I believe birth transforms us
Your body. Your baby. Your family. Your birth.
Homebirth makes room for birth to unfold within the life you have already built. Your own bed. Your own food. Your own rhythms. The people you love nearby. A sibling wandering in to meet the baby. A partner who is not a visitor, but part of the experience.
My hope is that you never feel like you have stepped into my space and need to follow my rules. I am stepping into yours.
Your family, your values, your hopes, and the way you want to move through birth matter here.
This is your birth. My role is to help you feel safe enough to fully be in it.
I believe birth belongs to you.
I believe there is wisdom woven into you—in your body, your intuition, and in the way God designed you to bring forth life. That wisdom deserves to be honored.
My role as your midwife is not to take birth from your hands, but to come alongside you. To know you, help you prepare, offer skilled and attentive care, and help create a space where you feel safe enough to listen to your own body and instincts.
Because being made for this does not mean you were meant to do it alone. You are worthy of being cared for, listened to, protected, and deeply held through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and all the becoming that happens along the way.
I was sixteen the first time I witnessed a birth, and I was completely captivated. There was something about watching a woman bring her baby into the world that stayed with me.
Years later, I began my nursing career caring for mothers and babies postpartum, and eventually found my way to labor and delivery. I spent seven years there, surrounded by birth and learning from incredibly skilled nurses, midwives, and physicians. I learned to recognize normal birth, to notice when something wasn’t right, and to stay calm and respond when I was needed.
I loved birth then. But over time, I began to wonder what birth could look like outside of the hospital.
Then a fellow labor and delivery nurse had her baby at home.
That got my attention.
Birth has been drawing me in for a very long time
Photography © Iris Birth Collective
That birth changed the direction of my life
I stepped more fully into the world of homebirth, spending four years working alongside homebirth midwives as a birth assistant before completing my own years of midwifery education and apprenticeship. In 2025, I became a Certified Professional Midwife.
Along the way, I witnessed again and again what had first changed me in my own birth: women laboring in their own spaces, surrounded by the people they loved, with midwives who understood when to watch, when to wait, and when their skill was needed.
Held Midwifery grew out of all of it.
The nurse in me who understands the importance of safety. The mother in me who knows what it is to surrender to birth. The midwife in me who has learned to watch, listen, trust, and step forward when I am needed.
Held is the kind of care I believe women deserve.
Homebirth changed the way I understood birth.
Until then, homebirth had never really felt like something that belonged in my world. But watching someone I knew and respected choose it made me curious.
During my second pregnancy, I chose it for myself.
I gave birth to my 10-pound baby at home, surrounded by people I trusted. But what changed me wasn't simply where I gave birth. It was the way I was cared for.
My midwife knew me. She knew my family. She listened to me, trusted me, and gave me the space to find my own way through birth while quietly holding the safety around me.
I felt like I met my full self at that birth, and I was never the same.
I wanted other women to know what it felt like to be cared for that way.
The more I witness birth, the more I trust it
I have spent years witnessing birth—in hospitals, in birth centers, and in the quiet familiarity of home. And the more birth I witness, the more convinced I become that the environment surrounding a woman matters.
Birth is exquisitely sensitive. It responds to whether a woman feels watched or private, hurried or given time, interrupted or allowed to follow her instincts.
At home, a woman remains in her own nest. She is surrounded by familiar sounds and smells, the people she loves, her own bed, her own food, her own rhythms. She can move, rest, eat, make noise, get into the water, reach for her partner, and find her own way through labor without having to leave herself behind.
And I believe there is safety in that.
There is something powerful about a woman laboring in her own nest.
There is also safety in being cared for by someone who knows normal physiological birth intimately. Midwives are experts in this. They are trained to watch and listen--to recognize the enormous range of normal, to protect what is working, and to recognize when something is no longer normal and our help is needed.
I have seen what intervention can do when it is truly needed, and I am profoundly grateful for it. But I have also learned that intervention is not neutral. Doing more does not always make birth safer.
Sometimes safety is knowing when to act.
And sometimes it is knowing when not to disturb what is already working
Sources: Birthplace in England Collaborative Group, BMJ (2011); Reitsma et al., EClinicalMedicine (2020).
Other outcomes associated with intended homebirth included lower use of epidural analgesia, episiotomy and oxytocin augmentation, as well as lower odds of severe perineal trauma and maternal infection. PubMed
lower odds of forceps or vacuum birth
lower odds of cesarean birth
compared with 58% planning birth in an obstetric unit
experienced a “normal birth” when planning homebirth
Research reflects much of what I have witnessed. Among low-risk women, planned homebirth is consistently associated with substantially fewer obstetric interventions and higher rates of physiologic birth.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SHOWS
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer birth is the space to unfold and the safety of being deeply held.
I had the opportunity to join other local midwives for a conversation with KSMQ Public Television about homebirth and midwifery care
A conversation about homebirth
I'm married to my best friend, Michael, and together we're raising our three children, Grace Davey, Ellis, and Earnest. These days, much of my life revolves around motherhood and homeschooling, and I find so much joy in the ordinary beauty of our days together.
I love being outdoors, exploring nature, spending time with animals, cooking good food, reading, wandering through thrift stores, and finding little adventures with my family. I'm happiest surrounded by the people I love, preferably with a good cup of coffee or matcha nearby.
My Christian faith is at the heart of who I am and how I see the world. It shapes the way I love, serve, and care for others, and reminds me of the dignity and worth of every person.
My family, my faith, and my own experiences of motherhood continue to shape the woman I am and the way I care for women as a midwife.