Hello and Happy New Year!

As I review my notes from 2005 the IMC has accomplished so much and we are really on a roll. We began last year with a survey to all the contacts we had, got a good response, were able to update our database and have a better idea of who we are currently. We re-established our 4 Regions and their representatives, had meetings all over the state, made a great showing at all the Vital Statistics workshops, filled our board positions and began publishing this newsletter again! We had a successful membership drive and awarded 4 scholarships to the Idaho Perinatal Project Winter Conference – two funded by the Idaho Perinatal Project and two by the Idaho Midwifery Council.

Now for 2006 – LOOK OUT!

Many tasks, lots of energy and enthusiasm, some trepidation, lots of cautious optimism and a healthy amount of craziness. That’s it in a nutshell from your President. Please jump in, help out, let us know what you think and feel, what you need or can offer, share in the fun. We are all important!

Sincerely,

Barbara Rawlings, CPM

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Idaho perinatal project’s winter conference! February 2 & 3 Register at idahoperinatal.org

In the fall Barbara Rawlings sent out a request to ten practicing midwives throughout Idaho asking if they did VBACs. If so, did they have special protocols for them; if not, why not.  All ten midwives responded and all ten do VBACs with these basic requirements:

Otherwise, most midwives hardly give it a thought and feel that VBAC clients are not any different from other clients.  All have excellent outcomes.  

LIFE SONG

There is a tribe in east Africa in which the art of true intimacy is fostered even before birth. In this tribe, the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of conception as in other village cultures. For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother's mind. Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree. There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive. Once she has heard it, she returns to her village and teaches it to the father so that they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them. After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old women and midwives of the village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is greeted with its song. After the birth all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself. It is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations. This song becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown, and at the end of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.

Quoted from Jack Kornfield,
A Path with Heart (Bantam Books, 1993), p. 334

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MEMBERSHIP REPORT (Kendra Scarlett, Bonners Ferry)

The membership roster as of Jan. 8^th, 2006 is as follows:

Voting members: 24

Non-Voting members: 13

I encourage all of us to get out there and recruit more members to the IMC. There is strength in numbers, and we are certainly going to need all the support we can muster in the coming months!