Bellingham Birth Center

Blog - Bellingham Birth Center

Welcome to Rebecca Bartsch, MSM, LM, IBCLC

We are very pleased to welcome Rebecca Bartsch, MSM, LM, IBCLC to the group of licensed midwives privileged at Bellingham Birth Center, bringing our total number of midwifery practices up to 7!  Rebecca is a licensed midwife as well as a lactation consultant, and her midwifery practice is in Burlington.  She primarily serves families living more »

Ina May Gaskin Podcast

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 »

Britain’s NHS Urges 45% of Women to Avoid Hospital Births and Give Birth at Home or in a Birth Center

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 »

Join Us For Our 1000th Baby and 10-Year Anniversary Party on October 5th

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 »

Shocking News: Study Looks at 3/4 of a Million Home Births and Finds it is (STILL) a Safe Option for Mothers and Babies

  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 »

Water Birth

Bellingham Birth Center

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 »

No Unnecessary Interventions

Gentle Hands Midwifery

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 »

We’re 10 years old!

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 »