This paper investigates links between early-life exposure to a large-scale community midwife program in Indonesia and the formation of cognitive skills. My empirical ap-proach exploits both the program’s timing and geographical variation to identify mid-wife effects. Using data from the 1993, 1997, 2000, and 2007 waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey, I find statistically significant positive correlations of cognitive skill test scores at age 11-14 and early-life midwife exposure. The increases in cognitive skill scores that are associated with early-life midwife exposure range up to 8.8 percent and are robust to controlling for different sets of later-life household- and community-level characteristics. The results from different sample splits indicate that the program low-ered both geographical and financial access barriers to better early-life living conditions and that it was effective in improving early-life living conditions for children of less-educated parents in villages, but not in towns.