Patrice Latka BHSc RM

At the age of eighteen, I found an old, battered copy of “Birth” at a church rummage sale in West Virginia. Something compelled me to spend the twenty-five cents that they were asking for it, not knowing how the investment I had just made would change my life.

At the time, I didn’t know that there were midwives practicing in Canada, nor did I know that thousands of women every year were choosing to have home births. All I knew was that I wanted to become a midwife. After a couple of years of self-study, I came across a flyer for an “Introduction to Midwifery” course being run by the Midwives Association of BC. I registered. I went and I learned that midwifery was my calling.

At the time, midwifery was unlegislated in Canada so I went to France where I apprenticed with a home birth midwife for a year. I saw things during that year that I will probably never see again in my career and I am so thankful for the experience.

By the time I returned, The Midwifery Education Programme In Ontario was accepting students so I moved to Toronto where I spent the next four years studying midwifery. I graduated from the program with a BSc in Midwifery in 1999.

After working in Toronto for a few years, I went to work in the Canadian Arctic where I both practiced as a midwife and taught Inuit women in the Inuulitsivik Midwifery Education Program. Working in isolated, Inuit communities, six hours by plane to the nearest hospital, taught me two very important lessons. First, I was reassured that my midwifery education prepared me to deal well with emergencies. Second, (and more importantly) I was reminded that birth is normal and that our bodies are designed for this amazingly complex process. Time and time again it was reinstated how resilient women and babies really are and how important it is to trust the process.

When I’m not working, I enjoy taking long motorcycle trips on vintage bikes, knitting, practicing Ashtanga yoga, trying to stand up on a surf board and rock climbing.

I finally went through the magical and life-enriching process of pregnancy and birth for myself after having had the honour of assisting hundreds of women through their sacred processes over the past 18 years. My son Quincy was born in April 2009 and I have been blessed to spend all my time with this joyful, cheery and clever little boy who has taught me more about love in the past seven months than I learned in my lifetime before his arrival.