Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Anne Richardson.
Hi Mary Anne, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
n August 1994, Mary Anne Richardson made a career change and pursued midwifery. Since then, she has been assisting couples with births in Central Tennessee. During that time, she has trained and worked in hospital settings and in the homes of clients.
She has experienced management of breech births, twins, shoulder dystocias, VBACs, and hemorrhage. She has dealt with placenta previa, placenta abruption, retained placenta, cord wraps, and velamentous insertion of the cord.
As a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) in 1997, she founded Tender Beginnings and was the sole midwife for much of that time.
In pursuit of her passion to improve the reputation of midwives, Mary Anne has served two terms as the President of the Tennessee Midwives Association (TMA) as well as other positions on the TMA board, and still serves the TMA as a legislative liaison. As a legislative liaison, she worked tirelessly, along with other midwives, to legalize CPM/Home birth midwifery in the state of Tennessee by successfully lobbying for three different bills through the state Legislature.
She has served two terms on the Council of Certified Professional Midwives, a division of the Department of Health state of Tennessee, as Vice-Chairperson and Chairperson. Currently, she serves as the consultant to the Council of Certified Professional Midwives, reviewing complaints to the Council. Mary Anne served on the board of the North America Registry of Midwives (NARM) and was the Director of Accountability for this organization for approximately 5 years.
While caring for families as a midwife and monitrice, she maintains three TN State licenses, and she is currently active in providing education to other midwives and students to improve midwifery care for mothers and babies across the country.
She has presented courses to students in local universities and colleges about midwifery. She was honored to serve as the Keynote presenter at an “Empower Your Birth Conference.” She and Becca Hightower together have developed and presented courses for midwifery students and midwives, some of which have been accredited by MEAC (Midwifery Education and Accreditation Council). Their most current MEAC-accredited classes are Midwives and Pharmacology, and “Stick ’em up IV Therapy”. She was a presenter at the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), an international midwifery conference.
Mary Anne has also been an Instructor and preceptor at the College of Traditional Midwifery. Some of the other institutions that Mary Anne has been a registered preceptor for are: Mercy in Action College of Midwifery, Midwives College of Utah, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, and, of course, NARM.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Anything worth accomplishing is going to have challenges. My hardest challenge was to balance personal time and life with my practice. Midwifery work is demanding.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Tender Beginnings Birth Services LLC?
Tender Beginnings is a teaching practice that has been servicing the Nashville area for over 30 years. This Tennessee midwifery practice offers complete prenatal care for a safe homebirth. The primary midwife, Mary Anne, is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) and she also offers professional monitrice (doula) services for a “homebirth in a hospital” experience in the middle Tennessee area.
Our service area is approximately a one-hour drive time from our office in Eagleville. This area includes Nashville, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Spring Hill, Smyrna, Shelbyville, to name a few cities. In addition, we provide the service of some home visits. The philosophy of Tender Beginnings is that all couples should have their choice of birth sites to include water birth and be allowed to make informed decisions with the care of mother and baby in mind.
Our midwifery care creates a safe birthing environment, protecting the health of the woman and her baby, with a focus on the whole family while respecting the woman’s needs, choices, and privacy.
How do you think about happiness?
Watching the miracle of birth unfold, creating a new family with all the joys accomaning that event, exspecially watching the parents cry tears of joy as they see the new family member for the first time.
Why? How can some one not be happy experiencing this intimate joyous time.
Pricing:
- Total midwifery fees $6000.00
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tender-beginnings.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057426910997
