Helen Mikul Story Transcript

My name is Helen Mikul. I was a staff midwife with the Duke Midwifery Service from 2003 to 2008.

So, I had actually been working at the freestanding birth center in Chapel Hill [Women’s Birth and Wellness Center], and I had resigned because I was fried … and I got a call from Amy MacDonald, who didn’t know me. And she said, “Hi, my name is Amy, you don’t know me, but I need a midwife to work with the residents here, and having somebody who speaks Spanish would be really great.” And I was going to start exactly – I gave three months notice – and I was going to start in three months. And I thought, “This seems meant to be.”

The residents were very respectful. There was one time it was – she was an intern. It was her first year. And I was with her in triage, and she went to go check the patient. And I said, “So, you want to find the station, the dilation, the effacement.” And I went through a list of things she needed to be checking for. And she said, “Helen, if I just find the cervix, I’ll be happy.” [Laughs] You know, it’s just that process of watching them grow, too, was really cool.

One of the first deliveries I was with – I think she might have been a third-year resident. And the birth was beautiful. And as soon as it was over, she left [claps hands]. And I followed out in the hallway, and I said, “Where are you going?” She said, “To write my orders.” And I said, “What was that woman’s name?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “You just were allowed to participate in one of the most powerful parts of her life. You need to know your patients’ names. You need to thank them. And you don’t just split like that.” And it was those kinds of things. They liked us, the residents liked having the midwives there. Because we were kind to them, we were supportive.

You know, they hired us to teach the normal … That there wasn’t a need for continuous monitoring … Trusting the process. You know, this is not pathology. This is physiology. Which is really different when you’ve gone through medical school, and everything’s pathology. A great example of that is the birth of the placenta, where we did expectant management and it could take up to 45 minutes. But they were able to see that there were less issues with postpartum hemorrhages, or cords breaking, or whatever, if you just sat for a few minutes and let the placenta get loose by itself. Just something as simple as not breaking down the bed. You know – just women giving birth in a bed that wasn’t taken apart with stirrups. That was not normal when we started there.

They were very, very receptive to any teaching, and doing things. They started doing births on hands and knees, and side-lying, and several of the residents ended up delivering during their tenure, and they had great midwife births. They always wanted a midwife with them at their birth.

Read a transcript of the full interview here.