Background
Education — Training and Experience
For my elementary and secondary education, I was home-schooled through the Advanced Training Institute, graduating in December of 1998. I began to be interested in midwifery in 1999, and enrolled in the Telos Institute International, a post-secondary distance learning school, to complete prerequisite courses. After completing these courses in 2001, I was accepted into the midwifery program of the Medical Training Institute (MTI). In order to gain practical experience, I applied for an internship at Family Birth Services, a renowned Birth Center in Grand Prairie, Texas. I graduated from this internship in December of 2005 simultaneous with my graduation from the MTI midwifery program. I have also been employed by an OB/GYN who graciously shared much information and trained me in many basic gynecologic and obstetric procedures. In February of 2006, I completed the final requirements to become licensed with the state of Texas and registered with the North American Registry of Midwives as a CPM.
The MTI Midwifery program is an intense academic training course that prepares its students academically for the rigors of midwifery. This formal academic training course covers basic gynecology and the prenatal, labor, birth, and postpartum periods. It consists of bi-annual conferences, rigorous testing, and intensive written assignments. Because of the program�s design, it teaches the students to research many topics and then determine their own beliefs about the many controversial areas in birth based on the available evidence.