Welcome to Golden Seam Midwifery. I am so glad you found your way here. Here is a bit about me.

I spent my first several years of practice providing holistic prenatal and wellness care, and assisting my midwife mentors in out-of-hospital births (both in families’ homes and in a birth center). I witnessed the profound effect that pregnancy care and birth experiences have on the wellness of the entire family and how powerfully the birth memory impacted birthing people, their partners and support people, and their babies. 

Seeking a position closer to home after giving birth to my first child, I transitioned to hospital-based work at an academic medical center in Philadelphia. In that capacity, I have worked for 10 years in the Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) division and on the postpartum service. Additionally, I lecture in the OB-GYN resident education series and have previously led yoga classes geared toward stress reduction for OB-GYN residents. I am also a member of a hospital-based research team studying ways to reduce opioid use after cesarean birth, and a member of the hospital’s newly formed Perinatal Palliative Care Committee. Most recently, I served as the Course Director for Fetal Evaluation, a graduate course in Penn’s Nurse-Midwifery and Women’s Health and Gender Studies Nurse Practitioner program. 

My outpatient MFM work includes performing ultrasound and interpreting fetal heart rate monitoring for clients with high risk pregnancies, co-managing their medical conditions, and helping guide decision-making for births when they require medical intervention. In my inpatient role, I care for families during their postpartum hospital stay. As I have midwifed thousands of families through these periods and listened to their stories, something has crystallized in my heart and mind: providing therapeutic care always entails more than attending to individuals’ immediate medical needs. Often the most critical aspect of supporting families through decision-making in these vulnerable times is bearing witness to their struggles and celebrating their resilience. When these aspects of a person go unseen, their medical care suffers and the adverse impacts on their personhood and parenthood can be dramatic and lifelong. 

As I began to explore this through the lens of my own traumatic birth experience,  I experienced a shift in my practice. I realized that my story and the many others that had shaped my approach to care had the potential to powerfully educate other clinicians and challenge practices that perpetuate harm in obstetrics. This is how the seed for Golden Seam Midwifery was planted. I have spoken formally nearly two dozen times in a variety of settings (see below for details). I have also spoken informally to hundreds of people, many referred to me by other pregnancy and birth care providers in Philadelphia, in an effort to help them process their birth experiences and navigate the pregnancy and birth care system in preparation for a subsequent birth.

It is my hope that as Golden Seam Midwifery takes root, I can continue to grow this aspect of my practice and help birthing people transform the painful narratives that have framed their experiences of birth and new parenthood. 

I live in Center City, Philadelphia, with my husband and three children.  

To date, my speaking engagements have included:

‣  Grand Rounds at teaching hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey;

‣  Educational sessions at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Special Delivery Unit and in American College of Nurse-Midwifery conferences; and

‣  Lectures in University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Health & Gender Studies/Nurse-Midwifery, Neonatal, and Anesthesia nurse practitioner programs and as part of the OB-GYN resident education series.