This Women’s History Month let’s celebrate all women, let’s lift up all women and let’s support  all women!

I am a midwife. The word ‘midwife’ is from old English and means ‘with woman’ and I have been blessed to have spent my entire adult life in this glorious profession. I began my training in the UK in 1979, where I was born and raised, and have been ‘catching babies’ ever since!

For me there is no greater joy than to participate in the journey to new life, to support the women and families throughout the process, and to witness, first-hand the gift and promise of every beautiful birth. So, when I arrived in Orlando in 1989, I was excited and ready to continue my work, offering my midwifery experience and skills to serve the local community and continue practice. Ah, but there was one glitch – midwifery was not at all common or integrated into women’s health care in the United States as it was in the rest of the world; in fact at that time midwives could not even be licensed to practice in the state of Florida.

What a conundrum! I knew that globally women were accustomed to trusting their pregnancies, births and postpartum to midwives and being supported by obstetricians (OB/GYNs) whenever they were in a high-risk or complicated situation. I also knew that the majority of women remain healthy and low-risk through their childbearing years so long as they have the support, education and access to quality care and caring providers. After all, midwives delivered America until the mid twentieth century and midwives continue to deliver the majority of babies around the world.

I fought to find a way to work in my field and finally, with support from so many other Floridians, the state re-opened licensure and I became the first foreign-trained midwife to be licensed in Florida in 1994. What has transpired over the ensuing years is that I have been blessed to build a large maternity care practice supporting women who have sought out midwifery care, who wanted to experience the independence and the empowerment of choosing to birth in their community, whether at home, in my birth center or the hospital, and who have transformed women’s access to safe, personalized, one-to-one health care.

2021 Reunion Photo of ‘The Birth Place’ Winter Garden birth center babies (oldest ‘baby’ in the picture was age 26) – Photo © Jodi Severe

Look what can happen when we support women! The history of birth in the USA is one that deeply involves midwifery because everyone of us has been born or will be born, the process has not changed, nor will it. The midwifery model of care is patient-centered, safe, culturally-sensitive care delivered with respect and dignity for every person, every time. We are building a movement to birth a more just and loving world.

This month, and every month, let’s remember how we all got here. That is women’s history, that is human history!

Jennie Joseph, Midwife

Founder and President of Commonsense Childbirth, Inc.

Owner of The Birth Place birthing center, Winter Garden

One of twelve TIME Women of The Year 2022