Laurel

Midwife and podcast host Katie reconnects with longtime colleague and friend Laurel, a certified nurse midwife of 15+ years, to kick off the podcast series!

Laurel stumbled into midwifery as a nursing student through a Women's Studies minor and a transformative clinical rotation at a birth center — where she witnessed birth as a joyful family event, not a medical procedure. That vision never left her.

Her early career was marked by instability: a first job where midwives were quietly squeezed off the hospital floor, a second solo practice where she found her footing alongside a nurse practitioner "partner in crime," and a relocation to North Carolina that traded career ambition for survival mode as a new mother far from her support network. Postpartum depression and a patient who mirrored her own symptoms sent her home to Delaware.

Threading through all of it is a single theme: the people around you are the job. Mentors who kept her from quitting. Colleagues who made the hard days bearable. Nursing staff who chose to welcome rather than undermine. When those people left, Laurel left too.

Now settled at an independent birth center, Laurel has learned — after years of self-reflection, therapy and her own raw labor experience — that giving without asking is a recipe for burning out. She guards her Tuesdays alone fiercely, asks for the schedule that actually fits her life, and has stopped pretending that 30-minute visits and genuine trust-building are luxuries. They're the whole point.

Her hope for midwifery? Consumers are finally catching up. People want this kind of care — and that demand may be what saves the field. Don't miss this opening episode to a raw and insightful podcast about life when you happen to be a midwife. 

P.S.-each episode will have a pairing suggestion. This episode is best paired with a glass of champagne.