My purpose as a midwife is to take your maternity care up a notch…a BIG notch.
Congratulations, you’re pregnant!…Now what?
You’ve seen The Business of Being Born, you eat conscientiously, and you want to do everything possible to keep yourself healthy, low risk and avoid an unnecessary C-section not to mention birth trauma.
You’re motivated but you need information
…and you’re probably not going to get it by waiting in your doctor’s office for an hour only to see them for 5 minutes!
So maybe you turn to pregnancy apps and although the info you’re finding there, like, “your baby is now the size of an eggplant” is cute, it’s not exactly helpful. No matter what vegetable-size your baby is, you need actionable steps! Whether it’s your 1st or 6th baby, every pregnancy, birth and baby can be different and pose its own challenges and I want to help you navigate those challenges and optimize your health for the best pregnancy, birth and baby possible!
If you want more than the conveyor belt treatment of an OB’s office, want to learn to trust your body, trust your baby, be turned on to natural remedies and want! some! respect! then I’m your gal!
How did I build my midwifery chops?
There was no escaping midwifery growing up at my house. I’m the 4th of 8 kids, but, add to that the fact that my mom gave birth to my two younger brothers in our living room with her midwife and hasn’t stopped talking about it since, and you can see why I’m a midwife today. Heavily influenced as I was, I was trying to breastfeed my play-doh at the age of 4, I was officially obsessed with babies by 9 and at 17 I decided to be a midwife.
I dove head first into school when I came back to the states after teaching English in Taiwan shortly after turning 19. If I wasn’t studying, I was spending my nights as a student midwife in googly-eyed awe watching the magic of birth on repeat. That was 1999.
Fast forward about 21 years, and about 750 births and my practice has evolved an incredible amount.
Of course you can’t do something 750 times without getting better at it but the variety of experience I’ve had from delivering babies in Senegal, working at two busy birth centers, staying with my clients through hospital transfers, as well as working with many other midwives and practitioners hasn’t just sharpened my skills, it’s opened my eyes to how women are affected by the way they’re treated through the childbearing year. It’s taught me compassion and how to decrease birth trauma. It’s taught me how to keep women low risk. It’s taught me that women want and need an open line of communication with a qualified health care professional. It also taught me that I wanted more to offer as a care giver.
It just so happened that my desire to increase the offerings in my practice was answered with an episode of chronic and crippling fatigue. It was a nasty case of adrenal dysfunction but luckily I had just heard about a course in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and signed myself right up. It was a godsend. I gained an understanding of hormones and herbs without which I would have remained a crumpled ball of fatigue, maybe forever. Then a year and a half later I came across Vaginal Steam Therapy and its simplicity and effectiveness for treating gynecological issues immediately spoke to me. I knew it was something I wanted to be skilled in. Since then both V-steams and functional testing have become invaluable tools in my practice! I’m so grateful for my experience and especially those women who have trusted me enough to work with me. I have learned from all of them!!
After all that experience I can truly say that I serve birthing people! I can help…
- Whip your nutrition game into shape
- Give suggestions that will only be made with your best interest in mind
- Give guidance on how particular supplements or nutrients reduce various risks in pregnancy, birth and postpartum. For example: premature rupture of membranes, GBS infection, hemorrhage, depression etc…
- Women who have had a traumatic birth in the past or want to steer clear of birth trauma the first go-around
- Give you exercises to help you avoid the dreaded “back labor”
- Work through the typical pregnancy discomforts and issues such as herpes, anaemia and insomnia with natural remedies instead of drugs
- Educate on when a C-section may be necessary and if it is, how you can get the most out of the experience. I’ve seen this MAJORLY reduce birth trauma and feelings of failure.
- Decrease the amount of tearing you experience at birth through nutrition and gentle management of pushing
- Detect postpartum mood disorders and get you the help you need to solve or alleviate it
- Detect postpartum thyroiditis (no, I DON’T look at TSH only)
- Prepare for lactation and nip any problems in the bud (including early detection of tongue tie)
- Navigate the medical system when needed and so much more!