PRENATAL CARE

Pregnancy is a time of wonder, growth, and mystery. A midwife’s touch invites you to enter into that mystery with an open mind and an open heart. Alongside the typical blood pressure checks, measurements, and questions about baby’s flips and turns, we discuss nutrition, movement, and your overall well being.

Forever and ever midwives have trusted their hands to assess the growth and position of babies in the womb. This is also how midwives have connected with their littlest clients. I swear that once they are born, my babies know my voice.

Labs are a wonderful tool for letting us know what your body has, and what it may need for optimal health for you and baby. Food, herbs, and good ol’ sunshine are often enough to steer the boat ashore.

HOME BIRTH

Birthing in your own home, with the lighting just how you like it, the pillow you can’t sleep without, with people who you know and have come to trust as guides throughout the months, your belly growing as your love and trust for your midwives has grown, is not only safe, but it’s enriching.

While birthing, women have been squatting down, lying on their sides, pushing on a birth stool for eons. It’s how our foremothers got us here.

Is it safe? Yes, for low risk and healthy moms and babies, home birth is safe, and in addition, boasts lower intervention rates for things like inductions and epidural usage, and certainly, much lower cesarean section rates.

Midwives are of course equipped to handle emergencies; our birth bags contain anti hemorrhagic medications, IVs, suture material, lidocaine, resuscitation equipment, and of course an apothecary of herbs, flower essences, and homeopathy, for the not so urgent matters.

.

POSTPARTUM

Lying in your own bed, a fresh newborn swaddled at your side, stews and teas delivered to your nightstand, often spoon fed to you, and if you are extraordinarily lucky to have a morning birth in springtime, your midwife may just go pick a fresh bouquet of wild flowers for your room - ahhh, hands down the best part of home birth - the postpartum.

Before I leave a birth, I make sure to glimpse over my shoulder at the newly minted family cozy and usually, drowsy, in their beds. It’s how I imagine a painter must close the studio door on his final stroke, deeply satisfied, a dash of apprehension, and an expansive joyfulness.

The next day I return to make sure mom and baby are well, no fevers, good pink skin color, lots of nourishment for both mom and baby, and lots of rest is being had by all. I do this a total of four times minimum to ensure weight gain in baby, sufficient milk transfer, comfort for mother, and that the transition to motherhood is blossoming slowly, and not stunted.