I was not trained first in emergency.
I was raised first in trust.
I grew up in the mountains of Ceres, about an hour down a dirt road from the nearest town. We cooked on fires. We had no electricity. If you called an ambulance, you would wait at least an hour.
So we learned to take care of ourselves.
My mother grew medicine in her herb garden. She dispensed remedies to the local people. We learned first aid simply because it was necessary. I remember sitting at twelve years old with tweezers, picking glass out of a man’s scalp. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just part of living far from everything.
That was my first education in steadiness.
My mother became a traditional midwife almost by accident. The first birth she attended was a breech. She turned the baby in labour and the baby was born well. After that, the local women called her when they were in labour…
I have no memory of anything “going wrong” at those births.
Birth happened in the middle of the night.
And life went on.
That imprint shaped me.
So when I teach Birth First Aid, I need to be clear:
The focus is not emergency.
The focus is physiology.
In most cases, birth unfolds beautifully when the mother feels safe and unobserved, when adrenaline is low, when the environment is right.
But nature also teaches us that not every flower opens. Not every peach ripens.
There is a small percentage of mothers and babies who require some help at birth.
Over the years, and across roughly four hundred births, there have been rare moments when I needed to step in. And I have been deeply grateful for the muscle memory in my body when that happened.
Not to control birth.
Not to manage it.
But to gently bring things back onto their path.
Birth First Aid, for me, is about this middle path:
Deep trust in physiology.
Clear understanding of normal.
And the steadiness to respond when something truly requires action.
Using your head.
Using your heart.
Following your gut.
And when needed — using your hands.
That is why I teach this course.
Not because birth is dangerous.
But because birth is powerful.
And power deserves steadiness.
Join us for the next cycle of the Birth First Aid course:
