why I chose it. NARM does not require you to finish your didactic training in a certain amount of time. At least I have never seen or heard that, and I'm assuming not since they allow self study. I know that there are some time frames for your births and things like CPR certification, and you can find that on the CIB.

I would love to be able to do clinical outreach. I know that Lisa from MTB takes students to the Dominican Republic and they are talking about going to Uganda this year. You don't have to be an MTB student to go on the trips. I don't think births count, but you can get prenatals, postpartums, and newborn exams checked off there.

Hope that answers all your questions, feel free to ask more if you need to!

[bnakol]

Thank you! Im so excited to get started! How much were your books for starting up? Just trying to get a feel for how much I need up front.

If you haven't heard of it already mercy in action does a clinical outreach and their site says its a qualified narm out of country site (or something along those lines lol) im hoping to do that once I finish my didactic phase.

[2littlebirds]

I went a little crazy getting books so I spent a lot lol! But to get what you need to be able to get going on first modules, I would say maybe $250-$300, but you can do a lot less than that if you get used. Amazon has a store credit card that offers 6 months no interest on books and a bunch of other stuff too so I signed up for that so I could go ahead and get everything instead of only being able to get a couple at a time. I figured I could either spend money each month on 2-3 books, or I could get all the books at once and spend the same amount each month paying off the card.