HOME BIRTH

Prenatal Care

With Threshold Community Midwives, the heart of your prenatal care is about building a trusting and honesty relationship. We offer you hour-long prenatal appointments to discuss your pregnancy, monitor you and your baby’s health and well-being, as well as spend time getting to know you and your family. By the time you have your baby, we hope to have build a strong relationship of trust and comfort, so we can best support you in your birth and transition into parenthood.

Prenatal care begins at the start of your pregnancy (or whenever you come into care with us). We offer comprehensive prenatal care including all screening and testing options related to pregnancy (prenatal labs, genetic screening, STI testing, gestation diabetes screening, Group B Strep testing, referrals for ultrasounds, etc) and do our labs in our office or at your home. Each prenatal visit includes pregnancy assessments and monitoring of health and well being of you and your baby, education and counseling, and consultations with other medical providers as needed. We makes sure that all of your questions are answered, and are committed to informed consent and embodied consent; we will give you unbiased and evidence-based information on all testing, options, and exams during your pregnancy. You are the expert in your body, family and needs and in honoring that we share decision making and responsibility with you.

Prenatal Visits Include:

• FREE initial consultation either in-person or by phone to see if we are a good fit and answer your questions

• 1.5 hour initial prenatal visit to get your medical history, discuss your pregnancy thus far, do initial lab work, listen to fetal heart.

• Hour long routine prenatal visits

  • Every 4 weeks until 28 weeks gestation

  • Every other week from 28-36 weeks gestation

  • A home visit at 36 weeks with your complete birth team (both midwives and whoever else will be at your birth)

  • Weekly visits from 36 weeks until birth

  • Additional appointments as needed

• Flexible appointment times so that you can have an appointment during the day or in the evening, depending on what works best for your schedule

• We schedule your visits so that you can alternate between seeing both midwives.

• Ongoing phone calls or emails throughout your pregnancy to help your answer questions / concerns in between prenatal appointments; for non-urgent matters we respond within 48 hours.

• On-Call 24/7 for urgent support throughout pregnancy. Your midwives will discuss what urgent needs might be and when to call the midwife after business hours.

Labor and Birth

Your midwives are on-call for your labor and birth beginning at 37 weeks gestation through the birth of your child.

Both Tessa and Emmy will attend your birth, one acting as a primary midwife and the other the assist midwife. Your primary midwife will be in contact with you throughout early labor, offering phone support and advice for coping. We will plan to arrive at your home when you are in active labor, providing gentle and loving support. During your labor we monitor your vital signs and the baby’s heart rate and monitor your labor progress and coping to assess your overall wellbeing. We offer positions to facilitate progress, offer comfort measures, herbs to facilitate labor and provide emotional support.

After the birth of your baby and placenta, we will stay for 2-4 hours to ensure every one is stable, and do a newborn exam on the baby. Your primary midwife continues to be on call for you 24/7 after we leave, should any concerns arise.

While monitoring the health and wellbeing of you and your baby is one of our top priorities, we also strive to hold you in a safe and affirmed space. Physiological birth happens best when you can relax, feel cared for and safe, and when you can tap into the trust and wisdom of your own body and its ability to birth.

Please see the section on Home Birth FAQs under the About tab to details regarding the safety of home birth, our emergency skills and capacities and emergent and non-emergent hospital transfer during or after labor.

Postpartum Care

We love the sweetness of postpartum home visits and think this is one of the best parts of home birth care. During your postpartum visits, we monitor the overall health of you and your baby, offer support and education for lactation / infant feeding, support your healing and caring for your baby. We continue to be available to you 24/7 by phone throughout your postpartum to answer question and address concerns for you or your baby.

Postpartum visits include:

• home visits on day 1, day 3, and day 7

• care for you in our office at 2 weeks and 6 weeks and additional visits as needed

• ongoing drop-in postpartum group gatherings, as a part of the Threshold Community Midwives network

• monitoring of you and your baby’s vital signs and baby’s weight and family bonding

• support and education around breast/chest feeding, including troubleshooting issues, monitoring frequency and feeding patterns, baby’s output and referral to lactation consultants as needed

• support your physical and emotional wellbeing during this time of transition

• Critical Congenital Heart Defect (CCHD) screening, Hearing Screening, and Newborn Metabolic Screening

• opportunities to process and debrief your birth experience

• opportunities for feedback and evaluation of care

• If you should need to transfer to a hospital during you labor, we offer ongoing phone and in person support (as possible) and pick up postpartum care once you and your baby are discharged.

Payment + Fees