The DawningLife Way

Here’s a little information about our practice to get you started in thinking about what’s important to you in choosing your midwifery care.

  • Debbie Schneider, senior midwife of DawningLife is highly trained and experienced in homebirth. Debbie has been midwifing for nearly 25 years and has been primary midwife at nearly 900 home births.

  • We have excellent statistics. Over the last 5 years, for instance, our transport rate has been 11% while our C-section rate is a mere 1%. We have a strong and supportive medical backup structure and provide continuing support, as appropriate, even in the event of transfer of care.

  • Debbie, Shoshanah, and Olivia work together as a team and are therefore able to provide a strong and consistent support system to our clients while also emphasizing very intimate and highly personalized care. At any given time, there may be 2 or more student midwives in the practice to enable even greater levels of support.

  • We do a full program of prenatal, birthing, and postpartum care and clients have virtually unlimited access to us over the course of our relationship.

  • Our practice is strongly based in Informed Choice. We are all about supporting you in “your birth, your way” and provide research-based information as well as the benefit of our extensive experience in guiding you to make the decisions you are truly most comfortable with.

  • We believe a woman brings her entire being, physical, emotional and spiritual, into her birthing and we strive to support and honor her on all levels.

  • We are very holistically and preventatively oriented. Our practice is firmly rooted in the Midwifery Model of Care. (See Below)

  • We take a very time-intensive approach to care. Clinical care takes time! Providing information and answering questions takes time! Relationship building takes time too and is as important an aspect of our care as any other.

  • We love waterbirth and have attended many hundreds of them, so once again we have the information and experience to support you well in this option. We are also here to guide you in whatever approach and birthing position you choose.

  • As a part of our holistic approach we integrate a variety of modalities into our care. We are very experienced and comfortable with the use of herbs, essential oils, homeopathics, etc. Debbie is certified in Maya Abdominal Massage.

The Midwives Model of Care

The Midwives Model of Care (MMoC) is based on the fact that pregnancy and birth are normal life processes and includes:

  • Monitoring the physical, psychological, and social well-being of the mother throughout the childbearing cycle

  • Providing the mother with individualized education, counseling, and prenatal care, continuous hands-on assistance during labor and delivery, and postpartum support

  • Minimizing technological interventions

  • Identifying and referring women who require obstetrical attention

  • The application of this woman-centered model of care has been proven to reduce the incidence of birth injury, trauma, and cesarean section.

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