information ABout the practice

Information about the practice
Congratulations on your decision to have a home birth!  We are delighted to serve you as you prepare and welcome this New One into your family. Just as every pregnancy and birth is different, so too are the styles and expectations of care-providers. If this is your first opportunity working with a Certified Professional Midwife, you will soon see that we offer a unique way of providing care, different than what you find in a clinic setting. But also know that each CPM is different as well. We ask that you familiarize yourselves with the following information about my practice so that we may serve you better.
-        Prenatal appointments generally run about 45 minutes, more for the first two. We know that children and life events can get in the way of scheduled time. If you are running behind, please know that we will need to still end at the scheduled time, out of respect for the next person. If we are running behind for any reason, we will alert you and we will adjust our time accordingly. If you need to reschedule your appointment time, please call as far in advance as possible, preferably at least 24 hours. Appointments are usually on Wednesdays and Fridays in Menomonie. Only during holidays or due to a birth, appointments will be adjusted. Midwife's life is on call all of the time, so it’s even more important to have appointments scheduled.
-        Children at prenatal visits – your children are always welcome to come with you for prenatal appointments. However, due to the community aspect of our building, if your children come to visits, they must stay with us in the designated prenatal room.
-        Financial arrangements: at the beginning of our working together we will discuss and sign the Fee Agreement Form. Although, we work hard to keep overhead low, we are the secretary, receptionist, bookkeeper and sometimes bill collector. We humbly ask you to take responsibility to pay as agreed. If you wish to see where your fees go, please ask for that information. While we try to work with each family to create an arrangement that works, we do have to feed our families and repeated clients that intended to pay and yet do not end up paying have to make overall flexibility less.
-        Food/Snacks at your appointments.  If at all possible, bring easy to clean snacks or, better, wait until the appointment is done.
Please clean up any food brought to your appointments as you leave. Crackers leave a crunchy experience for the next family and we don’t usually have time to clean between.
-        Appointment day: If we are at a birth, one of us attempts to still hold appointments. If your appointment time is later than 10 am, we should have time to call, text or email. Do make sure that you check your email, texts and voice mail before leaving your home.
-        Communication: We welcome any and all feedback, requests and questions. If you are calling for non-emergency reasons, please call between 9 am and 9 pm.  If it’s an emergency CALL ANYTIME!  Do NOT text or email an emergency or urgent situation. Please keep in mind that our family lives are interrupted a great deal with births and emergency calls, if it’s not an emergency, please keep it brief and allow us time to return your call/text later.
-        Book and video loan – as a service to others and us, please return books and videos in a timely manner. Please keep them in good condition and if they get ruined, please replace them.  Do not use them as coasters and do not loan them out to others.
-        Insurance billing – We are happy to connect you with our insurance biller to make arrangements for billing. We are Badgercare providers, as long as you call for the HMO exception (we will give you instructions).