A soapbox of two midwives practicing in Central Virginia..

I sat down this evening with a cup of tea to read all about the new publication Evidence-Based Maternity Care by Childbirth Connections, The Reforming States Group, and The Milbank Memorial Fund. [Read more →]

Hello Charlottesville! This is a birth announcement for our new blog: The Midwife Monologues. Our vision is to have a forum for dialogue for all things pertaining to modern midwives and the clients they serve. Topics will include Advocacy, Research, Health, Parenting, Breastfeeding, and (oh yeah) Birth! We invite you and your midwives to join us as we raise this little tyke of a blogspot into a resource for information and community building.
Special thanks to our web-midwife, Michael Davis. A fabulous home birth dad who bartered his web design services for the birth of his son (Baby Jack was our collateral), Michael is behind our brand new site Mountain View Midwives. As Deren and I lean towards being luddite midwives, it has been a fairly sharp learning curve to be able to “blog”. In fact, it required 7 video tutorials for me to learn how to post. Now that I get it (sort of), I am amazed at the potential for knowledge and connection that this communication tool provides.
We have a special category called Charlottesville Midwifery that will be a local forum for birth stories, swapping used baby equipment, events, and general questions about midwifery and related resources in the Charlottesville area. Please let us know what resources we are missing in our Links section! Look forward to seeing you there!

I am very excited to be attending Rosita Arvigo’s Maya Abdominal Massage Practitioner Training in Belize in in January of 2009! I have taken the level one (self care) course and can’t wait to be able to offer this simple and profound technique to the women of Charlottesville.  The basic concept is that your uterus moves, both in it’s monthly cycles and in response to injury, body changes, and childbirth.  For centuries, mayan healers have used specific techniques to gently massage the uterus into a balanced alignment.  The benefits are numerous and modern practitioners are finding amazing results in treating a multitude of health problems with this simple process.  More later….  I’d love to hear from other folks who have practiced or received this technique.

I gave the following speech at this morning’s
meeting of the Virginia Board of Medicine. [Read more →]

After accepting the Birth Matters Virginia award in Richmond, VA on
Sunday, August 10, 2008, I gave the following acceptance speech.

Thank you so much for this recognition and for the opportunity to come together to celebrate our passions for safe and satisfying birth for mothers and babies. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to stand up on a soap box for five minutes and preach to the choir…two of my most guilty pleasures. [Read more →]