By Kendra Smith
Kaye Bullock of Las Vegas, Nev., has helped deliver more than 1,600 babies when Darcee Barnes met her a few years ago.
Darcee Barnes, of Sandy, tried three different places to have her children - the hospital, a birthing center and at home with a midwife.
Barnes said her experience with Bullock was the best of all.
Research on the advantages of homebirth convinced her to use that option.
'I totally trusted my midwife, who was unobtrusively with me the entire time - not in my face, but by my side, watching over me to make sure that everything was proceeding normally,' Barnes said. 'If any problem occurred that she couldn''t resolve, she wouldn''t have hesitated to take me to the hospital, and I absolutely trusted her judgment.'
During her first birthing experience, Barnes said she felt nervous the whole time because they couldn''t get the IV in her arm right away.
Her midwife didn''t even use an IV and the percent of women who had to go to the hospital instead of delivering at home with Bullock was 2 percent.
'It was my birth, and I was in charge,' Barnes said.
With women seeking alternatives to giving birth, midwives in Utah want a legal medical status, so by law, they will be recognized as an acceptable channel for birthing mothers to use.
Utah Friends of Midwives aren''t midwives, but are people who use them or support them.
In February, the Utah Midwife Association signed a petition for a bill to go through Congress, the Midwife Certification Act. The act would define midwifery in legally acceptable terms, and allow midwives to be state certified. They would also be allowed to use a small list of medications.
Currently, lay midwives - midwives without certification by the state - are not considered legal medical practitioners because they have no official training.
'The bottom line is that it''s going to make everyone legal, and it''s going to give extended privileges for those who choose to certify with the state,' said Vivian Giles, one of the founders of Utah Friends of Midwives.
To gain support for midwives, Utah Friends of met May 21 in the Capitol Rotunda to contact Utah legislators.
Giles said many Utah legislators support the bill from the 'staunch conservatives to local liberals.'
The Utah Medical Association, however, opposes the bill.
Mark Fotheringham, spokesman for the Utah Medical Association, said the association does not support the sanctioning or licensing of lay midwives because they have not had the training needed for licensing.
According to Fotheringham, the bill would make it appear that way.
Not all midwives are considered 'lay midwives.' Some are certified and work in hospitals with doctors and others, like Suzanne Smith, owner of Better Birth LLC in Orem, have there own professional midwife services.
Dr. William Parker, Mt. Timpanogos Women''s Health Center in Pleasant Grove, agrees with the medical association about lay midwives.
The health center has seven certified midwives that overseen by doctors.
Proper training and knowledge of problems in pregnancy are what lay midwives lack, Parker said.
Home births can be safe, Parker said, but the way midwives in Utah perform them - without the equipment a hospital can provide - typically aren''t.
He said the health center doesn''t support lay midwives because they aren''t trained although he will see their patients if the lay midwife refers them.
Smith usually delivers 60 to 75 babies a year.
She said a growing trend in Utah is the use of a midwife for childbirth rather than a doctor.
'Women are becoming more educated in their options, and particularly to the option of home birth,' Smith said.
Often midwives deliver babies in homes, though midwives operate in hospitals as well.
Smith said it''s better at home than in the hospital because of less intervening factors, like monitors and epidurals.
'For a normal, healthy women homebirth is actually safer,' Smith said.
Along with a safer environment, it is considered a more intimate care.
In hospital and obstetrician situations, a woman may only see a physician for a few minutes.
But for Smith''s clients, the visits are at least a half hour per visit.
She said it helps her to get to know the women.