Overview

Midwife and Mother

What is a midwife? Midwife means “with woman”. A midwife provides comprehensive care and education for women and their newborns, encompassing their physical and emotional needs and fostering self-determination throughout the childbearing year.

Midwives practice in home, birth center and hospital settings. Midwives worldwide have an excellent record of safety with numerous studies associating midwifery care with excellent outcomes. In the five nations with the world’s lowest infant mortality and lowest rates of technological intervention, midwives attend 70% of all births without a physician in attendance.

“There is not a single report in the scientific literature that shows obstetricians to be safer than midwives for low-risk pregnancy and birth. Midwives are the best experts on normal birth. So if you are among the over seventy-five percent of all women with a normal pregnancy, the safest birth attendant for you is a midwife.”

-Marsden Wagner, MD
Maternal & Child Health Office
World Health Organization

Our Philosophy

We are committed to compassionate, women-centered care in which both midwife and mother are actively engaged in the decision-making process—informed choice is a cornerstone of our practice philosophy. We believe that pregnancy and birth are healthy and normal events in a woman’s life. As midwives, we feel that it is our honor and responsibility to nurture and create a safe and sacred space for the women we serve during the journey to motherhood.

We recognize that in pregnancy, most women experience great physical, emotional, social and spiritual changes, and it is our intention to support women and families in this time of transformation. As midwives, we offer our skills, experience and loving attention as well as our deep trust in and respect for birth. In our culture homebirth is often seen as an irresponsible choice, when in fact it is quite the opposite–families that choose homebirth are claiming responsibility for themselves and their baby, rather than handing over their authority to a perceived expert and being told what to do and how to do it. It is our hope that by taking responsibility for their own health and well-being and that of their baby, women will discover the power that birth holds, and carry it with them throughout their lives.