Alison E. Price, LM, CPM, RM

When I was a little girl I was fascinated with pregnancy as soon as I realized that babies weren’t found in the cabbage patch nor  delivered by storks. I marveled that one day a baby  would come out of what was then my small body.   One summer afternoon by the swimming pool, a friend of my Mother’s , big with child, took my little hand and pressed  it on her huge,  round belly . I felt the baby inside her.  Kick. Kick.  It felt like a special handshake.  I didn’t realize it at the time,  but I was making a deal with the universe.  I would become a midwife.

I got my BA in psychology from Mills College , Oakland, California in 1980;  then took time out to have my children.  In 1988 I went back for my certificate in Pre-Med with the idea of possibly continuing in obstetrics.   It was around this time I  read an article in a local newspaper about a homebirth midwife  in California and something in me shifted.  I realized I didn’t have to go to med school to deliver babies.  I enrolled instead in a grassroots midwifery school  in San Francisco and after that a program in St. Mary , Jamaica.  While I maintained a doula practice, I worked and trained with a group of midwives over a three year period , traveling back and forth between California and  Jamaica.   In 2004 I got my  California state midwifery license( LM ), my national midwifery certificate ( CPM ), and  my Jamaican midwifery registration(RM).

I have been in practice  as a midwife now for 5 years.  My childhood fascination has turned into my adult profession. Every time I place my hand on a women’s belly and feel that miraculous kick, I renew the deal I made that summer day.  I love being a midwife.