Odessa Birth & Wellness is closing.

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Operating Odessa Birth & Wellness has been one of the greatest privileges of my career. I built this birth center because I believed families in West Texas deserved another option—one centered on physiologic birth, informed consent, autonomy, patience, and respect for pregnancy and birth as normal physiologic processes.

I still believe every bit of that.

As I prepare to officially close the doors of Odessa Birth & Wellness next year, I am no longer accepting new birth center clients. I have loved operating this center, caring for families here, and watching this space become part of so many birth stories.

But I am not leaving midwifery, and I am not leaving the families of West Texas.

Instead, I am bringing the same midwifery model into the hospital. 

Changing the setting does not change the way I practice.

I will continue to support physiologic labor and birth, freedom of movement, position changes, hands-off birth when appropriate, individualized care, shared decision-making, and true informed consent.

Patients will still be encouraged to ask questions and understand the benefits, risks, and alternatives to the care being offered. Your preferences still matter. Your birth plan still matters. Your autonomy still matters.

Unmedicated birth is still supported. Doulas and partners are still an important part of the birth team. Movement, comfort measures, patience, and allowing labor to progress physiologically when mom and baby are doing well are still part of my practice.

And if you want an epidural? That’s okay, too.

Midwifery has never meant avoiding medical care at all costs. It means respecting normal physiology while recognizing when intervention is beneficial, discussing those options honestly, and keeping the patient at the center of the decision-making process.

One of the hardest parts of birth center practice has always been having to transfer someone’s care simply because her pregnancy or labor moved outside the parameters of an out-of-hospital setting.

Sometimes nothing catastrophic has happened. Maybe an induction becomes medically necessary. Maybe pregnancy develops a complication requiring closer monitoring. Maybe labor needs pain management or interventions that simply aren’t available at a freestanding birth center.

In the birth center model, those changes can mean transferring not only your location, but sometimes your entire care team.

The hospital setting expands the circumstances in which I can continue participating in your care. It gives us access to induction medications, epidural anesthesia, continuous fetal monitoring when indicated, operating rooms, obstetric physicians, neonatal services, and other resources immediately when they’re needed.

It also allows me to care for some patients who would never have qualified for birth center delivery in the first place, including certain pregnancies requiring delivery beginning around 35 weeks.

That means more continuity and fewer situations where a change in risk status automatically means saying goodbye to the midwife you know and trust. 

This transition also removes another barrier that families have encountered when seeking midwifery care: insurance access.

Out-of-hospital birth has not always fit neatly into the commercial insurance system. Even families with good insurance coverage have sometimes found themselves paying significantly out of pocket to choose the birth center and provider they wanted.

Practicing within an established medical practice and hospital system gives patients much better access to their commercial insurance benefits while still allowing them to choose a Certified Nurse-Midwife and the midwifery model of care.

For families without insurance—or those who simply prefer not to use it—a reasonable self-pay option will continue to be available.

My goal has always been to make individualized, respectful maternity care accessible to West Texas families. Moving into the hospital means that, for many patients, choosing a midwife no longer has to mean choosing between the kind of care they want and actually being able to use the health insurance they’re already paying for.

 More clinical options. More financial accessibility. Same midwifery philosophy. 

I chose to make this transition at Midland Memorial because I believe the culture of its Labor & Delivery unit gives me the opportunity to continue practicing midwifery while gaining the resources of a hospital.

Patients can still plan for a physiologic birth.

They can still bring their doula.

They can still move, change positions, use comfort measures, and participate actively in decisions about their care.

And now, if something changes, additional resources are right down the hall rather than requiring a transfer to another facility.

For me, that’s not giving up the midwifery model.

It’s expanding what that model can safely offer.

 There is a common assumption that choosing a hospital automatically means choosing an intervention-heavy birth.

It doesn’t have to.

A hospital is a location. Midwifery is a model of care.

My role remains the same: protect normal physiology when things are normal, recognize when they are no longer normal, explain your options honestly, and help you make informed decisions about your own body and your baby.

If you want to labor naturally, move around, use your doula, avoid unnecessary interventions, and have a quiet, patient birth, I will support you in working toward that.

If you decide during labor that you want an epidural, I’ll support that decision, too.

If your blood pressure changes, your baby needs closer monitoring, or an induction becomes medically appropriate, we can adjust the plan without treating that change as a failure.

And when higher-level medical care is needed, we have an entire hospital team and additional resources immediately available while maintaining midwifery involvement whenever clinically appropriate.