One year ago, Cosette Boone’s life changed as she, for the first time, experienced what she has guided many other women through: the birthing process. Boone is a certified nurse-midwife and owner of Willowsong Midwifery Care. She opened the business, which provides well-woman gynecology and prenatal and postpartum care, as well as home, hospital, and water birth services, in 2001. Boone says giving birth to her daughter, Sage, has given her new insight into the process.

“I was so excited to go through labor,” she said. “I wanted to experience what it was like. Each woman describes birth a different way. Feeling it adds a whole other dimension to my repertoire of things to pull out of my hat to help women.”

Boone grew up in Des Moines and received a bachelor of arts degree from Northwestern University in 1991. She received a bachelor of science in nursing from Grand View College in 1998, and a master of science in midwifery from Philadelphia University in 2000.

“Midwifery is a calling,” Boone said. “One of my reasons for focusing on midwifery was to change how pregnancy, labor and birth are managed in this country and women’s perceptions of their experiences.”

Boone says midwifery faces several challenges, including the high cost of malpractice insurance, getting insurance companies to reimburse for midwifery services, getting permission to deliver patients’ babies in hospitals and fighting misconceptions about midwifery.

Many women who put a lot of research and thought into their life choices will automatically choose a hospital birth attended by an obstetrician because it is what most of their family members and friends have done, Boone said. She says the current trend of people researching their health-care options will lead more people to seek out midwives, however, and as more midwives enter the workforce and touch more women’s lives, the practice will be more accepted. Boone hopes to see her business grow and incorporate group prenatal care, in which several women who are due to give birth at about the same time get together for checkups and group discussions.

“This business is a beautiful thing,” Boone said. “There are lots of avenues it could take.”