This weekend I had the pleasure of seeing the new documentary Catching Babies. Claudia Booker of Birthing Hands DC organized the viewing.

The film is about a midwifery school in El Paso Texas called Maternidad La Luz. It’s a unique place–an intensive midwifery program that trains non-nurse midwives in a 13 month program that is extremely hands on. Two of the student midwives in the film describe catching their first babies just months after arriving at the school.  Students who complete the program can work as out-of-hospital midwives across the country, depending on the laws in their state governing non-nurse midwives.

I actually visited the school in 2007, did an overnight where I shadowed students and midwives as they did their visits and attended births. I went because at the time I was still planning on becoming a midwife, and I was excited by the possibility of attending a school that almost entirely catered to the Latina community.

Because the school is based in El Paso, steps from the border with Juarez, Mexico (the two cities are actually contiguous, the only thing separating them a bridge that represents the border) the vast majority of the women who birth at Maternidad La Luz (it is a free-standing birth center, as well as a school) are Mexican and Spanish-speaking. Many are not US citizens, but living on the border are allowed to travel back and forth with a certain area on what are called “radial visas.”

The film is really well done. The filmmakers are both women of color, which comes across clearly in their perspective and in who they choose to focus on as subjects of the film. We see one African-American student midwife, another who identifies as indigenous Mexica and grew up in El Paso, along with two other student midwives as they take their journey to midwifery. Throughout their stories is the birth stories of the women they support during pregnancy and birth, all of whom are Spanish-speaking women of color.

This focus of the film stood in stark contrast to my own experience when I visited the clinic in 2007.

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