Our Philosophy…

Midwifery from the inside out

Riverdale Community Midwives is a practice of experienced registered midwives, offering expert, low-risk obstetric care to healthy pregnant people and their newborns. We provide compassionate person-centred maternity care with a strong focus on the life context of your family. We love our work and collectively share an unyielding passion for honouring the transformative power and awesome beauty of birth. Our mission is to support and inspire you on your journey of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. As your midwives, we strive to hold space for birth as a healthy and life-changing event in a person’s life.

Continuity of Care

The secret ingredient

As many midwifery practices move towards group care, Riverdale Community Midwives remains committed to providing continuity of care. When you come into care with us, you are assigned a Primary Midwife as well as one or two Backup Midwives. We organize your prenatal appointments so that you can build a relationship of trust with your midwives. Your Primary Midwife is the most likely to attend your labour and birth. The Backup Midwife will join at the time of birth to complete the care team for you and your newborn. If at the time, your Primary Midwife is unavailable, your Backup becomes your Primary. Our midwives are on-call all days of the week at all times. To ensure wellness for our midwives and best quality care for you and your baby, we schedule regular off-call time and appropriate rest after overnight births. Rarely, due to the unpredictable nature of birth, you may also work with a midwife whom you have never met; we can assure you that you will find yourself in the best of caring hands!

We believe that every person deserves to give birth safely and with power and dignity. To help birthing people benefit from the excellent health outcomes of normal, physiological birth, we provide skilled one-on-one care during your labour. Guided by an active and positive approach to childbirth, we offer you hands-on comfort measures and heartfelt emotional support. Our practice group proudly attends a significant number of Home Births and births at the beautiful Toronto Birth Centre. Both at home and at the birth centre, we are dedicated to making Water Birth available for you. We invite you to explore each of these safe birth options to find the right fit for you.

A Holistic Approach to Care

We live in a time of unprecedented rates of technological and surgical interventions in childbirth. At Riverdale Community Midwives, we work holistically and believe that a preventative and proactive approach to health throughout the childbearing year makes sense.

Depending on your unique needs, we encourage the use of complementary therapies when appropriate. These may include mental health counselling and support; naturopathy, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, or body work. In addition to our prenatal classes, we highly recommend hypnobirthing as an effective form of birth preparation. Our clinic maintains a list of professional health resources in these fields whom clients have found to be excellent. Most importantly, we are always eager to learn from you and the approach you have found to be helpful. Please, share your experience and your discoveries with your midwife.

Supporting Your Choices

As your midwives, we support your unique choices and help you make decisions that promote wellness for you and your baby. We work in partnership with you and provide up-to-date research and resources to guide you. During your prenatal appointments, we always make time to discuss your individual questions and concerns. We invite you to actively participate in your own health and help you make informed choices that are both safe and empowering. To help prepare for the journey of birth and parenthood, we offer our popular in-house prenatal classes where you learn and connect with a small group of other parents-to-be. Join us and discover the calming effect of knowledge, and watch your fears and anxieties give way to genuine excitement!