With your help, Ilka will be a home birth midwife

I expressed my uncertainty and embarrassment about receiving help to a friend of mine, who said in a gentle voice:

 

“It is hard for me to imagine a world where there is any circumstance where it would be burdensome to care for you.”

 

His words touched my heart and landed deeply. That is how I feel about most people. So, here I am asking for your care and love in the form of financial support because we need it. Here is my story:

 

If you don't know me yet, or not very well, my name is Ilka Fanni Szilagyi. I was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. I came to the US in 2003 to study dance, performance art and social change and met my husband, Scott Wells, a dancer and choreographer. We settled in the SF Bay Area and created art, dance performances, ran a dance studio and Scott’s dance company and toured internationally teaching Contact Improvisation and performing.

We have 2 beautiful boys, Buda (12) and Noam (6). My background is in dance and movement and Massage Therapy. I trained in Somatic Movement, Developmental Movement Therapy, Counseling and have been a massage therapist, dancer and dance teacher for the past 24 years. My whole life, I have been supporting people. Teaching, communicating, moving, touching, holding people in their learning, healing and transitions. The birth of our first child launched me on a different path. It was a traumatic birth and a long healing process, but during that time, I had an epiphany that I wanted to be a midwife. With a then 2-year-old, going to school was not yet an option, so I became a birth worker. For the past 11 years, I have been working as a Doula, Childbirth Educator, Placenta Medicine maker, Spinning Babies Parent Educator and supported 200+ families on their journeys through pregnancy, birth and postpartum.

 

Living an on-call lifestyle, countless nights awake, countless backs and bottoms rubbed, tears (and all other bodily fluids) wiped, supporting women/birthing people and their babies and partners through this amazing, transitional time has been the hardest and most magical and rewarding work I have ever done.

 

After 10 years of waiting and learning and having a second baby, despite the pandemic, I finally enrolled in midwifery school and became a student midwife.

 

For the past year, I have been in midwifery school, studying and apprenticing with 2-3 amazing Bay Area midwives, seeing clients and running a full doula practice while having a family and being the sole breadwinner. Feels like four lives all at once.

I was going strong and fulfilled for about ten months, and I didn't realize that the toll of all this was sneaking up on me until mid-October when I suddenly hit a wall.

This wall was big. For days, I couldn't get out of bed. My whole being felt wrung out in ways I had never experienced before.

I have had a few very rough months and I came to the realization that I reached a serious burnout.

I needed to take a real and immediate break to preserve my mental and physical health and seriously reconsider my path in life.

I have realized that the residual trauma from witnessing hospital births is triggering me beyond what I can handle at the moment. I am not a good support to my hospital birth clients anymore. As a survivor of PTSD and Postpartum Depression, I know in my bones that in order for me to stay afloat mentally and physically, I need to stop supporting clients in the hospital setting.

(You can read more on birth worker burnout here: https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/ethics-law-life-sciences/about-us/news/obstetric-violence-blog/cost-of-caring/)

 

I took a few months off to recover, started seeing a therapist to help with my burnout and took a break from academics. I kept up my apprenticeship and clinical practice in a pace that was manageable. My mentors have been amazing in supporting my recovery and advancement in midwifery, and I am eternally grateful to them.

My dream of becoming a midwife is still possible!

 

After the last few months of recovery and not earning money, my family is now in a financial crisis. I wish self-care wasn’t so costly that it puts my whole family in jeopardy.

I am doing my best to figure out how to earn enough a month to pay the bills and still be able to continue on my path to become a midwife in a sustainable and healthy way. The pandemic and an injury just about annihilated Scott’s career and prospects, and now I rely on him to be the stay-at-home parent and take care of the children while I work. He has been an incredible support for me during all of this time. I’m so grateful for his steady heart, kind and playful parenting and love.

 

 

I started this campaign because right now, I can’t do it all by myself,

I need a little help from my friends.

However big or small, once or regularly, your donations will support us in paying bills, providing the kids with after school activities and sports, helping us survive these transitional years in health; and support me to have less stress and more time to study and become the community midwife I have always meant to be.

 

School will take me another 1-2 years to finish, so I am setting the goal at an amount that would help us thrive through that time. I am grateful for any support you can give us and for sharing this request with your friends and family and on your social networks.

 

Please reach out to me if you have questions, work opportunities, or heartfelt advice.

I will post updates periodically.

 

Thank you for your love, care and support!

 

Hugs,

Ilka