Exploring Your Birth Options in Tulsa
From hospital-based midwives to birth centers, families have more choices than ever when planning where to welcome a new baby.
Childbirth is one of the most life-altering, profound experiences, and deciding where and how to give birth is a deeply personal choice. Today, Tulsa families can choose from a range of childbirth options, including hospital-based midwives, birth centers and traditional obstetric care.
Tranquility-Focused Birth
Montika Collins is the owner and founder of Given Women’s Health Oasis and Birthing Center, just a short drive north of Tulsa, which offers certified midwifery services, lactation consulting, prenatal and postnatal care and natural delivery suites with large soaking tubs for waterbirths, including a large family suite. Additionally, the facility offers on-site villa rentals for a more relaxed stay in a woodland setting on 8 acres. Home visits are also available.
Montika built Given to fill a gap in maternal care needs in her community by providing an essential service that some mothers previously lacked access to.
“As a nation, maternal mortality rates are very high, and I can go further into that and say that about Black maternal health,” she says. “It is so important to have options for women of color.”
Collins believes interest in midwifery continues to grow as more families explore alternatives to traditional hospital births.
“I believe big ships turn slow, and where midwifery has been in hospitals all over the country, they haven’t been steadily available here. I hope that this trend will continue and that we will have midwives available in all of the Tulsa hospitals,” she says.
Photo courtesy Given Women’s Health Oasis
Compassionate Hospital Midwifery
Ascension St. John offers certified nurse-midwife care, primarily at its Owasso location, and focuses on low-risk, personalized prenatal care, labor and delivery and postpartum care. Certified midwives Carla J. May and Katy Martin work alongside OB-GYN physicians to provide comprehensive care for women throughout their lives, including well-woman support.
“We are advanced practice registered nurses,” Martin says. “We have at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing and then have gone on to get a master’s degree specializing in midwifery care, allowing us to care for women from menses through menopause, and covering primary care, obstetrics and gynecologic care—the whole spectrum.”
Choosing midwife care is deeply personal. “It’s more focused on the physiologic process of birth and respecting that; having watchful waiting, and intervening when necessary, with the consent and education of the patient,” May says.
In the event of an emergency, patients receiving care outside a hospital may need to be transferred to a hospital. Ascension’s midwife services in Owasso provide on-site emergency protocols.
From One Mother to Another
For Hannah Aragon, the choice to give birth with a midwife was always the plan for both of her pregnancies. Aragon is the mother of two daughters under age 2, and her choice to use midwife care for childbirth was because of her own mother’s profession as a certified midwife.
“I’ve gotten to grow up and know the behind-the-scenes information,” she says. “I am also a nurse, so I have medical knowledge as well.”
Aragon’s first child was to be born in a birthing center, but labor complications forced her transfer to a hospital.
“I was in labor for like 32 hours, and they knew I could do it, but thought it would be best to transfer,” she says.
Her mother ultimately ended up delivering her daughter at the hospital she was transferred to, so she was still under midwife care, but even more personal in nature. Her second child was delivered under the care of a midwife at Ascension in Owasso.
“I had talked at length with my midwife about what I really wanted to do, and my goal, of course, was a healthy baby, a healthy mom, so whenever it came to labor time, she was able to be an advocate for me,” she says.
Aragon believes there should be no polarization between conventional medical care and midwifery, but that the bridge between them is simply a matter of choice.
“Advocacy is so important for the patient, and viewing it as a physiological process creates a good environment for birth,” she says.
Hannah Aragon and her baby
Local Birth Centers & Midwives
- Ascension St. John Midwife Care (Owasso/Claremore): healthcare.ascension.org/st-john/specialty-care/womens-health/specialties/midwife
- Balance Birth Center: balancebirthcenters.com
- Breath and Birth Wellness: breathebirthandwellness.com
- Given Women’s Health Oasis and Birthing Center: ifwinc.org
- Levana Birth: levanabirth.com
- Midtown Birth Center: midtownbirthcentertulsa.com
- Modern Village Midwifery: modernvillagemidwifery.com
- OSU Medicine, Shaun Baranowski, APRN-CNM, WHNP: osumedicine.com/services/ob-gyn
- Special Delivery Birth Center: tulsamidwife.com
Macy Goodnight is a freelance writer and photographer from Broken Arrow. She loves spending time with her family and friends, and has an interest in studying history, gardening, hiking and traveling.
