Catching Babies!

I recently had the great pleasure to attend a screening of a new documentary, Catching Babies, directed by filmmaker Barni Axmed Qaasim. The film follows several clients and student midwives at Maternidad La Luz midwifery school and birth center in El Paso, Texas.
Qaasim, who spoke after the screening, said she decided to do the film after visiting a friend who was in training at Maternidad La Luz (MLL). Qaasim recalled that in watching her fried attend a birth she saw a different side of her, and wanted to more deeply explore the experience and transformation of student midwives. Qaasim describes the journey of the women she filmed:

Texas. Kennasha, Jessica, Diana and Sandra are young modern women embarking on a journey toward the ancient profession of midwifery. They are struggling through one of the most demanding schools of midwifery in the country, Maternidad la Luz, which was designed to be stressful in order to push women to understand their own strength. Sandra's clinical studies go hand in hand with her spiritual studies as she learns the Mexica, indigenous Mexican, traditions around birth and pregnancy. The group bonds as sister-midwives in this transformative space, which gives birth to babies, mothers and midwives. Catching Babies is the personal story of three women as they strive to change the world by changing the way babies are born.

I was ready for a film about midwives and mothers, but Catching Babies surprised me in its utter beauty and thoughtfulness. The camera lingers and meditates on the images that make the work of MLL so special -- strong round bellies, yawning newborn babies, new families sitting together, the smiling and struggling face of a woman in labor.
Catching Babies follows two paths: those of the student midwives and the the mothers that they are serving, teaching, and learning from. The student midwives speak with great candor about their experience at MLL, describing the grueling schedule (a full-time class load as well as 24-hour clinic shifts every 3 days), but also revelling in the thrill of the first “catch” and the way that their midwifery education has taught them more about themselves as women. And while there is a lot of waxing on about “loving women,” the film does touch on less-than-pretty outcomes, particularly when one student says her “insides are shaking” after being part of an emergency response to a mother with a postpartum hemorrhage.
But it's the voices MLLs clients that bring the film to life. Qaasim followed four clients, most of whom live in the bordering Mexican city of Juarez, through the end of their pregnancies, and features them telling their own stories to the background of footage of their incredible, beautiful, cute-as-all-get-out babies and families. These mothers describe the “sisterhood” relationship they feel with their midwives and discuss their past births in hospital environments where “no one cares what the mother feels.”
In watching the film, you feel the wholeness of birth as an experience of an entire family and community. From watching the preparations of an indigenous ceremony to prepare the pregnant woman for her birth, to hearing a father speak about the experience of being the first person to touch his baby boy, the viewer gets a sense of renewing long-held traditions and restoring our faith in the natural process of birth. As one student midwife says (and I didn’t take notes, so this is the best my memory can do), “The more I learn as a midwife, the less proactive I am in a birth, and the more I trust women to do what they do.”
There is, of course, always more a film could cover. In a discussion after the film, Qaasim touched on the inequalities that make MLL work --that the school’s position on the border gives student midwives access to many women seeking affordable maternity care, allowing students to “get their numbers” of births attended. There’s something about that relationship that makes me a little uncomfortable, but the film does demonstrate that each client is treated with great care and thoughtfulness.
This would be a great film to use to introduce people to the midwifery model of care, and to get people talking about midwifery education and the process-both professional, intellectually, and emotionall-of becoming a midwife. It's so fitting that I saw this film while editing SQUAT's next issue, which will begin a series of "spotlights" on midwifery schools and education options. 

 
Qaasim is touring with the film in the Southwest--look at her web site for screenings near you. You can also request a copy to host your own screening, find the film on Facebook. Qaasim is currently working on a Spanish translation of the film so that it can be screened and distributed in Mexico.

-Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist

editor, SQUAT Birth Journal