(Full Resume)
Donna Stiles has been a nurse-midwife for 30 years. (I know she doesn’t look that old!!!)

On an unconscious level she decided to be a midwife when she was 8 years old – the night her brother was born.  She remembers standing on the back porch under a full moon and a clear winter night in Iowa waiting to be taken to the neighbors while her nervous father backed his car into a massive snowbank and the friendly farmer across the road had to dig him out.  The baby was born (barely) in the hospital, but young Donna stood there shivering and thinking – “wow – who gets to see nights like these? Normally I would sleep through all this beauty”.

Donna chose nursing school as a practical choice and probably wouldn’t have made it through if obstetrical nursing wasn’t the first topic studied.  The 20 something student nurse was so excited to observe a birth! And when she did and it was not so great, she still had a basic gut feeling “this is not how it should be” as opposed to “I never wanta see that again!  The very next day she met her first real nurse-midwife who chatted up midwifery and ever since then this became a conscious goal for Donna.  She HAD to finish nursing school and graduated from Arizona State University.  She worked as a childbirth educator. As a nurse she worked in the NICU and then labor and delivery at Maricopa County Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona..  She applied to all 6 MSN midwifery programs and was accepted to St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri . She sucked it up and returned to the Midwest (where she had said she would never move again) and graduated in December of 1979.

As she had attended school on a National Health Corps Scholarship, the next move was to the medically under served area of Southern Texas – Raymondville.  She worked at a birth center – Su Clinica Familiar – more then 40 minutes from the hospital – a great first experience.  She liked the people and the area more then she ever expected but felt she better get out before she lived there forever and besides she didn’t like living under all the cotton sprays and red necks but did like Padre Island and sun and sand and living in the country.

A radical move to Washington, DC – just about the opposite of southern Texas as possible and a job at Georgetown University was the next move.  The job at Georgetown involved teen parents – mostly from El Salvador – and a program financed by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Foundation.  Eunice visited the clinic once and this was a great thrill – Honestly.  Donna supervised CNM students at the office and at DC General Hospital – a pit.

She followed love to Washington D.C. and next to Portland, Oregon.  For many years Donna did births at home but with the birth of her first son, returning to a group practice at a hospital seemed like a great idea and it was.  After a short time at Planned Parenthood – kinda boring – she got work at First Steps in Vancouver WA.  She stayed there as the clinic transformed to Second Steps and then Healthy Steps – she taught Kathleen Hensch-Flemming as an OHSU student.  Then Healthy Steps closed after 20 years of serving the uninsured and under insured of Clark County – how sad was this?

Well it was summer so being without work wasn’t so bad but those pesky bills kept coming and work happened in the form of per diem work in Kirkland, Washington – an interesting locale and the clientele was microsoft!  I loved it but my family – that now included another son – did not love it so much.

The position with Pacific Midwifery opened, I applied and I am now thinking this is the greatest  ever clientale- very involved and invested and interested. I am grateful to be working here.

Birthing babies is a miracle every day.  Hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time with families is my next favorite miracle.  I love what I do.  I love being up at odd hours – just like when my brother was born – seeing things that most people don’t.

In my spare time, I attend to my family as best I can – one son in college and one 13 year old.  We have an urban farm – garden, goats and chickens.  I read, do crosswords and suduko, try to exercise and hike and want to travel as extensively as possible.
I can hardly wait to see what happens next!