First Day Back

I spent the few hours with two young women: one with her four-week old daughter and the other 37 weeks pregnant. I felt a little rusty, remembering how to work in the small spaces where each mother and baby pair live.

I know I’ve had a good time when I lose track of it, which is what I did. It felt right being around young mothers – one making a baby and the other breast-feeding hers. Benefits of breast-feeding are trickling down to offenders from the efforts made by public health nurses and midwives involved in applying this knowledge to incarcerated mothers. These days, a nurse-midwife is giving prenatal care within the prison clinic. Only two years ago, the pregnant women were driven to the midwifery setting in Lakewood.