KELSI HINES, CPM, LM
 
Community Midwife

My journey into birth work started as a Sociology undergraduate at University of Wisconsin - Madison. There, I studied global maternal health using a social justice lens and focused my work on the inherent differences in outcomes for people birthing in high-resource versus low-resource settings. I spent time learning about the maternal health system for birthing families in Kenya and came home to witness my sisters navigate birth here in the U.S.  At that time I imagined working to improve health outcomes for pregnant people through policy/advocacy work. However, that quickly changed in 2010 when I was trained as a Doula and started attending births with families in Washington, D.C. I deeply valued the relationships I formed with families during this time. I ultimately chose training as a Community Midwife to learn how to use my hands, knowledge and intution to determine when higher levels of intervention are truly needed. Midwifery is at the core of my activism. It is a deep honor to carry on the tradition of midwifery (kept alive by the Grand Midwives in the South), to be able to support families reimagining a new paradigm of birth - one created by themselves, for themselves, no matter their chosen location of birth.

I am passionate about finding ways to better nourish our bodies, cultivating intuitive movement and grounding in our daily lives, protecting the sacred postpartum period, connecting with our sexuality, better integrating the raw emotions of pregnancy/birth/postpartum into healthcare, and ensuring each family has a trained provider they trust and can build connection with during this incredibly raw and tender time in life. For me, it is not necessarily about where you give birth, but how you feel during and afterwards.