not just any Kitty

Jun 15, 2009 at 8:40 PM
2 comments

Greatness can be detected by many subtle factors.

Last week I walked into a presentation at the Frontier Nursing School. I was late and didn’t know where to find the speaker. My best guess was the old barn. I entered the building with light steps. I followed traces of music. Rushing down the stairs, I walked the tightrope between speed and gentile steps. The room was a large and square. White words were projected onto a dark screen. The audience took no notice of my entrance as they caroled on behalf of midwives, women, and children.

I stood in the back of the room, in awe at a speaker of such respect and reputation to bring a room of strangers in unison through song.

Kitty Ernst first arrived in this corner of Kentucky as a nurse studying to become a midwife under Mary Breckinridge. Today, she stands in front of hundreds of nurse midwifery students every year unveiling an entangled history of herself and midwifery in America.

The song closed. There was lightness in the room as Kitty began the story of how she started the Frontier Nursing School’s distance education program for midwifery students. The tales goes, our country needed more midwives, more individuals to sit with women during their pregnancies and labors. FNS had existed for decades at this point, but only a small number of pupils could make is to the corner of Kentucky to be trained. Kitty set her eye on creating a mechanism to train nurses to be midwives across the country.

From a converted chicken coop on her Pennsylvania farm, this accomplished midwife held board meetings, planned curriculum, recruited staff, constructed a clinical setting, handled marketing, and formalized accreditation for a mater’s level nurse midwifery program that could reach men and woman throughout the fifty states.

Paired with trails and tribulations, Kitty filled her staff, enrolled the initial 35 students required and from there the program has exploded. At present the school accommodates over 500 students a year (primarily nurse midwifery, and also other graduate and doctorate level nursing programs). FNS has grand plans to build new facilities to stretch their annual class capacity to 1,000 students.

A true visionary, Kitty is a midwife to the fullest of its definition, “with woman”. No doubt, she is an icon for the women’s health and women’s empowerment movement. Kitty reminds us to trust women’s bodies, to listen to them and to believe them.

Kitty’s voice has a depth and directness that carries a well-deserved authority. Her confidence fills the room. She wraps you in her words. By the end of the story you are equipped with the fuel, the grace, and the inspiration to creatively soar past any obstacle just as she has.

The last story Kitty told that evening was of the first birth she attended.

She had just passed the FNS final exam. At the time, Mary Breckinridge sat by the fire in the big house with 6 diplomas rolled up and tied with a red ribbon in her lap. Ms. Breckinridge would ask each student one question. If you answered it correctly, you passed. Otherwise, you went through the program again.

Kitty received her diploma. That evening, Ms. Breckinridge sent her off to a post at one edge of the county with a few simple words, “Go forth on behalf of women and children”.

Within her first week at the clinic, a husband came to her door for his wife was in labor. Kitty saddled up and rode her horse to the creek. She dismounted at the water’s edge and rode across with the husband up to the bank by their home.

Kitty did what every good midwife does. She found a seat and waited. To still her hands and mind she sat on her fingers. Her shoulders were slowly creeping up to ears. She waited. The pregnant woman paced around the room in her night dress, following the instincts of her body. At one point, Kitty felt the mother’s hands rest on her shoulders. She looked up. As the laboring mother massaged her stress bent muscles, these words passed through her mouth with an Appalachian twang, “Now Ms. Kitty, don’t you worry a thang. Everything gonna be alright”.

To this day, Kitty declares this was one of the best lessons of her life.

The evening session ended where it started, in song. Kitty simply said, “circle up ladies and gentlemen. If I know one thing, there surely isn’t enough laughter and singing in this world”.