Faculty Practice Nurse-Midwifery and Primary Care for Women
Contact Vanderbilt Nurse-Midwifery & Primary Care for Women

We are the oldest midwifery practice in Nashville.

The Vanderbilt Nurse-Midwives began serving women in 1995.

The first midwives at Vanderbilt attended births at a hospital in a rural county west of Nashville, then moved to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 1997. Over the past twenty-four years we have established a stellar safety record.

For 2022 we can proudly report:
- Vaginal birth rate 84.5%
- Cesarean section rate 15.5%
- Primary c-section rate 13%
- Episiotomy rate 1.2%
- 3rd or 4th degree lacerations 3.6%
- Preterm birth rate 2.7%

We are an all-nurse practice.

We are staffed exclusively by graduate level trained advanced practice registered nurses from the Vanderbilt School of Nursing.
Our CNMs are graduates of top-flight, accredited Master’s Degree programs. We maintain certification through the American Midwifery Certification Board as well as Tennessee state licensure in both midwifery and nursing.

Our twenty-one midwives have over 250 years of combined experience!

We are a teaching practice.

Every provider in our group is a faculty member at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. Vanderbilt’s School of Nursing is one of the best in the nation, ranked as the #8 graduate school of nursing according to U.S. News & World Report. In fact, the VUSN Nurse-Midwifery graduate program is ranked #1 in the country! Some of us teach in the classroom and some of us provide hands-on clinical training.

We’re all involved in and committed to educating the next generations of midwives and primary care nurse practitioners.

Our practice includes nurse-midwife faculty in leadership at the School of Nursing, and nurse-midwife researchers who generate cutting edge research in pregnancy care. We don’t just practice evidence-based care - our providers are generating the evidence that guides safe maternity care world-wide.

We offer true midwifery care.

Midwives believe that women’s lifecycle events (menstruation, conception, pregnancy, labor, birth, breastfeeding) are normal processes, not medical diagnoses. We care for women through those events with education, support, and counseling.

Your midwife will listen, educate, and support you through it all!

The Vanderbilt Nurse-Midwives monitor women through the childbearing year, provide women with individualized education and counseling during prenatal care, offer support and assistance during labor and delivery, minimize unnecessary technological interventions, and identify women who develop complications in pregnancy or labor.

For many of our clients, birth can occur with very little intervention. We are patient with the birth process. When we recommend an intervention, we start by explaining all the reasons we believe intervention is warranted, then empower women to make decisions about their own care.

Listening to our clients, honoring their needs, and providing a respectful, safe, and nurturing healthcare environment is what we do best.

We care for low-risk women, women with pregnancy complications, and women with medical complications.

We are fortunate to practice midwifery care within a world-class academic medical center, with the ability to consult with, co-manage with, or refer to other members of the care team - obstetricians, maternal fetal medicine physicians, neonatologists, geneticists, and more.

Like all midwives, we offer expert care to healthy women experiencing low-risk pregnancies. And thanks to close relationships with our collaborating physicians, we are able to safely care for some women with medical problems prior to pregnancy, or women who develop complications in pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum.

This offers the best of both worlds: midwives who are experts in normal birth working closely with other expert specialists to provide seamless and unified care of the whole woman.
We are happy to offer care to women who have had a previous cesarean section and desire a subsequent vaginal birth. Our certified nurse-midwives strongly support vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) as an option for women who have had a previous cesarean birth. We have a high success rate: over 80 percent of the women who try to give birth vaginally after a cesarean with us achieve their goal. Many of our patients decided to prepare and deliver with the Vanderbilt midwives because of our strong support for VBAC.

We offer exceptional midwifery care with all the benefits and safety of a hospital setting.

Our practice has a collaborative relationship with the Vanderbilt Medical School faculty obstetricians. These physicians are available to us night and day. When a true emergency occurs during pregnancy or birth, midwives are trained and ready to respond. When the emergency requires surgery, it takes just minutes to gather the team and move to the operating room.

Vanderbilt has a level IV NICU, the highest state and national rating. Most of our babies don’t need that intensive care, but when a baby needs highly specialized medical care, those providers and technologies are readily available.

LACTATION CONSULTING

The Vanderbilt Faculty Practice has a board-certified lactation consultant in our offices, available to all our patients at no additional cost.

She offers prenatal breastfeeding visits and group breastfeeding classes to prepare women for nursing. She is also available for postpartum consultations, to solve breastfeeding problems. Our IBCLC can help improve baby's latch, boost milk supply, and prepare a nursing mother for the return to work. She works in tandem with the midwives and nurse practitioners to diagnose and treat mastitis and thrush.