Chanda Williams: What Midwives Taught Me

Chanda Williams shares about her experiences with midwives and her pregnancy journey.

I expected our interviews to be filled with stories about complications. Instead, I kept hearing about celebration as part of a research team studying midwives of color in California. I spent hours listening to birth workers describe how they care for families during pregnancy, birth and beyond. Again and again, they returned to a word I hadn’t anticipated, joy. Not because birth is always easy.

Pregnancy and childbirth can be unpredictable, especially for Black and Indigenous families who continue to experience unacceptable disparities in outcomes. But these midwives refuse to let inequity define every interaction. They celebrated pregnancies, they celebrated births, they celebrated parents. 

But recognizing a profound transition in someone’s life. It made me wonder how often our healthcare system mistakes efficiency for excellence. We’re very good at measuring blood pressure and tracking outcomes.

We’re less skilled at measuring whether someone felt welcomed, respected, or genuinely cared for. As a researcher, I spend a great deal of time collecting data, but some of the most important lessons aren’t found in a spreadsheet. My own midwife celebrated my pregnancy as much as she monitored it.

She helped me trust my body, honor my intuition, and welcome my daughter with joy instead of fear. Looking back, I realized she wasn’t just shaping my birth experience. She was quietly shaping the kind of mother I would become. These midwives reminded me that celebration isn’t an extra. For families whose experiences have too often been shaped by fear or dismissal, celebration is part of the care itself. Maybe that’s something all of healthcare could learn. With the Perspective, I’m Dr. Chanda Williams.

Chanda Williams is a research and trauma-informed yoga teacher. She lives in Oakland.