<<<Go Back
News from MaMA, Vol. 1, No. 12
We welcome comments and questions at info@mamah.org.
News from MaMA, Winter 2008
Practice news
This month, MaMA are very happy indeed to welcome 2 new per diem midwives: Susan Cassel, CNM and Erin Smith, CNM. Susan moved to Brookline from San Diego about a year and a half ago. She has attended births at home, in a birth center and in a hospital in the years she has been practicing. She is a doula trainer for ALACE, one of the two major organizations that provide training for aspiring doulas. She has two grown daughters. Erin is also from California, but the northern part, near Sacramento. Before Mt Auburn, she worked at the UC Davis Medical Center. She lives with her husband and 2 little boys in Arlington. Susan and Erin will usually be taking call shifts but you may occasionally find one of them in one of our offices. Whenever possible, they’ll come to our Meet the Midwives nights.
Julia Dickinson, RN, SNM, our Yale midwifery student, arrived the week of January 14 and has settled right in. She has been seeing clients at the Joseph Smith center in Waltham and at our Hope Ave. Waltham office as well, besides attending births and making postpartum rounds. Julia will be with us until the end of April, except for 2 weeks in March when she has her spring break. She will be spending it at the Spanish language institute in Esteli, Nicaragua, working on improving her Spanish skills and having a little bit of fun too.
Centering at the Center We are really excited to announce that a Centering Pregnancy group is forming now at the Center for Women. Centering Pregnancy is a group model of prenatal care. Women, along with interested partners, meet as a group 1-2 times per month. Each participant gets a few minutes of private time with the midwife, but the educational portion of the visit occurs in the group. This allows for lots of discussion, sharing common interests, group problem solving and mutual support. This effort is being organized by Julie Mann, CNM with the able assistance of Jackie Graham, MA, for clients with due dates in August and September 2008. If you are interested please contact Jackie at the Center for Women, 617 499 5151.
Midwives come to Boston in May This year, Boston is hosting the annual meeting of the American College of Nurse Midwives, May 23-29 at the Sheraton in Back Bay. We expect somewhere around 1200 midwives, their families, and other meeting guests to attend the convention. It’s our yearly opportunity to get some continuing education, attend meetings of national committees and other work groups, catch up with our classmates and former colleagues, make new connections, and enjoy whatever city we are visiting. For the first time this year, there will be an associated Women’s Health Expo, open to the public, on Saturday, May 24 from 10 am to 4 pm. There will be lots of women’s health information for women of all ages, as well as screening for hypertension and other disorders and other health activities. Several of the MaMA midwives will be there and we hope to see you there too!
Personal news
Our most recent bride, Kathryn Kravetz Carr, is glowing for a different reason these days: she’s pregnant and due in mid-August. Current plans are for a 3- month maternity leave and a return to work 20 hours a week.
Robyn Churchill is once again training for the Boston Marathon. This year, it’s on April 21, Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts.
Robyn will be a speaker on a panel whose subject is “Being Born in Massachusetts: Pushing for More Midwives.” Other speakers include Eugene de Clercq, PhD, of the BU School of Public Health; Miriam Khalsa, CPM, representing the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance; Tina Cassidy, author of “Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born”; Todd Shapiro, MD, OB-GYN at Beth Israel; Dona Rodrigues, CNM of Boston Medical Center; and Peggy Garland, CNM, coordinator of the Mass Coalition for Midwifery. The panel moderator is Judy Norsigian of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, editors and publishers of Our Bodies, Ourselves. The panel is being held at the Walsh Theatre of Suffolk University, 55 Temple St, Boston (near Park St T stop) on Wednesday, Feb 27 at 6 pm. From 4:30-5:30 there will be a screening of 3 birth films. There is no admission charge but a donation is requested to support the work of Massachusetts Friends of Midwives. This promises to be a very interesting evening!