Imagine a hospital delivery room: two proud parents gazing adoringly at their newborn child, as the nurse-midwife congratulates the mother and father. Midwife?

There are nearly 4,000 practicing nurse-midwives in the world today. National Nurse-Midwifery Week, October 7-13, is designed to inform women about the care they can receive from nurse-midwives.

“I had worked as a labor nurse at Mary Greeley for 11 years before I went back to school [to become a nurse-midwife],” Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) and Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) Dawn Heaberlin said. She became a nurse-midwife “as an extension to that role, to add autonomy to my position and to give women another option in care.”

To become a certified nurse-midwife, a person, male or female, must be a licensed Registered Nurse in the United States, complete an accredited nurse-midwifery program, and pass the certification examination given by the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Certification Council.

According to the ACNM, concerns in the 1920s about the high U.S. infant and maternal mortality rates resulted in programs that brought nurse-midwifery to the United States.

Based on statistics, the nurse-midwifery profession appears to be accomplishing its original purpose. In 1991, the infant mortality rate for nurse-midwife-assisted births was 4.6 per 1000, while the national average was 8.6 per 1000, according to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Unlike the old-fashioned midwives who made house calls, all of the deliveries attended by the nurse-midwives in Ames are located at Mary Greeley Medical Center. A labor nurse and a nurse for the baby also attend the delivery, and a physician is always on-call in case of an emergency, Heaberlin said.

Today’s nurse-midwives provide more than prenatal and delivery care, however.

Heaberlin said at the Mary Greeley Medical Center, in addition to the traditional services, she and the other two practicing ARNP/CNM’s provide STD testing, annual examinations, birth control consulting and well-woman care.

Well-woman care involves women who may not have a primary care provider and need annual examinations, such as pap smears, Heaberlin said.

“Really, we see just about all ends of the spectrum. We do see a few post-menopausal women, but mostly our practice is from teens to peri-menopausal women,” Heaberlin said.