Sarah, Jenny and Michaela have over 35 years of combined Midwifery experience between them. They have all worked in midwifery-led, high-risk and community maternity services, enabling them to confidently and competently manage any birth complications that may arise. They are experts in active, physiological labour and waterbirth. They are trained in hypnosis and aromatherapy. They also have the additional professional qualifications in Newborn Examination and Newborn Life Support.
While all chosen modes of birth are supported and celebrated by the My Independent Midwife team, they are passionate advocates for vaginal birth after caesarean section – VBAC – having personally birthed 5 of their own children this way, and facilitated hundreds of VBACs in the home and hospital environment. Additionally, they support both complicated and uncomplicated individualised care plans for birth including breech, IVF, large for gestational age, Group B Strep, advanced maternal age, raised BMI and pregnancy beyond 42 weeks gestation.
My Independent Midwife has an inclusive approach to families, having supported surrogates, non-binary and transgender birthing people. They believe that it is empowerment and communication that achieves positive, transformational birth experiences.
I qualified as a midwife in 2006 and I have practiced as a midwife ever since. Midwifery was always my calling and I have never deviated in my passion for the profession. It has been my honour and privilege to support hundreds of families in their journey to parenthood over the years. Each individual family has brought their own unique story, challenges, joy and hope and I never fail to feel astonished at their strength and love throughout the pregnancy and birth.
I have developed a special interest in providing midwifery led care as I truly believe that having a midwife that you know and trust with you through the pregnancy, birth and early weeks increases both positive physical and emotional outcomes for the whole family.
As an experienced midwife I am a strong advocate for all of the families in my care and take great pride in my ability to respect and support their wishes using evidenced based care and knowledge.
I feel that it is extremely important to continually evolve as a midwife, ensuring competence and safety for each family.
These skills and qualifications allow me to deliver holistic care to families during pregnancy, birth and beyond.
I qualified in 2008 and knew that I immediately wanted to work within a caseloading model. For the first two years of my career, I worked as a Private Midwife for ‘The Private Birth Centre' in Northwich, Cheshire. Here, I became expert at empowering, advocating and facilitating births for people from all kinds of birthing backgrounds, beliefs and philosophies. Many of these births were births after a traumatic experience, and I saw for myself how healing and empowering birth can be when it's on your terms. In 2010, I then worked within a classical hospital setting as a rotational, then community Midwife in order to support my Mother-in-Law's cancer.
When the hospital opened its alongside Birthing Centre in 2015, I was first in line to become a core MLU Midwife.
In the birth centre, I was able to utilize my skills in physiological birth and advocating for people with more complicated pregnancies to birth safely in a low-risk environment.
In 2020, I became a Ward Manager for a brand-new Birthing Centre, setting the culture, ethos and role-modeling the skills to facilitate birthing people to release power and capabilities that they never dreamed they had.
Now I aim to combine all of my previous experience, skills and knowledge to provide the true continuity of carer model that evidence shows is so much safer and positive for the people and their babies that experience it.
I have always wanted to be a Midwife ever since I was little (before I really knew what one was) and I achieved this life long dream when I qualified as a midwife in 2021.
As soon as I was able to I followed my passion and accepted an NHS role that allowed me to split my time between the community and the local birth centre in South Manchester, providing continuity of care to the families I worked with. This gave me a depth of knowledge in physiological birth, how best to support and empower people. I especially enjoy enabling people to take control of their experiences and holding space for them to make informed decisions, on their journeys to growing their family.
My love for indvidualised care, choice, evidence-based information and full continuity led me into Independent Midwifery where I am able to offer unrestricted time and relationship based care to promote better outcomes and positive experiences.
I am particularly passionate about trauma-informed birth which led me to undertake further training to broaden my skills to support people to work towards a positive birth experience that makes them feel safe and empowered. This additional training includes:
