Meet the Midwives
We are midwives, mothers, educators and advocates. Our passion for reproductive justice brought us to this work. We promote the full scope of midwifery that is our global lineage: compassionate care from birth to death, menarche to menopause. We believe in a community-based model and we help our participants gather the resources they need to shape their own experience in ways that honor their values and individual needs.
Maryann Colella, LM, CPM
(she, her) English and Spanish (second Language)
Born and raised in LA by a single mama who taught me at a young age the truth about “the birds and the bees,” I was surprised by how little my middle school friends knew about their arriving menses. I quickly became an informal bathroom body literacy educator (and I probably taught them some other things their parents didn’t want them to know- oops!).
When I learned at age five that I was born by scheduled cesarean because my older sister was born by cesarean, my mother tells me I was emboldened with a sense of injustice; “Why wouldn’t they let me try to get born?!” I soon began to carry everywhere a coffee table book called A Child is Born and would show any willing stranger in the grocery store a large color photo of a baby crowning. Thankfully, my mom never censored my passion for biology.
My mother and older sister were open with me as a teen about their abortions and I understood from experiencing poverty that termination was a vital healthcare option.
After coming off hormonal birth control in my early 20s, I began offering free “radical menstruation” and Fertility Awareness Method workshops every summer in rural Vermont. In 2013 I started my own doula practice in Boston, MA and I also volunteered as a doula with the Boston Abortion Support Collective and for teen parents giving birth at Brigham and Women’s hospital. In 2013, I went to Guatemala to learn Spanish and had the honor of being hosted by a local midwife in a small village outside of Xela.
In 2016, I started midwifery school at Maternidad La Luz and began training at their high volume birth center on the border between El Paso, TX and Juárez, MX. While there I served hundreds of Juarense families and became passionate about birth on the border.
Upon graduating, I moved with my partner to Puerto Rico, which had just been hit by Hurricane Maria, to be closer to her family. In 2018, I started a midwifery practice with another midwife, Marla Rodríguez Morales, and we offered care for pregnancy loss, birth, and insemination. I also started working with the local abortion doula collective, Las Mingas de Aborto. In 2021 my partner and I conceived with our first attempt at home IUI and I birthed our child at home in 2022. Three months postpartum, I began working in a community midwifery practice with the non-profit organization Caderamen.
Now that our little one is wanting buddies, we decided to move our family to Tucson, where we have friends and community with kids. Thanks for welcoming me; I hope to be of great service!
MY STORY
My FORMATION
ACTIVE Certifications and memberships
Arizona Licensed Midwife
Certified Professional Midwife- North American Registry of Midwives
Advanced Provider- Neonatal Resuscitation Program
Basic Life Support- American Heart Association
Member- Asociación de Parteras de Puerto Rico
Training
Midwifery Graduate- Maternidad la Luz
Breech Pro- Breech Without Borders
Twins and Breech Master Class- Breech Without Borders
Resolving Shoulder Dystocia- Gail Tully, CPM
One Day Workshop- Spinning Babies
Intrauterine Insemination and Sperm Washing- Liam Kali, CPM and Audra Karp, CPM
Pregnancy Loss for Midwives- Molly Dutton Kenny, CPM
Emergency Skills for Midwives- Ruth Kauffman, CPM, RN
Midwifery Assistant (1 Week Training)- The Farm
Sarah Weinstein, MN, CNM, IBCLC, PMH-C
(she, her) English and Spanish (second Language)
Midwifery called to me during my undergraduate education during a lucky exposure to out-of-hospital birth incorporated in to a reproductive biology course by a creative professor who was also a pediatrician and ethnobotanist. We watched a video of a physiologic midwife-attended birth at home, and I knew immediately and in my heart that this had always been my path. After becoming a midwife in 2014, and I caught babies both in and out of the hospital. I finished training and began working as a midwife with Tribal Health on the Diné Nation and in rural New Mexico. As a very new midwife, I learned quickly from these communities that our social and lived experiences are inseparable from our health and birthing experiences; these lessons would forever shape my midwifery practice. I then caught babies at a midwife-run freestanding birth center in Albuquerque where I continued to learn from my co-midwives, honoring and providing space for the physiologic processes of labor, birth, and transition to parenthood. In 2019, after birthing my own son in the water at the birth center, I worked again in rural NM. Later, after relocating to Tucson, I worked at an academic institution for several years and continued to hone my special focus on breastfeeding and lactation care and perinatal mental health. I have a focused practice in these domains at Milk & Honey where I work as part of skilled interdisciplinary team. I have taught midwifery, nurse practitioner, and medical students, and resident physicians, and have provided talks for midwifery and other groups. I have always been drawn to midwifery’s potential for advocacy, promoting health equity, “being with” families, and engaging in true shared decision making and informed consent. Midwives work in relationship with their communities, and I believe fully in community health as the vehicle for improving societal health and equity outcomes. I am so grateful for our community here and for the many families that have blessed me with participation in their birth and parenting journeys. Midwifery is a life-long path of learning, and growth. Thank you for walking this path with us.
