Thank you, Photos & Yeshi's Talk
Homestyle Midwifery Community Support Collective
Greetings! We hope this update letter finds you and your families
well.
As many of you know, we had an inspiring and productive meeting on
Sunday May 20th. About 80 people came, many wearing babies on their
chests, many with babies still in their bellies, and shared their
beautiful hearts, and their amazing talents. THANK YOU AGAIN TO THOSE
WHO WERE THERE AND HAVE ALREADY ROLLED UP YOUR SLEEVES AND MADE A LOT
OF THINGS HAPPEN!
Below you will find a copy of the talk that Yeshi gave about Homestyle
- its mission, history and future vision!
For those of you who were there some of this info will be a repeat of
what you already know but please read the whole letter . There is NEW
INFO!
The focus of the MAY 20th gathering was to make it possible for
Homestyle to smoothly transition and become private practice. To make
this happen, we created several working groups focusing on different
tasks. For those of you who are not part of a working committee but
would like to be please contact the Facilitator of each group. SEE
BELOW.
As many of you know one of the big challenges facing us is financial;
Now that we will no longer be subsidized by St Luke's Women's Center
we will have to come up with funds for salaries, rent, malpractice
insurance, overhead, the cost of paying a supervising physician and
start up costs. You will be receiving a letter soon inviting you to
participate in the fundraising efforts.
At the meeting on the 20th, we had announced that we hoped our new
doors would be open by August 1st. However, it is now clear that it is
more realistic that we will be ready to take care of Homestyle clients
with a due date of October 1st and beyond.
WE ARE GOING TO GATHER AGAIN ON JUNE 24TH AT 1 pm-3pm!
at Sheri Giblin's wonderful art studio 3824 Mission Street. PLEASE
COME AND PLEASE COME ON TIME!!! So we can end promptly at 3pm!
WORKING GROUPS
To join a group, please contact the respective facilitator.
Fundraising
Goal: Raise money for the transition and continuation of practice.
Contact: Catherine Gray Fogelquist- catherine...@gmail.com
· Pledge cards were distributed on May 20th to the Collective as a way
to start raising money. If you haven't done so already, cards can be
sent to:
Catherine Fogelquist
321 West Blithedale Avenue
Mill Valley, California 94941
· Please make checks out to Homestyle Midwifery LLC
· Contact Catherine if you would like to make a pledge.
· We are drafting a letter that you can send to friends and family to
assist in raising the funds we need. We hope to have this to you
within the next week
Marketing
Goal: Get the word out that Homestyle is continuing-we need to build
the practice.
Contact: Aimee Einstein Karp- aime...@gmail.com
Web/Blog
Goal: Create forum to communicate with public and with each other.
Contact: Wendy Turner- we...@jivastudios.com
Office Management
Goal: Develop new office structure.
Contact: Julie Carlson- juliee...@yahoo.com
Business Planning
Goal: Develop business structure and systems.
Contact:Taylor Fogelquist- tay...@fogelquist.com
Nonprofit
Goal: To set-up the Homestyle nonprofit arm.
Contact: Natasha Deganello Giraudie natasha_...@yahoo.com
If you have general questions, please email Homestyle Midwifery.
Homes...@yahoo.com
Thank you again for all of your love and support. We look forward to
keeping you posted on our fundraising goals and all the other
activities in the coming weeks.
With love and gratitude,
Natasha & the Homestyle Midwifery Communiy Collective
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Photos of our first meeting:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=whddk34.16wkmpbk&x=0&y=-izp449
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YESHI's TALK
You have just expressed what Homestyle means to you. As a founding
mother of HM I want speak about what HM means to me
HOMESTYLE MIDWIFERY: Soul Satisfying Care for the Childbearing Family.
For me Homestyle Midwifery is the flowering of a long journey as a
midwife which I decided to become a few minutes after I gave birth to
my first daughter at home in 1970. After 10 years of attending home
births I became a CNM in 1980 because I wanted to brings something
like the soul satisfying transformative childbirth that I experienced
at home births to the 99% of women in this country who for whatever
reasons want to or need to give birth in the hospital. After many
years of frustration because I was unable to provide the care that I
believed woman and babies should have, finally in the year 2000
Amrit, friend and home birth midwife and I conceived gestated and
birthed HM
Homestyle Midwifery embodies the midwifery model of care. Why does
MIDWIFERY Matter? We live in Obstetric technocratic paradigm where
Midwives attend only 7% of births nationwide. Our country spends the
most money of any country on mother baby care and yet 40 other
countries have lower rates of infant mortality. Babies do way better
in Countries like Sweden and Japan where the midwifery model is
standard care. The World Health Organization as have demonstrated that
the midwifery model of care means fewer operations, less medical
intervention, better outcomes for mother and baby.
A recent report of huge national survey of women's childbearing
experiences called Listening to Mothers revealed that large segments
of women bearing children in the US today are experiencing
inappropriate care that does NOT reflect the best evidence, legal
right to informed consent the wishes of mothers and health interests
of babies. "
It is in this context that Homestyle is a model of care for families
here but also is already on its way already to being a model of care
that can be replicated across the country.
Many of you know that the word Midwifery means WITH WOMAN. With
Woman embodies a worldview of birth as a miraculous and sacred right
of passage in the life of a woman and her family With woman means
partnership with a mother on her journey to motherhood. It means
Respect of a woman's choices for herself and her family. IT means
honoring her innate wisdom to birth her baby in the best way for
herself. With Woman means welcoming a baby with love and gentleness.
