Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Olivia Deane. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Olivia, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

Since the birth of my 7 children I have been passionate about birth. I followed my dream of becoming a midwife and did my training in the U.S. Back to my country, Argentina, I wanted to give back the opportunity for the many women that were seeking this kind of training where there it is not. Home-birth training is not available in South America. Starting a school of midwives in a country where there is a lack of midwives was my calling. My goal was to bring options for women to birth at home safely and to provide comprehensive and personalized care during the childbirth process. Looking back I can see we were guided into this work. From curriculum development to recruiting experienced midwives and gathering materials and resources to start operating, everything started coming without any difficulty.
My advice would be to stay in contact with your inner world, listen, and follow your desire. We are always guided if we listen, and the easiest way to know is following what brings us joy and enthusiasm.

Olivia, 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?

Since becoming a mother for the first time and having had a really bad experience at hospital, suffering obstetric violence, I felt the need of helping other women to achieve a great experience at birth. Many years passed and it was after my last baby (#7) was born that I decided to acquire midwifery education. The type of education I was seeking did not exist in my country, and I had to come to America to find it. Although the maternity statistics are not good in this country, the options of midwifery education are great, and I enrolled in an online midwifery school to start my journey. In this profession you need academic education and practice. I did an apprenticeship at a birthing center and then with a midwife. Back to my country I continued my training with a traditional midwife and together with a colleague decided to open a school to give this opportunity to more women seeking this path.
The first step was to identify the need and then create a vision: establish a school of midwives to train a new generation of skilled professionals who could provide safe and compassionate care during home births.
As soon as we opened the school, many women rushed to answer the call. Most of them were doulas that wanted to acquire midwifery knowledge. Soon our school expanded to other countries in South America and Europe.
As we became better known, we received some attacks from certain sectors that did not like the autonomy with which we provide education.
The next steps were to create an association NGO in charge of examining the knowledge, skills and clinical experience of our graduates.
After six years with our school we are now expanding and opening a new training for doulas in South America, Europe and the U.S.
During these years we have had good and bad moments, and I’m clear now that sustaining a profession of such dedication takes a lot of energy and love for this work. I think that you really need to love it, to be able to sustain this intensity. I know we will still be facing obstacles as we go on expanding our message, but it is this strong calling that leads us to continue. It is worth the effort and it is so rewarding to see how new midwives are making the difference in their communities across the world.
Mayeutica Birth Academy and Escuela de Parteras Mayeutica, is open to everyone and is committed to provide excellent education for midwives and doulas. Our message is based on autonomy, empowerment and an holistic view of the childbirth experience.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The starts are not easy, you have to get out your message and try to attract your customers. I think that there was a clear need for midwifery education and we came at the right time and in the right place. We knew little about marketing strategies and did publicity through facebook. We had our brand and webpage, and the first customers appeared. We also held meetings in some parts of the country, Argentina.
We enrolled the first group and started. I think we did a great job, dedicating all of our time to provide all the quality education and stay close to our group. That helped and spread the word for new clients that were waiting to enroll in the next opportunity. We grew fast and started receiving clients from other countries. We also started traveling to give workshops in Spain and Ecuador.
I think doing a good job is what attracts clients. Now we continue to do some advertising through the networks, but our reputation is what makes our clients trust what Mayeutica offers.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

I think that having a clear vision and visualizing what we wanted gave us impulse. When you put your heart and love into your project and company, it will always succeed. We gave to the community something new, something that our clients were longing for.

Also, everything I do comes from my inner world and I decree what I want to see manifested in my life. We are creators of our reality. Mayeutica was born and is sustained with our calls and decrees for the birth revolution that we want to see in the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.parterasmayeutica.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/parterasmayeutica?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parterasmayeutica?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Linkedin: Olivia Deane

Image Credits
parterasmayeutica