Natalie Leduc-McAnsh

What are the challenges you’re facing as a midwife practicing during the pandemic? How has your midwifery practice changed since the pandemic?

One of my favourite parts of midwifery is building a relationship of trust and respect with families, providing them with a bunch of information, and supporting them through the process of becoming parents. With all the new guidelines and policies, I think the hardest change for me is not being able to help pregnant people get the experience they want. It’s a very weird time to be pregnant and have a baby right now. We do more and more virtual prenatal and postpartum visits, we can only have one support person at every delivery, and we can’t support water birth (practice specific)—to name a few challenges.

Can you please describe a snapshot of a recent workday?

Taking care of families during one of most special time in their lives, with some additional outfits changes, showering, cleaning and sanitizing.

What, if anything, is helping you get through this crisis?

My family and my work family. Knowing that we are all in this together.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Id like to send out a thank you to all the front-line workers, and also thank everyone for staying at home and following public health recommendations.