What does it mean to walk as a Midwife?

Well first my love, you better grow thick skin. The purposeful propaganda that started centuries ago is still strong today. Walk in a room and say you are a home birth midwife and watch what happens. Projections, reflections, traumas, and ignorance. You will become a mirror. Remember to reflect back love and grace for you represent the thin veil between life and death. You will grow to know it well.
Being a midwife means gentle hands and whispered tones even when your heart is beating loudly in your ears and you haven't turned off your vigilance for hours/days. It's a full bladder, dehydrated mouth, and growling stomach that gets pushed aside because your presence means something.
Midwifery is stopping a hemorrhage that people don't even know is happening because you're smiling and cooing at the baby to keep up the oxytocin. It is sitting on a living room floor helping a baby cry while telling everyone, "Oh my goodness look how cute she is! Her color is getting so pink! Her heart is so strong." It is sometimes being the voice in the room that says, "I think you would benefit from an epidural." Then at the next birth you are nodding along as a woman cries she can't do it as you guide her to the tub because you know her baby is arriving soon. It is jumping for joy at that first latch and each ounce of baby weight gained.
It is knowing that these truths will be seen as sacrilegious to some and not "true" Midwifery. Then on the other side, you will have people shocked that you know how to take a blood pressure and amazed that you understand how to manage emergencies. You will not win over them all. You have to accept this.
It is knowing you are not God and you humbly submit to the understanding that you will never predict or control it all.
It is missing date nights and apologizing that you have to keep getting up to answer the phone. Saying no to activities you so desperately want to do but there is no cell service and a baby is arriving soon.
But mostly, its hearing the voice in your head saying after each moment with a mother, "If that is all I ever did, it is more than enough. This is what it means to work for the Divine"
- San Juan Midwifery