All services are rooted in informed choice, and reflect a deep dedication to woman-centered, respectful care, free from undue interference.

Yearly well-woman exam, including Pap and Breast exam
Includes a full physical exam, routine blood work, breast exam, pap smear and cultures. Client education is thorough and takes place throughout the visit. These are not trade secrets; women should know their own bodies and be encouraged to learn more. Teaching includes learning self exam techniques with speculum and learning to perform a thorough self breast exam.

Preconception and Natural Family Planning Assistance
Become intimately familiar with your cycle and your body’s rhythyms. This visit consists of in-depth client education. You can expect to learn your body’s signs and symptoms of ovulation, implantation, and early pregnancy, the hormones involved with each, and how to chart your cycle accurately to aid in timing of intercourse or insemination, as well as speculum self exam principles. Preconception care often incorporates different disciplines including nutrition, herbs, and homeopathy.

Compete Prenatal Care
In keeping with the Midwives’ Model of Care, your prenatal care is individualized and evidence-based. Any and all procedures and treatments are performed only with your informed consent. I am delighted to provide you with research that may help you make decisions during your pregnancy; however, I strongly encourage parents to conduct their own research as well. I am, of course, available for questions at any time.

Most prenatal visits take place in your home and last about an hour. Prenatal care begins with a full physical exam and labwork to ensure optimum health and balance. Every visit I will be checking together for changes in blood pressure, urine, weight, uterine measurements, fetal heart tones, and fetal position. You can expect to be educated and involved in every facet of your prenatal care.

Midwives refer out and call upon different healing modalities to ensure balance and safety throughout your pregnancy. Examples include herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture, nutrition, counseling, and hypnosis. I recommend childbirth preparation classes for all parents, and I require all parents to see a collaborating physician at least once over the course of pregnancy.

Parents are encouraged to borrow one of our fetoscopes for home use during pregnancy.

Labor and Homebirth, including waterbirth
As your due-time approaches, you will be spending time preparing your birth space and birth plan and clarifying your expectations of your birth team. Every labor and birth is different with different demands, and every woman's desires are different. This is what women can expect from me:

I will remain quiet, respectful, and patient. I will remain calm and unimposing. You will have my encouragement, belief, and trust, and you will receive nothing less than the utmost respect for your privacy and autonomy. While I will monitor appropriately to ensure safety and balance, I will do so as unobtrusively as possible, and as always only with your informed consent. Labor and birth are strong and powerful and require intimate space to be honored.

As your labor progresses and birth approaches, I will call a second midwife to act in an assistant's role. Imagine that we are your lifeguards. You are free to birth your baby as you like, while we protect that space. You will work with your body's urges to birth your baby. This is your moment. We will not meddle or place demands on how hard or for how long you push with each sensation. You are free to listen to your body and to push your baby as you like, right into your or your partner's hands, where you will have some private time to begin the important work of bonding.

Before we leave, we will ensure that mother and baby are both stable and that balance has been reachieved in your body. Your baby will have a comprehensive newborn exam, much of which can take place in your arms, and the rest of which will take place right at your side. We will make sure that you have eaten and gotten up to shower and that baby has nursed. Your bleeding will be minimal and any necessary repairs will have been made. We clean up and tuck you into bed.


Postpartum Care
I will see you many times for home postpartum care. Visits should be expected on day one, day three, day six, two weeks, four weeks and at six weeks. During these visits we will together check your body and track its return to nonpregnant state. We will also together monitor the baby's growth and wellbeing as well as the development of your breastfeeding relationship.