Interestingly, Aristotle wrote extensively about “His Experienced Midwife.” (Who knew?) He also conceived the notion that, “Many things have a plurality of parts and are not merely a complete aggregate but instead some kind of a whole beyond its parts.” The Midwife Matrix is just this kind of thing, at once a plurality of parts and a whole beyond its parts. It is a compendium and a source pattern about “the bigger thing” of the collective matriarchal consciousness.
The Midwife Matrix was born out of many inspirations and experiences, including the 12 themes from the anthology, Into These Hands, Wisdom from Midwives. A living, breathing, adaptive model for healthcare delivery, The Midwife Matrix is rooted in an earlier system of holistic, woman-centered, women-led healing. From an Anglocentric perspective, the word “midwife” comes from Olde English and means “with woman.” The word “matrix” is from the Latin word mater and literally translated means “mother” or “womb.” Matrix is a substance in which something else is embedded.
We can think of The Midwife Matrix as the substance in which all of the knowledge about being “with woman” is embedded—the mother lode, the wellspring, or the codex. Like a crystal embedded in a rock, or a baby embedded in a womb, being “with woman” is embedded in midwifery philosophy and practice. Click to download a PDF of the two-page synopsis.
In the landscape of complex and rapidly changing modern maternity care, being “with woman” is the anchoring force of midwifery philosophy and practice, and is the vital feature that marks midwifery as distinct and unique in maternity care—past and present. The Midwife Matrix is comprised of 12 simple, powerful, and essential qualities that are the guiding principles in what we currently call “the midwifery model of care.”
The Midwife Matrix is the dynamically interdependent relationships that are shared between midwives and the women they serve, like a grapevine, a braiding of an interlaced trinity of roots, branches, and fruit that feed and support one another. The Midwife Matrix affirms that what matters to childbearing women and people with wombs matters to midwives, in a synergistic exchange of giving and receiving.
Read more about The Midwife Matrix in author Geradine’s Simkins blog.
Wisdom from Midwives 