This was a great year for midwifery. Looking back over it gives me a lot of fulfillment, even though it was emotionally probably the worst year of my life.

So in 2023, I worked 42 prenatal shifts and 125 birth room shifts (that’s just over 1000 hours in the birth room)–this involves many things: labor care, births, newborn exams, giving injections, and baby meds, charting, filling out birth certificates, doing the newborn screening, postpartum checks galore, and a few other details I’m forgetting.

I also worked in the well-woman area 4 times learning to do Pap smears and gram stains on my own.

I certified in CPR in July and was later moved, along with my class, into primary roles. It feels wonderful to have gone from such incompetence to feeling more comfortable with the myriad of skills we need to learn.