Life & Covid-19 Update

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

Lets see… Last year I was daydreaming and trying to figure out what I was going to do with the beautiful, old building that the birth center was in. It wasn’t big enough to hold next level dreams and it was too big to manage a downsize. The best scenario would be to sell it and create a more useable space somewhere else but there were a lot of complications to manage in order for that to happen.

But how to sell it? It wasn’t quite right for a home or for a business, it had it’s limitations that somehow I had managed to make work, but it wasn’t easy. Thats what I was thinking about when there was a knock at the door. It was a broker who introduced himself and said that he had a buyer for the buildings. I said “its complicated”. He said “thats nothing”. He gave the price and I said “if you can sell it, lets do it.” Well, he sold it.

My plan was to take some time off, travel the world, visit some midwives, work on a birth project that I have been thinking about for years and then come home and redo the birth center in a new way.

I was ready to leave, tickets in hand, when the shutdown happened.

To make a long story not as long… I ended up on a piece of land in Arizona that is very dear to me. This is where I began my midwifery journey in earnest and where, throughout the last 30 years, I would come for spiritual renewal.

What to do with all this land? To start, we decided to do a sustainable homestead. We put in a garden, got some chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits and goats! But what am I going to do with my midwife-self?

Having my babies on this magical land was one of the best experiences of my life. I have decided to share that experience with others- should they be interested.

We have erected a lodge next to the pond and it will make a lovely retreat for a woman and her family. What I envision is mom being able to come here at around 39 weeks to remove herself from the stresses of the modern world. A time to sit in nature, soak up the elements, spend time with the animals, float in the river, gaze at the pond and enjoy all of the wildlife. When she goes into labor I will care for her until her midwife arrives, the baby will come and then the family can spend several days healing, bonding, holding and loving their new baby. The land is teaming with wildlife and we are a certified wildlife heritage site. Yet we are only 1/2 a mile from Safeway and less than 5 minutes from the hospital.

I will include some photos below (scroll alllll the way down, below the contact form) so that you can see whats going on here.

Life has gotten really strange and I have absolutely no idea what the new normal will be or what it will be like next year. But for now, this is what I am doing.

Midwife Lakisa will be seeing all of our Phoenix Clients and she is open to assisting those that would like to have a farm-stay birth.

For information on a Farm-Stay birth or a home birth in the Greater Phoenix area, please use the following form.