Homebirth

We work with all types of families providing comprehensive care through pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum. Seeing one team of care providers – Evaly and Morgan – through these many weeks ensures that we can build trust, build safety through continuity of care, and build satisfaction in your care. Your homebirth care will include:

• Hour long appointments at our beautiful office in Berkeley or in your home
• Prenatal group appointments to discuss topics in-depth and build community with other pregnant families
• Monitoring baby’s growth at every appointment
• Providing you with information and resources so you and your family can make informed choices
• We will have time to discuss your questions and concerns at each appointment and we are available by phone, text or email for anything between appointments
• All routine lab work can be done during appointments, and we will provide referrals for ultrasounds or medical consultations as needed (lab and ultrasound fees are paid for separately through insurance)
• We are on-call and stay in the area for your labor during your due window of 37-42 weeks
• During labor, we will come to your home to support you through the process and will monitor you and baby to ensure that everyone is coping well
• In the event that you need to transfer to the hospital for personal or medical reasons we will accompany you there and continue in a support person role
• Postpartum care for you and your baby together then continues over 6 appointments or more, as detailed below

It’s so beautiful to think that this journey with you and Morgan started off as seeking a medical professional to something so much greater than that. You and Morgan have become such a major part of our community and your role in our lives is incomparable!” – IS

Words cannot express my gratitude and appreciation to your work during the whole process of my prenatal and postpartum time. You are not only a wonderful, skilled midwife but also have this gentle and healing energy which helped to ease my anxiety about birth. Because of you, my birth experience was beautiful and memorable. -RF

Herbs, Placenta Offerings, Doula Services, and Postpartum ceremonies:

Student midwife, Sonia Lizama, offers doula services and postpartum belly binding, and traditional at-home postpartum sealing ceremonies (cerradas, or the closing of the bones). Please learn more on her website!

Student midwife, Mika Cade also offers placenta encapsulations, doula services, and homebirth education classes. Please learn more on her website!

Student midwife, Audrey Dombroski, offers placenta capsules prepared the Traditional Chinese Medicine method or raw method, placenta tincture, and placenta prints. She also offers personalized herbal blends and sitz bath herbs. Please learn more on her website!

Billing: we are passionate about providing midwifery care to anyone who is interested, including many who cannot afford the out-of-pocket costs. Please contact me for specifics for fees and payment plans.

• Homebirth Care – we provide complete midwifery prenatal, birth and postpartum care (check out the Services tab for full details). You will also have access to our birth tub for labor or birthing if desired.
• Sliding Scale Homebirth Care – complete midwifery prenatal, birth and postpartum care available to families for whom the regular midwifery fees are too high. I encourage everyone who can afford the regular fee to start there so we may offer reduced fee care to more clients who may be struggling to make ends meet. Everyone deserves access to respectful, unbiased, loving care.
• Black/Latinx/Indigenous/API clients – I offer a reduced price to those who identify with these categories. For Black pregnant people looking to work with Black midwives, the Black Bay Area Birth fund is available to you. There are more resources for Black/Latinx/Indigenous/API clients on the Resources Page.

I encourage clients with PPO plans to work with Alisha at Earthside Billing. Some clients receive reimbursement for midwifery fees at out-of-network rates or higher from many insurance companies. Clients have also had luck with reimbursement through HSA and FSA programs.

Over 15% of fees from 2023 were donated directly to student midwives Audrey Dombroski, Mika Cade, and Sonia Lizama, and also the BIPOC Student Midwives Fund. 

Hybrid Care

Hybrid care is for families who want the benefits of midwifery care as described above but want to ultimately birth in the hospital, for personal or medical reasons. For these families, I do regular prenatal appointments at home, and when labor begins we labor at home until we collectively decide when is the right time to go to the hospital for the birth. After the birth we continue with postpartum visits at home as we normally would.

What is the difference between this care and hiring a birth doula? The main difference is families will be getting all of the benefits of midwifery care during our appointments including monitoring your baby’s growth prenatally, discussing and giving suggestions to optimize your health and wellness during our visits, monitoring your baby’s heart rate during labor with a Doppler or fetascope, doing vaginal exams as needed during labor, baby weight checks after the birth in correlation with breast/chest feeding consultation, assessing your healing, etc.

The peace of mind and support you provided throughout the process was so special to us. We really couldn’t have done it without you! I am so grateful to have learned so much about midwifery and how it can truly compliment a hospital experience. -HC

Home Postpartum Services 

The first few weeks after your baby’s birth is an exciting and emotional time. You and your family will go through many changes and adjustments even if you’ve done this before. The care that we provide the birth parent and baby is designed to help ease the transition to life with a newborn. This includes, but isn’t limited to:

• Six visits on this schedule: day 1, day 3, day 6, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 6 weeks, all in your home!
• We are available with phone and text support between visits for every question or concern you may have
• We will weigh your baby at each visit as one data point in your baby’s health
• We will support you with breast/chest feeding, and if desired, discuss when and how to introduce the bottle
• We will assess the birth parent’s health and healing, help with sleep, nutrition, exercise, emotional health, etc.
• If there are older siblings we spend time discussing their adjustment to a new family dynamic and including them in the care