Seattle Home Maternity Service

One of our sweet SHM babies at her mom's final postpartum visit ❤️

Continuing to delight in supporting families to grow through transitions - and happily settled into our new home at the Center for Birth on Eastlake! https://www.centerforbirth.com/

Dear Seattle Home Maternity families and community,

We are writing to share with you a constellation of changes we are anticipating over the coming year.

After almost 27 years of clinical practice, Heather will be moving on from her role as midwife and owner of SHM in December of 2025. Heather has carried forward the legacy of SHM for many years, infusing the practice with her steadiness, her evidence-based exceptional clinical care, her generosity, her sense of humor and sparkle, and her beautiful heart. She has touched innumerable lives - both the babies she has gently welcomed, but also the many birthing families, midwives, student midwives, and professional colleagues. She has been a constant in the Seattle midwifery community through seasons of challenge and change, and has embodied for so many the heart of being a community midwife through her service.

Seattle Home Maternity was founded in 1980. It is the oldest continually running midwifery practice in Washington state. Our founders, Suzy Myers and Marge Mansfield, were responsible for the resurgence of midwifery in WA state in the early 1980s by establishing an educational pathway for midwives that enabled generations of midwives to enter the profession and serve their communities as Licensed Midwives. Our practice home in Columbia City has been a fixture and resource in the midwifery community, serving families for over 45 years.

Just as they were responding to the realities and needs of the time, we too are called to respond to the changing landscape and realities of practicing midwifery at this time. The values so central to midwifery: respect for the space and time that birthing and its transformative transition needs, attending to the body, mind and spirit of our clients, respecting choice and the space it requires - these have become increasingly hard to translate into the language of insurance reimbursement. In short, insurance does not reimburse for the qualitative and time-intensive aspects of midwifery care that are so central to the deeply humane experience of midwifery care and are also integral to the excellent clinical outcomes of our model of care. The number of midwives in the Seattle area has been decreasing steadily - related to the financial implications of this work that ultimately take a toll on whether this model of care is personally sustainable at this time and in this place. It has come time for our current model of care to evolve, with an eye to a future where community midwives and the community they serve and live among share more transparently in the realities of a model of care that holds both birthing families and the midwives who walk alongside them with respect and integrity.

We will be finishing out 2025 at our sweet home in Columbia City. Beginning in January of 2026, Brooks will be carrying forward the practice as a solo midwife, seeing clients in a space on Capitol Hill. She will care for a limited number of clients, attending births at home and at the Center for Birth. Suzanne has been a much beloved and integral part of our team since 2011 and will continue to support the practice.

Thank you for this community and the privilege to be of service to it. We look forward to continuing in this work and caring for all of you as this chapter comes to a close and new future possibilities have the space to emerge, including duly celebrating Heather and her exciting transition to come!

Available no matter where you live, this 12-month, 60-hour program provides comprehensive instruction, guidance, and facilitated peer support for navigating pregnancy, preparing for birth and infant care, and weathering the early months of parenthood. Over and over again, we hear participants say, "We are SO GRATEFUL for this group!" Each cohort is organized by due date and is limited to 10 families. Meetings happen on Zoom twice each month, plus a weekend childbirth class intensive. Each 2-hour evening meeting includes a check in on physical and mental health, Q&A session, and a topic which may be instruction, facilitated discussion, or a guest speaker. Cost per family is 12 monthly payments of $125. Sign up in your FIRST TRIMESTER to access the complete program!

LGBTQ+ Pregnancy & Parenting Program Content:

Conception Stories
Understanding Models of Care
Living in a Pregnant Body
Non-Gestational Pregnancy
Gender and Body Image
Relationship Changes
Pregnancy Health
Pelvic Floor Health
Perinatal Mental Health
Childbirth Preparation
Lactation / Infant Feeding
Postpartum Recovery
Infant Sleep
Baby Arrival Stories
Postpartum Mental Health
Coparenting and Relationship
Queering Biology
Balancing Work and Family
Legal Issues
Starting Solid Foods
Affirmations of Family
Celebrating Community

https://maiamidwifery.com/pregnancy-parenting/

Join us in the spirit of generosity as we work towards feeding more than hunger this ! Will you help us reach our $90,000 fundraising goal?

So far this year, we’ve distributed 33% more food than last year. Nearly all our programs have grown throughout the past year. In addition to creating access to an on-site social worker who assists with navigating our social service network through our Community Connector program, we’ve added overdose prevention resources to our food bank, including low-barrier access to fentanyl test strips and Naloxone. We’ve expanded our partnerships, bringing over a dozen service providers on-site.

Join us in feeding more than hunger this when you help spread generosity with a gift.
https://www.wagives.org/organization/rainier-valley-food-bank