05/10/2026
A couple days out from repeating Birth Emergency Skills Training, and I keep reminiscing about how differently this training feels now compared to when I was a student four years ago.
Back then, I don’t think I fully understood the weight of practicing in true rural community birth. I trained in places where a hospital was two stoplights away. Help felt immediate. There were always multiple skilled hands in the room. If something changed quickly, there was comfort in knowing higher-level care was right there.
Now, I practice in rural Nevada, where transport can sometimes mean one, two, even four hours. There are births where it’s just me. No extra set of experienced hands standing beside me. No nearby unit down the street. And that reality changes the way you approach everything. It changes the way you prepare, the way you train, the way you think through emergencies, and the level of responsibility you carry walking into someone’s home.
One of the things I felt most deeply this weekend was gratitude. Gratitude for the women who have poured into me over the last eight years. Some of these same women whose births I attended as a student are now both midwives and students themselves now. That kind of full-circle growth is something really special to witness, and a torch that is beautiful to pass on.
Midwifery is such a small, tight-knit community. There’s something incredibly grounding about knowing where your people are — even when they live five hours away — and knowing they would still drop everything to answer a call, help you debrief a case, teach you something, or make sure you never have to carry this work alone.
Thank you again to Andrea Dixon and Willa Woodard-Ervin. I’m deeply grateful for BEST, for the standards this organization holds, and for the willingness to continue teaching midwives how to think critically, respond calmly, and keep growing no matter how long we’ve been doing this work.
