Tree of Life Midwifery

Welcome to Tree of Life Midwifery

If you're expecting a baby or planning to in the near future, congratulations! This time will be unlike any other in your life, full of questions, hopes and fears. I hope you find the information on this site useful, but more importantly, I hope it leads you to ask more questions and seek out answers. The birth and rearing of your child is too important to be left up to others. Make informed decisions and transcend mediocrity!

I would like to share my background and philosophy about birth, so that we can begin to know each other.

My studies of natural birth and midwifery began in 1980; I was still in high school. Over the years, I read voraciously on the subject of birth. I taught childbirth classes off and on, attended births when I was invited. And I gave birth to five children at home between 1985 and 1993.

While lactating and changing diapers for nearly ten years straight, I learned. I learned to knit, spin and weave, play the banjo, train a horse, handfeed baby cockatiels. I learned to identify and prepare herbal remedies, skin a rabbit, change my oil, and chart my fertility cycle.

Then, in 1999, I began my formal midwifery apprenticeship and started working toward my NARM certification. During that period, I also coached soccer, rode my horse in a novice (25 mile) endurance ride, worked as a doula to buy more books and equipment, raised dairy and pack goats and suffered a miscarriage. All these learning experiences have prepared me for the vocation of midwifery. I hope to be the compassionate, skillful attendant to my mothers, that my midwife and mentors were to me. When my hair gets a little whiter, I'll pass the knowledge on to some special apprentice and continue the tradition.

As a midwife, I am constantly in awe of the transformative power that a natural birth has on the life of a family, and a woman in particular. My hope is that women will regain the confidence in their body's ability to give birth, so they can become active participants in the birth process rather than being "actively managed" by a so-called healthcare system .