Hi-
I decided I wanted to be a midwife when I was 18, and in college. I finished my BS I was working on at the time (in midwifery related social history and pre-nursing school classes), and took a year off and worked for Outward Bound, and just read birth books all the time. I knew I would go to midwifery school and I kinda of thought of it like grad school after college. I went right into a three year direct entry midwifery school. I was really stuck on my decision between nurse midwifery school and LM/direct entry midwifery school, since no one had graduated form the schools when I started. They were just two years old, and so new and untested. The whole LM thing was freshly revived in our State, but I decided to walk that path and be a test case for whether I could make direct entry midwifery work in my State. Plus I was way to feminist, and fresh off of reading Witches, Nurses, and Midwives by Barbara Ehrenlich too go to nursing school and put up with the bullshit I heard my waitress coworkers in nursing school talked about . I did not want to take care of gangrened legs, I wanted to see babies born!!!
I started midwifery school on the day before my 22nd birthday and got my license when I was 25. I started working for an older midwife in my first job in a birth center, but she had an injury shortly after I was hired and so I basically did it all my first year, but she was always a phone call away and had the older maternal grandma kind of presence many clients liked. But she was pretty burned out and I had the juice to give, it was a good combo. I left after a year, I think I had done about 60 births in the team practice before I went solo. I started doing homebirths and opened a birth center and hired another midwife two years later to accommodate my busy practice. She was in her 40s and many people related to her in the maternal way, but it was weird because she was really green and had lots less experience than I did in midwifery. Most people presumed she was more seasoned than me because of her age, but that was not so.
There were only older midwives doing homebirth and I offered a more professional, current model of care than they did, in my opinion. I was just at a conference and Venus Marks, a 72 year old midwife from Trinidad, said midwifery changes every ten years....birth is the same, but what women are looking is different every decade. I have been in one decade, and I think this is really true. I came in on the wave of doulas ten years ago, and I was the one in our practice that had trained with Penny Simkin and came with my with the birth ball, all ready to do the hip press, do unwavering labor support, and do hands off waterbirths....I read my clients needs, and could write articles that spoke to what was happening with women in my generation....now its about catching your own baby and elimination communication. Its fun to feel like I can really see what she was talking about, the culture HAS changed around birth. As a new passionate midwife you bring that new research, and being in on the culture of birth to the clients in a different way than someone who has been at it forever.
The older midwives I worked with, and there were three at the time I was a student, did not have kids. So I did not stick out in that way. It felt weird to be 22 and doing prenatals on 35 year olds with 8 kids. But I am not of a culture that has 8 kids so it was more about the culture difference than anything. Your clients are always your main teachers, you learn so much, and in midwifery you are sharing information, not being THE AUTHORITY.
I've been at 250 birth as the "real" midwife/350 including my student births/assists/doula births. Now I have a kid. I had my baby at age 30 after attending 200 births as the midwife, 300 total. I had much more to give when I was a young passionate midwife than I do now. I used my energy then to build a successful business, and now someone else is running it. I sold it. I feel like I have a really strong foundation, and really glad I spent my twenties building what I did. Now I am being with my kid, thinking about having another, and doing things that do not require me to be on call. I know I served women really well. I think I only had a few clients interview that had an issue with my age. There are other midwives for them. You will find you have your own personality and strengths and weaknesses, and will build a practice and following that reflects who you are.
But yes you can absolutely succeed as a "young" midwife. You use all that up all night party energy others burn up dancing at bars being up with women in labor. I was a really driven, stable person and I am glad I got to use that energy to build something real in my community and develop a solid set of professional skills. My friend works in World Trade in Washington DC and had her first baby the same time I did. We both felt we put a decade or so into our careers in our twenties, and now we have kids we don't give to work in the same way we did as childless 20 something yr olds. We are both glad we did what we did.
It was weird to see my friends just partying and being 22 when I was up all night helping babies come out. I lived with my same college roommates when I started midwifery school. Those days were often a clash of cultures and I sometimes felt burdened by the sense of deep REALITY...Like I would come home form a really tough birth and it was weird to be around folks that how ever much I loved them couldn't to grasp what it was I had just been through and touched. I ended up moving home with my parents, getting a dog, and spending most of my down time with my dog in the woods or on the beach!!
After a while most of my friends were midwives, and I got support for that and that burden was lightened and I did not feel so lonely since I had friends that shared an understanding of the intensity of birth, and of how every life changes and takes on a new dimension when you work in birth. I met my husband when I was 25 and a senior student, and he had done rebirthing breathe training in Sweden and knew all about birth, and had seen waterbirth videos, etc...so he was also an easy natural birth buddy. He was my main "birth partner" in my solo practice years and can debrief a birth with the best of them!
I love being the midwife to my contemporaries. I will really miss it when my friends in my age cohort are not giving birth anymore! Now at 32 I actually feel "old sometimes" because I am just not in the culture of the 25 year old moms like I was ....I remember the first time a mom called me Ma'am and MEANT it, I was 25 and she was 16. I have since been with her for all 4 of her births and she is such a great mom, probably only now as old as I was then!