“Photo: A new arrival at the Greenbank Women’s Clinic and Birthing Center is Elijah Ray, who with his parents Amy Kamplain and Joe Ray visits with Natasha Sàra, an intern for the past six months, and Cynthia Jaffe, who heads the centerKate Poss/staff photoThe ancient art of midwifery is alive and thriving at the Greenbank Women’s Clinic and Birth Center, where women are encouraged to trust their feelings and let go of fear.(In childbirth) women are at their most vulnerable, and the room (in a hospital setting) fills with people – it’s hard to relax, said Cynthia Jaffe, whose midwife practice has grown since she first opened her office eight years ago. You would never think of putting a dog in labor on her back with her legs in stirrups in a room with bright lights. People would call that cruel. Yet we do that to laboring women all the time.Islanders Amy Kamplain and Joe Ray visited Jaffe’s center as soon as the young couple first knew they were expecting a baby. Their son Elijah Ray was born in late May.We don’t have to go to a hospital to know this was the right thing for us, said Ray. We were able to bond with our baby right away. They didn’t take him away and scrub him up and give him shots. It was a more personal experience. Cynthia’s great. So is Natasha.Both new mother and father gave Natasha Sàra a long hug, which left Sàra with tears in her eyes.Sàra was finishing her last week of six months interning at Jaffe’s center. She is enrolled in the Seattle Midwifery School, one of two in the state that offers intensive training for delivering babies and licenses women to practice.I feel so blessed to know these moms who gave birth, Sàra said. Two other babies came last night. It’s an emotional day for me. Everyone is coming to say good-bye. I’ll taking my licensing exam in February and finish my training by December.Sàra will be coming back to Greenbank in April to take over Cynthia’s practice while she is away for the month.Ahh, she said. That means I’ll be a midwife. Sàra noted that midwives used to be the aunties or grandmas who passed their skills on to apprentices – often a relative — and worked in a town where everyone knew and trusted them. Now we go to school to learn this, she said. In a culture that is so informed that women typically fear something can go wrong with their delivery, Sàra that her training begins with nine month’s study of normal births (which most are), followed by a three month internship and then the study of birth’s complications.We’re trained to recognize normal births and know right away when they’re not, she said.When birth complications need a medical doctor’s intervention, the woman is taken to the hospital, though Jaffe said she has had few emergencies. The decision to transport is usually made after a long amount of time with no progress in labor, said Jaffe.Jaffe’s children – a son born in 1984 and a daughter in 1986 – were delivered by midwives while she lived in Israel.The midwife became a good friend and introduced me to another woman looking for an apprentice, said Jaffe. Israel takes a very healthy view of childbirth, and pregnant women are well treated. Israel doesn’t spend a lot of money on unnecessary interventions for healthy pregnant women.Jaffe enrolled in the rigorous courses offered by the Seattle Midwifery School in 1990, became licensed by the State of Washington and opened her practice in Greenbank a year later. Her license permits the use drugs for stitches and hemorrhages and the administration of oxygen. Averaging about five deliveries a month – both at the clinic and at the mother’s home — Jaffe also provides complete prenatal counseling and teaches breast-feeding techniques. During labor and delivery Jaffe encourages the mother to take the position that makes her the most comfortable. Afterwards she will visit the mother and baby at home, making sure all is OK, and the parents come in for a checkup as well.Life’s primary force, says Jaffe, is to procreate, and once a woman is pregnant, 90 percent of the battle for midwives in this country is to have a woman trust in her body’s natural processes. Somewhere along the line fear came into play.To me, having a 16-year-old teenager out driving has more high a fear factor than having a baby does, Jaffe joked. My coming to practice midwifery was from the place that we have an incredible knowing.Jaffe said she knew from a young age that she wanted to be involved in women’s healthcare. In addition to her positive experience with midwives in Israel, she read Spiritual Midwifery, and it clinched her desire to become one. The sun opened up in my eyes after reading it. I learned that birth can be empowering and not just something to ‘get through,’ she said. It’s incredible to be involved in this intimate passage of life, she added. It’s not a random dinner out. Now I run into moms whose babies I delivered. I see a lot of teen moms.Along with counseling women before and after the delivery of their babies, Jaffe on occasion has offered sex education talks to teens within Island school districts. Refreshingly honest about the nature of sex, Jaffe said there needs to be an honest approach to educating young people so they know that what they’re feeling is natural, but something to take responsibility for, too.Jaffe is also taking a strong stand on genetic testing. In an article published in the Winter 1999 edition of Birth Gazette, a magazine devoted to promoting midwifery, she wrote: Genetic screening tests have less to do with science than with building a society based on the premise that men and women with disabilities are an optional commodity.For more information about the Greenbank Women’s Clinic and Birth Center, call 222-3101. Licensed midwives are covered by health insurance carriers In the State of Washington.”