Recognizing IU Health's Nurse Midwives

By: Courtney Finafrock, social media senior specialist, cfinafrock@iuhealth.org

Our certified nurse midwives are experts in women's health and are advanced practice registered nurses who have completed an accredited graduate education program in midwifery and passed a national certification exam.

"We do full scope pregnancy care, so that means antepartum when patients are still pregnant, labor and delivery support, postpartum support, we also to gynecology care and birth control, pap smears and annual exams as well," Cheyenne Starner, certified nurse midwife, explained.

Rebecca Evans, a certified nurse midwife & women's health nurse practitioner, explained nurse midwives specialize in low risk and physiologic birth.

"We spend a lot of time with patients in the prenatal setting but also in labor as well," Evans said. "So our goal is really to be with our patients at the bedside as much as possible. We also work with our physician partners to take care of higher risk women, women with complicated co-morbidities or complications in their pregnancy."

Starner said just because a patient chooses to work with a midwife does not mean medication is not an option.

"We can prescribe medicine," Starner said. "We are definitely practicing up to date evidence as well."
Tatiana Van Braeckel recently delivered a baby with the help of Starner.

"My labor and delivery was everything and more that I wanted," Van Braeckel said.

She said working with a nurse midwife to make decisions surrounding her labor and delivery felt empowering. Evans said one of her team's main goals is to help patients feel like their desires are heard.

"We really want people to feel empowered to have the birth that they want and so that includes pain medications, nitrous, hydrotherapy, epidurals," Evans said. "Knowing that that plan can change. We also support families who choose formula and don't want to breastfeed. We're supportive of that as well. There is really that misconception that we are always trying to push unmedicated births or breastfeeding on everyone, and I just want to make sure people know that is not the case."

According to the Centers for Disease Control, Indiana's maternal mortality rate is 30.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. It's a grim statistic that nurse midwives, like Starner and Evans, are working to improve.

"Indiana has really atrocious maternal mortality rates and so, midwives are actually evidence based and proven to have better birth outcomes for people, along with doulas, and we do have a great doula team that we work with as well at Riley," Starner said. "Specifically Black women; Black women die at three times greater the rate than white women in labor and childbirth and beyond, so I think it's really important that we have midwives of color on our team as well. It's really important for us to be here and we're really happy to have this space and a growing practice."

IU Health's team of midwives work in collaboration with obstetricians, gynecologists, perinatologists, anesthesiologists and neonatologists to ensure both mother and baby remain as healthy as possible.

"I do think what's great about the midwifery care at IU is that because we work with our maternal fetal medicine specialists and because we have the whole Riley support system, that we can take care of more medically complex patients for patients who do desire midwifery but would otherwise risk out of a home birth or a birth center setting," Evans said.

For more information about midwifery at IU Health, visit IUHealth.org.