Mindful Midwifery Presents: The Labor Behind Labor

Katie
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From an outsider's perspective, midwifery sounds like a fascinating profession. But what does it feel like to juggle life's demands in a career that doesn't allow you to have a bad day? This is an insider's view of the labor behind labor.  Join Katie O'Brien, Certified Nurse Midwife, for frank conversations with frontline  midwives about the joys, challenges, and politics surrounding the work of midwifery while trying to maintain a quality life away from the job. 

Episodes

  1. APR 5

    Holly

    Send us Fan Mail Holly never set out to have a career. She wanted to be a wife and a mom — and for a long time, that's exactly what she was. But somewhere between homeschooling three kids, working night shifts as an L&D nurse, and her husband's quiet encouragement, she found herself in midwifery school.  In this episode, Katie and Holly explore what happens when a person becomes someone new — and what that can cost. Holly opens up about the toll midwifery school took on her family, the shock of a marriage unraveling just as she was finally finding her stride, and the years she spent wondering if she'd made the wrong choice. Now on the other side, Holly is exceling professionally, hauling her own camper, planning trips to places like Alaska, and creating weekly challenge lists with friends. She's building a life that continuously surprises her — and apparently, she has a lot to add to her 2027 (yes 2027!) bucket list. This episode is best paired with campfire whiskey (on Holly's list to try!)

    1h 9m

  2. MAR 22

    Kathy

    Send us Fan Mail Before water births were trendy, before fathers were allowed in delivery rooms, before midwives could legally do a pelvic exam in Maryland — there was Kathy. the midwife who wouldn't be managed.   In this episode, host Katie O'Brien interviews her mentor and the mentor of many other midwives in the Baltimore area: Kathy Slone.  Kathy traces her career from an Indiana labor and delivery floor in 1968 to the halls of Johns Hopkins, where she negotiated her own salary with an unflinching stare, pioneered in-room deliveries (no more wheeling patients down the hall to birth!), taught physicians how to fit diaphragms, and testified before Maryland's legislature to rewrite outdated midwifery law.  Oh, and how about the time she accidentally ran a clinic solo for a year while the doctors were in Southeast Asia shortly after becoming a midwife, or when she introduced in-hospital waterbirth to the Baltimore area! With Kim's (Kathy's longtime office manager) legendary memory and Kathy's refusal to take "no" for an answer, they created a Baltimore practice that became the rare place within hospital walls that actually felt human.  Recorded over tea in Kim's cozy Baltimore living room, this conversation is part origin story, part love letter to mentorship, and part field guide for anyone who wonders how much of an impact one midwife can make.  This episode pairs best with a cup of english breakfast, prepared traditionally, of course!

    1h 14m

  3. MAR 8

    Beverly

    Send us Fan Mail Taking a step back in your career isn't always a bad thing or an indicator of lack of commitment or drive. Sometimes it's just plain common sense and self-love.  In this episode, Katie sits down with her self-described "introverted" colleague and friend, Bev — a woman whose career story is anything but quiet. After 23 years as a labor and delivery nurse, Bev made the bold decision in her 40s to pursue her master's degree and become a certified nurse-midwife. What followed was a masterclass in resilience: navigating the financial shock of a salary reset, struggling through an under-mentored first job at the very hospital where she'd spent decades as an expert, weathering the isolation of a lawsuit and grueling depositions, and surviving 24-hour birth center shifts — an hour from home — until her body finally said enough.  Just in time, an opportunity presented itself to return back to floor nursing and Bev took it. But this wasn't personal failure, it was growth. You don't un-become a midwife. Now working as a postpartum nurse, Bev uses her midwifery lens to give new mothers something priceless: closure. She bridges the gap between what happened in the delivery room and what her patients thought happened — a quiet but profound act of healing. This episode features tears, laughter, and hard-won wisdom from a woman who has spent her career listening, learning, and showing up — even when it was brutally hard. This episode pairs perfectly with a cup of oolong tea.

    1h 2m

  4. FEB 22

    Bayla

    Send us Fan Mail Being a homebirth midwife is an all-encompassing, 24/7 career choice. Most homebirth services are offered by Certified Professional Midwives, but why don't more Certified Nurse Midwives offer homebirth services?  In this episode, host Katie O'Brien sits down with her old colleague Bayla: CNM, serial entrepreneur, and one of a small group of nurse-midwives in the United States offering home birth services. What starts as a career retrospective quickly becomes a masterclass in everything nursing school doesn't teach you. Bayla has done it all — cloth diaper store, bookkeeping firm, four-midwife practice, solo home birth CNM — and she's doing most of it simultaneously. She talks candidly about why she left the hospital (spoiler: she had her own baby and sprinted home), why she stays in home birth (the relationships, the autonomy, the lack of someone looking over her shoulder), and why she's finally starting to pull back (the board of nursing called — multiple times). Along the way, the two dig into the state-by-state legal maze of home birth, the fraught reality of hospital transfers, the lost art of breech delivery, malpractice insurance that nearly hit $40K/year, and the gut-punch of going above and beyond for a patient who never speaks to you again. Equal parts inspiring and sobering — this one's for every midwife who's ever asked "why do I keep doing this?" and then answered their own question at 2 a.m. on the way to a birth. This episode pairs well with a chilled glass of moscato.

