Shine OnMeet Canada’s only male midwife
Twenty-six-year-old Otis Kryzanauskas of Hamilton, Ont. is Canada's lone male midwife.
"There's always a little look of shock when I tell people that I'm a midwife," Kryzanauskas, a recent graduate of the McMaster University midwifery program, tells CBC.
In Canada alone, only three men are known to have pursued the profession -- one is now retired, another is currently studying to become one, and then there's Kryzanauskas, the only practicing male midwife in the country.
"I think it is a phenomenal opportunity that any person would be lucky to be a part of. Not just males or females," says Kryzanauskas, whose mother is a practicing midwife.
Out of more than 1,000 Canadian midwives, Kryzanauskas is the only male currently working in the field. While seven universities in the country offer midwifery degrees, Kryzanauskas was the very first to enroll in one of the programs, and has since gone on to deliver more than 300 babies since 2012.
As can be expected, Kryzanauskas admits he deals with his share of gender stigma and sometimes loses out on clients because of his gender.
“Sometimes people don’t want you involved in their care,” he tells Maclean's. “Or their partners don’t want you in the room.”
Mary Sharpe, the director of Ryerson University's midwife program, says the characteristics necessary to be a good midwife are compassion and responsiveness to women's needs, but that doesn't have anything to do with gender.
"Some people would claim that women understand women better. I'm just not sure that's always the case," she says. "I've seen fantastically compassionate care provided by male physicians and male midwives, and sometimes not so caring work by females."
Sharpe also notes that several years ago, not a single male applied for the program. This year alone, three men have expressed interest in applying.
Kryzanauskas tells Maclean's that part of his motivation for becoming a midwife was seeing his own brother delivered at home when he was four-years-old.
“The actual delivery was so calm,” he recalls. “It seemed like the right way to bring a baby into the world.”
