Brynne Potter, CPM

BRYNNE POTTER, CPM:
I currently sit on the Board of Directors for the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), the credentialing agency that oversees the CPM credential. I also continue to serve the Commonwealth Midwives Alliance (CMA) as the Policy Coordinator and serve on the Advisory Board of the VABirthPAC.

In 2010, I co-founded Private Practice, makers of electronic charting software for midwives.

I frequently speak on multiple topics, (all of which can provide CEUs for midwives) and also write on my company blog.

MY STORY:
I decided to be a midwife when I was 20 years old.  My spark was an interest in empowerment through self healing and natural remedies.  I had started learning about herbal remedies for myself and that led to lots of reading about all the bad things that happen to us when we are young that can become wounds and illnesses we have to “heal”.  It occurred to me that if we can start babies off right, maybe they won’t have so much healing to do.  I started catching babies in 1991, with a live in apprenticeship (oh the things we can do before we have kids of our own..) with a midwife in Mississippi.

In 1992, after the birth of my first child, Max, at home in Virginia (we called him “a career move”), I began assisting at births in the Charlottesville area. I attended home, birth center, and hospital births as an assistant to anyone who would have me. I also had my second child, Jeremy, at home in 1996.

In 2002, I began attending home births as a primary midwife. I simultaneously began the systematic documentation and training to qualify for the Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) credential. In 2005, I received my CPM certification.  It was a crazy year, as I also served as the Legislative Coordinator for the Commonwealth Midwives Alliance (CMA) living in a hotel in Richmond so that I could spend every day lobbying our legislators to pass our CPM licensure bill.  The work paid off for me personally, as the bill passed and I received my Virginia license in early 2006.

Contact me at brynne@getprivatepractice.com