Call the Midwife: Teryl Stay and Amber Adams on Informed Decision-Making

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

For this post, I was honored to interview Amber Adams (DEM) and Teryl Stay (CPM, LDEM), who attend home births in northern Utah County and southern Salt Lake county. Together with student midwife Kirsten, Amber and Teryl are Birth Mind Body, midwifery care that “brings back the village” to care for new parents. Both Amber and Teryl attend all prenatal visits and births together and work as a team.
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Teryl and Amber each became midwives after first working as doulas. I loved talking with them about their journeys to midwifery, as my goal is to become a midwife as well! (I’m hoping to attend Vanderbilt’s CNM program. Fingers crossed!) Teryl became a doula at a friend’s suggestion and fell in love with community birth. She started attending Midwives College of Utah when her then-youngest child started kindergarten. For Amber, a series of random events led her to choosing midwifery care for her own first pregnancy and learning more about pregnancy and birth. After three people separately told her that she ought to be a midwife, Amber accepted the call to midwifery and also enrolled at Midwives College of Utah. Both Teryl and Amber had a baby (or two) while in midwifery school, and have personally experienced a range of birth experiences. They agree that the variety among their own births is an invaluable resource they drawn on as they support their clients. “I really believe that every midwifery journey gives you a different perspective to be able to help a client down the road,” Amber reflects.

The main topic I chatted with Teryl and Amber about was how they support their clients through decision-making. Throughout the conversation, they both emphasized that they view their relationship with their clients as a partnership, and that they expect their clients to be involved, active participants in their care.

Whenever their clients are making choices, their role is to teach their clients about benefits and risks of each of their options and respect their informed decisions as they move forward. Anytime screenings, tests, or interventions (such as glucose screening, Strep B testing, etc.) are offered, they provide an informed decision-making document with information about the possible benefits and risks of each option. Together with their clients, they talk through all of the information on the document and offer the chance to discuss any further questions they may have. The document also points them towards other resources they can consult as they make their own informed decisions.

“A lot of it is based on trust,” Amber says. It’s important that their clients trust their midwives to give them the information they need to make decisions about their care, and that they trust themselves enough to confidently make decisions.

Of course, there are times when, as medical care providers, Amber and Teryl sometimes need to hold firm on certain guidelines. They insist that all clients have an ultrasound to determine the placenta’s location during pregnancy, as placenta previa (when the placenta covers the cervix) is a serious complication that needs a higher level of care.

​If other complications arise during birth, trust is again key. Teryl explains, “It’s also so important to talk about this prenatally, and even during the interview, that these things can come up… We want to make sure that you have enough trust in us that if we’re telling you, ‘you need to go to the hospital; there’s a higher level of care needed,’ that they will trust us.”
With this relationship of trust, Amber and Teryl strive to honor their client’s autonomy and provide safe, quality care throughout pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.