Kim Osterholzer, who was born in Michigan and lived in Battle Creek for many years, will be signing copies of her new book, “Midwife in Amish Country.”  this Sunday in Battle Creek.   She was a recent guest on the 95.3 WBCK Morning Show with Tim Collins.

Kim is a midwife who's "caught" over 500 babies since 1993. The review on Amazon says "She  ushers readers behind the doors of Amish homes as she recounts her lively, entertaining, and life-changing adventures learning the heart and art and craft of midwifery."

Osterholzer is the niece of Battle Creek resident Kathy (Banfield) Shaw, who tells us "Kim  was schooled in Mt. Pleasant via public school and home school. After HS graduation she met her future husband, Brent Woodard, and after they were married moved to Battle Creek when Brent became a Battle Creek police officer for 12 years.  He then became the youth pastor at Victory Life Church. Brent died from cancer at 36 years old. We miss him lots."

Kim began her midwifery journey while living in this area and as she apprenticed for the career, she met and became the midwife for many people in the greater Battle Creek area. 

The book signing is Sunday, June 24, 2018 beginning at 1:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at  5701 Beckley Rd., Lakeview Sq, Battle Creek, MI 49015, Lakeview Square Mall.  

Shaw says Kim is the mother to Hannah Woodard Simmons who lives here in Battle Creek and has taken over Kim’s midwife clients as well as has many clients of her own here in Battle Creek.  She and her husband Jesse have two girls, Evangeline and Elyse.

Here's an excerpt from the book:

"I found the stone farmhouse easily enough. It was the only one along that isolated stretch of gravel. But I had trouble finding the road the home stood upon in the gloom of the rain-splattered night. My nerves and stomach were coiled into a knot so tight I found it hard to think clearly, and then, just as I reached the intersection of what I thought ought to be Hacker and M-66, a semi-truck roared past me, rocking my minivan like a rowboat on rough waters and sending a spray of mud across my windshield, obliterating my view of the minuscule green sign marking the corner. The paper scrap with scribbled directions I crushed against the steering wheel fluttered to the floor as I skimmed through the intersection, and my already-quickened pulse surged in my chest and thundered into my head.

Ah! Gosh! I know that’s it. I gotta go back! But what if it isn’t? Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord God! What am I doing out here? Please help me! Please help me get there! Please help me get there and please help me do a good job and please, please help me not faint or throw up!

I swung the vehicle around and roared back. I slowed when I approached the intersection again, squinting past the swish of wiper blades to read the sign. Who makes these things so tiny? Hacker! Yes! I skittered around the corner, then crunched and rumbled along the washboard of sandy dirt as rapidly as I felt I safely could. I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head, and relaxed my grip on the steering wheel a mite, taking a measure of comfort in the fact I found the laboring mother’s road, though only a very little comfort. The evening’s foray into solo practice was thrust on me suddenly. I’d attended but one birth alone through my nine years catching babies and I was still twenty-nine days from taking my midwifery examination. The outline of a house rose from the darkness and sea of wet, windswept fields, interrupting the train of my thoughts. My heart tripled its pace, but as I rolled into the driveway, the four sturdy feet of a rusting windmill standing before the weather-beaten, whitewashed barn and long, low row of rickety fencing illumined by the sweeping fan of my headlights helped to smooth the disheveled edges of my soul. The place was new to me, but the landscape was as familiar as home, looking, as it did, like most Amish farms, like my own grandfather’s farm—even like my lifetime."