Blog - Bellingham Birth Center

We are very pleased to welcome Rebecca Bartsch, MSM, LM, IBCLC back to the group of licensed midwives privileged at Bellingham Birth Center, bringing our total number of midwifery practices up to 6!  Rebecca is a licensed midwife as well as a lactation consultant, so she is extra capable of helping with lactation.     more »

This podcast is an excellent way to spend 25 minutes, especially if you can relate to having to adapt your “birth plan” due to a complicated birth.  It is a conversation between Ina May Gaskin and a woman who feels like a failure due to a difficult birth which ended in a cesarean.  As a midwife, it more »

The UK’s National Health Service just released a refreshing statement about maternity care.  And I quote: “Guidance from National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says that midwife-led care has been shown to be safer for women and recommends that all women with low-risk pregnancies – 45% of the total – should be advised that more »

10 years and 1000+ babies after Ina May Gaskin cut our “umbicial cord” at Bellingham Birth Center’s Grand Opening in 2004, our center is happily humming along.  We have a great crew of midwives, doulas, and birth assistants, several expert cleaners and landscapers, and many many happy babies and families to show for the community’s collective hard more »

  A recently published article on the safety of planned home birth seemed newsworthy to me and inspired me to venture into the world of “blog posts” ~ something that did not exist when I started practicing midwifery in 2002. The sarcasm evident in my “post title” reflects how tired I am at the misunderstanding more »

What sounds better than slipping into a warm bath during labor and letting your body float, relax, and open?  How wonderful, too, that this act of soaking in a warm bath actually helps labor progress more efficiently.  Just as the heat of a bath helps relax muscles after a day of gardening, the warm water more »

In some hospitals, routine interventions such as depriving the mother of food and drink during labor, mandatory IVs, frequent inductions, and continuous fetal monitoring with the mother laying in bed, often cause many of the complications that result in an excessive number of cesarean sections and other perceived emergencies. “Failure to progress,” the most common more »

Established 2004 With overwhelming community support and the indispensable help of family and friends, Christine Gibbs and Catriona Munro established Bellingham Birth Center in early 2004 to answer the community’s need for a private, peaceful setting for labor and birth.  At the time, there was no free-standing birth center north of Everett, although the possibility more »