About us
Ashley is a Traditional Lay Midwife specializing in natural, holistic, and Christian birth services in the southwest Pennsylvania area. She supports mothers through their pregnancy and home birth journeys with the highest level of prenatal, birth delivery, and postpartum services available. With almost 11 years of birth experience and midwifery, as your midwife, she can assure you that you are in the best hands when it comes to your home birth journey.
Meet the Midwife
Ashley Fleming
Ashley is a traditionally trained midwife and owner of The Mother’s House. She is a God serving wife and mother of 3 amazing daughters.
She began growing a passion for all things pregnancy & birth while she was educating herself leading up to becoming pregnant with their first.
She birthed all of her daughters unmedicated and naturally at The Midwife Center in Pittsburgh.
She accredited her empowering births to the confidence and comfort she had gained in herself and her body’s abilities due to educating herself about pregnancy and birth.
She began her birth worker career in June of 2014, taking her doula training and serving as a birth doula for 5 years. In those 5 years she served 110 women. She also gained her DONA certification in January of 2019.
After much research, personal interactions, and conversations with birth professionals about Midwifery in PA, she chose to begin traditionally training. She shadowed and trained in person, learning hands on. She was graced with two amazing mentors.
Her most senior mentor is a midwife who has been practicing traditionally for 48yrs serving the Amish Communities of western PA. She has attended over 5,000 births in her career, “Too many to count” as she’ll tell you.
Her second senior mentor has over 30 years of experience and was trained traditionally by the first senior midwife. The two have served women and their families together throughout their careers and allowed Ashley to join them and they’ve shared their vast knowledge. Their expertise and knowledge they have shared with her through in person and hands on experiences, and the multitude of knowledge Ashley gained due to the vast amount of births she’s had the blessed opportunity to attend and learn from are irreplaceable.
Since January 2019 - April 2024 she has attended over 750 births and counting. In her 6 years of growing as a Midwife, she’s become well versed in providing safe, natural, holistic care to women who are journeying through a “normal”, low-risk pregnancy. These women often share hopes of birthing knowledgeable, well-supported, and with confidence in the comfort of their own homes.
FAQs
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The Mother’s House, LLC believes that pregnancy, labor and birth are natural processes of the body that unfold normally and without intervention in most cases. Here at The Mother’s House, LLC we believe it is our responsibility to provide comprehensive care in a safe and respectful way while educating and encouraging families to make empowered and informed decisions for their care.
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There are advantages and disadvantages to out of hospital birth. When choosing a birthing location it is important to research and examine these advantages and disadvantages as well as the risks and benefits in order to make the most informed decision possible. Each individual or family examining their options for birthing locations and providers must think about what is important to them while they weigh the advantages and disadvantages. The largest disadvantages to home birth are: the lack of emergency equipment that you might otherwise have access to in the hospital, the time it takes to respond to an emergency in transport to the hospital, the lack of medical pain relief, and the distance from an operating room, if needed.
Most obstetrical complications, however, are not emergencies and can be handled by a skilled midwife and team, can be predicted ahead of time, or are not emergencies and allow for the time needed to transfer care. True emergencies are rare and most often allow time to transport, but no guarantees can be made. On the other side of the coin, in-hospital birth is not risk-free and has its disadvantages as well. Hospital birth may increase the risk for unnecessary intervention, the cascade of intervention, increased risk for infection, and maybe more uncomfortable for the birthing person and family.
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-Low rates of maternal morbidity or mortality
-90-95% success for vaginal spontaneous delivery
-Bodily autonomy
-Autonomy in decision making
-Labor and birth in the place that makes you feel the most comfortable, your home
-You know your team
-You are able to move freely, eat and drink and birth in the position that you desire
-Similar rates of neonatal morbidity and mortality to those of planned in-hospital births for low-risk individuals
-Higher satisfaction
-Reduced rates of postpartum hemorrhage
-Reduced rates of tearing
-A healthy baby will not be separated from the family
-Delayed cord clamping is the norm
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-Higher distance to an operation room if an emergency c-section is needed
-Many insurance companies will not cover a midwife or out of hospital delivery
-Lack of access to medical pain relief
-Your midwife has to travel to you which can mean they arrive late
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Southwest Pennsylvania
These areas include but are not limited to: Dayton, Kittanning, Butler, Fryburg, Brockway, Blairesville, Monroeville, Zelienople, Allison Park, New Castle, Grove City, Knox, and Clarion.
To see our full map of our service area, CLICK HERE.