Table of ContentsWhat is a Midwife?The Colonial MidwifeMary BreckinridgeFor this article, I have chosen to delve in the history of nurse-midwifery in the United States and how Mary Breckinridge sparked change in not only breastfeeding, but also childbirth. I chose this topic because I have been working alongside nurse midwives for a year. With each shift, I am continually amazed by the work these women accomplish and the knowledge they possess that underpins their practice. I want to explore what birthing practices were like before the formal training of nurse midwives, how Mary Breckinridge influenced a change in the way people gave birth, were trained to assist in childbirth, and what lasting impacts she had on the current practice of the nurse-midwife profession. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayWhat is a midwife?According to the World Health Organization, the profession of midwifery is “competent, competent and compassionate care for women of childbearing age, newborns and children. families… throughout pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and the first weeks of life.” Some more important elements of midwifery go beyond just childbirth, they include the ability to help women through any factors that might affect their ability to conceive a child. Conceiving a baby, although it may seem simple enough, can often be influenced by factors we don't see coming or thought we'd encounter. Being a midwife also means respecting the opinions, decisions and circumstances of each woman while she is in your care as a healthcare professional. But more importantly, being a midwife means working with women to help them strengthen their own abilities to care for themselves and their families. Colonial Midwife Unlike our modern society, formal education was not always required to legally practice as a birth attendant. Midwifery was introduced to America aboard the Mayflower. Two women, Martha Ballard and Bridget Lee Fuller, resisted the two-month journey to America aboard the ship. During this time, women participated in several childbirths and continued to write about their experiences in newspapers. Once the voyage reached America, Fuller continued to provide midwifery care to the women of Plymouth for another 44 years, until her death in 1664. For years, midwifery was a service which many women provided for free to their communities. The city of New Amsterdam was the first city in America to pay a midwife for her services. An amount of 100 guilders, or $52, was paid to a midwife to serve the poor in the community for a year. Although women were not required to attend a formal institution to become a lay midwife, they often spent a significant amount of time observing and working alongside an older, more experienced midwife before taking the plunge. alone. Once alone, it was common in colonial America for a midwife to act under the supervision of a Protestant bishop, because at that time the infant mortality rate exceeded fifty percent. Working under the supervision of a bishop made it possible to reduce the time between birth and baptism. By the early 1900s, large communities hadoften at least a single midwife who assisted women in giving birth as much as they were physically able to do so. However, in more rural areas of America, access to health care was limited, which meant that women were often forced to deliver their own children with the help of a few family members and neighbors untrained. Due to lack of training in these areas, maternal deaths per 100,000 births reached 800 while 100 children out of 1,000 died before their first birthday. Mary Breckinridge Mary Breckinridge was born in Kentucky in 1881. She was born into a privileged family and received an education in Europe and the United States. Breckinridge's decision to attend school at St. Luke's Hospital in New York at age 26 came shortly after the deaths of her husband and two young children. She became a registered nurse in 1910 after deciding to devote her life to improving the lives and well-being of women and children. Breckinridge spent time working in France during World War II, where she met several British nurse-midwives who piqued her interest and eventually led her to believe that "the nurse-midwife profession was the logical response to the needs…of rural America.” As the profession of nurse-midwifery was not officially practiced in the United States at that time, Breckinridge returned to the United States after the war and attended Columbia University where she devoted her studies to health to address the health problems facing rural areas of Eastern Kentucky. . She believed that if her plans could succeed in such an isolated region, they could also later succeed in other parts of America. In order to survey families living in such a large area, Breckinridge set out on horseback in hopes of determining what the needs of these families were and what the practices of lay midwives were. Her travels highlighted a dire lack of prenatal care and she found that many families had an average of nine children each. During this period, births were more often attended by self-taught farmers' wives and who, in turn, relied heavily on folklore, holistic measures, and superstitions when it came to childbirth practices. Due to the dire needs of the communities and the lack of formal midwifery training, Mary Breckinridge established the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) in 1925 to provide a venue for formal midwifery training. Once established, she wrote an article in the American Journal of Public Health in 1927 stating that thanks to FNS nurse-midwives, Appalachian Kentucky had gone from the region with the highest maternal mortality rate to the one of the regions with the lowest mortality rate. Today, Frontier Nursing Service in Breckinridge is known as Frontier Nursing University and is among the most popular institutions for training nurses and midwives. Changes in Practice For centuries, women have sought pain relief in different forms during childbirth. For hundreds of years, women viewed the pain of childbirth as just another challenge to face when it came to raising their children. For centuries, women have relied solely on non-pharmacological measures for pain relief, such as hydrotherapy, structured breathing, relaxation and visualization. It wasn't until the 1850s that anesthesia was used as a form of pain relief.