My daughter, Cassie, who just passed her driver’s test yesterday, drove me across the state this afternoon. This is our longest drive of the journey (381 miles) from our house to the Brinks just east of Rapid City. I googled all the locations last night and put together a little map book for us. I know that is rather anal…but I like to be prepared. If we don’t take any detours, we will have traveled 1500 miles by this time next week! Now that’s what I call mother / daughter bonding time!
Chandelle invited me to a Nursing Moms meeting in Rapid City where we explained the situation for home birth families. Home birth is legal in South Dakota, but there is only one midwife in the whole state who can legally assist in out-of-hospital births. The specialists in out-of-hospital births, Certified Professional Midwives are not allowed to practice here. Nurse midwives, who mostly work in hospitals, are greatly restricted and there are only 9 in the whole state who are doing maternity care (not counting those working for IHS). Five of those midwives are in Sioux Falls, leaving the rest of the state severely under served.
South Dakota families need more midwives and that’s what this Walk is all about. I’m looking forward to getting started. The Walks tomorrow are in Spearfish at 8am and Rapid City at 6:30pm. The website has all the details.
The Dell Rapids paper carried an article about our walk today thanks to Ronda Kvigne! The timing couldn’t be better on the eve of our first Walk.
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