Midwifery

Holistic Care Throughout the Life CyclesubHeadH2 accessibility

At WellSpan, our certified nurse-midwives provide mindful health care for all women – from adolescence through post-menopause. As part of this entire lifecycle of women’s health care, our midwives care for women during pregnancy who are interested in a more natural, self-directed approach to childbirth. However, our practice isn’t just focused on childbirth. We provide women’s health care services for all stages of a woman’s life – including annual exams and screenings, family planning, contraception, and perimenopause/menopause.

Choosing a certified nurse-midwife for your obstetric and gynecologic care can provide you with more individualized, whole-person health care. We provide care in a way that caters to your family life, by providing appointment times that can help you schedule around your job, your children’s school and activities and other factors of everyday life.

WellSpan certified nurse-midwives deliver babies right in the hospital – so you and your baby are close to specialty care, including our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) – in case something doesn’t go as planned. All WellSpan midwives are fully licensed and have advanced training in our field.

By choosing WellSpan, you are choosing a system that covers all spectrums of life. Our rich, interconnected community of midwives spans across the WellSpan network. If one of our patients moves during her pregnancy or works near one location and lives near another location, our midwives can coordinate your care to continue to provide you with high quality midwifery services.

Conditions Treated

We provide women’s health care services for all women, including:

• Gynecologic issues (well-woman care)
• Pregnancy and childbirth
• Conditions associated with perimenopause/menopause
• Abnormal uterine bleeding 
• Breast issues

How We Can Help

Breastfeeding Support Services

To support our expecting and new moms, midwives are trained in breastfeeding, including treatment for mastitis and related conditions. We also connect our patients with WellSpan breastfeeding services for even more specialized support, as needed.

Childbirth and Family Education

Our midwifery team encourages pregnant women and their families to take advantage of the wide variety of educational opportunities available at WellSpan, including childbirth classes, breastfeeding classes and support, grandparent classes and sibling classes.

General Women’s Health Services

Our midwives provide whole-person women’s care throughout the lifecycle. Midwives typically schedule longer appointment times with our patients than physicians, which allows us to spend more time with each patient understanding and addressing her concerns.

Maternity Services

WellSpan midwives offer comprehensive prenatal care and hospital deliveries. While midwives have traditionally offered maternity services to lower risk patients, our midwives can now offer maternity care to some higher risk maternity patients through collaboration with WellSpan specialty obstetrics. We have a high-risk pregnancy coordinator on staff to help streamline your care with your obstetrician, maternal-fetal medicine provider and other specialists.

Group Prenatal Care

Our midwives offer a type of group prenatal care known as “centering.” In this approach, your prenatal visit begins with checking your vitals and a few minutes spent alone with your midwife. After that checkup, the rest of your appointment is group care with other pregnant women around the same gestational age. With centering, you’ll spend about 20 prenatal hours with your provider – versus about two hours of standard prenatal care. Research has found that pregnant women who participate in centering have a lower risk of preterm birth due to receiving more education on what to watch for in pregnancy and being more likely to call their provider if complications do arise. And, when you graduate from your centering class, you have a group of friends with babies around the same age.

Physicians