Shortly after I posted about midwifery being my “calling,” an LDS friend emailed me the following story about the history of LDS midwives. I am not LDS myself, but I am Christian, and growing up in Iowa, where so many LDS pioneers settled after fleeing Nauvoo, the majority of my friends from childhood are LDS. Now, living in Utah, the LDS culture is all around me and I find it fascinating. I love learning about the pioneers’ trek to Deseret and their hard lives settling in Utah.

Did you know that midwifery used to be an official Church calling?

The need for midwives in the newly established Zion was so great that in each Ward, the Relief Society would nominate two women to be trained and set apart as midwives for the women of the ward.

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Several of the accounts [of Utah pioneer midwives] also spoke of midwives as “presiding” at a birth. Typically when I think of “presiding,” I think of a priesthood holder presiding over a church meeting. The man presiding isn’t always the one who is in charge of conducting the meeting; commonly he doesn’t say anything, but he is there representing the priesthood authority of Heavenly Father. I like the image of a midwife not “delivering” or “catching a baby,” but “presiding over the birth.” Her job isn’t to do the work—that is in the hand of God, mother and baby—rather, she is there to oversee the process and to represent the power of the Heavenly Mother.

Doesn’t that sound like just the perfect description of a midwife’s role? Go read the rest of the post over at The Gift of Giving Life.

This is why I truly love working with LDS clients, and why I feel blessed to practice as a birthworker in Utah. Family here is sacred and birth is respected and honored as spiritual.

Even for non-religious clients, I believe there is a sense of the sacredness of the moment, even to those for whom it is a secular sacredness.