Massilia Midwifery Project

Meet the Midwife

Barbie Nesbitt is the co-leader of a missional fire family, a traditional birth attendant, journalist, classical home educator, bushcraft enthusiast, and the stubborn, exciteable, unrelenting idealist behind the Massilia Midwifery Project.
Raised between Marseille (Massilia), France and Santa Barbara, CA, where she learned homeopathy and medical herbalism from the long line of herbalists in her family, Barbie was professionally trained in journalism, and became editor-in-chief of an award winning weekly paper.

She later pursued mentoring and education in nordic midwifery, doula care, and in the Charlotte Mason method of classical education.
She is currently in formation as a ljósmóður, specifically trained in traditional Icelandic birth assisting. Her unique vision for traditional midwifery grew out of her own experiences with faith, family, education and motherhood. She believes that a necessary foundation in marriage is openness to life, that birth is a natural process, that parents have a responsibility to be the primary educators of their children, that education begins in infancy, and that health begins at home. This philosophy makes her unique among the majority of her peers and heavily influences her practice.

By cultivating relationships with other wives and mothers, her goal is to make ancient healing arts, self-sufficiency, and a living education available to all families in her community, and to re-awaken a culture that values motherhood.
Barbie is co-founder of the Our Lady of the Visitation Traditional Midwifery Apostolate, which provides mentoring and education to up-and-coming Catholic midwives, doulas, and educators. She runs the Massilia Midwifery Project from her Fayetteville, NC home between diaper changes and arithmetic lessons.
Barbie is available for talks, retreats, and home education, parenting, and women's health conferences and workshops.
She is a frequent speaker at women's ministry events. +JMJ+

Your apostolate, however, is directed above all to the mother. Undoubtedly nature's voice speaks in her and places in her heart the desire, joy, courage, love and will to care for the child; but to overcome the suggestions of fearfulness in all its forms, that voice must be strengthened and take on, so to say, a supernatural accent.

-- Pope Pius XII, Address to Midwives on the Nature of their Profession

Why nordic midwifery?

I've always been fascinated by the women of Scandinavia. Surviving numerous harships and an incredibly demanding lifestyle, Viking women were, in my mind, the personification of strength in womanhood. And although the Sagas record very few problems with childbirth, many stories of saints performing miracles on the scene of a stillbirth or difficult labor are recorded. It was indeed a challenging life and required brave and capable women!
I began to study nordic midwifery in the hopes of learning some tips and tricks to help me in my own pregnancies, and along the way I fell in love with traditional Icelandic birth practices. In a world of innovations, the ljósmóður or Icelandic midwife is a breath of fresh air, both practically and spiritually. The ljósmóður returns to the same positions and soothing measures that have always worked instead of looking for new ways to make labor something it is not.
She offers a "lightening" experience to the mother-- taking onto herself part of the load of childbirth-- while helping the mother reach into her own reserve of inner strength. I have replaced her traditional methods of rune casting and chanting galdr-songs with singing praise songs and reading scripture, but in the traditional Icelandic ljósmóður I find a spiritual quality that I deeply admire: She knows she is on sacred ground when birth is happening.
She epititomizes one of my favorite sayings about birth, a term attributed to midwife Harriette Hartigan: "Birth is as safe as life gets."
- Barbie

The Wellness Coach

Sarah is a Fayetteville native and a delight to work with.
Sarah's coaching is a well-balanced mix of encouragement and pressure, combined with an energy and a sense of humor that is unmatched. Highly motivated and extremely knowledgeable in the areas of nutrition, fitness and mental health, she has successfully helped many women to achieve their potential just by helping them find creative solutions to everyday problems that might otherwise be difficult to resolve.
Sarah's broad range of experience helping women to overcome challenges and her transformational ability to bring out the best in people enables her to help women of all age ranges and in many different scenarios: from helping high schoolers plan for a better future, to helping women organizing their time, decrease stress, get in shape, or work on communication in relationships.