…well, in my heart at least :)

When I was a little girl on Kauai during the summers, my Auntie Amy seemed to be always pregnant. I loved hanging out with her and her little ones and I was fascinated by her belly and the squirming baby inside her. She was planning her fourth homebirth above the Hanalei river and one night my Momma Susan let my two older brothers sleep over at our neighbor’s but kept me home. I ruffled at the injustice until she woke me up at 3am to tell me that Amy was in labor and we were invited to the birth. We drove out of the Wainiha Valley by the light of a full moon, cruising along in our blue VW Doppelkabine pick up, overhead swooped a huge white owl (Pueo in Hawaiian) and the sky twinkled with shooting stars. Magic was happening.

Walking into that homebirth scene, I felt I was home. Inside myself. I held Amy’s hand as she labored in the tub and witnessed a group of women supporting this gorgeous process of unfolding. As I stood in calm meditation out of the way with my back against a wall I watched as Amy pushed lying on her left side. The bedroom was dimly lit by candles and smelled of sweet incense. One woman was holding her top leg up while she pushed, another rubbed oil on her deeply tanned skin. An intense contraction and a big push from Mama Amy sent her waters bursting across the room, spraying me with hot amniotic fluid. I was blessed, anointed, and completely hooked.

I should mention that both my brothers, Jackson and Willie, and I were all born at home in Los Feliz in LA. My Momma Susan wasn’t super in-the-know about birth or anything but she had had some gnarly experiences in the hospital as a little girl and just knew in her soul that she would not subject herself or her yoni to medicalized care again. The midwife for my birth was a woman named Elaine Fresco (who also later caught my dear friend, Chloe Roth). I have a tape recording of my birth. It’s incredible and moving. My Mom played it for me for my 16th birthday and we both wept. So I always knew the word MIDWIFE even before I knew I wanted to be one.

The whole mystical night was dotted with fascinating details: watching her yoni get a few stitches put in after the baby and placenta were born, seeing someone eat scrambled eggs with ketchup for the first time, investigating the placenta with the midwife, watching Baby Savannah find her way to the breast and get started nursing, getting to hold the hot stone body of a brand new baby. In these moments I realized that I too was a midwife.

Years later in college at UCSC I was a language studies major but happened to take and Intro to Femenisms class with Bettina Aptheker. This class changed my life and after years of attitude and snottiness and internalized patriarchy on my part I seemed to realize all of a sudden that I was a strident feminist! I changed my major to Women’s Studies and graduated from UCLA summa cum laude. My newly ignited (or rekindled) feminist ideologies recalled to me my childhood goal of becoming a midwife. I understood then that to support positive change at the level of the new family plants seeds of wellness and empowerment that can effect change throughout a life and across generations.

When I applied to UCSF’s Nurse Midwifery MEPN program the first time my application was rejected. I knew in my soul that I was a midwife but had nothing pragmatic to prove it. So, I got certified as a DONA doula and started attending births in LA. I lived and trained with traditional Mexican midwives for several months under the sage guidance of Juanita Nelson, CPM and became certified as a Birthing From Within Mentor. Basically, I got my feet wet with pregnancy, birth, and new parenthood so that when I reapplied the next year I was granted an interview with Holly Cost and achieved a spot in their elite program.

The three years I spent studying at UCSF gave me invaluable knowledge, skill, and insight. I am deeply grateful for the deep learning I received from the midwives and the understanding I gained of the birth systems in the country and the strengthening of my internal compass. And even though that program was the right fit for my education and training my heart was never in hospital birth. I graduated in 2010 with a Masters in Nursing, as a Registered Nurse, a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner (later to become Board Certified), and a Certified Nurse Midwife. I’ve also qualified to prescribe medications (called a Furnishing License for nurses).

Side note: in 2007, the first year of my UCSF education I also helped to start Gravel & Gold, alongside my two dear sister-friends, Cassie McGettigan and Lisa Foti-Straus.

When I graduated in 2010 I reached out to Nancy Myrick, who at the time had Rites of Passage homebirth practice in SF (and who founded and runs the San Francisco Birth Center). Her partner at the time, Ami Burnham, was taking a break to go catch babies on Kauai actually so she had some energetic space for me. She generously and graciously took me under her wing to show me the ropes of a homebirth practice; what goes into your midwifery kit, how to bill insurance, what a transfer to the hospital looks like, how to navigate charting, etc. and we worked together for about a year through one full cycle of clients before I started my own homebirth practice, Mama Lion Midwifery. I practiced in the Bay for about 9 years, nestled among the San Francisco Homebirth Collective, in the most amazing community of phenomenal midwives who taught me so much, supported me completely and reigned as my chosen family for that time.

In 2015, alongside three amazing midwife friends, I helped begin theROOT in Noe Valley.

In 2017, very pregnant with my first child, I stepped away from catching babies for a while. When my little one was about a year old I took on another set of homebirth clients and after midwifing that group of second-time families I found that I could no longer dedicate myself to my practice as I did before having a baby of my own. I simply did not have enough Qi to spare. So, with a tender heart and deep grief, but true clarity of self, I decided to not have a homebirth practice any more. A global pandemic, the death of my Momma Susan, and having a second baby in 2020 allowed me a significant pause away from any kind of clinical practice.

In the world of pregnancy and family building, we are all very focused on the birth. Rightfully so. The birth of your baby means the world. We take classes and make plans. But for most of us our imagination stops there. We even neglect to think about the birth of the placenta. We are all of us woefully unprepared for the postpartum period. Once I had my own children I could really feel my focus shift to giving due importance to what is now often called The Fourth Trimester. This is where I have found a new home as a midwife.

Postpartum clinical care, which is the basic standard of care in much of the world, e.g. England, Japan, Scandinavia, much of Africa and Latin America, is an unexpected and fascinating new field in the United States. Postpartum care services?! What even is that?! I’m here to tell everyone who cares to listen that the postpartum period, the fourth trimester, is a critical time for the new family and it deserves comprehensive and compassionate care.

So, I’ve revamped my midwifery practice now in my forties, with two small children, post pandemic, to center on the Fourth Trimester. See the Services Page to get all the details.

More exciting pieces of my midwifery story are: number one- that Natural Resources in the Mission, which has long held a New Mothers Circle (originally created by midwife Yeshi Neumann, MPH, MA and then facilitated by the lovely Ginny Zeppa) has now hired me and my colleague, tine (Christine Lu Singh), to be the next facilitators for this special circle. I also have the pleasure to teach their Newborn Care and Parenting Class, their Childbirth Preparation Class and have developed and teach the Car Seat Safety Basics Class. You can also sometimes catch me at the New Parent Drop In Circle and the Bay Area Bellies Meet Up. And, number two- I am now a Certified Child Passenger Safety Technician!

I used to me “that mom” who was always trying to gently improve her friends’ car seat set ups. But when I took the 40 hour certification training to become a CPST I was somewhat horrified at the many little things that I had been doing wrong that were effecting the safety of my kids in my car. Now I offer a boutique service to come to your house for a private hour-long consultation to help you install and understand your car seat and your child’s needs for safety in the car.

I hope this snapshot into my path to becoming a midwife and what I’m up to now helps you understand how passionate I am about serving families so that they can become the best versions of themselves: empowered, whole, valued, confident, and able. I hope to cross paths with you soon.