After 42 years and nearly 3,000 births, Peoria's first certified nurse-midwife is retiring
PEORIA – Peoria's first certified nurse-midwife, Dana Humes Goff, remembers when women had little control over their birth experience.
Goff began her nursing career in 1981 in the labor and delivery unit at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Galesburg. At that time, protocol dictated that every woman got an enema and had her pubic hair shaved. Episiotomies were routine, even if a woman didn't need one, and everyone was subjected to constant fetal monitoring — which meant they were confined to the bed, Goff said.
"Sometimes women wanted to do an unmedicated birth and they were just poo-pooed,” she said.
Childbirth protocols were designed for the convenience of the doctor, with the presumption that it was safer that way, but the thinking was beginning to evolve. Goff was at the forefront of a new era in childbirth. She and other labor and delivery nurses worked to empower their patients to have more control in the delivery room.
"Little by little, some of the nurses that were really strong patients' advocates would do things like ‘oh, she went so fast I couldn’t get that enema in.’ And little by little, those things started to change," said Goff. "And you know, miraculously, these babies were born without enemas. There were some that didn’t have time to get their pubic hair shaved, and, oh look at that, you can still deliver ... so just those little things we were able to do.”
As protocols evolved across the U.S., Peoria was slower than many communities to embrace change.
Even though certified nurse-midwives were sanctioned in Illinois in the 1970s, obstetricians in Peoria were resistant to the idea. It wasn’t until 1995, when Goff was granted privileges at Methodist Medical Center and St. Francis Medical Center, that certified nurse-midwifes began delivering babies in Peoria.
A pioneering path
Growing up in Galesburg, Goff had always known she would follow in the footsteps of her mother and older sister, both nurses.
“My sister enlisted in the Air Force back in the '70s, and then she was in one of the first classes of nurse-midwifery that the Air Force did," said Goff. “She graduated in 1975. ... I wanted to do what she was doing — what a wonderful career! It’s a happy, happy career 99 percent of the time.”
Goff graduated with an associate's degree in nursing from Carl Sandburg College in 1981 and a bachelor’s degree from Bradley University in 1992. She got a master’s degree in 1994 from the University of Illinois Chicago and became a certified nurse midwife the same year.
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Goff was the director of maternal child nursing at Methodist Medical Center when she became a certified nurse-midwife. She longed to move out of management and work more closely with patients, but because she had watched one of her colleagues, Bonnie Cox, fight unsuccessfully to become the area’s first nurse midwife, Goff didn't have any hope if it happening in Peoria.
She her husband were making plans to move out-of-state to a community where she could use her training.
“Knowing what Bonnie had been through, I thought, well, I’m not gonna try it," Goff said. But one day she was approached by an administrator who gave her hope.
"It was a busy day, and the chief medical officer of the hospital approached me and congratulated me on my degree and new path, and he said ‘what are your plans?’ I said I was probably going to relocate – I know things aren’t very friendly to midwifery around here, and he said ‘I want you to be patient. We see the future of nurse-midwifery, and we want to be a part of it. And we want to hire you,’” Goff recalls.
A very special final delivery
After 42 years of seeing patients, Goff retired Dec. 20. During her long career she has witnessed an evolution that ultimately empowered women. Today there are about 40 certified nurse-midwives working in central Illinois.
Goff worked in private practice with Dr. David Kindred and Dr. Prentiss Carter before joining the practice of Boyd, Lowe, Goff Obstetrics & Gynecology, where she delivered about 200 babies a year. For the past seven years she’s worked with Dr. Michele Couri, providing gynecological care and hormone replacement therapy. Though retirement means she will no longer be seeing patients, Goff plans to continue working with Dr. Couri part time on a research project.
Goff delivered close to 3,000 babies before retiring from the delivery room in 2016. Though the hectic schedule was something she was ready to give up, there were special moments she knew she would miss.
“When you do a delivery, the baby’s head comes out facing down towards the bed, and then they rotate to get the shoulders out, and when that little face would rotate up, and you see this little face looking up at you - that's a whole person separate from the mother. That’s pretty special,” said Goff.
Goff’s last delivery happened on her 60th birthday when she got the opportunity to deliver her granddaughter, Aubrey Goff.
“It wasn’t planned. I hadn’t anticipated delivering her. I sure didn’t know she was going to go into labor on my birthday – she went into labor the night before and it went into the early morning hours. And then I got to catch the baby. It was a nice, easy, beautiful birth — I get a little choked up talking about it.”
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Leslie Renken can be reached at (309) 370-5087 or lrenken@pjstar.com. Follow her on Facebook.com/leslie.renken.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Peoria's first certified nurse-midwife is retiring after 42 years
