Urban Midwife

09/06/2025

27/05/2025

26/04/2025

Access to midwifery care ins ALWAYS in jeopardy. In some states it is ILLEGAL to do what I do in Texas and I could be sent to prison for being a midwife in those states.

Because of that we are always aware and diligent in watching legislation that is often snuck in on the backs of other bills.

Midiwfery is under attack again. There is alot of back story but if you know anything g about me at all you know instand for truth...always... so you can trust me when I say, this bill that will be debated in a hearing on Monday is NOT for midwives and will cause great harm to midwives and the women we serve.

Please, I fyiu value choice and autonomy and midwives..... call and email the committee to let them no to NOT support HB 4553

House Bill 4553 has officially been set for a hearing in the House Public Health Committee on Sunday, April 28 at 8:00 A.M. in Room E2.030 at the Capitol.

House Bill 4553 threatens the autonomy of our profession under the guise of data collection. While framed as a neutral reporting bill, HB 4553 lays the groundwork for invasive oversight, misrepresentation of outcomes, and the further medicalization of midwifery care without the context or nuance necessary to accurately represent our clients or our work.

We need every midwife, student, client, and supporter to contact the public health committee and urge them to oppose HB 4553.

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What You Can Do Today:

1. Call the Public Health Committee – urge them to oppose HB 4553.

Phone: 512-463-0806

2. Contact Chairman VanDeaver directly – tell him to withdraw his support for this bill.

Email: gary.vandeaver@house.texas.gov

Phone: 512-463-0692

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Call Script or Email Template:

Subject: Oppose HB 4553 – Protect Midwifery from over regulation and medicalization. Protect Family Choice

Dear [Chairman VanDeaver / Public Health Committee Member],

I am a [licensed midwife/client/family member/supporter] writing to strongly oppose House Bill 4553, scheduled for hearing on Monday, April 28. This bill, though presented as a neutral data reporting proposal, contains harmful and confusing language that would result in over regulation, redundant statistics collection, the medicalization of and the erosion of midwifery care in Texas.

Texas midwives are already held to high standards of safety and accountability. This bill duplicates existing reporting, imposes burdensome new rules, threatens privacy, and undermines informed choice in birth.

I respectfully urge you to oppose HB 4553 and support true solutions that protect safe birthing options across our state.

Sincerely,

[Your Full Name]

[Your Address]

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We must act now. Please make your call today, and help us mobilize clients and supporters in your community.

25/04/2025

15/04/2025

You *can* have a birth with bright white light and possibly a spotlight.
But you can also have a birth in soft, glowing light in your own bedroom surrounded by your 5 older sisters. 🩷

12/04/2025

I will always firmly stand on the belief that midwifery is the original and oldest profession. From the dawn of creation women have attended women in those birthing times. Spoken of even in the most Holiest of books is the midwife.

We have always had the same model of learning and while it has evolved over millinea to include stats and science and deeper concepts, it has always been generations of women teaching the next generation of women the art of birthing.

So there's something to be said about your first catch. After 2 years of watching me, learning , studying, practicing , its time.

But its done in the way women and mothers have always taught ... my hands over yours teaching the movement, the pressure, the timing.. what we call a *four handed catch* .. and you'll just never forget that first time a warm, wet slippery new life slides free of his mother's body and into your waiting and gentle hands.... And... she probably won't be able to sleep tonight either after that 😍

31/03/2025

I recently heard someone argue that OBs were experts at physiological birth.

Now, I love the OBs I've worked with & I appreciate and acknowledge their knowledge and skill set & they are experts in their fields, helping manage difficulties, offering higher level care when needed, skilled in surgical alternatives when necessry, but what they've never really done is sit in birth.

I don't know an OB who has sat in the birthing room for hours on end. Laughing, napping, encouraging gently from the sidelines, listening to the conversations of the home the voices of the siblings and maybe grandma wrangling older kiddos, hholdong puke bags and washcloths to the mothers sweaty forehead. I've never met one who, throughout medical school and residency SAT WITH BIRTH. They deliver babies from the mother and that's a whole different thing. I understand the logistics are different the landscape is different, I get all that, I do and i am GRATEFUL for what they do, but it's not what the midwife does.

