GoMidwife exists to train the next generation of doulas, childbirth educators and midwives. Our desire is to see birth workers equipped and released throughout the nations to teach and serve women during the childbearing years. Our focus is multi-purposed:
1.To train and equip doulas, childbirth educators and home birth midwives in the U.S. to change the accepted cultural norms surrounding birth.
2.To train and educate midwives in rural, crisis and developing world situations thereby improving care and decreasing mortality.
3. To provide advocates who work tirelessly to create platforms from which the voices of women, all women, can be heard. To resist the status quo of accepted norms and to reclaim birth as a natural process, owned by the woman.
4. To provide relief for midwives working tirelessly in rural areas who need time off call to recover, refresh and rejuvenate for the work ahead.
5. To mobilize midwives to go into short-term crisis areas and provide education and relief as needed.
6. To train women in community, sustainable and appropriate development technologies. To build food forests surrounding clinics and maternity homes where women can receive meals and fresh produce to maintain healthy pregnancies and provide micro-business models from which they can support their families.
7. To disciple women and families through the auspices of pregnancy, childbirth, nutrition and sustainable farming, leading them ever nearer to the water quenching all thirst, and to the the One who eternally feeds our souls.
Photo Credit: Vivienne Marcheel
One of the greatest crises in our day surrounds childbirth. No family, community or nation remains untouched by childbirth; from the richest to the poorest nation, none are exempt. Regardless of where you are in the world, women are having babies. Whether you are in the developed world where there is too much intervention or the developing world where there is too little...both are facing a crisis. The loss of understanding that birth is a natural process, the increasing rise in cesarean rates, higher induction rates, refusal for VBACs, and the ever present mortality and morbidity rates of mothers and babies throughout the developing world due to lack of access puts women and babies at risk each day.
In all areas our focus is to use the time surrounding the childbirth period, one of the most intimate life moments women ever experience, to influence change, restore dignity, express perfect love and bring life. Our goal is to resurrect the current crisis in maternal-child health today back to the original intent of life and life to the fullest.
This can all be changed through education. If we can educate women, train and equip birth workers and raise up new midwives we will see improved outcomes and increased life. It is our desire to see women trained, confident and competent in the natural process of pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, willing to spend their lives to see change affected in our generation.
We believe every mother and every life is special and each deserve to be cared for through the midwifery model of care. Our mandate is to raise up competent doulas, childbirth educators and midwives who will challenge and change the accepted cultural norms and improve birth outcomes worldwide.
Read more about our practices and structure.
Amy Kirbow, CPM, LM
Founder and Director of GoMidwife
Amy is a midwife, who has served for over 8 years in the Pacific and is now currently serving women in southwest Montana. Her desire is to train others to become competent and integrous midwives, who grow their own midwifery practices and to reach the nations. She became a midwife specifically to educate and train other women as midwives, and to increase the education and training of cultural midwives already serving their communities in both the rural and majority world. It is her expressed purpose to train women to go into the nations to serve, teach and equip other women, and to reach into crisis situations bringing comfort and raising the level of care for mothers and babies. Amy states, "It is the need of our day. It is the issue we face. It is the mandate of our generation to stem the hemorrhage of life from the wombs of women. It is ours to set right and we will do it."
Contact Amy at: [email protected]
Derek Kirbow
Director of Operations & Finance, Academic Administrator
Derek has earned advanced degrees in International Relations, Comparative Politics and International Development with a focus on food and water security. Derek brings an understanding of long-term development in the nations to GoMidwife, and has helped establish a major foundation in building permanent food systems on which healthy pregnancies, mothers and families can be built. His focus at GoMidwife is teaching nutrition, community development, worldview and permaculture while bringing a deeper understanding of how development must go hand in hand with midwifery for improved outcomes.
Contact Derek at:[email protected]
Laney Lewis
Executive Assistant
Laney has been both a student of GoMidwife as well as the co-leader and assistant in the running of our MOM course program. She is currently an advanced birth assistant at the Bozeman Birth Center as well as serving in her executive role with GoMidwife. Laney has been an integral part of our team as we grow and expand the heart and vision of our ministry and calling.
Contact Laney at: [email protected]