I would say the first thing that we know about birth is that there is something right about the process. It's the way that human beings have been coming into the world since the beginning of time so that there is something innately right about it. We know that birth can be and should be a normal process for the vast majority of women. We know that birth is a right of passage in a woman's life. We know that birth takes a woman from one place in her life to another. The birth of a child certainly does change her viewpoint of herself and, I believe, her viewpoint of the world.
Birth also can bring about some powerful emotions within us during the time of the pregnancy. It provides us a time to think about our own mothers and fathers; a time to think about ourselves as women and our relationship with other people in our lives; and certainly, we begin to think about the whole process of mothering. I believe this happens from the time we come to the acceptance of the pregnancy and come to the decision that we are going to become a mother, that we are going to continue the pregnancy and mother the child.
We know that birth impacts the woman personally, her support system, her family, and also the community. I believe that it affects the community. I believe it's important that as we help women through the process of pregnancy and birth, through the process of self discovery that is part of the pregnancy and birth process, and that we help them come to a point of empowerment during the pregnancy. Then they will have learned assertiveness to better be able to find those things that they need in order to be good mothers after the birth. That has to be good for our communities.
Indeed, the slogan is "-midwives changing the world one baby at a time-" and I believe that when we help women, when we help them to come to that sense of empowerment and that sense of a new self-definition, we are impacting the future, one baby at a time.