Beltane Midwifery, PLLC

12/21/2025

Wishing all who celebrate a Blessed Yule and to All a Happy Winter Solstice 🌑 I hope everyone finds warmth and comfort on the longest night of the year as we look forward to the longer days ahead and the promise that the sunlight brings 🌞 If those snuggles left you with more than good cheer tonight, never fear - I have plenty of room for September due dates 😉

12/20/2025

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12/19/2025

12/12/2025

💜 Hi Families near Hampton, VA! 💜

Join Sentara Careplex for their Postpartum Support Group!

If you’re pregnant or in your first year postpartum, you’re warmly invited to connect, share, and find support in a welcoming, judgment-free space.

📅 1st & 3rd Tuesday of each month
⏰ 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
📍 Sentara Careplex Hospital – FMC Conference Room
3000 Coliseum Drive, Hampton, VA 23666

For more information, contact Melony Teague at Mxteague@sentara.com or call the Lactation Office at 757-736-0180.

All are welcome. You don’t have to walk this journey alone. 💕

12/12/2025

12/08/2025

I often am asked why we chose to live “so far out there” or am questioned about my decision to set my Midwifery practice up in Smithfield rather than in one of the more urban / accessible parts of the Peninsula/Tidewater/Hampton Roads area. I have valid reasons that I respond with; that we prefer the rural scenery vs the hustle and bustle of the cities and that by setting up my practice here I am accessible to the rural communities of Isle of Wight County and can offer services to the maternity care deserts that surround me (Southampton, Greensville, Dinwiddie, Prince George, Petersburg, and Charles City counties). These pictures sum up the feeling of living “out there” for us in a way my words can’t. Where else can we let our family just go and be themselves like this? Where else can we find the peace and beauty of the woods that surround us? Where else can I feel like I am a part of something bigger and that the work I do makes a more meaningful impact to the families I serve? I’m feeling extra blessed today as I watch my kids, both two-legged and four, frolic in the atypical (for coastal VA) snow this afternoon 💜❄️

12/07/2025

Just spent an incredible two days immersed in emergency skills and suturing practice with . The training along with the incredible hands-on practice and the support from Andrea and Avril (and the amazing Midwives who participated in the workshops) was truly an invaluable experience! Gaining more experience, learning new techniques, and talking with other community Midwives about how they practice and what has worked/not worked when managing complications is just one of the many ways that Midwives hone their emergency skills and keep home birth safe 💜. My mind and heart are full ☺️

11/25/2025

A new paper on monochorionic twins looks at cord clamping choices during vaginal birth and asks whether delayed cord clamping is safe when babies share a placenta. This is a confronting topic for parents and clinicians, especially because delayed cord clamping is usually seen as helpful for preterm babies. Here, the headline is more of a warning than a reassurance: in this center, delayed cord clamping was sometimes linked to sudden twin-to-twin transfusion at birth and serious brain injury in one twin. The study is small, but it raises important questions about how we manage shared placentas in labor. Link to the research is in the comments.

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲
This study followed vaginally born monochorionic twin pregnancies, where the babies share one placenta. It compared early cord clamping, where the cord was clamped at or before one minute after the first twin was born, with delayed cord clamping, where the cord was clamped more than a minute after birth. In the delayed group, clamping was often around three minutes, and in one subgroup it took place between three and ten minutes, once the first baby was considered stable. The team looked at differences in blood counts between the twins in the first 12 hours and checked early brain scans for severe injury. A sudden shift of blood between the twins at birth (acute twin-to-twin transfusion) was only seen after delayed cord clamping, and when it happened, at least one twin in each pair had severe brain injury.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝
Thirty five monochorionic twin pregnancies were included, 17 with early cord clamping and 18 with delayed cord clamping. Acute twin-to-twin transfusion, defined as a difference of more than 8 g/dL in hemoglobin (the red blood cell level) between twins within 12 hours after birth, did not occur in any of the early clamping pregnancies. It happened in about one in six of the delayed clamping pregnancies. In all three affected twin pairs, one baby had severe brain injury on scans, and one of these babies later died after care was changed to focus on comfort. The longer the time between the birth of the first twin and clamping that baby’s cord, the larger the average hemoglobin difference between the twins. In a small subgroup where cord clamping was delayed until the first baby was clearly stable, most of those twin pairs developed acute transfusion.

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧
In monochorionic twins, small and large blood vessel connections run across the shared placenta. When the first baby is born and starts breathing, blood pressure patterns change. If the cord is left unclamped for several minutes, blood can still move through those shared vessels. The worry is that blood can quickly shift from the twin who is still inside to the twin who is already born, or sometimes the other way around. This can leave one baby suddenly very anemic and low on blood, and the other with very thick blood and too many red blood cells, which can both harm the brain. In this study, twins with larger two-way vessel connections in the placenta seemed to be at particular risk, although the numbers were small.

𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬
The authors conclude that, for vaginally born monochorionic twins, delayed cord clamping may carry a real risk of sudden twin-to-twin transfusion and severe brain injury, and they do not recommend it in this specific situation. They call for caution, careful decisions for each pregnancy, and more research that looks at monochorionic twins separately from twins with separate placentas when studying cord management. For families and clinicians, this paper is a reminder that twins who share a placenta are not the same as twins with two placentas. If you are expecting monochorionic twins, it is reasonable to ask your team how they plan to handle cord clamping for each baby, and how they weigh the usual benefits of delayed clamping against these particular risks.

Find the link to the paper in the comments.

11/22/2025