About Awakenings Birth Services

What We Offer

Awakenings Birth Services is a midwifery practice that offers an array of services, not only birth care.

A) We offer care for a Planned Homebirth. This is primary care to families during their perinatal period (pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum) and to their babies during the neonatal period (first 6 weeks) of life.

B) We serve people planning a hospital birth who would like concurrent prenatal and postpartum/newborn midwifery care.

C) We serve people wishing to conceive with conception care: IntraUterine Insemination (IUI)/topical cervical application (ICI).

D) We serve people with their pre-conception needs: care and counseling.

E) We serve people through miscarriage: care and counseling.

F) We provide Holistic Healthcare for everyday ailments and chronic discomforts to non-pregnant people who have a womb and have menses flow. In this case we are an adjunct provider to one’s primary care provider.

G) We provide nutritional assessments and nutritional counseling.

H) We provide breastfeeding and chestfeeding support and counseling.

I) We provide hands-on bodywork that integrates, massage, cranio-sacral, myofascial release, healing touch and Reiki.

J) We offer tub rentals.

As needed, we provide referrals to chiropractors, acupuncturists, body workers, lactation consultants and therapists.

We may refer out for childbirth, newborn and parenting classes, doulas, and placenta processing.

We provide referrals for ultrasounds, diagnostic testing and gynecological and obstetrical risk assessment for clinical indications.

We will consult and/or provide physician referral or transfer in accordance with the Medical Board of California Standard of Care for Licensed Midwives.

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We serve people of all races and ethnic backgrounds, religions/spiritual beliefs, incomes, genders, sexual orientations, and marital/single/partnership status.

Client-Centered Home Healthcare

We believe personalized, client-centered healthcare is a basic human right. Thus, we provide individualized and family-centered care. We offer care in your home or our home office. We take the time necessary for the healthcare process to feel complete.

We strive to partner with our clients in making informed healthcare choices that are appropriate for them, thus we create care plans together. We hold the intention of facilitating educated decisions. Clients and their partners (if applicable) are offered information catered to their needs. Questions are answered as thoroughly as one deems necessary. We respect your decisions and act accordingly as much as humanly possible and as outlined by the limitations of our License.

We require a third-party translator when we don’t share the same language.

Fundamentals of Awakenings

The following are fundamentals for this practice. While we are human, which inherently means we are imperfect and make mistakes, we see these through to the best of our ability:

• We strive to contain a deep knowledge of human mechanisms and how our bodies function.
• We strive to look at life in a holistic manner, assessing the physiological, mental, emotional and spiritual self, as well as the connection to the environment and ancestry.
• We strive to honor this body, mind, spirit, environment connection, and formulate care plans with this as the basis and foundation.
• We strive to respectful, supportive and gentle guardians.
• We strive to be caring, thoughtful, and non-judgmental healers.
• We strive to facilitate healing and growth toward love and joy.
• We strive to approach clients with an emphasis on communication and understanding.
• We strive to share information in various ways to cater to the learning style of an individual.
• We strive to have sound clinical judgment, wisdom, and common sense.
• We strive to have a solid and well-rounded skill set for emergent situations.
• We strive to make timely decisions and carry out immediate actions based on protecting the life of the client and baby.
• We strive to cater to the individual versus forming standardized protocols for a high volume client load.
• We strive to nurture all aspects of a family’s wellbeing.
• We strive to facilitate the interactive informed decision making process that assists in self-determination and discovery of one’s own decisions in which they feel comfortable, confident, and empowered.
• We strive to be sociologically and ecologically conscious and mindful.
• We strive to utilize whole foods nutrition and plant-based medicine.
• We strive to avoid synthetic, concentrated and isolated remedies when possible.
• We strive to avoid chemicals, including pesticides and fungicide in remedies.
• We strive use the services of conventional medicine when holistic modalities do not address the issue.
• We strive to not change recommendations based on one’s assumed financial ability.
• We strive to have great referrals to like-minded practitioners.
• We strive to respect each individuals’ personal choices and lifestyle.
• We strive to meet people where they are at — the more one puts into the process, the more we can offer.
• We strive to serve families of all races and ethnic backgrounds, religions/spiritual beliefs, incomes, genders, sexual orientations, marital/single/partnership status.
• We strive to acknowledge and address racism, classism, and other oppressive and harmful cultural and systemic norms as we are able.
• We strive to acknowledge and apologize when we make mistakes.

