For 30 years I have supported women with their choice to birth their babies at home by serving them as midwife. I have learned that women have acquired memory to intuitively know how to birth. When women are in a supportive and safe environment they become empowered with this innate knowledge. This facilitates the trust in their body and with the natural process of childbirth. Your body contains naturally occurring pain relieving endorphins that miraculously become very active and increase as the birthing energy intensifies. This enables you to display phenomenal levels of physical strength and endurance during labor and birth. During the birthing process you will experience many transformational changes… connecting you with women that have taken this journey before you… this timeless sacred rite of passage… motherhood.

I have been honored, as midwife, to have attended over 700 babies as they entered the world in the safety, sanctity and peaceful privacy of home. It has been my privilege to have blended my art and practice of midwifery with families of varied backgrounds, religious and personal beliefs. I have many memories of babies emerging in the quiet of the night lit only by the amber glow of kerosene lamps and the whistling of the water kettle on the wood stove with Amish families. I have been awed by the tranquility exhibited by the many mothers choosing the soothing comfort of fluid warmth that only water births offer and of mothers surrounded by candlelight and soft music while practicing hypnosis for childbirth.

I have been humbled by the intense strength portrayed by these many women and the powerful primordial sounds they produce while giving birth confidently and uninhibitedly. I have assisted these many women with their choice to birth outdoors, in their bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, kitchens, standing, sitting, squatting, kneeling, in or out of water, all in the comfort of their own homes, be it huge mansions or tiny wooden cabins. Truth be known, women of various lifestyles share a common ground when they trust their instincts for guidance to birth intuitively. It has been and continues to be my joy to assist these many wonderful women and their families in discovering their unique journey through pregnancy and birth.

I have given birth to a son and a daughter born exactly eight years apart. They both were born on my mother’s birthday! In my area, in 1976, I was unable to find a midwife to assist me at home, so my son was a natural birth in the hospital. His birth was a tremendous experience, awakening me to the incredible power of birthing energy. I knew then, that birth could and should be an empowering experience and that one day…I would become very involved in helping women feel empowered with their birthing process. My daughter was born in 1984, at home on our waterbed, with her brother and their father and my mentor midwife at my side. This was a deeply bonding experience for all of us. It was simply blissful to snuggle all together as a family in our bed shortly after her birth. It was truly an empowering experience for me to have given birth naturally and safely in my own home. I was absolutely euphoric! With my personal experience to share, I became my best advocate for “homebirth”.

I began midwifery by apprenticing with a traditional midwife attending homebirths in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1980. Many years later in 1994, I was a listed midwife with the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) and then in 1997, I became credentialed as Certified Professional Midwife. This is the only route to midwifery that requires out of hospital birth experience for certification. In 2004, I became Certified as a Hypnotherapist with the National Guild of Hypnotists and I began offering private and group hypnosis sessions and teaching Hypno-Beginnings classes for childbirth. Then most recently in 2006, I was the tenth CPM to become a Licensed Midwife in the Commonwealth of Virginia, authorized to practice midwifery in the homebirth setting. I continue to update my midwifery skills regularly and seek knowledge with complimentary holistic modalities, such as herbs, homeopathics, essential oils, reiki,  eft, and hypnosis.

I practice midwifery in accordance with the requirements set forth by NARM for CPM’s and the new regulations with the Commonwealth of Virginia for Licensed Midwives. I am proud to offer the Midwives Model of Care. I have resided in north western Pennsylvania most of my life and I am pleased to have relocated to the warmer climate of Virginia in October of 2006. I continue to offer my midwifery care to those of you wishing to experience birthing at home in south eastern Virginia. I would be honored to enhance your confidence to birth naturally by serving you…as midwife.