CHEYENNE -—Before the current legislative session, there was mention of using midwives among the medical specialties needed to ease the shortage of medical care for pregnant women.
The idea was that perhaps they could help fill the gap that contributes to the state’s health care desert.
Maybe it was just pre-session public relations chatter or wishful thinking, given the woefully few active midwives in Wyoming.
According to the Wyoming Board of Midwifery, only 26 certified professional midwives are currently licensed in the state.
Of the 26 licenses only six are held by Wyoming residents. The rest of the licenses are held by out-of-state midwives.
Of those six state licenses, one each is in Platte, Park and Washakie Counties, while three are held by midwives in Uinta County, according to the Wyoming Board of Midwifery web page.
These licenses might include nurse-midwives, who are registered nurses with advanced practice training; they also are registered with the State Board of Nursing.
Lacy Mansfield, vice chair of the Wyoming Board of Midwifery, is a provider of midwifery services in southeast Wyoming through “Sacred Birth” in Wheatland.
A member of the Eastern Cheyenne tribe, Mansfield said in a phone interview that she discovered recently that her great grandmother was a midwife for the tribe, which may explain why she was drawn to the profession.
She is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) and a Licensed Midwife (LM). She trained as an EMT (emergency medical technician); is a graduate of the Mountain Midwives School and the National College of Midwifery, and passed an examination from the North American Registry of Midwives.
She said she has delivered 200 infants since she became a licensed professional midwife in 2019.
Nationwide, meanwhile, the demand for midwives is growing as more women seek a holistic or natural approach to childbirth through home births.
According to online statistics, midwives in 1980 attended only 1.1 percent of births in the U.S.
By 2020 midwives were attending or presiding over 12 percent of these births.
Maybe the British television series “Call the Midwife” provoked the interest.
Mansfield said she could see a bit of a pickup in calls for information about the work of midwives recently.
She also finds most doctors more accepting of her role in medical care; she mentioned one in Torrington who gave her a cell phone number to call if she needed help.
“We want to be sure we are doing everything right,” Mansfield said.
Regarding the out of-state midwives who hold Wyoming licenses, and practice here, most live on the borders of neighboring states.
The exception is Nebraska, a state with a history of hostility against midwives, according to multiple internet sources.
That state has no licensing requirements for any lay midwife, certified or not. It also has a law that makes it a potential felony for the other type of midwife - a nurse-midwife - to attend or oversee home births.
They can only attend births in a hospital setting.
The Wyoming Legislature years ago was equally hostile to any attempt by midwives to become licensed.
Their argument, which carried considerable weight, was if a pregnant woman had complications and the midwife sent her to a hospital, the doctor who treats her and the hospital are liable for the outcome.
But the midwives and their women supporters persisted. In 2010 the Legislature relented and passed a law allowing them to be registered and regulated through the Wyoming Board of Midwifery.
The history of midwifery and how it was gradually taken over by male doctors looking for more patients and more money is exemplified in a book I read years ago.
“A Midwives Tale” was based on the diary of a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard, who attended 816 births in 27 years in Maine in the 18th century.
At that time nearly all babies were born at home with the help of a midwife who learned her skills from older midwives.
The male doctors succeeded in their takeover campaign by attacking the midwives as ignorant and incompetent, although they had been delivering babies for decades.
Joan Barron can be reached at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
