A midwife is a person who supports a woman during parturition. The title midwife
is not gender specific to women as midwives. The traditional meaning originated
historically from Middle English; the prefix ‘mid’ means with, and the term ‘wife’
relates to the woman. Thus midwife means ‘with woman’. Midwifery is one of the
oldest practices, with the first recordings of lay midwives providing support to
women documented in France in the fifteenth century (Connerton 2018). Today,
midwifery is recognised as a profession that makes a considerable international
contribution to the reduction in maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality rates
(International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) 2017a)