A midwife is a trained health professional who supports healthy women during labor, delivery, and after childbirth. A midwife can deliver babies at birthing centers, at home, or in hospitals. A midwife (pl.: midwives) is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialisation known as midwifery.

Understanding the Context

What Is a Midwife? A midwife is a healthcare professional who cares for people during pregnancy and childbirth. Many midwives also provide care for newborns and offer routine reproductive care, like pelvic exams and birth control counseling. What Is a Midwife?

Key Insights

When To See One & What To Expect Being or becoming a midwife requires rigorous educational preparation as well as a commitment to improving sexual and reproductive health care. This section of the ACNM website provides a multitude of resources for aspiring midwives, new midwives, and those in all stages of their careers. What is a midwife vs. a doula? The biggest difference between midwives and doulas is that doulas offer non-medical support throughout the pregnancy journey.

Final Thoughts

While a midwife is a licensed healthcare provider, a doula is a birth coach and companion who can offer support during labor and childbirth. Midwives and doulas complement each other very well. Midwifery was an important occupation for married, older, or widowed women that provided them with payment, in kind, or social capital in exchange for their work. The universality of childbirth makes the practice of midwifery a cultural touchstone, as seen in historic textual and pictorial references to midwives attending births. What Does a Midwife Do? A midwife is a type of healthcare provider that cares for a person throughout pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum.