Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author.

It is just a few more days until the Season 4 premiere of Call the Midwife (Sunday, March 29, 2015). To honor the day, we are hosting a Call the Midwife event in Detroit, Michigan. It is hosted by Detroit Wayne County Health Authority (DWCHA) and co-sponsored by Wayne State University Physician Group, Certified Nurse-Midwife Service (WSUPG CNM Service) and Detroit Public Television (DPTV). It will be a fun event as we celebrate the DPTV Modern Day Midwives blog moving to the national PBS site and the launch of our new maternal child health initiatives with the birth of the Health Authority WSUPG CNM Service. Just like the Nonnatus House nurses, nuns and midwives the Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNMs) will go out into the community to deliver community based midwifery care while the Detroit Nurse-Family Partnership home visitors will be going into our clients homes.

When I first brought up the potential for this event I had two interesting questions: “What is a midwife and for that matter —what does it mean to be a ‘Modern Day Midwife’?” The second question was surprising to me — “What is a blog?!!”

So here goes ... MIDWIFE means "with woman" but each culture and country may have a different name or term. This past weekend I was in Quebec City, and when I asked how many midwives practiced at the hospital we were passing by they just gave me a blank stare. I remembered the French name for midwife is sage-femme which means "wise woman." A Danish midwife told me the name for her profession is jordmoder which means “earth mother.” Some may find it interesting to learn that the term obstetric is actually from the Latin term for “midwife” which is obstetrix. The word obstetrix has its beginnings from obstare because the midwife was to stand by or in front of the woman while she was assisting her during childbirth.

As a midwife we do “catch babies” but we do more than this. As a Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) here in the United States we provide primary care and maternity care services to help women of all ages throughout the entire life cycle. We help women through life events and approach these life transitions as physiologic changes not a state of disease. We partner with the entire health care team, women, families and our community, but women are the center of our care. As a Modern Day Midwife and blogger we will take people along into our current practices and share experiences from our personal lens. I try to showcase scientific evidence (and share resource links in case people want further exploration). I told my friend that blogs are posts that are on the World Wide Web and have been around since the early 1990s. I have seen blogs from just one individual or from a group like our trio of Modern Day Midwives bloggers.

I hope people come along on the Season 4 journey as our Call the Midwife characters provide the poorest women in the East end of London with the best possible care. We will watch each episode and reflect about our current or Modern Day Midwives experiences here in our community as we face the worst infant mortality in the entire nation and one of the worst maternal mortality rates.

Katie Moriarty (CNM, PhD, CAFCI, RN) is the Director of Nurse-Family Partnership at Detroit Wayne County Health Authority and currently serves on the regional board of directors for the American College of Nurse-Midwives. Prior to her current position, Katie served as the Associate Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Education Program at the University of Michigan.
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