We were lucky to catch up with Meaghan Snider recently and have shared our conversation below.

Meaghan, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?

Apprenticeship is an ancient way of learning a trade. Learning from masters in the field and taking some of this and that as you patchwork your own style and practice. As an apprentice, you are humbled. You need to stay curious, and shrug off failure in place of determination. You have to be ok with being uncomfortable. The path of becoming a midwife that I took involved getting my Bachelor’s in Midwifery, an active apprenticeship model under several midwives, and passing the NARM(licensed medical board test).

While I was a student and an apprentice, I learned so much. I learned how to sit on my hands and do nothing, while birth unfolded before me without any need for intervention. I learned how to be a silent witness observing miracles. I also learned when to step in and support the process for a baby to be born and transition. You must hone your instincts of when to move in and when to sit out. As an apprentice, I remember feeling so proud of every new skill performed: a catheter placed, an IV given, sutures sewn, catching a baby, and sharpening my intuition.

One day while I was an apprentice, I got to be a part of a birth team for a breech birth. In California, midwives aren’t allowed to deliver breech baby’s. We are able to deliver them at home if we have a doctor attending. For this baby’s birth, we were able to bring in a doctor to support us. The mother came from another country where homebirth and midwives, even breech, were normal for everyone. She wanted this even though there are risks that come with having a breech birth at home. She was a first time mom and delivered so beautifully. I will never forget the experience and the mother’s courage, knowing, and inner strength throughout the birth.

Meaghan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a midwife who comes from midwives. My Mexican great grandmothers, Juanita and Magdalena, were midwives. I help families deliver at home or in a birth center. My main job is to support the mother in understanding that she is the ultimate power and decision maker in her care. Her feelings, insights, and body are in the center of her prenatal journey. Her partner, the doula, myself, family, lactation consultant, therapists, body workers, acupuncturists, and others surround her, offering guidance when needed. It takes a village to raise a mother. We need everyone to help. I am there to support and educate on the upcoming tests, options, and decisions, measuring baby and the uterus, listening to fetal heart tones, palpating baby’s position, helping to empower her and remind her that she can do this and is not alone. I also cook for my families and love to nurture them with soups, broths, herbal drinks, and snacks. I perform abdominal massage, warm oil massage, belly binding, sitz baths, lactation support, nutrition/supplemental counseling, and the closing of the bones ceremony. I am also a clinical herbalist and Ayurvedic practitioner. I weave these modalities into my care.

Midwifery is a calling. It must be in your bones. That’s what happened to me. It felt resonant when I worked with a midwife for the birth of my children at a birth center and at home. I knew then in a way. It wasn’t until they grew up a bit, that it caught me in its web and I became obsessed with birth, mothers, newborns, and transformation. This is the very best and oldest job there is. It is an immense honor and privilege to be witness to the most primal and intimate experience.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

My practice is mostly formed by word of mouth referral. Midwifery can change your life. It is a type of medical care that you can take with you into all other areas of your life. As a client, you must learn and educate and make hard decisions about your body or that of your newborn. When being faced with big decisions such as circumcision, injections, screenings, and testing options, you must learn about the risks, benefits, cultural understandings, and history of the decision. You can look at your resistances or blind acceptances and question why you believe that way. Why do you feel strongly about it? What are the opposite understandings? Ask your community, your family, your friends about their experiences. You can take this type of care, which is non hurried informed consent, into your experiences with your dentist, your doctor, your pediatrician, your child’s school. When someone emerges from the midwifery experience, it is my goal that they have felt held and expanded to what’s possible with health care. That they feel nourished, connected, and supported. It is through their experiences, that ripple outwards into the community, that people come seeking similar care. There is an enthusiasm that comes with the emergence on the other side of birth, with a care provider that cares for you and wants the best for you, that is contagious.

Any advice for managing a team?

Sometimes in birth work, we get thrown some curveballs. Birth is not able to be controlled. It is wild and primal and never what you expect. Sometimes plans for a homebirth get moved to the hospital, due to a need for the next level of support. Sometimes there is a loss. There are lots of wild emotions that are constantly ebbing and flowing within the family. Doubt, ecstasy, joy, sadness, grief, frustration, depression, panic, disbelief, overwhelm, happiness. It is by gently and continually checking back in with the family, allowing all feelings to be felt and witnessed, that we can move into a space of calm and safety. We have time to discuss what we are seeing. We have time to try options and various positions, and to ask what emotionally is coming up for the mother. Sometimes by asking what is going through her mind, we discover a deep rooted fear. In speaking it, being vulnerable, or allowing tears to fall, we watch the birth, that may have been stalled, move forward.

We can keep a mother’s morale high by continuing to let her know she is never alone. We have her even when she feels completely undone. We can hold her in all the feelings.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://meaghansnidermidwife.com/meaghan-midwife
• Instagram: @meaghan_snider_

Image Credits

Katie Kupillas ( headshot)