Meet one of our new committee volunteers

But meantime, we would love to introduce you to one of the new members of our committee. Celine Lemay has been a speaker several times over the past 16 years and now brings her valuable experience to the VIDM. Welcome Céline.

Céline says ‘I worked many years as a midwife before midwifery was legalized as a profession in Québec, Canada. I started to serve as a midwife because of the need expressed by women and couples to be accompanied in their decision to give birth to their babies at home.

I am proud to be born as a midwife from social movements like feminism and  women’s health rights to choose the place to give birth and to have access legally to midwives and birthing center as options. We founded  an association of midwives and we were autonomous practioners. After some political activism  we were proud to be legalized as a profession distinct from nursing and from medicine. I am not a kind of nurse nor a kind of doctor. I am a midwife.

We were deeply reflective and each event was used to learn about obstetrical knowledge, technical skills as well as raising consciousness about all dimensions of maternity  processes: psychic, spiritual, cosmic….Birth is greater than us and it became  obvious that humility was a central posture for me as a midwife. I always wanted to work with love but also with rigour of mind, heart and soul.

For me, weaving relationships with women  in continuity was also  weaving confidence, respect and autonomy  in mutuality. What was good for women and families was also good for me. Compassion for women became true and coherent when it was also used for myself. Words used to comfort women and nourish their confidence were used also in my life as a woman, a mother and a spouse. In order to accompany women, newborn mothers and newborn parents in their adaptation to their life transformations I had to deconstruct and question our culture of  performance, control, perfection, guilt and self-blame  with them as well as for me. I had to assume the fundamental uncertainty and imperfection of our human condition. My practice was relational and it became procedural, attentive to processes.

It kept me opened to learn and deepened my understanding of birth, pregnancy,  newborn, women’s power, love, life, processes etc….Doing midwifery helped me to integrate the  values of the profession into my life and my poetic self, attentive to the wonders in the world I was happy to be immersed in the world of birth. I learned also that welcoming Life is coming with the hard and sometimes tragic aspects of it. Tears and broken heart.

I did a master in Anthropology and had the privilege to do a PhD in a multidisciplinary program, utilizing transdisciplinarity (beyond disciplines and between disciplines) to explore the meanings of doing midwifery before legalization of the profession. It helped me to conceptualize professional identity as well as  the cultural and social context of my profession. I am now in a period of transmission because I am teaching to student midwives in a University program.

AND, I did many other things: a lot of workshops (basketry, soapmaking, tincture with plants, felting,  calligraphy etc).  

My three children and my husband were intimately touched by what I was doing.  Actually I have the joy to have 4 grand-children.

Céline, proud French speaking midwife 😊