Spring 2020 Practice Update!

It’s been four years since I’ve entered a blog post?! That’s how busy I’ve been! We are in the middle of (or hopefully emerging from) COVID-19 lockdowns and distancing. We are functioning 90% of normal with some clients or incoming consultations continuing to choose TeleHealth visits or video calls. We just delivered our first client defection from a hospital birth plan due to COVID-19 policies and have another due.

We’ve moved into a bright and larger new space in Sugarhouse which is filling my soul every day I go to the office.

Student midwife Stephanie Tyrell has been attending births and many clinic days for the last year. She has been an incredible asset to the practice. She is soon moving into her Primary or Phase 3 advanced student phase of her journey.

We have tripled our client load from a year ago which we are equipped well for. We have excellent collaborating midwives for times when we have a couple women due close to each other. I currently have two clients in care who are having their third pregnancy / birth with me. Thank you for following me from other practices into my own the last several years!

We have just taken in our first 2021 baby. Some 2020 periods are full. We have babies due every month except October at the moment. Take a trip or wait for late to care calls?

We are the only clinical site in Salt Lake offering Sneak Peek gender testing with a blood draw as early as 8 weeks pregnant! Send your friends! Do not need to be a birth client to access this. $149. https://sneakpeektest.com/early-clinical-baby-gender-blood-test/

I am excited about the practice and the clients on board for the second half of 2020! Despite the COVID-19 mess, it has been a good year for us sofar.

Salt Lake City Midwifery

It’s been a busy 2016! In addition to my Salt Lake City midwifery practice, I have been a provider at Birthwise Maternity Care in Layton, UT since March of this year.  In the practice there are three CPMs and an RN and between us we are handling between 60-90 clients a year as well as some GYN care.  In this busy practice I am known to clients and providers as “Whitley” as there is another midwife named Heather and we wanted to keep things clear for people.

Birth wise offers birth center and home birth services.  I’ve enjoyed working with the women and clients there very much and have enjoyed working around other midwives to learn how they do things.  Midwifery, like life, is one of those things that you realize the more experience and knowledge you obtain, the less you actually know.  Humility and willingness to learn from one another is a keystone to success and progression in this profession that should last one’s entire career.  The busier we are, the more we learn how to work with a variety of personalities and clinical situations.  I’ve enjoyed it.  It is one of the more medically-minded midwifery care services I have worked in and I’m grateful to incorporate current evidence-based clinical care into my own practice.  I love the electronic charting and plan to move to this in my own practice very soon. I currently work a full clinic day in Layton on Mondays and take call much of the week.

 

I have maintained my osego-officewn small midwifery practice in Salt Lake City, opening a cute office in Sugarhouse inside the Midwives College of Utah office located in Sugar House.  Here I conduct prenatal and postpartum visits.

Please call 801-556-1483 for a free consultation or to discuss all the wonderful pregnancy and birth options we have in Salt Lake!

 

Sego Practice News

Hennore

I have been meaning to update for a while.  2015 was a year of adjustment for me living and practicing in Utah.  My mother passed away last summer, making it difficult for me to attend to women in my care in the way I am used to doing.  It is funny how the Universe seems to know when to back off with a client load and when to start ringing my phone again.

In 2015, I worked a great deal with Chris Miller’s practice (Arrivals Birth Services)- attending 20-30 births with her since last spring.  Chris has delivered in the neighborhood of 4000 babies and I’ve been fortunate to work along side her and learn some of her ways.   I delivered a small handful of my own clients’ babies from Layton to downtown Salt Lake in 2015.

2016 ushers in a new, busier phase to my own practice, taking my first round of repeat Utah clients (In Vermont I had been delivering siblings to babies I had once caught for a few years so I’ve been eagerly waiting for that trickle affect here in Utah).  I am also working clinic once or twice a week at BirthWise in Layton while one of the founding midwives takes leave for her own pregnancy.  I am just beginning to rotate into taking birth call for them and am super excited.  Licensed midwives Heather Johnston, RN, CPM, LDEM and her sister, Janelle Peterson, CPM, LDEM have amassed an impressive practice that I am fortunate to get to be a part of.  Because two midwives in the practice are named “Heather”, I will be referred to by my last name as “Whitley” to make it easier for BirthWise clients to differentiate.

