Midwifery

Shannon Maaske, CNM describes the path to her career in midwifery as “something I kind of fell into.” She enrolled at University of Iowa with plans to study psychology while completing pre-med requirements. At that time she didn’t even know that midwifery “was a thing.” However, a volunteer job in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit at the University hospital changed those plans. As a “cuddler,” she spent time holding the hospital’s youngest patients whose own parents might not be available for this important aspect of neonatal development. She described this time as “the best 2 hours of my week.” This work led to her meeting nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives and she quickly found herself switching to the nursing program. One of her nursing school professors was a midwife who became an important mentor. She encouraged Shannon to pursue an internship on labor and delivery during her senior year. Although Shannon was admitted to midwifery school at University of Minnesota immediately out of nursing school, she deferred her studies a year and worked full time on labor and delivery.

An early trailblazer in online learning, Shannon was part of University of Minnesota’s distance learning midwifery program; she continued to live and work in Iowa while pursuing her degree making the long drive to Minneapolis once a month. Right out of midwifery school, Shannon was hired to work at a federally qualified health center. She served migrant farmer workers and refugees who were uninsured or underinsured. In this role Shannon drew on her bilingual and bicultural upbringing. Shannon’s mother is from Chile and Shannon grew up speaking both English and Spanish and has always enjoyed providing care to Spanish-speaking patients.

When asked what she finds most rewarding about midwifery, Shannon shared that she loves providing health information to women. “When you provide a woman with information about her body and how to care for herself that impacts her entire family and community. Empowering women makes a lifelong difference.” Shannon has impacted many communities during her career with her kind, compassionate care. We are certainly lucky to have her here at UNC!