How a woman is treated during the time of pregnancy birth and
postpartum, not whether she has complications or not, but how she is
treated affects her lifelong relationship to herself, her child and
her family
Why Homestyle Midwifery? Some people have tried to get us to change
the word Homestyle for something more " uptown" or professional but
it's our story and we are sticking to it. Why? Because a woman is a
queen in her own home. She's in charge; she knows how she likes things
to be done. When we want someone to be at ease and feel welcome and we
say make yourself AT HOME! A woman needs to feel welcome at her own
birth experience. When she is at home she is free to move around, to
dance naked, to eat with her hands, to be wild and loud or deeply
quiet. This is not just soft stuff that elevates the importance of
woman's experience separate from the health of her baby. The best
scientific evidence demonstrates that the hormone of love, oxytocin,
the hormone necessary for labor and birth to go well flows most
abundantly when a woman feels at home where ever she is. When birth
goes well for the mother it goes well for her baby. They are not
separate.
What about Soul satisfying; for me, When I have the space and time to
truly express myself and be cherished for who I am then my soul feel
satisfied. When I am able to truly connect with another human being,
when in spite of whatever difficulties we encounter, love prevails,
then my soul is satisfied. When I am part of a community joining
together in a creative intention to bring more joy and peace into the
world, then my soul is satisfied.
History of HM
HM is in her 7th year of life and she has been thru a lot of changes.
St Luke's is the 3rd hospital where HM has attended births.
Being part of the Women's Center at St Luke's for the last 3 years
has been wonderful. We were initially embraced by Laura Norell, the
OB whom many of you know and love, and visionary out of the box
thinker CEO who is no longer there, who believed that HM would be a
gift to the community Having HM being part of the SLWC for the last 3
years has meant that we could be incubated and kept warm so we could
hatch and grow. Now With the merger with CPMC the mission of the
Women's Center has been redefined to be to provide basic ob care to
the medically underserved. HM is no longer included in this mission
because HM provides care that is beyond the scope of basic care and
the majority of Homestyle families have private insurance .Our option
now is to become a private practice.
So this is where we are now with the private practice.
We are in the process of securing a wonderful OB in private practice
as Supervising Physician. Securing a supervision physician is a huge
victory! For the time being we will continue to attend births at ST
Luke's, which is now the 4th campus of CPMC. The Doctors from the
women's center including Norrell will function as our hospital back up
OBs. We have a wonderful offer from our friends at Chinese Medicine
Works s on 25th and Noël to explore share their space. So we are well
on our way. Completely effaced, maybe 7-8 centimeters, getting ready
again push our beautiful baby out! We plan to begin attending births
as the new Homestyle on September 15th
What will it mean to be in private practice? There are opportunities
and challenges.
The principal challenge is financial. While HM was part of St Luke's
all our expenses were paid by the HCC. The midwives salaries, our
wonderful coordinator Staci's salary, our medical assistant salary,
our space, utilities, our billing and also our malpractice
Now it is up to us to make it work financially We have to come up with
start up costs and We have to come up with the money for everything I
just mentioned including paying a supervising physician. Our
preliminary business plan - we are still in process on this- indicates
that
In order to receive HM care families will have to pay out of pocket on
a sliding scale between 2500 to 5000. . We will have to figure out how
the doula's fee fits into this.
This is in the range of what families pay for Home Birth. Because
we will be able to bill through our supervising physician a portion of
that fee will be reimbursed by peoples' insurance. How much will
depend on each person's insurance. We are committed to helping people
get what they are entitled to on their insurance.
What are the opportunities for Homestyle as a private practice?
MANY! And INFINITE! Because it is up to us!
There are 3 visions for the future of Homestyle Midwifery.
1) Paradoxically, now that we are in private practice and there is
significant cost for our services we have the opportunity to make our
care accessible to all different kinds of families: When we were part
of the ST Luke's women's' center we were very specifically instructed
not to reach out to families that didn't t have private insurance.
Because St Luke's need us to bring in families with private insurance
in order to change the payer mix of a hospital that was mainly MediCal
so the hospital could survive.
Now we have a vision of a non-profit foundation that will be linked
with our private practice. I have had a dream for a long time of some
kind of sister/mother to sister/mother project so that women with more
economic resources partner with women of less economic resources so
that every woman can feel welcome at her own birth. I have a dream
that when we have our prenatal and postpartum groups the room will be
filled with families that are really different from each other- in
ethnicity in class and culture - talking with each other, sharing
their dreams and their journeys as parents. Across the divisions that
our society imposes on us that we never asked for. We have always
wanted to be sisters and brothers in one family.
2) Another vision is we the care providers at HM, the midwives and the
doulas want to manifest a model of women care providers who are also
empowered to care for themselves and their families. A model not of
too- much sacrifice and burnout but of joy, replenishment. And
sustainability Part of why C and H are not longer w. HM is that it
couldn't work for them to put the intense amount of time and energy
into HM and take care of their families in a soul satisfying way.
3) The third aspect of our future vision is that it is a shared
vision. Homestyle is now clearly a community project. If HM is going
to survive- and it will, and thrive- and it will, it will be because
of all us are joining our hearts and our hands to make this happen.
This means that what Homestyle becomes - is really up to this
community.
As your midwives we are here to serve our mutual interests as a
community, a community who believes that it matters how its babies are
born, a community that celebrates and cherishes its mothers, fathers
aunties uncles and grandparents who do the incredibly important work
of nurturing our children.
We have big visions for the huge redwood tree of which Homestyle is
the seedling.
Other ideas members of the community have had are a wisdom school for
mothers which would enable mothers to stay at home for the first year
of their babies life instead of going back to work and sharing their
own wisdom with each other about mothering. Also there is an idea of a
health coop in which the care providers and the care recipients work
together - to ensure the health of the community outside of the health
care for profit system.
But for now our focus will be on rebirthing Homestyle!