Fox Valley Midwifery

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Fox Valley Midwifery Comprehensive maternity care; home birth, water birth, VBAC support and more! Safe and informed, family-centered care in the Fox Valley and surrounding areas.

As Midwifery Week comes to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I am to be doing this work, and especial...
10/09/2026

As Midwifery Week comes to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I am to be doing this work, and especially for the people I’ve gotten to do it alongside.

When I first started Fox Valley Midwifery, I wasn’t exactly starting under the circumstances I’d imagined. I was excited to build something of my own, but I was also feeling pretty discouraged and alone.

What I didn’t expect was how much support I would find from other local midwives. Women who welcomed me, encouraged me, shared their knowledge, and made space for me in the community, when I wasn’t sure I had a place anymore.

I’ve been especially grateful for the opportunity to work alongside the midwives at Birthwise as a birth assistant. It’s been really refreshing to see how they do things; how they care for their clients, communicate with each other, and prioritize safety. I’ve really enjoyed getting to be an occasional part of their team.

Midwife literally means “with woman.” We talk a lot about what that means for the mothers we serve, but I think there’s something to be said for being with each other, too.

Midwifery can be hard. It’s a lot of responsibility, long nights, and sometimes really difficult decisions. We aren’t always going to agree on everything, and we don’t all practice exactly the same way. But I think there’s so much value in being willing to learn from each other, support each other, and hold each other to high standards. I think our community and the families we serve are better for it.

I’m so proud to be a midwife. It’s an incredible privilege to be invited into such personal moments in a family’s life, and it’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly.

I’m grateful for the families who trust me to walk alongside them, and for the midwives who have reminded me that I don’t have to do this work alone.

Happy Midwifery Week to the midwives who keep showing up, learning, advocating, and supporting one another. 🤍

This year has brought me several VERY fast births, and apparently this little guy wanted to join the club.His family liv...
10/04/2026

This year has brought me several VERY fast births, and apparently this little guy wanted to join the club.
His family lives about an hour and a half away, but since her first labor was on the longer side, we figured we’d have plenty of time for me to get there.
She called early that morning to let me know she was in early labor, with mild, spaced-out contractions.
Two hours later, her husband called to tell me things had made a shift and labor had suddenly gotten very intense.
I left right in the middle of my first prenatal appointment of the day, instructing him to call me back if it looked like baby was coming faster than I’d get there.
An hour and 15 minutes later, I walked through their door just as she started pushing. Baby boy was born 3 minutes later. 😅
His cord was tight over his neck and then down around his body like a little scarf, so he needed a little help getting the rest of the way out after his head was born - and that was probably the only thing slowing him down enough for me to make it there!

Welcome to the World, Wolfgang!

10/02/2026

I absolutely love home birth - but I’m also a firm believer that there is nothing wrong with choosing a hospital birth. For me, it has always been about having options, making informed decisions, and having support. I actually started my birth work as a doula, long before I became a midwife, and there will always be something really special to me about stepping back into that role. I still take the occasional doula/monitrice client when the circumstances are right and I have the space - and this was one of those families.

I got to know them during their first pregnancy, when I was working in a group midwifery practice. I wasn’t their midwife when labor came, but their birth ended up being long and difficult. After her water was broken, it was discovered that baby was face presenting. They transferred to the hospital, and she ultimately had a very unwanted, but necessary, cesarean. This time, she knew she wanted a VBAC - and she knew she wanted to have that VBAC in the hospital. So when they asked me to come alongside them as their doula, I was so excited to get to be part of their story again!

Labor came with excitement, but also with the fears that can come with laboring again after a birth that didn’t go the way you had hoped. And almost fittingly, while she was doing that work inside, a literal storm was building outside. The Menasha tornado came through only a couple miles away from the hospital, and we watched the sky change through those huge hospital windows as she labored.

But this birth was different. A few hours and a whole lot of hard work later, she pushed her baby into the world. She got her VBAC. 🤍 

After everything she carried into that room from her first birth - the fear and uncertainty, the hope that this time could be different - she did it.
The storm passed. Jules was here. And sweet Gigi had her little sister, close in age and pretty much destined to be BFFs.

09/21/2026

is just compliance without informed refusal

Natural never meant easy. Birth and breastfeeding are natural, beautiful, and often hard!
09/10/2026

Natural never meant easy. Birth and breastfeeding are natural, beautiful, and often hard!

It’s Newborn Screening Awareness Month, so let’s talk about the newborn metabolic screen - the heel poke done the first ...
09/02/2026

It’s Newborn Screening Awareness Month, so let’s talk about the newborn metabolic screen - the heel poke done the first few days after birth. This is a screening that I think is really important to understand.

This newborn screen looks for a long list of rare metabolic, endocrine, and hormonal disorders. These conditions are RARE, but also incredibly serious. Babies can look completely healthy at birth while something is happening that we can’t see yet, so finding out early can mean starting treatment before a baby becomes sick or before permanent damage occurs.

I’ve seen both sides of this screening over the years. I’ve had many families choose to decline it, for many different reasons. I’ve also known several families whose babies were diagnosed because of newborn screening and were able to get the care they needed early. One of those babies belongs to a very close friend of mine- her sweet boy was diagnosed with classic PKU. That experience makes this screening feel less hypothetical to me.

It’s also an imperfect screening. A positive screen does NOT mean your baby has the condition. Statistically, false positives happen more often than true positives. They can lead to repeat blood draws, more testing, appointments, waiting, and a whole lot of stress while figuring out whether something is actually wrong.

I don’t think informed choice means only talking about the benefits of something - or only talking about the risks. I want you to understand both, but I’ll respect whatever you choose to do.

These disorders are RARE. False positives happen. Most babies will have a completely normal screen. But for the small number of babies who truly have one of these conditions, finding out early is life changing- often lifesaving.

Birth has a way of reminding us how much we can know - and how much we still have to surrender to.This sweet boys mama k...
09/01/2026

Birth has a way of reminding us how much we can know - and how much we still have to surrender to.

This sweet boys mama knows birth. She’s a birth doula, and this was her fourth baby. She knows positioning and movement, how to make space in the pelvis, how to encourage a baby to rotate and come down.

And after days of frustrating (and exhausting!) prodromal labor and false starts, labor finally arrived…. and it was intense. Very different from her other births.

Her baby was very active, trying to figure out the way. And despite all the movement and position changes to give him space, her baby settled into a posterior position. Pushing was long and hard. Just moments before he was born, she hit that place of feeling defeated and even wondered if she was going to need a C-section.

Then she moved one more time. She moved into a kneeling lunge, gave him just a little more space, and out he came - completely posterior, looking right up at her.

This birth was powerful, but it was also hard. She was incredibly strong. And its intensity still left things for her to process afterward.

Knowing birth doesn’t mean you get to control it. You prepare. You make space. You listen. We support. And then, somewhere in there, you surrender to the mystery and power of it all.

Welcome to the world Dexter!

We have some amazing chiropractors in the area to help support your body through pregnancy.
08/19/2026

We have some amazing chiropractors in the area to help support your body through pregnancy.

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1620 S Lawe Street #5
Appleton, WI
54915

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