Marilyn Skousen

I started my career as a midwife after most of my 6 children were nearly raised and in college. I birthed five of my six children at home in Oregon (the first being born in a military hospital leaving me with the strong feeling that there had to be a better way to do birth). The idea of becoming a midwife never occurred to me before the day that I stood at the exhibit of Mormon midwives at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City where an electric feeling went through me from head to foot with the thought that, "If I would have lived in pioneer days I would have been a midwife." A few months later I found a flier about the Utah College of Midwives and enrolled in the school. I graduated from the school with my Bachelor's degree in 1998 and started taking clients in 1999. I went on to receive my Master's degree and served as the Assisted Studies Director for UCM for a couple of years. I have written a few of the syllabi for the school. I maintained an active practice until I went on a mission in 2005 where I came down with an acute case of arthritis and was sent home in a wheel chair. I have since recovered enough to again teach for the college. I have retired from the demanding practice of a midwife, although I still deliver my grandbabies.