Abundance of Networking

Today I attended the chapter ACNM meeting. All of the meetings are very informative, with a great dinner by the sponsor, presentation by the sponsor, and the meeting itself - but today's was esp. very cool. I met several people who were very well-known in the field of nurse-midwifery (for the sake of privacy, I will not post names, but some of them you may be able to find out anyway if you are that interested).

- One was an OB-GYN who had recently won a prestigious award. Guess what? He is also one of the board members for Frontier. :) And I just discovered tonight that he was one of the former governors for Frontier Nursing Service (FNS)!

- One CNM I met is the president of the Midwifery Business Network.

- Another CNM I met did a lot of things (I feel bad, but I can't remember - but I know she is well-known!). Among those, she was a former dean of Frontier. :)

- I met a CNM who practices somewhat locally to me.

- (Did not get to speak with her personally, but) One was a midwife from Canada who spoke about the practice of midwifery there - pretty neat and of course, different than the US. She is working on trying to promote vaginal breech births. I've always been kind of open to the idea of [visiting, living in] Canada. I think their maternity leave has a lot to do with it. ;)

- I met another CNM who was from up north, and I knew she was spoken of very highly and even had very positive remarks about the dean of Frontier.

I think that is about it. Whew! What a great meeting.

Our sponsor also showed us a video about Mirena, including a video demonstration of proper insertion techniques (on a real person, too). Quite interesting! For anyone who may not know, Mirena is one of the many kinds of birth control. And yes, nurse midwives can insert them.

Random cool thing about the meeting: the doctor who received the award, he was wearing a tie that he said Kitty Ernst gave to him. :D It said "Carpe Diem" all over it, which means "Seize the day." Very fitting for us students and those who work in the birth realm. We really must seize the day and work to make change TODAY to improve the lives of mothers and infants.