Hey!

I started my birth work journey on a high-risk, high-intervention Labor and Delivery unit here in San Antonio. I loved advocating for families in the hospital, and I learned a lot about how to support people who are navigating pregnancy complications. After what felt like hospital shift after shift of "failed" inductions, and wondering what I did wrong for my patients to end up with c-sections - it led me to start studying physiologic birth and Spinning Babies techniques. It completely changed my perspective on pregnancy and birth! Instead of this mysterious, high-intervention process that hopefully ends in a vaginal birth - it's a beautifully, complex dance that the body and baby intuitively know how to do. And it turns out that tapping into the innate processes that the body was designed to use in birth... works?? That's how I began spreading the gospel of just plain physiologic birth in my unit.  I know the nurses that I trained were sick of me talking about it, but I believed it was so, so, so important, especially in inductions of labor. 

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Ultimately, I still felt helpless and ineffective working within the hospital healthcare system that didn't always respect bodily autonomy, informed decision-making, or the innate ability to give birth without interventions. That's when I sought out working in an environment that supported physiologic birth and informed consent - you know, basic human rights. And that's when I came across out-of-hospital birth midwives in the San Antonio community. Initially, I had my reservations and thought, "Is that even safe? What if something happens?" I had a strong bias having come from the hospital setting where pregnancy is treated as an illness, something to be fixed and intervened upon... to "save" mom and baby. Also, Texas has the worst maternal mortality rates in the U.S. - shouldn't we be doing even more monitoring and interventions to prevent bad outcomes?? I had to do my research and unpack what I thought I knew about birth. 

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And what I learned... birthing people don't need saving! They are competent and smart decision-makers. But they're being given information that is based on fear and coercion, just so they can be convenient for a healthcare system that doesn't like the unscheduled, undisturbed nature of normal birth. And your birth options are too important to be reduced to what is opportune for someone else. 

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So here I am! Having researched home birth and finding it incredibly safe (even safer than hospital birth in low-risk pregnancies), I am now assisting a home birth midwife here in San Antonio. It has been a rewarding opportunity to support families in their homes and help them achieve their dream birth experience. But I still thought about the families, especially marginalized folks, who are birthing in the hospital system, and I wished they could receive this kind of care. I wish they had the opportunity to discuss evidence-based birth options and what that looks like for their family. And this is what led me to create a childbirth education class that is focused on non-judgmental, evidence-based, and individualized care. My priority is to help you feel calm and confident with your birth choices, no matter what path you are on!