Julia Allen BA (Hons) BMW RM

As a teenager, I began to realize there was something different about me when I noticed that while my friends were interested in the birth control chapters of our health textbooks, I was more interested in the chapters about pregnancy and childbirth. Over time, the call of midwifery got stronger and by my twenties, I had developed a habit of reading midwifery textbooks. I was passionate about examples of women taking charge of their own health, and loved the ways I saw midwives empowering women to find and listen to their own internal authority. The trouble was, I didn't think midwives existed anymore, particularly not in the quiet prairie city of Winnipeg that was my home. Midwifery seemed simultaneously foreign and ancient, and it didn't even occur to me that a midwife was something that I could be.

Eventually, I was asked to think about my calling versus my career, and in that moment all my years of reading finally made sense. I knew instantly that I was going to be a midwife. Sure enough, I soon met a woman who was studying to be a midwife, and she introduced me to the vibrant world of midwifery in Manitoba in the late 1990s. I was midway through a degree to become a family therapist at the time, so I did the only obvious thing and dropped out of school and became a doula.

I attended my first birth in 1999. It was long, hard, wild, and wonderful, and I was hooked! I went back to school and earned an Honours Degree in Women's Studies at the University of Winnipeg, and wrote my thesis on women's experiences of obstetrical care, winning the Gold Medal in my program. I worked actively as a doula and Birthing From Within childbirth educator through the cooperative I founded with three other doulas, called Birth Roots Doula Collective. I also worked as a sexual health educator and birth control counsellor at two community health clinics in Winnipeg.

After spending four years immersed in the emotional, political, and sociological aspects of women's health, I decided it was time to take the final leap into the clinical realm, so I moved to Vancouver to formally study midwifery at UBC. In the course of my studies, I attended hundreds of births in Vancouver, New Westminster, Salt Spring Island, San Luis Potosi (Mexico), and in my hometown of Winnipeg. I earned my Bachelor of Midwifery degree from UBC in 2006, and was thrilled to start off my career by catching a classmate's first baby a few weeks after classes ended.

My practice as a midwife is centered on the same beliefs that brought me to this work in the beginning: that the woman and her family are central participants in the care and decision-making; that pregnancy and childbirth are some of the female body's normal and healthy expressions; and that midwifery care should be available to all women regardless of sexual orientation, age, race, class, or ability. I feel honoured to practice this ancient art of birthing babies, mothers and families.