Austin Area Birthing Center, Inc.

Happy Thanksgiving from your loving AABC staff!
We are so thankful for all of our AABC Families ❤️

#

Happy Halloween from your AABC staff! Leveling up women’s health care one day at a time! 🎮

Birth plans promote
✨Informed consent✨
through education, communication, and shared-decision making!

Have you even been overwhelmed when looking at all the different kind of breast pumps?
If yes, maybe this will help!
Please share what breast pump you chose and why?

If you are a current patient of AABC and needing a breast pump, talk to your midwives and front office on how to get a great pump through insurance. 💜

For nurse-midwifery students, 40 is a magical number. It is the minimum numbers of birth one must do before completing their training. Our student, Carsen, caught her #40 this morning with this lovely family! We appreciate all the families who allow students to participate in their care: let’s keep growing midwifery!

When a patient that was born at AABC also delivers her baby girl at AABC. 💜 It’s a multi generation kind of thing!
Love our AABC family that is growing everyday!!!

THREE successful VBAC’s (so far) this week! 💪
A VBAC is when a birthing person has a vaginal birth after a previous c-section.

Evidence Based Birth provides some great information about VBAC safety and statistics, and could be a helpful resource in deciding if a VBAC may be right for you.

https://evidencebasedbirth.com/ebb-113-the-evidence-on-vbac/

Baby Benjamin was born on 7/28 at our North location with Sam and Roswitha weight in at 9lbs 11oz! He’s has 5 siblings, and 4 of them have been born with us at AABC. Our lovely midwife Sam got to catch 3 of them!
Welcome earth-side!

5 babies in 13 hours at the North center yesterday! These midwives need some coffee 😅

Happy birthday, sweet little ones! 🎉

We are honored to have been recognized by The Austin Chronicle’s Best in Austin as the
“Best Place to Meet Your Baby.” 🎉

Midwife-led, client-focused care since 1987!

Full Article 👇
https://www.austinchronicle.com/best-of-austin/year:2022/poll:critics/category:kids-and-family/austin-area-birthing-center-best-place-to-meet-your-baby/

What better way to spend a holiday weekend? Welcome, little Memorial Day baby! 💕

🍼Due to the current formula shortage, we are asking for your help! 🍼
If you (or someone you know) have unopened, not expired formula you don’t plan to use, please bring it to either AABC location. We will disperse it to those in the area who need it, with the help of GALS.
Thank you for helping support these families!

Be present. Be supportive. Be a guide.
Intervene 👏 only 👏when 👏 necessary.

This lovely couple just had their 8th baby with AABC! Pictured with some of the midwives who have been lucky enough to provide care for them, and Viola our medical assistant who has been at almost all Sarah’s births! Baby Z made a smooth entrance today, and everyone was excited to meet her!
And this was the first birth she watched in a mirror!

Happy Mothers Day from AABC!
Birth is beautiful and becoming a mother a gift 💝

Happy International Day of the Midwife to our lovely midwives at AABC. And a big THANK YOU to the families that have given us the honor of participating in their birth stories.

If you have any photos with the midwives that you would like to share, please feel free. We love reliving these memories. 💕

Dear AABC Family:

We have a former Birth Assistant, Chipo Chibende, who is in need of our help. If you were lucky enough to have Chipo during your birth or postpartum experience, then you know how Chipo's smile and joy light up a room. You know how she provides such sweet and tender care to AABC families and you know she loves what she does. During the pandemic, Chipo took up full time work as a Postpartum nurse at a local hospital, caring for families during a scary and vulnerable time and she has been doing that ever since. And even though Chipo no longer works with AABC families, she is always a part of the AABC family.

Chipo has been recently diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Lung Cancer that has spread to her brain and bones. There is a GoFundMe that was created for her and she will need every bit she can get to help her with this battle.

Please consider donating to help this wonderful person who has brought such calmness and peace to others.

https://gofund.me/2255ab20

Support. Essential for the laboring mother. 💚

Photo credit:

The Maternal Health Equity Collaborative of Austin is hosting their Community Baby Shower on April 23rd. The goal of MHEC is to make birth safer and prevent discrimination for parents of color in Central Texas. This garage sale with donated items is one of the MANY ways they help the community. Please feel free to check it out!

Also as a reminder, any families that would like to donate can do so at either AABC location.

Little miss Riley came to visit us for her 1st birthday! She got to see the room she was born in 💜
Always glad to see our past patients!

To the doulas we have had the pleasure of working with - thank you.

Thank you for being there for our clients and
Being a listening ear and shoulder to lean on
Providing emotional and physical support
Empowering them to advocate for themselves
And most of all, thank you being a guide in their journey to parenthood.