MY STORY
My FORMATION
ACTIVE Certifications and memberships
National Certification: American Midwifery Certification Board (AMCB)
AZ Licensure: Registered Nurse & Certified Nurse Midwife
International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC)
Perinatal Mental Health Certified via PSI (PMH-C)
Neonatal Resuscitation Pathway (NRP)
Basic Life Support (BLS)
American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM)
Co-chair of AZ ACNM Advocacy Committee
Midwives in Lactation subCommittee (MILC)
Fellow (FACNM)
Arizona Association of Midwives (AAM)
Arizona Community Birth Coalition (ACBC)
Board Member at Large
Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM)
Institute for the Advancement of Lactation Education (IABLE)
Lessons in Lactation Advanced Curriculum (LILAC) Breastfeeding Fellowship (University of Rochester)
Adjunct Faculty/Mentor
University of Arizona College of Nursing
PhD Candidate
Training
Oregon Health and Science University, College of Nursing
Masters in Nursing (Midwifery) 2014
BSN 2012
University of California, Berkeley
BA Integrative Biology 2010
Breech Without Borders:
Breech Pro & Breech Workshop July 2024
OUR Philosophy
We affirm that each person has the right to decide if, where, how, and with whom they want to give birth. As midwives and mothers, we know that childbirth is a normal, common and physiological process. Therefore, we trust that most pregnant people have the ability to give birth naturally and with joy, outside of the hospital. At the same time, we recognize that most is not all, and as skilled attendants, we are trained to make informed recommendations, support shared decision making, identify complications, manage emergencies, and transfer care when appropriate.
Midwives are skilled clinicians trained in various supports for the labor and birth processes, including interventions sometimes required to facilitate the safety of the birthing person and their baby. We use these interventions judiciously, and only when necessary. Much of the time childbirth just requires patience, an attentive eye and supportive presence, and maybe some strategic wiggling of the hips.
We believe that midwifery care is relational, and as such engage our clients as active partners in decision-making and communication. We believe in education, evaluating options, and holding space for the gray areas.
We respect the experiences of conception, loss, termination, pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum as profound events in our clients' lives, and witness them as such. We treat newborns with the utmost respect, knowing their first moments meeting the world are powerful ones, and that the early minutes and hours as a new family require the same gentle care as the birthing that preceded them.
We believe that each pregnant person has the intuition to listen to and trust the wisdom of their own body. With this in mind, we offer collaborative support so that each person can flourish in their own power. Our ultimate goal is to give people the radically personal support we all deserve in order to have transformative, embodied experiences that we carry throughout our lives.
Meet our Midwifery Student
Sarah Baxla
(she/her)
I am student midwife at Midwives College of Utah and have been a practicing birth doula for 7 years. My partner and I have an 8 year old son, Seth, a 6 year old daughter, Louie and a new baby, Ramona! On weekends, you can often find us out in the desert mountains that surround Tucson, hiking, gardening, biking, or tending our chickens.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2011, I took a job at a shelter for women and children with a domestic violence non-profit. This work changed my life, giving me a love of advocacy and supporting people in remembering the power that had been taken from them. Throughout this time, I also supported pregnant people who were living in our shelter, and witnessed the ways that traditional obstetrics would often further disempower them and alienate them from their own bodies and capacity. It was then that I also birthed my first child under the care of a midwife.
Experiencing these two vastly different birth modalities—the provider controlled environment of vulnerable birthers navigating the hospital system, vs my own empowering experience of birthing with a midwife—sparked a fire in my consciousness. How could these mothers, who had experienced so much hurt already, be thrust into a system where their births invited more trauma and powerlessness?
I found myself wanting to take part in bridging the gap for these birthing people, and support them in experiencing a birth process that transform the narrative from “things happen to my body” to “I am in charge of my body and my birth”.
This fire led me first into the path of doula support, childbirth education, community parenting support and now into seeking a degree in midwifery care.
