Photo by Marco Calderon
Left to right: Honi Trauger, CNM, MS; Jenifer Smith, CNM, MS; Christina Felten, CNM, DNP; Nissa Gossom, CNM, MS
Midwives help women have healthier pregnancies, more natural births and optimal postpartum recoveries. Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN)’s certified nurse-midwives have been helping deliver babies at Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH)–Cedar Crest and seeing patients at LVHN OB-GYN practices for years. Then last year, LVHN opened the area’s first-ever practice exclusively dedicated to providing outpatient midwifery services. LVPG Midwifery–Pond Road gives women across the region the option to experience the intimacy of midwifery’s evidence-based medicine in a unique facility committed to midwife care.
“Having your baby at LVHN offers you the best of both worlds: You can experience the intimacy of a midwifery birth in the safety of a state-of-the-art hospital,” says Christina Felten, CNM, DNP, with LVPG–Pond Road.
Trained in a wellness-based, hands-on, individualized manner to provide a more personalized approach to patient care, the midwives at LVHN offer moms-to-be an intimate and clinically sound approach to prenatal care, labor and postpartum care. They also work in a team with LVHN’s obstetricians to offer expecting women the best of personalized care and expertise.
Midwives’ holistic or whole-person approach to pregnancy and birth focuses on the psychological and emotional needs of women. This includes providing breastfeeding support and postpartum care to help moms have the best recovery possible. Midwives are also skilled in providing other routine care for women, including annual well woman exams, STI screenings and family planning.
Any woman—expecting or not—interested in midwifery care at LVHN can visit online to learn more.
Published as part of Faces of the Valley in the May 2024 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
