I started Penn's midwifery program as a distance learner in the fall of 2001. Penn has a unique approach to distance learning. My classes are broadcast over the internet through NetMeeting, and I am able to communicate via microphone from my bedroom in Hershey, PA, almost 100 miles from the classroom. Other distance learning students live in Baltimore, the Lancaster area, and in western PA near Eerie. At least once each semester, I visit Philadelphia for a week to gain hands-on skills in the lab, things like taking pap smears, pelvimetry, measuring pregnant bellies correctly, fetal monitor interpretation, and determining fetal position. Most of my classmates live in or commute to Philly for classes. Many of our classes combine midwifery students with nurse practitioner students.

Midwifery is most assuredly my calling. As a child I would deliver my teddy bear's babies and help her little bear to breastfeed. Many long nights were spent waiting patiently for rabbits and guinea pigs to give birth. I held the eggs of quail as they hatched in my hands and even raised butterflies, preying mantises and crickets. I was always drawn to birth and life, always fascinated by the process that has brought new individuals into the world since the dawn of time. Midwifery school represents a lifelong dream for me, but one beset by enormous challenges and sacrifices. The program is very difficult. I have found it necessary to prune my life to just the essentials, to let all extraneous activities fall away for the duration in order to accommodate the rigors of almost constant studying. Yet it is exciting and rewarding. If I could study any topic in the world, it would certainly be this. And on May 13, 2002, my hands guided a beautiful 8 pound 2 ounce girl into the world, my first delivery.

This web site is a scrapbook of my journey though midwifery school and the parallel journeys of my classmates. Each of us travels a different path, but our experiences share common themes- fatigue, feeling overwhelmed and overburdened, the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of mastery, anxiety and excitement. The journey is ongoing, and I will continue to add photographs and other mementos as we move towards graduation.