We want you to get the care you deserve.
What is Midwifery care?
Midwifery care is based on a respect for pregnancy as a state of health, and childbirth as a normal physiologic process. Midwifery care embraces the diversity of women’s needs. Midwifery also supports the variety of personal and cultural meanings attributed to the pregnancy, birth, and early parenting experience by women, families, and their communities.
The maintenance and promotion of health throughout the childbearing cycle are central to midwifery care. Midwives focus on preventative care and the appropriate use of technology. Care is continuous, personalized, and non-authoritarian. It responds to a woman’s social, emotional, cultural, and physical needs. Midwives encourage the woman to actively participate in her care throughout pregnancy, birth and the postpartum, and to make choices about the manner in which her care is provided. Midwives respect the woman’s right to a choice of caregiver and place of birth in accordance with the Standards of Practice of the College of Midwives of Ontario. Midwives are able to attend birth in a variety of settings – including birth at home.
Midwifery promotes decision-making as a shared responsibility between the woman, her family (as defined by the woman) and her caregivers. The woman is recognized as the primary decision-maker. Midwifery care includes education and counselling, enabling a woman to make informed choices. Fundamental to midwifery care is the understanding that a woman’s caregivers respect and support her (and her decisions) so that she may give birth safely with power and dignity.
Continuity of Care:
When you have a midwife, you will receive complete care
Midwives provide care for you and your baby from early pregnancy to six weeks after your birth.
Throughout your pregnancy, labour, birth, and the first six weeks of your baby’s life, you will be cared for by a small group of midwives. This means that you will likely know the midwife who delivers your baby.
During your pregnancy you will be seen every four weeks until the twenty-eighth week, every two to three weeks until the thirty-sixth week, and then weekly until the birth of your baby.
We will be present during your active labour and birth, and then will stay with you until both you and your baby are stable and breastfeeding is established, usually about 2 hours postpartum.
The first week after your birth, all of your postpartum visits are done in your home or at the hospital. We do six postpartum visits and more appointments are arranged as needed.
These appointments are usually on day 1, day 3, day 5, 2 weeks, 4 weeks and 6 weeks. The final visit is approximately six weeks after your birth, and is a check in for well woman/well baby care.
There is a midwife on-call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Clients with urgent concerns or emergencies can contact this midwife using the paging system.
Midwives are primary caregivers and so are able to order routine pregnancy-related laboratory work and tests (including ultrasounds).
Midwives consult and/or refer to appropriate medical specialists when risk factors arise during the pregnancy, labour, birth, or the postpartum period.