When you have a home birth it is a unique and special experience. You labor in your own comfortable environment, surrounded by familiar sounds and smells, simple comforts and your chosen community of support. You can move freely, walk around your back yard, labor in a birth tub or your own bed, all with minimal intervention. You may have intimate moments with your partner, and may have an older child present to witness the miracle of birth. There are limitless examples of how birthing people follow their body’s powerful instincts and find their own best way to give birth when they feel safe, respected and supported at home.
Glow midwives enter your home when you are in labor with loving, peaceful energy and a reverence for your birth experience. We watch, we listen, we assess the well-being of you and your baby, and we offer our support through words and touch. We are patient, knowing that your body opens in the fullness of time, not according to a graph or specific timeline. We have many ideas for comfort measures, pain coping techniques and position changes. Our support is individualized, responding to your unique needs, desires and experiences. We may spend long hours through the night massaging you to help you soften and open, and can sit quietly outside the room if you wish to labor in solitude. We provide reassurance when all is well, share information we gather from listening to fetal heart tones, and are comfortable using our advanced midwifery skills when they are needed.
We believe in creating an atmosphere of gentleness, peacefulness and love for babies when they are born—this is a sacred time! Babies thrive when they are kept skin-to-skin on their mother’s body, are spoken to by the familiar voices of their parents, and are touched with tenderness and respect. We are midwives for the babies as well, and bring our careful attention to their experience of birth and life outside the womb.
Glow midwives place safety as the highest goal, which means that occasionally transporting to the hospital is indicated. We have spent time cultivating good relationships with doctors and midwives at local hospitals so that our transports are as smooth and professional as possible, and our clients are treated with the respect and kindness they deserve. We discuss why and how transports occur and make a plan with every client during prenatal care, so should the need arise we are well prepared. One of the primary reasons home birth with a skilled midwife is so safe for healthy, low-risk people is because we have the knowledge and experience to detect when there is a problem and change locations.
