Welcoming new life a labour of love for mom-daughter registered midwives

Patty and Sadie consider their joyful teamwork ‘an absolute privilege’

Story by Gregory Kennedy | Photos by Nathan Luit

CALGARY — A mother-daughter duo of registered midwives are doing their best to put the stork out of a job as they care for pregnant people and newborns and share a career path that brings them joy with each new arrival.

Sadie Lenstra considers it a gift to work alongside her mother Patty. “It’s my goal to be able to learn from her every single day and just take in all of the wisdom and knowledge that she has to share. It's been an absolute privilege — and I don't think I'll ever let her retire. She’s not going anywhere.”

Patty echoes the love: “I truly burst with pride every time I get to work with Sadie. Together, she and I share a passion for the care we provide to our families — and we share it deeply.” Both women hail from nursing backgrounds and made their way to midwifery on their healthcare journey.

“I started as a labour and delivery (L&D) nurse and fell in love with that job,” adds Patty. “Yet, as I was working, I saw that my role as an advocate could be much stronger as a midwife — and as luck would have it, Foothills Medical Centre had a program for a few of us to become midwives. That’s how I became one, and I’ve been doing it for 35 years.”

For Sadie, midwifery wasn’t even a blip on her career radar when she entered nursing school.

“Midwifery, labour and delivery and women's health were kind of the farthest thing that I wanted to be a part of. Back then, my end goal was to be a nurse with the STARS air ambulance. But as it turned out, my final focus in nursing school was labour and delivery. As I came out of school, there was an opening in L&D at Rockyview General Hospital. I got the job, and just kind of fell in love with it, as I went.”

After nine years in the role, however, like her mother, Sadie felt the call to midwifery. “When COVID hit, it was kind of the perfect storm for me to go back to school through Frontier Nursing University where I got my masters in midwifery. I learned so much.”

While most people know midwives attend births — and provide primary care to pregnant people and their babies during pregnancy, labour, birth and beyond whether at home, birth centre or in hospital — there’s so much more to this profession that’s practised by nearly 170 registered midwives across Alberta, who cared for more than 6,300 families in 2023.

“We feel like we have this large role to play,” adds Patty. “We give what we call continuity of care. With all the roles we perform, women can see us for the whole duration of their obstetrical experience. In the medical world, it can be very fragmented, with many women having to see different doctors, different nurses, different community health staff and others. As a team of midwives, however, we can do all of it for them.”

It’s hardly surprising that when Sadie was born, Patty turned to her midwife colleagues to bring her into the world. “She grew up coming to midwifery meetings with me, and that was her life. She didn’t necessarily want that life, but it was lovely to watch how she came to it on her own all these years later.”

In her formative years, supper table talk could sometimes be challenging for Sadie and her siblings. “Ladies would call to talk about their breastfeeding and their baby’s pooping and things like that,” Patty says, then laughs. Nowadays, Patty and Sadie talk shop like the pros they are.

Sadie loves her new career and appreciates its future potential.

“There’s lots of growth within midwifery. I think the exciting part about it is that, as it evolves, you never know exactly what comes next. There are so many different things to be a part of within the women's health realm as community midwives integrate with hospitals and everybody becomes more aware of what midwifery has to offer.”

One new mom who sings praises of Patty and Sadie’s personal touch and birthing knowhow is Sarah Hendry, who delivered her firstborn Cosette Lafond last Oct. 28 in Rockyview General Hospital.

“We chose a midwife on the recommendations of a few friends who all had really great experiences,” says Hendry and dad Guillaume Lafond.

Through her experience with Birth Partnership Midwives in Calgary, Hendry adds she also took advantage of the option to join a group of other mothers who were due to deliver around the same time — and who’ve since grown into a supportive network of friends for one another’s families as their infants grow and achieve milestones.

“Sadie was on my team of three midwives — and I had a great birth — but when I went into labour, it happened fairly quickly. When we checked into the hospital, her mom Patty just happened to be the midwife on duty there at Rockyview that day. So I ended up with a mother-daughter team at my delivery.

“Everything went smoothly. It was a very personable experience.”

The origins of midwifery are as timeless as the history of women who’ve always been there to help other women deliver new life.

In fact, the word “midwife” derives from the Old English mid, "with", and wif, "woman", and thus originally meant "with-woman", that is, a woman who is with another woman and assists her in giving birth.

“Being ‘with woman’ is what we do,” says Patty. “Our job is to advocate for them and to support them and their newborn’s health. Really, we're in a partnership with them. We think our relationship is very special.

“We’re not just looking after them — we’re supporting them to look after themselves. We feel so privileged to support their empowerment as a mother.”

Midwifery in Alberta:

• Registered midwives provide primary care to Albertans and their babies during pregnancy, antepartum, labour, birth and postpartum period up to six weeks.
• Registered midwives are primary care providers who provide family-centric care.
• Families under the care of a registered midwife have the option to give birth at home, at a birth centre, or in a hospital where the midwife has clinical privileges.
• Nearly 170 registered midwives provide services through staff appointments with Alberta Health Services across the province.
• More than 6,300 Albertan families accessed care from registered midwives over the past year.
• Registered midwives are regulated by the College of Midwives of Alberta and follow Standards of Practice for their profession.
• In 1994, midwifery was first designated as a health discipline under the Alberta Health Disciplines Act and as of April 2019 Midwives in Alberta become Health Professionals regulated under the Health Professions Act and the Midwives Profession Regulations.

On May 5, join us in celebrating the International Day of the Midwife by thanking a registered midwife for their essential work, and recognizing the valuable role of registered midwives in Alberta.