A midwife provides a full range of services, beginning with early prenatal care. A midwife promotes good outcomes for mother and infant by encouraging healthy lifestyles through preventative measures, dietary recommendations, holistic care, and natural means. A midwife provides individualized, skilled and loving support, encouragement, education, and feminine empowerment. A homebirth midwife allows time at prenatal appointments to build a personalized, warm, trusting relationship. A midwife attends the labor and birth, continuously. Midwives carefully monitor the mother and baby using minimal invasive methods to preserve the calm, relaxed atmosphere.

She provides emergency measures, if necessary.  Midwives are skilled in adult and newborn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). A midwife carries oxygen to be used if necessary. She is trained to recognize deviations from normal, equipped to handle complications should they appear, and makes referrals when necessary.

A midwife follows through with the birth process by doing postpartum care for the mother and the newborn baby. A midwife is an expert in the normal breastfeeding relationship between the mother and baby, and is experienced in facilitating the best possible start in that relationship.  She also can identify when additional referrals are necessary to lactation consultants when problems rarely occur.

The midwife recognizes that there are physical, physiological, emotional, cultural, spiritual, energetic, and sexual aspects to the labor process. She helps to create and support an atmosphere in which the birth can unfold naturally in the privacy of the woman's home. A midwife understands that women are strong, capable human beings who are fully able to birth their babies safely and lovingly in a calm, familiar environment.  Women and babies are designed to experience birth and to come through the experience safely and unharmed.

In the homebirth setting there are no routine time limits, routine medical interferences, and technological procedures. A competent midwife strives to practice "evidence-based" care throughout the maternity cycle which eliminates many of the "medical ritualistic" interferences, technology, and procedures that are currently practiced in the medical community and hospitals. She recognizes that each birthing is sacred, unique, and individualized.

Women are able to stay more relaxed in a natural, familiar environment without intruding strangers or disrupting work schedules and birth attendant changes. A midwife encourages women to be up and moving during labor.  She also knows that eating and drinking during labor to keep well nourished and hydrated is of utmost importance preventing exhaustion and stress to the mother and her baby.

Women are encouraged to change positions to facilitate the birth process.  Heated water tubs are also available and are a fantastic tool for shortening labors and easing pain. Homebirth provides far more control and many more choices for a birthing woman as well as for the well-being of their birthing baby.

Homebirth and midwifery research studies and statistics have documented the reality of safe outcomes for healthy women and babies. There is significantly less risk of infection and other complications, which include... but are not limited to... hemorrhage, cesareans, and injury and trauma to the mother and baby. When babies are born at home, there are no mistaken identifications between mothers and their babies or unwanted medical procedures performed.

The important familial bonding between mothers, babies, fathers and siblings contribute to closer family ties and improved child-parent relationships.

"The first intervention in natural childbirth is the one that a healthy  woman does herself when she walks out the front door of her own home in labor.  It is from that first intervention that all others follow."    - Michael Rosenthal, OB/GYN