Giving women more options New midwifery business offers home births and more
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Story and photos by Goldie Rapp
t a young age, Angela Reidner knew she wanted to be involved in helping people deliver their babies in a good way. She’s unsure what sparked the aspiration, but it stuck with her all the way to college at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. During her studies there, she discovered midwifery and thought it might be what she’d want to do someday. After graduating from Wesleyan, she went into labor and delivery nursing and followed a path of high-risk obstetrics. She was a maternal transport flight nurse for a while before becoming a critical care OB nurse. While working in the midst of OB trauma and emergencies, it was women of normal, healthy pregnancies that Reidner worried about most. She said these women were not getting a “just service” under the overbearing hospital policies and procedures that regulated how their babies were delivered. “We were treating everyone like they were a potential disaster. There was something that could potentially go wrong and they were sick,” she said. “When something is wrong, having that skill level, that knowledge, those services is ideal. Unfortunately, 80 to 90 percent of women don’t fall into that category. They’re normal, healthy, and all the stuff we’re doing to assess their labor progress just causes trouble, causes problems.” After seeing enough of this, Reidner returned to school in hopes of helping these mothers. She became a certified nurse midwife at the University of Illinois in Chicago, which kick-started a 30-year midwifery career spent in local hospital systems. Reidner said wise use of interventions has always been her primary goal as a midwife. “Use it when it’s important to use it and don’t use it to cause problems when it’s not necessary,” she said.
Angela Reidner, CNM, stands inside one of two exam rooms at Catching Joy Midwifery in Princeton. 14 May 2022 | Illinois Valley Woman | A NewsTribune Publication
