When you’re pregnant, you’re faced with all kinds of options and decisions to make about how you want to labor. One of the biggest decisions to make is who you choose to provide health care for you and your baby.
What is birth with a midwife like?
For starters, midwives offer support and individualized care. We spend a lot of focused, dedicated time with our patients, and we stay by their side and talk through everything that happens in labor. The quality of care makes a positive difference in outcomes: birth with a midwife decreases your risk of interventions, complications and surgical birth, regardless of how you labor.
We offer waterbirth and nitrous oxide which are great options for eligible patients, as well as epidural pain relief.
How do midwives help with labor pain?
Some people choose midwife care because they plan not to use pain medication in birth and know we are experts in coping strategies. Nurse midwives are skilled in nonpharmacologic techniques like visualizations, massage and hydrotherapy. We teach positions and exercises that can help ease labor pain. We also provide nitrous oxide, IV medications and epidural pain relief. For patients with an epidural, we still use positions and techniques to help labor progress.
What about postpartum care?
We provide more than your typical postpartum care. Our lactation services are available to the entire community, regardless of whether you have your baby with us. We offer frequent and same-day lactation visits. We often see families for several weeks for ongoing lactation support. Our postpartum visits are designed to assess not just physical but also emotional well-being. We cherish the opportunity to care for people in the early days of parenthood. And we provide health care far beyond labor and delivery, too, long into menopause and beyond.
Anne Ziemba, MSN, CNM
McKenzie Midwives & Lactations Services
960 N. 16th St., Ste 104, Springfield (541) 744-8660