Paragon Health Associates CNM's take the same approach with all their patients, stressing education, partnership and a positive view toward a woman's reproductive life span - from teenage years all the way through the menopause. CNM's help women keep themselves healthy.
You CNM may advise vitamins, calcium supplements, or suggest diet, exercise or lifestyle changes. You will be encouraged to ask questions and be given plenty of time for answers. Your CNM will teach you how to maintain good health habits and self-care practices that aid in disease prevention. Midwives can prescribe medications including methods of contraception and treatment for common infections.
CNMs are especially skilled at using alternative birthing positions, birthing balls, hydrotherapy and massage. Their supportive presence during labor allows them to utilize and encourage these alternatives. Having a constant professional presence, educated in pain management techniques, in the labor room contributes to a significantly lower rate of epidural use while maintaining a higher rate of maternal comfort and satisfaction.
Midwives may let their patients
- Walk during labor
- Take warm showers or use the birth tubs
- Use birth balls
- Have clear liquids during labor, and in some cases light food such as crackers or toast.
Your midwife will stay with you during active labor and delivery, evaluating your progress and keeping you informed. This allows you to be an active participant in the decisions being made about your labor and birth. Should the need for a medical intervention arise, a Paragon physician would be consulted and immediately available. Even if a physician is called in, however, your midwife does not leave you.
Providing services in a hospital setting enables CNMs to offer they full array of options from a totally natural birth to the use of IV medication or epidural, if that is what you wish. The midwife's goal is to support each woman to have the kind of labor and birth she desires, as long as it is safe for mother and baby.
Perhaps the greatest service a midwife can offer an expectant mother, is to help make her pregnancy and her labor what many women might never have imagined: a joyful experience.
We hope this has been helpful. If you want to know more, or meet with one of us to see if the midwifery model of care is what you've been looking for, feel free to call and schedule a free 15 minute interview with one of us during our normal business hours. (This is not a medical consultation, but rather a chance for you to learn more about the midwifery model of women's healthcare.) or visit our website @ www.paragonobgyn.com
