Rebecca Beck completed her midwifery apprenticeship in 2001, six weeks before her first child was born at home. Since then, she’s assisted about 500 women and their families with home births.
“I studied speech disorders in college,” said Beck, 49, of Turners Falls. “But after a friend had a home birth, I knew that’s what I was supposed to be doing.”
Beck and her two partners, Tanya Rapinchuk and Anna Maunz of Sacred Birth Midwifery, offer home births to low-risk clients throughout our region.
Beck began in 1996 with basic midwifery courses through the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance; she is now the director of the MMA basic course. “Home birth is not necessarily for everyone,” she said, “but offers a beautiful alternative for many.”
Beck’s client, Tara Johnson, is planning for her fourth home birth. A Greenfield resident and nurse with Pioneer Women’s Health, Johnson is grateful for the home birth option as well as having an excellent back-up plan.
“I’d proudly give birth at The Birthplace at BFMC (Baystate Franklin Medical Center) if it were medically necessary, or if I was unable to access a homebirth,” said Johnson, 31, who’s due around April 30. “The quality of care offered by the Pioneer Women’s Health midwives, doctors, and Birthplace staff is patient-centered and heart-based.”
For Johnson, though, home birth brings “low levels of stimulation in a familiar space, with people who trust my ability to give birth. It provides me with warmth and strength to allow for opening on all levels: body, heart, and mind.”
At her job, Johnson sees “dedicated medical providers provide loving care. Unfortunately, practitioners are hampered by time constraints, heavy workloads which lead to burnout, and lack of support staff due to finances.”
Johnson said home birth midwives “do soul work, giving women the gift of trust. Western medical approaches have changed a lot due to financial constraints and fear-based methodologies.” Believing that “every woman deserves access to the homebirth experience,” Johnson also praises the “high quality, personal prenatal and postnatal support.”
Rebecca Beck treasures being involved with “a beautiful natural process. That a body can grow another person, give birth to, and then feed that new person — that’s a good indicator of health.” Yet Beck emphasizes that she and other home birth midwives are invested in good outcomes, rather than being attached to births happening at home.
“We have great hospitals in our area, and wonderful relationships with nurse midwives and dedicated OBs (obstetricians),” said Beck. When a move to a hospital is called for, Beck and her partners transfer with clients. “We have annual meetings of hospital staff and home birth midwives, which makes home births even safer and more transparent.”
Beck said it can be challenging to be on call 50 weeks of the year. “My car is always packed for a birth,” she said. “My family knows that making plans with me also means that when a call comes, off I go.” But Beck finds the work exciting. “When I get a call at 2 a.m. and everyone else is asleep, I drive through the darkness knowing that this magical thing is happening.”
Beck and her husband Brian have three children, Maeve, Josiah, and Kessek, ages 20, 18, and 15. “I maintained a lighter practice when they were younger, but the last seven or eight years have been really busy.”
The birth of a baby is magical, yet it’s part of a bigger picture of what a home birth midwife does. There’s measuring maternal bellies, collecting lab samples, listening to heartbeats, monitoring blood pressure, and dozens of other aspects before the big day.
“After the baby comes, we continue to offer support. We get texts about babies not pooping, or nursing questions. We track down labs and monitor postpartum health. There’s a lot involved with making sure our clients and their babies are thriving.” Families receive visits 24 hours following the birth, on day three, and at the ends of the first and second weeks.
The work is physically demanding, said Beck. “We learn to grab naps, since we’re often up all night. We operate on less food and engage in strenuous activities like applying pressure to a client’s back during labor.” Meanwhile, midwives help keep the client’s home clean, prepare food, do laundry, take out the garbage, “and spend a lot of time sitting on the floor,” said Beck.
One of Beck’s partners, Worthington resident Tanya Rapinchuk, founded Sacred Birth Midwifery 24 years ago and has attended home births for 30 years. Rapinchuk, 50, believes women can have “incredible, powerful, beautiful births anywhere. But with home births, I can impact everything I touch with as much positivity as possible.”
As a teen, Rapinchuk was “filled with fire, rage, hope, and excitement for the future. I wanted to put all that energy where I could make the biggest difference. I saw how women are treated, especially young women, poor women, and women of color, and felt midwifery would allow me to empower mothers and support parenting.”
Given the demands of being on call and engaging in physically and emotionally taxing work, clearly midwifery is a calling requiring extraordinary dedication and strength. Rapinchuk’s own story proves how strong the calling is for those who devote their lives to the work.
In 2011, about 20 years into her midwifery career, Rapinchuk’s eldest child, Zephyr Sequoia Rapinchuk, died in a skiing accident just weeks before his 19th birthday.
“He was an extraordinary human being,” said Rapinchuk of her son, whose long list of talents and hobbies reflect an amazing life: expert skier, singer and multi-instrumentalist, artist, photographer, published author, nature lover, devoted Red Sox fan, rafting guide, farmhand, and friend to many. “I miss him every day,” said his mother.
At the time of her son’s death, Rapinchuk had a full load of clients. “A community of midwives came together,” she said. “Colleagues stepped in for several weeks and covered my client load in addition to maintaining their own practices and lives.”
Support from colleagues gave Rapinchuk and her husband, Kamal Souccar, and their then-12-year-old daughter, Indra, space to attend to arrangements. But her work reprieve was brief; soon Rapinchuk was back at work, welcoming children into the world even as she grieved the loss of her own.
“But after a while,” she said, “I needed some time off. I worked as a baker for a while. Ultimately, though, I recognized that the home birth midwife part of me wasn’t done.”
When asked how, on a personal level, she continued with midwifery in the face of shattering loss, Rapinchuk said, “I love seeing people in their power, watching them persevere, often surprising themselves.” And she believes there’s a reason labor is difficult. “It’s a tiny taste, a warm-up for parenting. To parent well, we need stamina, patience, and flexibility.”
Rapinchuk’s lifelong goal is to address “how babies are treated when they’re born, and how parents are treated. When I took time off to re-evaluate, following Zephyr’s death, I recognized that my goal, my dream, hadn’t been realized. I probably won’t see the actualization in my lifetime, but we must strive to do better. It matters so much.”
Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope” and a musician, artist, and mom. She enjoys hearing from readers at eveline@amandlachorus.org or P.O. Box 223, Greenfield MA 01302.