I’ve been teaching per diem and at conferences for the Community School of Midwifery and the Midwives College of Utah.  Here is a photo of my latest teaching day involving palpation and fetal heart tone auscultation with a fetoscope.

Teaching Provo Orem Midwife Students

Teaching Provo Orem Midwife Students

I’ve got a couple BYU babies due now and later in 2016.  It’s fun to think I am one of the BYU student home birth midwives.

I love the families I am privileged to serve and can’t wait to see who else rings my phone this year!

i love being a Utah midwife

I have been working out of my Sugarhouse home office and delivering babies born at home in and around Salt Lake City.  I am also supporting Heather Wayside RockerChris Miller, a busy midwife up in Ogden at her birth center – Arrivals Birth Services.  We hold clinic on Thursdays, seeing 15-20 prenatal women and newborn babies who have chosen either birth center or home birth.  It is a beautiful site and I love working with Chris and her clients.  I studied under Chris when I was a student many years ago so I was elated when an opportunity arose to support her practice and collaborate.

Chris is a non-licensed Utah midwife, which allows her to deliver twins and breeches and allows women expanded choice when it comes to some obstetric issues.  Her experience level and volume of deliveries between Utah and California is impressive.  She originally studied under physicians in California.  It is a good time in my clinical practice, after some years under my own belt, to learn some new tricks from Chris.  I am blessed to have the privilege of working with her and covering her practice.

My license requires me to abide by the laws and rules set forth by the Utah Department of Professional Licensing.  It also allows me to legally carry and administer lifesaving medicines.  The model of licensed and non-licensed midwives is a dynamic one and one that greatly benefits women and babies by offering greater choice and flexibility in their birthing options.

I am accepting 2015 and 2016 clients in and around Salt Lake as well as working with families who are located closer to Chris’ practice in Ogden.

I recently delivered a baby of a woman who came to me around 37 weeks pregnant.  It helped that she had her complete medical chart and diagnostics for me to review ahead of her first prenatal visit and I could quickly confirm that she was a good low-risk candidate for home birth.  She delivered a beautiful baby near Layton in her 38th week of pregnancy.  It is really never too late to consider switching care providers.  In most instances, women should view themselves as consumers and clients rather than “patients” with a medical condition and shop around for the care provider who is best suited to deliver options right for them.

Call me at 802-282-2782  or email segolilymidwife@gmail.com to schedule a free consult in Salt Lake or Ogden.

~Heather Whitley, CPM, LM

Rediscovering the Legacy of Mormon Midwives – Sunstone Magazine

Here is a GREAT article. An excerpt that most surprised me…and didn’t surprise me at the same time:

“For a time, the role of midwife was an actual calling extended to Latter-day Saint women….The respect afforded Latter-day Saint midwives is suggested by the fact that they were said to be “officiating at births.”5 They were also considered general healers, going from home to home to care for the sick and attend to the dying.6 Moreover they engaged in the sanctioned practices of anointing, blessing, and administering blessings of strength and healing. In this way, midwives were viewed as the female equivalent of patriarch—matriarchs whose position was cemented by being called and ordained. An example is Zina Young. Emmeline Wells said of her, “In the sickroom she was a ministering angel, having always something to suggest that would be soothing and restful; she was a natural nurse, and she invariably inspired confidence. Her strongest capabilities lay in nursing the sick. . . . No other woman knew better what to do when death came into a home. . . . Numberless instances might be cited of her administrations among the sick, when she seemed to be inspired by some higher power than her own.”7 

 

For the full article and references, click here! (or copy/paste into your browser – my hyperlink function is malfunctioning!)

https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/rediscovering-the-legacy-of-mormon-midwives/

 

~The Sego Lily Midwife