Mindful Midwifery Presents: The Labor Behind Labor

Send us Fan Mail In this season finale, Katie reunites with Laurel and Lindsay — two of the OG guests from the very first episodes — for a conversation about what a year actually does to a person. They dig into where they were twelve months ago versus where they are now: professionally, personally, and everything in between. Laurel is leaning into what it means to be a content, healthy, soon-to-be...

Send us Fan Mail Carrie knows how bodies work. She's spent decades supporting women through some of their most vulnerable moments — and yet, nothing quite prepares you for becoming the patient yourself. In this episode, she joins Katie just two weeks after her hysterectomy to talk about the 30-year road to that operating table: the symptoms she managed, the decision she wrestled with, and the...

Send us Fan Mail Angela came to the United States from Venezuela as an undocumented teenager, speaking just enough English to interpret for her grandmother in an ER — and somehow found herself captivated by the people rushing around in scrubs. It took a perceptive teacher, a husband who said, "we'll make it work," and one pivotal moment at a midwifery orientation to unlock a calling...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Katie sits down with Cori — nurse-midwife, gestational carrier, and quite possibly the most interesting person you'll meet this week. Cori has spent her career advocating for better birth experiences after her own traumatic deliveries pushed her away from obstetrics and toward midwifery. But her story doesn't stop at the delivery room door. Cori opens up...

Send us Fan Mail Holly never set out to have a career. She wanted to be a wife and a mom — and for a long time, that's exactly what she was. But somewhere between homeschooling three kids, working night shifts as an L&D nurse, and her husband's quiet encouragement, she found herself in midwifery school.  In this episode, Katie and Holly explore what happens when a person becomes some...

Send us Fan Mail Before water births were trendy, before fathers were allowed in delivery rooms, before midwives could legally do a pelvic exam in Maryland — there was Kathy. the midwife who wouldn't be managed.   In this episode, host Katie O'Brien interviews her mentor and the mentor of many other midwives in the Baltimore area: Kathy Slone.  Kathy traces her career from an Indiana lab...

Send us Fan Mail Taking a step back in your career isn't always a bad thing or an indicator of lack of commitment or drive. Sometimes it's just plain common sense and self-love.  In this episode, Katie sits down with her self-described "introverted" colleague and friend, Bev — a woman whose career story is anything but quiet. After 23 years as a labor and delivery nurse, Bev ma...

Send us Fan Mail Being a homebirth midwife is an all-encompassing, 24/7 career choice. Most homebirth services are offered by Certified Professional Midwives, but why don't more Certified Nurse Midwives offer homebirth services?  In this episode, host Katie O'Brien sits down with her old colleague Bayla: CNM, serial entrepreneur, and one of a small group of nurse-midwives in the United S...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the midwife becomes the patient? Katie O'Brien sits down with Jenna — a newly minted midwife and an even newer mom — to find out. With 10-week-old Celeste in tow (and occasionally on the breast), Jenna unpacks what no clinical rotation could have prepared her for: the sheer, humbling, beautiful chaos of the postpartum fourth trimester. Turns out, knowing abo...

Send us Fan Mail Not all midwives feel they were called to be a midwife! In this episode, Hadja traces her path from a double major in international studies and nursing to the delivery room, driven not by a "calling" but by a conviction: that midwifery is one of the most powerful tools for improving women's health outcomes worldwide. The conversation winds through career pivots take...

Send us Fan Mail It's hard to be vulnerable, especially in the medical field, but if you can't show vulnerability at work are you in the right place for you to thrive? Katie and Lindsay explore the invisible weight midwives carry: constantly explaining who they are, practicing at the edge (or beyond) their intended scope, and soldiering through systems that don't always leave room f...

Send us Fan Mail What if the best thing about being a midwife was that it wasn't the most important thing about you? That's the philosophy Carrie lives by — and in this episode, she unpacks what it really means to be present at birth without losing yourself to it. A lover of nature in all its forms, Carrie sees labor the way she sees storms and tides: wild, unpredictable, and never truly...

Send us Fan Mail Midwife and podcast host Katie reconnects with longtime colleague and friend Laurel, a certified nurse midwife of 15+ years, to kick off the podcast series! Laurel stumbled into midwifery as a nursing student through a Women's Studies minor and a transformative clinical rotation at a birth center — where she witnessed birth as a joyful family event, not a medical procedure. T...

Send us Fan Mail What's this podcast about? Midwives, of course!  Find out more in this introduction to the series.