Meet Amber Berry of The Journey Birth Services & Midwifery Care in Northeast Houston

Today we’d like to introduce you to Amber Berry.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
While living overseas in Cairo, Egypt I was due with my first child. Discouraged by the medical system, I set out to find a missionary midwife who would come deliver our child in Egypt. The midwife came well prepared with all necessary equipment, sterile supplies, etc. for a safe birth at home. It was the most beautiful experience of my life! I began learning more about modern midwifery and how studies show that for the healthy woman, out of hospital birth with a highly trained professional midwife is not only safe, but statistically provides even better outcomes than traditional hospital birth in the USA where there is an overuse of risky intervention. I began my academic training in 2012 while still living in Egypt, and then began my first clinical training in 2013 in at a high-volume birth center for impoverished women in the Philippines. I knew I was made to deliver babies and saw it as my God-given calling to provide high quality, evidence -based maternity care. I began rigorous research, studies, and training to become the best midwife I possibly could. It has been my joy ever since to help women through safe, healthy childbirth experiences in the most comfortable and intimate environment possible. Being one who loves birth and seeks to protect the natural process, I devour studies and information and continue to pursue postgraduate degrees to further supplement my professionalism. Babies are truly joys and blessings, and the experience bringing them into the world should, and can be, as well! That’s what I help women safely achieve. I believe women’s bodies were made to give birth, and modern midwives help facilitate that process to happen in the safest, healthiest way possible, while having the training, skills, and equipment to intervene when necessary and safely resolve many complications. There is a saying about midwives: “Hands of a lady, heart of a lion, eyes of hawk.” I am grateful to be a midwife in Texas as Texas is a great state where midwives work autonomously while being highly regulated to ensure any woman who pursues an out of hospital birth is a prime candidate through our rigorous risk assessment process throughout pregnancy.
I have four children of my own, all born in the comfort of my own home with highly trained midwives. I am a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) and Licensed Midwife (LM) in the state of Texas and have my own birth practice, The Journey Birth Services & Midwifery Care.

Has it been a smooth road?
It has certainly not been an easy road! Throughout my years of training I continued to have my own children (I now have four). Juggling home life, my own toddlers and newborns, midwifery clinicals, and spur of the moment deliveries has not been easy. I once jokingly journaled: “Just another day where I gave 8 humans and a dog a bath in less than 12 hours (myself, my 3 children, 2 women after they gave birth, their 2 newborns, and our family dog).” While training, I had to take several breaks and change my clinical internships due to international moves and birthing my own children. One of the biggest obstacles was with a new ruling made by the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) in the middle of my training in 2013. NARM is the national regulating agency for CPMs. We were living abroad, and I was able to get many clinicals in with approved American midwives running missions birth centers overseas. However, NARM made a new ruling that clinicals had to be done exclusively in the USA. My clinicals up to that point would be grandfathered in, but we would have to return to the states for me to finish. God worked it all out but it was a major hurdle in my clinical training at the time that meant major changes for our family.

My midwifery training and career has meant being on call 24/7 for my patients; when I get a call that someone is in labor, it can be quite the challenge to throw on my scrubs, arrange childcare, grab my bags and get on the road all within minutes. Thankfully, I have had amazing support at home from my husband who is the one who makes it possible for me to be both a mom and a midwife. Being a midwife certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, and before opening my own practice I often wondered if I could juggle it all. Now that I am running my own practice, though there are still many challenges, I love what I do and am fueled by it!

So, as you know, we’re impressed with The Journey Birth Services & Midwifery Care – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The Journey Birth Services & Midwifery Care specializes in home birth for qualifying women. Women receive top notch, individualized maternity care from pregnancy through birth and six weeks postpartum. Midwifery care with The Journey is very personal–the midwife you see throughout your pregnancy is the one who is on-call for you 24/7 during your due-date range, no surprises. The hallmark of midwifery is holistic care–I look at the whole person and how everything is interrelated from her diet and nutrition to her stress level and emotions. We absolutely look at her lab work and ultrasounds but realize there is more to her person and health than just a body, and her emotions, job, nutrition, stress, calm, etc. can affect the physiology of her pregnancy and birth process. So, we tend to her (whole) person to set up each individual woman for the smoothest, healthiest experience possible as she brings her baby into the world. Honesty, integrity, evidence-based protocol, and individualized care are the cornerstones of my business.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I love the diversity of our city! Having lived overseas for 5 years, I love that in Houston I get to meet people from many different cultures and backgrounds. Deliveries this past month were with patients from global contexts–one parent was from Guyana, another from Ecuador, one was a from Canada, one from Dallas, and another a born and raised Houstonian like myself. I love it!

What I like least about our city relating to birth work is the traffic when called to a delivery at rush hour! Nonetheless I realize it’s much better for me to be in traffic on the way to them rather than for them being in traffic while in labor, trying to get to a hospital! So, I’m happy to do it! Thankfully, most deliveries occur in the nighttime hours.

Pricing:

• Total Maternity Care Package is $3,500 and includes all prenatal care, standard labs and ultrasound, birth, postpartum, and any equipment or medication necessary for a safe birth outcome. Water birth is an optional inclusion.

Contact Info:

• Address: 4222 Duneberry Trail
  Humble, TX 77346
• Website: TheJourneyBirthServices.com
• Phone: 832-840-7900
• Facebook: facebook.com/TheJourneyBirthServices/

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