Call the Midwife: Amy Ihrig on Home Birth and Education

Amy Ihrig, Utah County Home Birth Midwife

This is the sixth post in a series of blog posts based on interviews I’m doing with midwives who serve Utah County.

Today’s post is based on a conversation with Amy Ihrig. Amy owns Joyful Birth Midwifery Services. She has been in the birth community for 15 years (starting out as a doula), and has been a midwife for about five years. She graduated from Midwives College of Utah and is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). Amy attends home births in northern Utah County. Amy is passionate about learning and teaching, and it shows with the wide ranges of classes and services she offers! In addition to being a midwife, Amy is also a Bradley Method Childbirth educator. The Bradley method focuses on how husbands can support their wives during labor and birth. She also teaches infant massage classes for new parents, as well as comfort measures classes, which she calls “doula dad” courses. And she teachers mother/daughter maturation classes using the Maidens by His Design curriculum, a Christian-based program to help mothers and daughters understand and communicate about their incredible bodies.

As you can surely tell from that impressive list, Amy believes in the power of education and the wonder of birth. She truly believes that birth can and should be a joyful experience. Amy is a holistic care provider; rather than just considering her clients’ medical well-being, she looks at the whole picture of their overall wellness as part of her care.

Like many midwives I’ve interviewed, Amy began her journey to midwifery as a doula. She decided to become a doula after her awesome second birth experience (an accidental home birth—keep reading for the details!) After nearly a decade as a doula, she felt called to expand her scope of practice to be able to provide fullness of care—medical and beyond—to her clients.

Since I’ve noticed this doula-->midwife pattern in several conversations with midwives I’ve interviewed,  and I’m currently riding the doula-->midwife trajectory after having a transformatively awesome birth, I joked with Amy that having an amazing birth is a “gateway drug” for aspiring birth professionals.

Give a woman an amazing birth, and she’ll want to become a doula. When she becomes a doula, she’ll love it and realize the importance of education along the pregnancy and birth journey. She’ll decide to become a childbirth educator. When she becomes a childbirth educator, she’ll realize that she could expand her circle of influence even more by becoming a midwife. When she becomes a midwife, she’ll continue to seek opportunities for learning and growth to better serve her clients and invite them to have amazing births. And when her clients have amazing births…

(Now that’s a version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or, rather, If You Give a Woman an Amazing Birth that I can get behind! Give me that kind of ripple effect any day!)

Back to Amy’s journey from amazing birth to doula to midwife.

Before becoming a doula, Amy was staunchly opposed to home birth. Then, she had an accidental home birth. Her labor moved along much more rapidly than she expected, so she birthed her baby in her bedroom with baffled paramedics as her birth attendants. The birth was smooth and beautiful, and something in Amy shifted. Her next birth was a planned home birth, and the rest is history.

Now, Amy is a strong proponent of home birth and the opportunity it affords for an intimate birthing experience. She loves supporting her clients as they make informed decisions in the peace of their own home. “My ideal client,” Amy says, “is someone who takes responsibility for their own choices. They will listen to the education that I’m providing them, and they will pursue further research in helping themselves to stay healthy and low-risk.”

​Having a joyful home birth is not a fictional fantasy. Amy’s passion and work is to make the dream of a joyful home birth a reality for her clients. Preparing for a home birth requires research and work, and a supportive and experienced midwife. We are lucky, here in Utah County, to have so many such options! And we’re fortunate that Amy Ihrig is among them.