We call-in that the path may be clear and fruitful.

May it be so, and so it is.

Community

Here, in The Bay, we are on Ohlone land. We ask for there to be reciprocity for the fact that most of us live here on stolen land.

For this reason, we donate each year to an Ohlone Reciprocity Fund (sogoreate-landtrust.com/)****.

We cannot undue the harm committed, but we can make an offering for settling on this land and receiving its gifts.

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Black people, including Black women, need reciprocity and justice. We all need to support Black women in their journey toward equity in the birth room and with healthcare.

The Art of Mothering – Gingi Allen, midwife – Black Bay Area Birth Fund

Birthland Midwifery – Kiki Jordan, midwife

Black Women Birthing Justice

Please support Black Midwives and care providers who hold Black birthing people and women in their hearts when they offer them care.

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We believe every person is the decider of their identity.

We believe people are the deciders of who they love and with whom they share their life.

We believe people are the deciders of what to do with their body, and what to put or not put in their body.

We believe we are part of a community and we take care of each other, as well as ourselves.

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The plants have been around for a very long time. Much longer than humans. We see them as part of the community. They have figured out how to heal almost everything. They are so generous to offer medicine for whatever ails us and all they ask in return is gratitude and respect. We are so fortunate to have plants as a foundational piece of the healing process.

Philosophy

We believe in rites-of-passages.

We believe in healing.

We believe history matters and effects us today.

We believe our ancestry matters.

We value the physical, psychosocial and spiritual health, well-being and safety of every person.

We believe that each person has the right to a supportive, respectful caregiver who will see them as autonomous and competent to make decisions regarding all aspects of their life.

We value people as unique individuals. We value our uniqueness and wholeheartedly serve people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, religions/spiritual beliefs, incomes, genders, sexual orientations and marital/single/partnership status.

We see the body as interrelated layers which include our physical, spiritual and emotional selves. We are inextricably linked to our environment and culture which is very stressful and taxing. We are supporting people to adapt and find resiliency with an integrative approach of modern medicine, old-school-wisdom and plant-based medicine.

Words About Birth

For the vast majority of pregnant clients and their babies, we find the best way to support the birthing process is simply to allow labor to unfold uninterrupted. This means to honor clients privacy, dignity and autonomy, while offering nurturance, guidance, and encouragement as needed.

We see the role of the midwife as a loving presence, who provides expertise as needed and safeguards the health and well-being of clients and their babies. We prioritize the wishes of the client whenever possible.

We understand that the process of labor and birth is a rite-of-passage with the birther and baby as equal participants.

We value birth as a personal, intimate, internal, sexual and social experience to be shared, in the environment and with the attendants a family chooses.

We value the sentient and sensitive nature of the newborn and affirm every baby’s right to a caring and loving birth without separation from the parent(s). We wholeheartedly support the baby’s desire to nurse and find the next best alternative when, in the rare circumstance, that is not possible.

History of Awakenings

Awakenings has been committed to providing holistic care to clients since 1995. Awakenings has excelled at differentiating between normal, variations of normal, and true high risk.

Deborah Simone and Dana Fox are the founders of Awakenings, and have been joined by other midwives over the years including Juli Tilsner, Sharon Economides and Esther Healey. Deborah, Dana, Juli, and Sharon have transitioned out of the practice to new cities and opportunities. Esther joined Awakenings in 2010 and maintains a solo practice with the backdrop of years of experience and wisdom from one of California’s longtime leading homebirth practices.

We are honored and humbled to carry on the beautiful tradition and high standards which Awakenings has always set.