Midwifery services

Certified nurse midwives at Penn Medicine are registered nurses who receive advanced training in women’s health care. They offer a full range of women’s health and gynecology services from adolescence to menopause and beyond. Nurse midwives partner with you and empower you to choose the care plan that’s best for you and your family.

Midwifery care includes preventive wellness visits and risk management, primary care, and pregnancy, labor, and delivery support. Nurse midwives can diagnose and treat many acute and chronic conditions, and they provide health education and counseling. They also provide gender-affirming care for transgender and non-binary individuals.

Our nurse midwives follow the highest standards of care set by the American College of Nurse-Midwives and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Midwife services may include:

• Well-woman exams and other gynecology services
• Testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and conditions like urinary tract infections (UTIs)
• Counseling for family planning and contraception
• Prenatal, pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery care
• Care for healthy infants during the first 28 days of their lives
• Menopause care

Certified nurse midwives: aligning your childbirth experience with your preferences

You can choose to receive pregnancy support and labor and delivery care from an OB/GYN or a certified nurse midwife. Both provide prenatal exams, recommend tests and screenings, and deliver babies.

A nurse midwife can help you create a birth plan to establish your expectations during labor and delivery. If you wish to experience a more natural birth, your nurse midwife can help with techniques to manage labor pain.

With decades of experience caring for patients and delivering babies, our certified nurse midwife practice is the oldest in the region. Our nurse midwives participate in thousands of births each year at Penn Medicine hospitals.

Nurse midwife-led delivery

If you choose, our nurse midwives can support you through a more holistic, natural labor and childbirth experience. They may use non-medicinal options for pain management, such as aromatherapy, guided imagery, and positioning, but they can also prescribe pain medication during labor.

Nearly half of all pregnant people who receive nurse midwife childbirth support at Penn Medicine deliver their babies without an epidural.

Specialized care when you need it

You always have access to our highly skilled obstetricians, neonatologists, and neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in the event of a complication during pregnancy, labor, or delivery. We also work with doulas who specialize in supporting you through labor.