Services
Individualized, experienced home birth midwifery care for Twin Cities families
Comprehensive Prenatal Care
We are here for our families from conception through postpartum! We provide full spectrum prenatal care from early first trimester throughout the entire pregnancy. Building a close, personal, and trusting relationship with you is our goal, and we do that by taking the time to get to know you, your family, your people, your values, and what matters most to you for your birth and your care.
We offer one-on-one midwifery care with your primary midwife, who cares for you and your family from your first prenatal visit through your final postpartum visit. We offer hour-long prenatal visits in the comfort of your own home throughout your pregnancy to check in on how you’re doing physically and emotionally, offer holistic recommendations for a healthy, comfortable pregnancy or remedies if discomforts present, answer your questions, understand your hopes and dreams for your birth, and to truly get to know you and your family.
We see you monthly until you’re 28 weeks along, then every other week until 36 weeks, and finally weekly until your birthing time. We offer all standard labs, testing, and ultrasounds, and work with an informed choice process focused on parent-led decision making. You are the driver of your care, and you can consent to or decline any test or procedure you wish to. We offer referrals to community resources as needed as part of your care.
We welcome your family, loved ones, children, and support people to visits and enjoy getting to know the people who are important to you. The midwives are available to you directly for any needs you have in between visits. We believe everyone’s needs during their pregnancy and birth are different, and provide individualized care for each and every family we serve.
Home Birth
We believe birth works best when it’s left alone - when the birthing person is able to listen to and trust their bodies and intuitions without time limits, constraints, or interruption. Allowing labor to start naturally and birthing in the comfort and familiarity of your own home supports this natural, physiological process.
We discuss your vision for your birth in detail during your prenatal visits. We bring patience, loving support, and a calm, quiet presence into your birthing space. While we have an extensive toolkit of holistic techniques to assist in comfort and progress, we focus more on quiet presence and leaning into what your body is intuitively telling you to do. When needed, we are skilled in supporting your process with touch (or no touch, if you’d prefer), physical support, gentle guidance, encouragement, and suggestions to help facilitate comfort and progress such as spinning babies techniques, massage, movement, positions for labor, aromatherapy, herbal and homeopathic support, and more.
We tailor our labor support to what you want and need during your birthing time. We are happy to be as involved as you’d like - from catching your baby to quietly watching as you or your partner catch your own baby. We encourage you to have as little or as many people present as will make you feel most supported and loved on during your birth. We love and encourage the use of a doula.
After your baby is born, we tuck you into bed with your family to snuggle up with your new baby, eat a nourishing meal, bond, and establish nursing. We monitor both you and baby while baby is skin-to-skin with you, and can often perform our immediate assessments by simply observing. We always offer delayed cord clamping until after the placenta is born and the cord is completely drained. After a few hours, the midwives perform a head-to-toe newborn examination and we complete our final assessments. Then, we clean up your birthing space and leave you to bond with your new or expanded family.
All of the Vida midwives are certified in neonatal resuscitation and BLS/CPR for medical providers. We bring medical equipment and medications to manage complications should they arise. If needed, we have the ability to do IV's and perineal repairs.
Water Birth
The midwives have specialized training in attending births that occur in the water. Water birth is available to any family who wants it! We provide a spacious, comfortable birth tub as part of your care. You are able to use the tub as you see fit during your labor, and can get in and out as desired. Some of our clients like to use the tub for labor and not birth, some stay in the tub for birth, some choose to have a tub ready but don’t use it - it’s totally up to you! We are typically able to perform routine monitoring and assessment while you relax in the birth tub.
Postpartum & Newborn Care
We view the birthing parent and baby as a sacred dyad. After your baby is born, your baby goes right up on your chest and stays with you through routine monitoring and assessments. We do delayed cord clamping routinely until the placenta is born and cord transfusion is complete. We support lotus birth, cord burning, and other cord separation methods. A couple of hours after your baby is born, we perform a full newborn exam right next to you in your bed. We offer the following standard newborn procedures, which you’re welcome to accept or decline:
- Vitamin K injection or oral
- Erythromycin (antibiotic) eye ointment
And the following newborn screenings at the 24-hour home visit:
- Newborn metabolic screen (heel poke)
- Hearing screen
- Critical Congenital Heart Defect screen
We see the birthing parent and baby together at every postpartum visit. We visit our families in your home at 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, and 6 weeks. We provide complete newborn care during this time, including filing of your baby’s birth certificate and social security number. Most parents do not need to bring their baby to the pediatrician until eight weeks of age. We’re here for the whole family during the postpartum transition, focusing on how everyone is adjusting, your healing and emotional wellness, providing ample time to answer questions and discuss concerns, ongoing lactation support, and assessing both parent and baby, together, at every postpartum visit.
International Board Certified Lactation Consultant Services
Sometimes nursing is a smooth, easy process, and other times it’s a challenge. While Vida Midwifery Collective offers ongoing lactation care at each postpartum visit, we have an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) on-staff for when lactation needs are above and beyond our immediate scope of practice.
IBCLC services are available to all Twin Cities families regardless of birth setting!
Placenta Encapsulation
Using the placenta as medicine to restore the birthing person after birth has been used for centuries, but has very recently become popular in the US. Placenta medicine has been reported to improve energy levels, regulate and increase breast milk production, restore iron, reduce bleeding, speed healing, and regulate hormones during the postpartum shift. We offer placenta encapsulation, tinctures, prints, and salves to our home birth families for a reduced fee.
