Catching babies in WA

Giving moral support to families everywhere

Hey! Come see me over at my newest project: www.yourmoralsupport.com! If you are working with a hospital provider and need warm support and evidence based information to supplement their care, wanting support with parenting, or wanting to process difficult birth experiences, reach out! I am offering virtual support for folks across the country alongside your healthcare professional (or mental health care professional.) “I’m not your care provider—I’m just the moral support!” I love serving families in this way.

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I am no longer routinely catching babies in Vermont. I catch babies at an awesome little birth center in Eastern Washington State now. It has been so amazing working out here in the PNW, but of course I am super sad not to get to be catching your baby Vermonters! If you need help finding a midwife feel free to reach out. There are amazing midwives here! I suggest Threshold Community midwives if you are in Central Vermont—Tessa and Emmy are extraordinary! (8 Generations and Vitality are other favorites if Threshold doesn’t reach your community.) Thanks for a beautiful amazing breathtaking 8 years of babies!

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I have a fiery passion for birth work, families, and babies. I would love the opportunity to talk with you about the birth you are envisioning. I enjoy walking with families in a relationship of equals. I aim to empower you to make the best decisions for your own family by sharing my knowledge of evidence and practice with you. I bring fresh skills, safe care, deep knowledge, and all of my respect and love.

I offer complete pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and newborn care for low-risk normal pregnancies and clients. I have offices just outside of Montpelier (at Green Mountain Community Fitness in Berlin) and near Burlington (at the Grow Family Wellness Center in Essex Junction) and attend births up to a 1.5 hour radius of either town. I do not accept insurance or medicaid. I offer free no-pressure in-office consultations so we can see if we’re a good fit and to talk about what care would look like with me, and I have regular daytime and evening office hours so you don't have to use your time off until after the baby is born.

I have worked hard to build skills and knowledge to provide midwifery model pre-conception care to LGBTQ clients or clients who have struggled with infertility. I offer guidance around assisted reproductive technologies including guidance around home IUI (intrauterine insemination).

There really is no one “kind of person” who plans a homebirth.

Whether you live in an apartment, a yurt, a trailer, or a house, have a pet canary, don’t own a CD player anymore but still have CDs, have no other children or 8, are looking for a job at a bike shop, or work in a cubicle, are so over Zoom, listen to baseball on the radio, don’t enjoy gardening, despise 80’s jeans, love fall, want to be an astronaut when you grow up, won’t grow up, feel like you’re too grown up for all of this, go birding, used to think homebirth was just for “hippies”, or all/none of the above. Homebirth is for people like YOU!



My lifelong love of babies is what drove me to midwifery. I want families to have choices about their care during pregnancy, for birth, for their babies, and in postpartum care.  I want you to feel empowered through the process of care with me, and this is constantly reflected in my practice.  

 

I acquired my training through the time-honored tradition of apprenticeship.  I first started attending births as a labor support person in 2006.  I was busy raising my own family at that time, so I studied slowly, going to a few births a year to help out, reading texts, taking midwifery courses when I could, attending workshops, skills labs, and conferences until my kids were old enough for me to begin a formal full-time apprenticeship.  I spent two years apprenticing with a homebirth midwife in Vermont.  During this time I studied all aspects of client care, pregnancy, labor, birth, postpartum, and newborn care formally on my own to meet the detailed didactic requirements of the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) to complete their Portfolio Evaluation Process (PEP)--an alternative route to licensure for those who excel at self-motivated study.  During my apprenticeship at home I practiced all clinical aspects of client care under my preceptor's supervision, and from her I learned the true art of caring for families. Because Vermont is a small state, I supplemented my clinical study with 3 month-long trips to freestanding high-volume birth centers in Utah.  At these centers I was part of the care for 20-30 births each month (first trip as the assistant and in subsequent trips as the primary midwife under supervision).  The hands-on experience in the more clinical atmosphere of the high volume birth centers was the perfect compliment to my more organic, artful, and personal education here in Vermont.


I have three of my own children, all born at home, and I gave birth to three babies at Fletcher Allen as a gestational carrier (twins then a singleton).  I earned my Bachelor's degree in Motherhood and Sustainable Living from Goddard College in 1998 and received my Master's in Radical Alternative Pedagogy from Goddard College in 2003.  I received my CPM (Certified Professional Midwife--the national credential given by NARM) in October 2014, and my LM (Licensed Midwife--the Vermont credential) in November 2014.  I regularly pursue continuing education above and beyond my licensing requirements and have a real passion for evidence-based care. 

 

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