Eat Cake, Win a Portrait Session, Help Babies

The Midwife Center for Birth and Women’s Health, located on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, is the only independent birth center in the Pittsburgh area. What’s that, you say… you mean people give birth there, not in a hospital?! That’s right, and in fact, it’s where my son Jonas was born. If you’ve ever driven down Penn Avenue around 28th street, you’ve seen it – the building with the bright, colorful mural on the side of the building:

Midwives are commonly misunderstood. They are decidedly not witch doctors, voodoo specialists or Amish. They’re not all women, either. Midwives are registered nurses with master’s degrees in midwifery. Two chief differences between a midwife and an obstetrician:

1) Midwives believe that for most women, pregnancy and birth are natural, normal events. They monitor pregnant women for any abnormalities or problems, and are trained to manage many of the common minor complications brought on by pregnancy. Midwives believe that the woman should be in charge of her care, and should have the right to give birth in the manner that she chooses.

Obstetricians are physicians trained to manage illness, and are more likely to actively manage and induce labor.

2) As midwives are not physicians, they don’t perform cesarean sections. Midwives can, however, prescribe pain medication, and attend births in hospitals as well as the birth center. So, you can choose to have a midwife AND a hospital birth AND an epidural.

The Midwife Center provides pregnant and laboring women with a reassuring, home-like environment. Below is one of the birthing suites, The Desert Room. It feels so warm and inviting, and for me was so much more comfortable than the institutional feel of a hospital.

It has its own bathroom with a jacuzzi tub.

What I love about TMC even more than the decor, though, is the personal care and attention that I receive there. When I have an appointment, the midwives talk to me like a person – not a list of symptoms. They are genuinely concerned and interested in me as a whole being. They want to know if I’m feeling stressed, what’s going on in my life, and they look at the whole big picture. In today’s health care world where you can feel lost between a sea of referrals, it’s so refreshing and inspiring to know they’re looking out for me.

So…

Tomorrow, Saturday, April 24th is The Midwife Center’s 5th Annual Let Them Eat Cake! Benefit. It’s at The Children’s Museum on the North Side at 7:30pm.

The night begins with a silent auction. One of the prizes will be a certificate for a portrait session (with digital files) by me.

So come, eat cake, sign up for some silent auction items, and help this fabulous resource for Pittsburgh women.

Find out more about attending Let Them Eat Cake! on the official Facebook page. Thanks also to Sumer Schmitt of Simply Perfect Weddings for lending her event planning expertise to the cause.