EMPWR

30/07/2024

30/03/2024

For anyone that has come to an EMPWR antenatal class or had me as their midwife… please come along to meet some other parents and say hey. Little ones of course welcomed 🧡

17/03/2024

Introducing Jess!

Jess is a midwife based in Te Awakairangi/ Lower Hutt where she lives with her wife Hillary and their current foster-greyhound, Dark. She’s an enthusiastic tramper, scuba diver, culture consumer and cross stitcher.

As a midwife, she’s passionate about providing individualised, empowering, and evidence-based care across the pregnancy, birth and postpartum continuum. She has spent the last few years working as an LMC midwife supporting her clients to birth where they felt best, be that in the comfort of their own homes, the local birthing centre, or hospital.

She is currently employed as a full-time labour/birthing midwife at Hutt Hospital, so you may see her on the ward!

***r

14/02/2024

The latest review from one of our clients. Words like this make my heart swell with pride and emotion. THIS is why I do so much mahi in this space; so that q***r people doing stuff outside the norm of cis and het have a space to come home to. A place to feel seen and safe.

Sign up to our next antenatal classes online! Check the link in the bio 🧡🌈

***r ***rmidwife

15/01/2024

Kia ora tātou,
Nō England ahau,
Ko Oram tōku whānau,
Ko Arlene tōku ingoa.

I qualified as a midwife in 2016 from Bournemouth University, in the south of England and have worked across a range of settings including home births, continuity and high risk labour wards!

My LMC practice in central Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, was dedicated to providing q***r celebratory care to the LGBTQIA+ Takatāpui community.

I founded EMPWR antenatal classes alongside .nz and have been teaching childbirth and parenting education classes since October 2021. Our classes are for anyone who is pregnant, but more importantly for anyone who has ever felt “outside of the norm” or for anyone who has ever felt like they didn’t quite fit in. Our classes are inclusive for everyone.

There’s no diet culture here. No body shaming. No side eye glances about who is in your whānau and no need to explain it to us either! We are size inclusive, s*x worker, solo parent and polyamorous whānau positive.

I’m a yoga teacher, passionate about movement for every body; regardless of size. I’m a postgraduate student studying for my Pg Diploma this year in the hopes to complete my masters next year and I’m an IBCLC in training. I plan on sitting my lactation consultant exam in April and then (all going well) will be able to offer q***r celebratory lactation consultancy.

I would love to get to know a bit about you and I would love to know what your favourite desert food is! I’m a gal with a sweet tooth and there’s a special spot in my heart for a tiramisu, or a cheesecake, or a gooey chocolate brownie 🤤 let me know your fav!

26/12/2023

This is a panui (a shout out) to all the people who ever told us that EMPWR was “too niche” that there simply weren’t enough q***r people to need a service like ours. Well, consistently time and time again; I’m proving them wrong.

We are here for the q***r people. Visibility matters. Representation matters. The 46% includes polyamorous whānau, solo LGBTQIA+ parents, takatāpui, trans men, non-binary and gender diverse people.

Love is love. But we actually mean it. You are all welcome here.

I haven’t been collecting data about our neurodivergent community (until now), but I’d also garner a guess that we have a lot of that community coming through our classes as well. After all, our classes were co-created by an neurodivergent non-binary midwife.

The people accessing education from EMPWR are looking for something a little different. A little bit away from the norm of mainstream education and I am so proud of what Lou and I created and the community we have built.

Here’s to 2024 and hopefully to more growth and more community. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the grace, patience, understanding and love you have all shown me during the darkest period of my life. It truly means the world to me. To everyone who sent care packages, reached out and reminded me why I mattered, thank you. Truly. Words can’t express just how much gratitude I have for you and the kindness you’ve shown me since I lost Lou. I’ll be giving back in 2024. 💛

22/12/2023

Are you in need of a midwife? Are you coming back to Auckland after your surrogate has given birth? Perhaps your midwife doesn’t provide postnatal care.

Well, hit me up! Just flick me an email and we can chat. I specialise in providing LGBTQIA+ positive and affirming postnatal care and I would love to hang out with you and tour pēpi whilst you get to know one another.

I’ll travel anywhere in Auckland to provide care to someone in the q***r community! It’s my passion and I’m here to support you and your new whānau member.

22/12/2023

Oh the hip squeeze! It’s your secret sauce in labour and it can often feel really good for the pregnant person as well! This is a really awesome tool for INCREASING 👆🏼 the size of your pelvic outlet. The bit where the sit bones are and the baby comes out. So it’s excellent for making space during the pushing part of your labour.

It’s easiest if you have two friends or birth partners to do it like we do in the final slide but one v strong person could do it as well.

Check out for extra info and their website!

21/12/2023

Check out what our previous clients have said about our antenatal classes!!

“This is not a regular antenatal class, this is a cool antenatal class” 😎

21/12/2023

Antenatal classes are often a given for anyone who’s pregnant … but sometimes they can feel like a bit of a drag, and just yet another thing to spend your hard earned cash on and your very limited free time doing!

But… antenatal classes are not only an opportunity to build community, make friends and meet other parents - it’s an investment in education. And we know that education is power.

EMPWR’s antenatal education teaches you how to sift through the bs so that you can make the best informed decisions for you, your pēpi and your whānau. Plus, we reckon they’re pretty fun as well!

Check out our website to learn more about our classes and register online!

Our next course starts on 5th September, sign up now!

21/12/2023

Short on time? Work late? Don’t enjoy the thought of 6 weeks of antenatal classes? Perhaps you’ve just left it a bit late and need education, like kinda soon?

Sign up to EMPWR’s new offering - a 2 day weekend workshop covering absolutely everything you need! The first course launches on 20th & 21st January 2024.

Sign up via the website and as always, email me with any questions and share with all your hāpu friends and fam.

***rmidwife

09/09/2023

I struggle to articulate to people who don’t know me or didn’t know Lou, or didn’t know our relationship, about what exactly it was. Yes, we were best friends but we were also in love and we loved each other deeply. But we weren’t ever romantic partners. But we were partners in all other senses of the word. But we didn’t fit into the boxes of cis heteronormativity so sometimes people find it hard to understand, I can feel their confusion about my grief, the implied “so why is your grief so big, why aren’t you over it yet?”

My grief is still big. It’s just so exhausting being that overwhelmingly sad. All. The. Time. I also need to not be sad enough to earn money. To pay the rent. To have a coffee. The small things. Which are also the big things.

I worry that I am a burden on my friends. That I’ll burn them out with my grief. I probably will. For some, it will be too much. I will be too much. That’s hard. But day to day life is also hard. But I also don’t have any other choice. I have no other option but to just keep going. Putting one step in front of the other.

But I’m moving without my shock absorbers. I have no suspension on my bike. The routine, banality of daily life, of daily living, the usual and expected stressors of being alive continuously hit me like a tonne of bricks. I go into fight or flight mode. I am a whirlpool of anxiety and then the panic attack comes, regardless of how hard I try to avoid it. I feel as if my life is in free fall. I don’t feel like I have any control at all. And so I try to control as much and as many things as possible. But to no avail because none of it is in my control. I am just falling. Desperately clutching, trying to grab hold of anything and whatever I can.

Then I wonder how long I will feel like this. I wonder how long I can survive like this. But the answer is that I must. I have to. I have no other choice but to carry on. So I do. Sometimes I wash my hair. Sometimes I can’t. But I move. I keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how small or how slowly it moves.