We appreciate you. ❤️

If you are a doula and are looking for more families to work with, please feel free to comment below and provide your information.

A few of the many benefits of delayed cord clamping! At AABC, we typically wait to cut the cord until after it is done pulsing and delivering the extra blood to baby, but waiting just 5 minutes has been shown to make a big impact.

You know what they say about best laid plans.. sometimes we plan and prepare and do everything right, but things don’t go the way we pictured. This mama worked so incredibly hard for her VBAC, but a C-section is ultimately what brought her little one into her arms.

As she put it, “not all births go as planned,” but they are all beautiful in their own way, and every story deserves to be heard.

Find the full post in our story.

So much love, support, and strength in these photos.
This mama said it best: “i never knew i wanted or needed this love, but he did 💚”

Congratulations, and thank you for sharing!

Happy International Women’s Day!

Braxton-hicks are what one may call the body’s “practice contractions.” For some, it can be hard to tell whether you’re experiencing harmless Braxton-hicks, or if true contractions are happening. Here are some general tips for how to tell the two apart.

Make sure to contact your care provider if you think you are experiencing contractions - especially before 36 weeks!

There is an upcoming virtual Birth Essentials class on March 13th from 12:00-4:00pm taught by midwife Jayme Moore!

Have you tried hypnobithing as a relaxation method for your birth experience?

If interesting in signing up for the class please email the instructor Jayme Moore at [email protected]

A patient dropped off some cute cookies for our midwives today! 🍪😋❤️

We had a Twos-day baby born at our south location! Welcome to the world baby Scout!
2/22/2022

#2/22/22

⭐️Pregnancy and labor affirmations can be a great tool for motivation and reducing anxiety.
⭐️Clients have gotten creative and arrived to the birthing center with affirmation cards made by their kids, friends, and etc. We’ve seen the coolest birth room set-ups!
⭐️What are some of your favorite affirmations/mantras

Peace. Stillness. Connection. 💙
Photo credit:

Our Birth Assistants/Students practicing their blood draws. They lovingly called it the “stab lab” 🤣🤣

What does it mean when you hear about cervical dilation?
⭐️ During labor, the cervix will soften (efface) and open (dilate) to allow baby’s head to descend into the birth canal.
⭐️ How this process happens is a little bit different for everyone, but here is one example of how it can look.
Isn’t is amazing what the body can do!?

❄️Bad weather update❄️

A little overview of one of our pain relief options.
Who has used nitrous during labor? What was your experience?

Fun fact: the midwives at Austin ABC offer a wide range of services beyond pregnancy and childbirth! We love having the opportunity to care for our clients through all stages of life.

Austin Area Birthing Center, Inc.

**Have you heard**
Hello AABC Families,
We hope you all are having a happy and safe start to 2022.
We are happy to announce we will have diagnostic ultrasounds at both locations starting in February! Starting next week, our South Center (William Cannon) will have ultrasounds on Wednesdays and our North Center (Duval Road) on Thursdays. AABC is collaborating with Access Physicians, an amazing maternal fetal medicine group that will read and review all our ultrasounds and can offer consults when necessary. Our new sonographers are a lovely husband-and-wife team with 50 years of experience between them.
AABC will be able to perform and bill the following ultrasounds:
Dating/Viability
Nuchal Translucency
Anatomy
Growth
Biophysical Profile (BPP)
Amniotic Fluid Index (AFI)
If you are due for an ultrasound soon, we encourage you to call our offices (or message us through your Client Care portal) for more details so we can set up your appointment. You can also speak with the front desk staff at your next visit to discuss scheduling options and pricing. We will send out another email soon with more information regarding insurance billing and common questions. We look forward to offering these much-requested services once again!
Thank You,
AABC Staff

Austin Area Birthing Center, Inc. Since 1987 AABC has provided families with two safe, homelike birthing centers for natural childbirth, including waterbirths. www.austinabc.com

Baby Samuel was born 12/17/2021 at the south office! Look at those cute little baby boots 😍

Happy International Women's Day! We honor all of you ladies out there! You are amazing, strong, and powerful. Love to all of you awesome Women, Moms, Birth Workers, and Midwives (and all other womanly categories). Continue to be beautiful!

Hi Everyone! One of our AABC clients is collecting disposable diapers, formula, and wipes for the Harvey hurricane victims. There are collection bins at all three of our AABC centers until this Friday so please help, if you can.

Many emergency response organizations do not deliver diapers because they are bulky so any disposable diapers you can donate will be a huge help for those families with little ones.

Thank you, Lauren, for organizing this!