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ABOUT
US
Our
Background | Our Philosophy
Welcome to the Seattle Home Maternity Service and Childbirth
Center, the longest established midwifery practice and
birth center in Washington State. We are happy you are
interested in our services. We are a midwifery practice
offering complete maternity care including prenatal
and postnatal care with delivery in your home or in
one of two licensed birth centers. Licensed Midwives
Suzy Myers and Marge Mansfield own and operate the Seattle
Home Maternity Service and have worked together for
over thirty years! In 2006 we expanded our practice
and welcomed Heather Chorley, PA, LM,
Our
Background
Suzy and Marge began work in midwifery in 1975 as part
of a women’s community health center in Seattle.
With physician supervision, our training group attended
more than 250 births over the following three years.
Recognizing the need for formal training and licensure,
we co-founded the Seattle Midwifery School (SMS) in
1978 (http://seattlemidwifery.org)
. Today, SMS stands as an internationally recognized
model for midwifery and doula education in the United
States, with over 250 midwives and 3000 doulas trained.
We are very proud of our role and continued involvement
in SMS; we are faculty and clinical instructors and
Suzy serves on the Board of Directors. In 1980, we became
the first midwives educated in the United States to
obtain Washington State midwifery licenses. We subsequently
started our own practice, today the longest-established
midwifery service in the Seattle metropolitan area.
In 1983, our childbirth center was licensed by the state
Department of Health, enabling us to expand our services
to include birth center as well as home delivery. In
the late 1990's we helped launch the Community Birth
and Family Center (http://communitybirth.org),
the first non-profit birth center in the state, where
qualified midwives in the community may obtain delivery
privileges. Our clients desiring a birth center delivery
may choose either of these two lovely centers.
Heather attended Seattle Midwifery School from 1995
to 1998 and met Suzy and Marge when she was a student.
During her clinical training, she spent 6 months as
an intern in their practice and impressed them with
her intelligence, skill and caring nature. After graduation,
she launched her own practice, Welcome Home Midwifery
Service, with classmate Wendy Rowe, LM. Heather and
Wendy continued to have a close alliance with Seattle
Home Maternity Service, often serving as "relief"
midwives when Marge or Suzy took vacation time away.
In 2005, When Wendy decided to return to her family
home in Vermont, we all recognized that what we wanted
and needed was to join our practices. Wendy and Heather
officially closed Welcome Home in June, 2005, just weeks
before Heather gave birth to her second daughter, Maevis.
After a 6 month maternity leave, she joined Suzy and
Marge in January, 2006, as their much needed and appreciated
third partner!
Our Philosophy
We believe that pregnancy and birth are normal, healthy
human experiences best completed with minimum intervention
and maximum education and support. As midwives, we strive
to provide women and their families with knowledge,
skills and confidence that enhance the health and quality
of the childbirth experience. Further, we believe that
optimum health and safety are best achieved when the
midwife and her clients work closely together and share
responsibility. We also believe that clients should
be in charge of making decisions affecting their health
and that each family is unique and must be treated with
respect and flexibility.
We believe that birth at home or in a birth center is
a safe and economical choice for normal childbirth.
There is no evidence in the medical literature that
hospitals provide the safest place for healthy women
to give birth. In fact, hospital birth may increase
the likelihood of unnecessary interventions and procedures
that could actually increase risks as well as drive
the cost of care higher. However, birth outside the
hospital is not for everyone. You must choose the setting
for birth in which you will feel the most comfortable.
We encourage you to give this choice careful consideration.
An important landmark study published in the British
Medical Journal in 2005 describing the practice of Certified
Professional Midwives in North America can be accessed
at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7505/1416?ehom.
We are committed to preserving and promoting the Midwives'
Model of Care*, which includes:
The
application of this woman-centered model of care has
been proven to reduce the incidence of birth injury,
trauma and cesarean section.
*1996-2005, Midwifery Task Force, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
A midwife’s expertise is assisting normal pregnancy
and childbirth; a physician’s specialty is treating
medical problems. We work with physicians and hospitals
in our community to blend our skills in order to provide
the best care possible to our clients. We also are well
connected with a wealth of alternative health care providers
in the Seattle area including acupuncturists, naturopaths,
chiropractors and massage therapists.
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