Interview with Alice Bailes, CNM

Tamah Kushner interviewed Alice Bailes for the Spring 1994 Birth News, the newsletter BirthCare & Women's Health

I was lucky enough to see Alice Bailes, CNM "catching" a friend's baby and I remember thinking, "This woman can catch my next baby!" I was so impressed with her interpersonal and midwifery skills, both of which are essential to the making of an excellent midwife.

Alice's first encounter with childbirth literature was in 1956. Her mother read a copy of Granty Dick-Reed's Childbirth Without Fear to prepare for the labor of Alice's baby sister. Alice, who was 10 years old at the time, read it too. Alice says that her first birth of her daughter Jen, now 23, led her on the path to midwifery by interesting her in obstetrics, the power and spirituality of birth, and the grass roots politics of control over your own life and health.

Although these were the times of scopolamine, Alice escaped a medicated birth because she went to Lamaze classes and her doctor was on vacation. The back-up obstetrician, one of the founders of ASPO (American Society for Psychophyllaxis in Obstetrics) Lamaze, was laid back about the birth process.

Although transition was a challenge, she felt exhilaration in doing the work to get her baby born. When she was fully dilated, they took her on a crazy gurney ride down to the delivery room where Jennifer was born on an emotional high.

This joy ended abruptly as they gave Alice a routine post partum sedative and took Jennifer away for the first 24 hours. That was hospital policy back then. Ben's birth 3 years later was both wonderful and more difficult, and according to Alice, made her a better midwife. Ben was a nine-pound posterior baby, born at home in the presence of his family.

Alice became a Lamaze teacher in 1971 and started attending home births as an observer when her students invited her. Then she started birth assisting for Dr. De Vocht who was doing home births in the D.C. area.

Alice says that home births were a natural choice for her. She saw in home births "people being able to be themselves, and the support they're offered enhances their ability to greet labor. Giving birth under those circumstances, a baby is welcomed into the world where everything is possible. Bonding and self-actualization that take place in that environment make people value their family and children, that changes the world. That's a revolution right there."

Soon it became important to Alice to become a certified nurse-midwife. She entered nursing school at George Mason University and then midwifery training at Georgetown University. In the hospital atmosphere Alice felt that mothers had to spend a lot of energy adapting to someone else's environment. Her education within the medical system was invaluable, teaching her the medical side of care. Because doctors are taught to concentrate their attention on charts and medical data, Alice says they miss "many of the assets women bring to their birth experience: their attitudes, family, stamina - and they don't realize how that impacts on the birth." She feels if doctors were taught by labor sitting they would understand the birth process a lot more.

After becoming a CNM, Alice practiced with Kate Beverage and Joyce Daniel for five years at Family Birth. When they decided to scale back their practice, she searched for a partner to start BirthCare. As a Lamaze teacher herself, Marsha Jackson had met Alice thru ASPO and they had been classmates in midwifery school at Georgetown. When Alice was looking for a partner, she saw Marsha again at a conference in Orlando and was lucky enough to find a "soulmate" for the cause of starting a home birth practice.

Alice says she couldn't be luckier in finding a business partner and colleague than Marsha. She's organized, dedicated and is a great actualizer of ideas.

As health care reform emerges on the national agenda, Alice feels that "every first time mother deserves a nurse-midwife to be with her for her pregnancy and her birth so that she can develop a respect for her own strengths and her own amazing, miraculous ability to bring forth life. And without a nurse-midwife as her guide and her guardian she won't get that."

Before the births of Jen and Ben, Alice received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Dance and Theatre at New York University. The dance training helped Alice with Jen and Ben's births, and also contributes to her midwifery. It taught her efficient use of the body and how to identify any muscle tension which was not useful in labor. Alice says she "can look at a person and see where they're using their energy in a way that does not promote labor." Dancing taught her performance technique that can be applied to help a laboring woman best direct the energy and stamina that she has. Performance techniques also provide the concentration necessary to be a good midwife.

She adds that in the dance program, she learned a great deal about nutrition and promoting one's own health.

What does Alice get out of being a midwife? That optimism and affirmation that come with being a witness to this very profound miracle. She feels that it is an honor being there at this event In people's lives. Alice draws on her own spiritual feelings during a birth and says she will sing psalms to herself help the labor along. "I am so lucky to have new life on my hands all the time, to have my hands on miracles every day."

Tamah Kushner is married to Greg Davidson and they have three children who were born at home.