by BB Bishop
Conversations with a midwife

Navigating the post-election haze of late autumn, many Riverwest residents have been thinking, What can I do in my own neighborhood, among my own people? Walking and talking with 30 year denizen Eileen Nyholt, a midwife and yoga teacher, conjures themes of women’s empowerment, reproductive autonomy, and the power of our bodies.
Our bodies. Everyone begins life with a placenta. Not the property of a biological mother or gestational carrier, it is the only temporary organ. Created to be the lungs, nutrition and waste disposal system for the fetus, the web of blood vessels also weaves a connection between mother and baby that essentially keeps each from biologically destroying each other.
After a delivery, Nyholt has been known to take a pause to find a teachable moment with a postpartum family, to briefly contemplate the placenta. She elevates the amazing, jellyfish-shaped mass up to the light. “The tree of life,” she admires. The resemblance is unmistakable, a network of roots and branches in shades of orange, red, and purple.
Talking to Eileen on a recent afternoon stroll along the river’s left bank, the foliage is still ablaze in warm colors. The forest still feels cozy even in mid-November, extra degrees having heated the soil a little longer this summer, decaying leaves giving off their own warmth. Along our path on this Sunday, we bump into local comrades perhaps also pensively contemplating what’s next?
Over the past two or three decades, those who have cultivated the revitalization of this patch of forest have become friends with each other as well as with the trees. So many Riverwesterners have names for their tree friends along these river banks.
“One of my favorites was my opera-singer tree,” Eileen confides, instantly eliciting the image of the noble posture of a performer. Over the years on walks like these, she held a relationship with the tree until even after its death. Eventually its remnant became a vital habitat for insects and fungi as it decomposed.
Making sense out of darker times. To be blessed to be invited into the most awe filled moments, such a livelihood carries the caveat that the challenging times are especially somber.
Filled with respect for this world-won wisdom, I ask what influences have helped evolve the field of midwifery over the past 30 years that Nyholt has practiced. Not surprisingly on this day in mid-November 2024, our conversation turns to reproductive justice.
The origins of the reproductive justice movement come from the fight of women of color for reproductive freedom. Its growth as a movement, fueled by the activist Dr. Loretta Ross and the Sister Song collective, has largely been in response to US reproductive politics. As Nyholt explains the tenets of the movement, its impact on those in her profession becomes profoundly apparent:
Every human has the right to not to have a child, to access birth control, abstinence or abortion
Fight for the right to have children. Birth justice is the right to control the conditions in which we have children.
Once the baby is born, we fight for the right to raise our children in safe and healthy environments.
Bodily autonomy, gender identity and sexual pleasure.
As acknowledging and affirming the experiences of all became crucial, the fourth tenet was added a decade into the movement as definitions of motherhood and gender evolved.
Having codified these ideas into a framework offered a vernacular for feminists challenged to process contemporary dialogue and politics, especially during the winter that followed the 2016 election. Organizing is crucial to the reproductive justice movement, and the Women’s March of 2017 was centered around its themes.
Literature featuring midwives often delves into themes of women’s empowerment, bodily autonomy, the power of birth, and the complex relationship between women and healthcare systems. But most importantly, it centers around the relationship between women.
Over the past three decades at Sinai Medical, the network of practitioners, mentors and peers that Eileen has practiced amongst has developed into a family tree of those whose work is intertwined. The birthing center at Sinai Medical is currently highly rated, and its strong midwife practice carries outcomes that are undeniable. Rates of cesarean birth and episiotomies, though fluid, are far below the national average.
Evolution is also key. The newly opened water birth suite at Sinai is the only one of its kind in southeast Wisconsin. When patients were asking for water births at the hospital, Nyholt explains that administration looked to research that supported their implementation, which was lacking. Her colleague Emily Malloy, also a certified nurse midwife, stepped up and commenced a two-year study focused on water birth as an option.
The dozens of women who have delivered in 2024 via this method have praised its capacity for pain relief and stress reduction during labor and delivery. In addition, Malloy’s study provides evidence for other birth centers to safely adopt the practice.
Somewhere along the base of Nyholt’s tree, where roots meet trunk, are her midwife mentors. After graduating nursing school in 1996, one of her first close mentors was a veteran missionary who had spent years in Sierra Leone. It sparked a life changing decision to attend a six week practicum in Kenya, where removed from hospitals and technology the role of a midwife was entirely different.
Revered wisdom from Keewaydinoquay Peschel, the Ojibwe author and herbalist, also holds a space somewhere deep in Eileen’s consciousness. Studying ethnobotany at UW-Milwaukee, Nyholt developed a relationship with the scholar and was eventually able to travel to her family land on Garden Island.
It feels like Eileen’s wisdom and sereneness has attained the level where she now is a revered elder, not just for the sake of catching thousands of babies.
Rated one of Milwaukee’s 100 coolest moms by OnMilwaukee in 2006, Eileen still lives very nearby to her daughter Lily Shea, a wedding and portrait photographer. In the neighborhood, Nyholt can be found teaching Keep it Simple yoga at the Pink House, volunteering at the polls at Gordon Park, or just digging in her garden. She is currently looking for the best native plants for the shady part of her yard.