Home Birth
Birth at home, attended by licensed midwives
For a healthy, low-risk pregnancy, home can be a good, safe and gentle place to give birth. It’s where most of us feel most at ease. There’s no place like home! We’ve been welcoming babies at home in St. Augustine and Northeast Florida for 17 years and counting.
Photo by Aly Perez
Why families choose home birth
Most families tell us the same thing: they want to be somewhere they already feel safe, with a provider who knows them, free to be exactly as they are while they do the hardest, most powerful work of their lives.
At home you can:
- Move, eat, drink, and labor in whatever position feels right
- Utilize your own lighting, your own bed, and your own bathroom
- Have whoever you want present, including your other children
- Let labor unfold without interventions that are routine in a hospital but not always needed
- Stay together as a family afterwards, with your baby in your arms rather than in a nursery, and nothing to sign before you rest
Is home birth right for your pregnancy?
Home birth suits a healthy person with a low-risk, single-baby pregnancy that is progressing normally. We keep checking in on this throughout your pregnancy, because a pregnancy that starts low-risk can change, and part of caring for you is noticing when it does.
Sometimes home isn’t the safest place to give birth, for example with certain pre-existing medical conditions, a baby in a breech or transverse position at term, twins, pre-eclampsia, or a preterm labor. If your pregnancy moves outside what we can safely support at home, we’ll talk it through with you honestly, explain why, and help you transfer to a provider who can care for you well in hospital.
Your safety and your baby’s always come first, even if that means helping you plan a birth somewhere other than home.
What Care Looks Like
The rhythm of a year with us
Before you are pregnant, or early on
A free consultation. Come and meet us or hop on a call. We’ll talk through your history and what you’re hoping for, answering any questions you have. You can then decide whether we feel like the right fit for you and your family, with no pressure at all.
Through 28 weeks
Prenatal visits every four weeks, in our office or your home. Each one is unhurried, closer to an hour than the ten minutes you may be used to.
28 to 36 weeks
Visits move to every two weeks, and we begin planning your birth together: who you’d like with you, how you want the room to feel, and what happens if plans change.
36 weeks to birth
Weekly visits, including a visit to your home, so we know your house, your street, and where everything is before the day arrives. If you’re planning a water birth, or would simply like a pool to labor in, we’ll bring one to leave with you at your 36-week home visit.
Labor and birth
We come to you once active labor is established. Two of us are with you at every birth, a midwife and a birth assistant, and we stay until you and your baby are settled, fed, and stable. Before we go, we tidy everything away and start the laundry, so you can rest.
The first six weeks
We visit you at home in the first week while you’re resting and healing, see you back at the office at two weeks, and once more around six weeks. We’re here for breastfeeding support and to answer any questions or concerns the whole way through, continuing to be on call for you until our last visit.
Safety, equipment, and transfer
For a low-risk, normal pregnancy with a licensed midwife, home birth outcomes are good.
At every birth we bring:
- Oxygen and neonatal resuscitation equipment
- Medications to control postpartum bleeding
- IV fluids and the ability to place a line in the event of an emergency
- Doppler monitoring for your baby throughout labor
- Suturing supplies and local anaesthetic
Everyone on the birth team (midwives and birth assistant) holds current neonatal and adult resuscitation certification. Together at your 36-week home visit, we make a transfer plan in the event that the pregnancy or labor becomes high risk. If you do need to transfer, your midwife comes with you.
Where we serve
We attend home births throughout St. Johns County and the wider Northeast Florida area. Prenatal visits can happen in our office or at your kitchen table.
Come and meet us
We’d love to chat with you and answer any additional questions you have or set up care.