Midwife K. Michelle Doyle, CNM, NYS LM and Local Care Midwifery, PLLC welcome their 100th baby! Like all of Local Care Midwifery’s babies, this one hundredth baby was a Capital District planned home birth. Baby Stella Grace was born at home, beautiful and healthy, on January 4, 2013, and weighed six pounds, fourteen ounces.

In August 2009, Michelle, a Certified Nurse Midwife, began offering planned home birth services, aiming to attend just three births a month. Catching Local Care Midwifery’s 100th baby three and a half years later is indicative of the area’s strong desire for licensed home birth care. Doyle, a NY State licensed midwife, became familiar with this need while working at hospitals in Rensselaer County.

“When I started Local Care Midwifery, it was the first legal practice for home birth in the area in at least fifty years,” she says. Now, there are five other midwifery services helping women deliver their babies at home.

The success of Local Care Midwifery, PLLC began with K. Michelle Doyle’s reputation. Clients valued her strong listening skills, and her ability to help them navigate pregnancies with an understanding of both the art and the science of prenatal and birth care. Now that she operates independently, Doyle is able to offer planned home birth services as well as in-depth postpartum and Well Woman (gynecological) care.

Evidence based care is at the root of her practice. Since she participates in the Midwife Alliance of North America Statistics Project, she knows Local Care Midwifery operates at a rate in keeping with guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO). For normal clientele, WHO says you should have about a 5% c-section rate. Currently in the US, Cesarean births accounts for approximately one third of all deliveries. Capital District hospitals are slightly above the national rate. Local Care Midwifery’s c-section rate generally ranges from 3-5%, well within the WHO recommended guidelines.

Doyle is grateful for her clients, past, present and future, and the many doctors, nurses, doulas, childbirth educators and other  professionals who have supported her in the first years of running Local Care Midwifery, PLLC.

“I followed my heart made a plan, a very rational plan,” she says. “Between my skills, my plans, and the good grace of the universe and clientele, it’s worked out.”

The 100th baby and family were present a gift basket with useful LCM merchandise. Congratulations to all!