The midwife though, well the sitting and waiting and encouraging is what we do. We drive 2 hours away at 2:38am to sit in the space of the unfolding of labor for however many hours it takes, as the mother works through labor on her terms. We watch, and we wait, we assess and evaluate, we offer options and thoughts when asked and encouragement when needed and we sit on our hands and allow her the space to experience her labor without inpatient pharmaceutical encouragement and applying birth to an algorithm of how someone thinks it should go.

OBs are good at their jobs , and we are thankful for them when we deviate from normal and do need help, but if we are real and honest, physiological birth isn't it.

20/06/2024

I'm about to date myself and you youngins can google it 😆 I've decided to do a *Skooner Tuna* on my midwifery fee.

I know many are increasing fees based on increasing prices with this inflation. But I also understand that rising inflation has not risen income levels so, to me, I cant justify increasing my prices thousands of dollars to match inflation when family incomes are remaining the same..I believe God will provide for me.

So I'm just here to say, I will not be raising my prices. I feel convicted that my practice is a ministry and as such, I must have faith that God is who He says he is. I have always wanted to be accessible to the masses more so than *raise fees, work less*. I have also always been willing to work with families on payment schedules and fitting in their budget if they make a commitment to midwifery care.

So if you're looking for a midwife and the Inflation is strangling your family, let's talk.

17/11/2023

When people find out what i do for a living they always talk about “the babies” how much they LOVE the babies and I always think…babies are 2% of what I do. 98% is mothers, growing and nurturing new mothers.
But there is a 1% that we don’t really talk about much either.

The 1% is where everything goes quiet, your focus goes laser sharp. The birthing room stops being the mothers nest and starts being mine to manage. Pretty much all sound except for what you are focusing on sucks out of the room along with the air and there is a split second moment where everyone in the room freezes and looks at YOU because you are it…. the full stop, the wall, the end game and what are YOU going to do. Your brain is scrolling through all 543,527,768 scenarios you’ve experienced, learned about, studied or heard about in passing conversations while it looks for the ONE it will settle on and in that SPLIT SECOND it took to scroll, you breathe, come alive and say “call 9-1-1”.

And then instantly the gravitational pull of silence is broken, the room explodes in a flurry of sound and light and movement. But you, YOU, have to pull your s**t together, make the call, sound coherent, professional, calm and detached, give pertinent information & facts only leaving out her dreams and hopes for this birth, patiently tell a 9-1-1 dispatcher you are a trained professional with all the equipment you need and you dont need a shoestring and a safety pin ( and WTH do you need a safety pin for anyway? I digress) or info on how to deliver a baby from a laminated cheat sheet and you wait for the entrance of paramedics while monitoring, assessing or managing the life threatening complication and you pray for the mother and the baby and that the EMS team isnt an ego fueled s**t show. Because, lets be honest, in every profession there is always the one who makes everyone look bad, even in mine.

Your assist is calling out times or heart rates or med administration and somehow you are taking it all in while working as a team to keep everyone safe and concisely communicating, in your strong but calm voice , everything that is happening to the mother and then you hand them off and say another prayer because most of the time we aren’t allowed in the ambulance even though we are the most skilled person in attendance to continue management of the complication. And then, you make the second call to the receiving hospital, to give another report, to answer questions and get them ready and prepare records and send them off to meet the mother at the hospital and then …. follow along knowing the postpartum is going to be rough with an unplanned, truly emergency cesarean for a sweet first time mom and that she’s going to need a lot of space to process what happened to her.

The 99% of my job is amazing, triumphant, sweet daddy catches & precious memories.

But the 1% is midwifery, too.

30/09/2023

This right here is why physiological & undisturbed birth is often upright and not flat on the mothers back & why it is so important. Rarely am I honored to witness it so beautifully! This mother's rhombus would expand and retract during her contractions as the baby opens the room he needed to descend into birth. (Shared w/permission)

“The rhombus of Michaelis (sometimes called the quadrilateral of Michaelis) is a kite-shaped area that includes the three lower lumber vertebrae, the sacrum and that long ligament which reaches down from the base of the scull to the sacrum. This wedge-shaped area of bone moves backwards during the second stage of labour and as it moves back it pushes the wings of the ilea out, increasing the diameters of the pelvis. We know it’s happening when the woman’s hands reach upwards (to find something to hold onto, her head goes back and her back arches. It’s what Sheila Kitzinger (1993) was talking about when she recorded Jamaican midwives saying the baby will not be born ‘till the woman opens her back’. I’m sure that is what they mean by the ‘opening of the back’."