Quality Midwifery Services
What care can you expect from your midwife for your home birth?
- 1 Hour appointments directly with Me, generally you do not spend anytime in the waiting room at all!
- Complete care for your pregnancy to include regular prenatal appointments, lab work, referral for ultrasounds as needed. In your prenatal appointments we will do all the standard things done at a doctors office, blood pressure, weight, pulse, temperature, measuring your baby bump (fundal height) listen to the baby’s heart beat, etc. We will also spend a significant time talking, going over your nutrition, how you are feeling, questions, concerns, hopes and dreams for your birth. This time is unique to home birth midwives, and it helps us to develop a relationship before you go into labor.
- Education and Informed Consent to all aspects of care.
- Referrals as needed to physicians
- Use of birth pool as available (you will need to purchase a few items)
- Easy access to your midwife via cell, text, and email
- 24/7 on call status by your midwife from 37-42 weeks (longer at times)
- Labor support throughout your labor, generally we will stay in contact throughout early labor and you will Call Me as labor gets into the more active stage. I stay with you throughout this
- In case of transport to the hospital (generally non-emergency) I attend with you and stay with you for the remainder of your labor and birth helping to advocate for you and support you through the remainder of your labor and birth.
- Postpartum support. I stay with you for a few hours postpartum taking vitals on mother and baby to make sure. You are both transitioning well and that breastfeeding has been well established.
- After the birth, once mother and baby are taken care of and all is well, I then begin cleaning up. I start the laundry, take out trash, drain, clean, and take down the birth pool. While birth isn’t generally as messy as one might think, we do use tools and techniques to minimize the mess. By the time I leave your home except for the new baby in your arms it doesn’t even look like a birth happened a short time before!
- Regular postpartum care for mother and baby. The first postpartum visit is in your home within the first day or two after the birth. I remain on call for questions and/or concerns during this time. Several more postpartum visits after this with the final being at 6 weeks postpartum.
- Breastfeeding support
Attending births is like growing roses. You have to marvel at the ones that just open up and bloom at the first kiss of the sun, but you wouldn’t dream of pulling open the petals of the tightly closed buds and forcing them to blossom to your time line.
~ Gloria Lemay