    1h 20m

  5. FEB 8

    Jenna

    Send us Fan Mail What happens when the midwife becomes the patient? Katie O'Brien sits down with Jenna — a newly minted midwife and an even newer mom — to find out. With 10-week-old Celeste in tow (and occasionally on the breast), Jenna unpacks what no clinical rotation could have prepared her for: the sheer, humbling, beautiful chaos of the postpartum fourth trimester. Turns out, knowing about postpartum swelling and C-section recovery is a lot different from living it. Knowing that cluster feeding is normal doesn't make 4 a.m. any shorter. And knowing that new moms are always late to their appointments? Well — now she really knows. But Jenna came prepared. Doulas. Classes. Freezer meals. A husband who learned the difference between input and output. A mother-in-law who's a massage therapist. A community that showed up so Jenna could sit down. The conversation expands into something bigger: a field that asks its caregivers to pour endlessly from cups they're never given time to refill. Katie and Jenna make the case — gently, persistently, from lived experience — that taking your maternity leave is clinical practice. That modeling sustainable midwifery is patient care. That the bravest thing a midwife can sometimes do is say: not yet. I'm still becoming. BTW Celeste approved this episode. She didn't say so, but she stayed on mic for the whole thing. This episode is best paired with coconut water (a stable of hydration support for Jenna)

    1h 17m

  6. JAN 25

    Hadja

    Send us Fan Mail Not all midwives feel they were called to be a midwife! In this episode, Hadja traces her path from a double major in international studies and nursing to the delivery room, driven not by a "calling" but by a conviction: that midwifery is one of the most powerful tools for improving women's health outcomes worldwide. The conversation winds through career pivots taken on faith, the undervalued art of listening to patients, and why midwives — by nature — are quiet rebels who can never quite make peace with the status quo. Together, Katie and Hadja tackle the thornier issues in the midwifery field: the push for doctorate requirements that may shrink the very workforce midwifery needs, the compounded burnout carried by midwives of color who become sole representatives of entire communities, the case for treating healthcare like the business it actually is, and why mentorship isn't just important — it's foundational. This episode is best paired with a cup of chai tea served with milk and honey!

    1h 13m

  7. JAN 12

    Lindsay

    Send us Fan Mail It's hard to be vulnerable, especially in the medical field, but if you can't show vulnerability at work are you in the right place for you to thrive? Katie and Lindsay explore the invisible weight midwives carry: constantly explaining who they are, practicing at the edge (or beyond) their intended scope, and soldiering through systems that don't always leave room for vulnerability. They get honest about burnout, the loss of clinical identity, the myth of work-life balance, and the particular ache of loving a calling that doesn't always love you back the same way. At the heart of it all is a recurring theme: the midwife community itself — that curated, fragile, irreplaceable sisterhood — is the thing that keeps you going when the compass feels broken. Equal parts candid and comforting, this episode is for every midwife (or person!) who has ever wondered is this still the right fit? — and needed to hear that the question itself is part of the journey. This episode is best paired with a cup of Tazo's lemon loaf tea (the best tea to drink with a friend!)

    1h 5m

  8. 12/21/2025

    Carrie

    Send us Fan Mail What if the best thing about being a midwife was that it wasn't the most important thing about you? That's the philosophy Carrie lives by — and in this episode, she unpacks what it really means to be present at birth without losing yourself to it. A lover of nature in all its forms, Carrie sees labor the way she sees storms and tides: wild, unpredictable, and never truly controllable. Which is exactly why she's still in awe of it after 20+ years. Katie and Carrie get refreshingly honest about the labor behind the labor — the physical toll of full-scope midwifery, the burnout that quietly accumulates on both ends of the patient spectrum, and what it actually looks like to build a career that doesn't consume your entire identity. From broken legs to broken systems, they explore why so few of their classmates are still on the front lines, and why that might not be a failure on an individual's part so much as a natural progression. This episode is best paired with a black iced coffee (it is Carrie's favorite and she "would die without it!")

    1h 12m

  9. 12/04/2025

    Laurel

    Send us Fan Mail Midwife and podcast host Katie reconnects with longtime colleague and friend Laurel, a certified nurse midwife of 15+ years, to kick off the podcast series! Laurel stumbled into midwifery as a nursing student through a Women's Studies minor and a transformative clinical rotation at a birth center — where she witnessed birth as a joyful family event, not a medical procedure. That vision never left her. Her early career was marked by instability: a first job where midwives were quietly squeezed off the hospital floor, a second solo practice where she found her footing alongside a nurse practitioner "partner in crime," and a relocation to North Carolina that traded career ambition for survival mode as a new mother far from her support network. Postpartum depression and a patient who mirrored her own symptoms sent her home to Delaware. Threading through all of it is a single theme: the people around you are the job. Mentors who kept her from quitting. Colleagues who made the hard days bearable. Nursing staff who chose to welcome rather than undermine. When those people left, Laurel left too. Now settled at an independent birth center, Laurel has learned — after years of self-reflection, therapy and her own raw labor experience — that giving without asking is a recipe for burning out. She guards her Tuesdays alone fiercely, asks for the schedule that actually fits her life, and has stopped pretending that 30-minute visits and genuine trust-building are luxuries. They're the whole point. Her hope for midwifery? Consumers are finally catching up. People want this kind of care — and that demand may be what saves the field. Don't miss this opening episode to a raw and insightful podcast about life when you happen to be a midwife.  P.S.-each episode will have a pairing suggestion. This episode is best paired with a glass of champagne.

    1h 23m

  10. 12/04/2025

    Intro to Mindful Midwifery Presents: The Labor Behind Labor

    Send us Fan Mail What's this podcast about? Midwives, of course!  Find out more in this introduction to the series.

    4 min
  • 10 Episodes

About

From an outsider's perspective, midwifery sounds like a fascinating profession. But what does it feel like to juggle life's demands in a career that doesn't allow you to have a bad day? This is an insider's view of the labor behind labor.  Join Katie O'Brien, Certified Nurse Midwife, for frank conversations with frontline  midwives about the joys, challenges, and politics surrounding the work of midwifery while trying to maintain a quality life away from the job. 

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