Bloom Community Midwives
1033 Davie St # 408 V6E 1M7 Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dear Bloom Families, BC Midwives need your support! Now in BC, midwives attend 22% of deliveries in our province. Last October, BC midwives voted down an offer by the NDP government because it failed to incorporate requirements that are critical to sustaining the profession and ensuring midwifery care is available to birthing families in BC. This week Midwives are back at the bargaining table with the BC Ministry of Health- at a time when support and demand for midwifer...y is at an all-time high. As per a recent study, 1 in 3 BC midwives say they are likely to leave the profession within five years if support remains deficient. We are midwives as it is our calling, but no amount of passion can attract sufficient recruits without an urgent and robust rollout of ministry-funded infrastructure. Want to help our profession Bloom? 1) Visit @bcmidwives Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter pages- please share or re-post our campaign to raise some noise 2) Visit www.supportBCMidwives.ca to send a letter to Premier Horgan, the Honourable Adrian Dix and your local MLA 3) Post your reason for loving midwives and tag our BC decision makers @johnhorgan4bc and @adriandixbc, using the hashtag #deliverformidwives Thank you for your support! Source: @bcmidwives #bcmidwives #bcpoli #midwifelife #bcndp #deliverformidwives @ Vancouver, British Columbia

Today is International Day of the Midwife For our profession the cherry on top is the World Health Organization celebrating 2020 as the international year of the nurse and the midwife- even though it feels like the international year of the strange and unsuspecting infectious pandemic diseases! Through the past weeks, as your midwives and as essential workers, we have been overwhelmed by the support from our clients, families, colleagues, local business and community ...members in working together to protect families and create safe spaces to be pregnant and birth our babies. We want to thank all who have supported us in this time of uncertainty and have done their best to care for families having their babies in stressful times. Every moment we show compassion for our fellow humanity, our clients and our neighbours, we are all heroes in bettering our world our children enter. Thank you to all for supporting us in the tireless work we do! We are very proud of our Bloom Midwives recently representing and supporting our profession in our province (check out this clip of our midwives Zoë and Emily!) https://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/video?clipId=1952702 @ West End, Vancouver

In the midst of this global pandemonium, midwives keep working, babies keep coming, and families still need our support. Following our client COVID19 email update earlier this week, we have added a COVID information & updates section on our website to keep families informed, found here: www.bloomcommunitymidwives.com/bloom-covid19 We are so fortunate to both be midwives and pregnant families in Canada with our universal healthcare and resources during this public health cris...is . WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: "I want to start today by acknowledging that even though COVID-19 has captured the world’s attention, there are still many other health issues people continue to face every single day and that WHO is continuing to work on. Babies are still being born. Essential surgery is continuing. People still need emergency care after road traffic crashes. People still need treatment for cancer, diabetes, HIV, malaria and many other diseases. And for all of these, we need health workers. Today I want to send a personal and sincere thank you to every health worker around the world especially nurses and midwives, who we are celebrating this year through the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. You do a heroic job. We know that this crisis is putting a huge burden on you and your families. We know you are stretched to the limit. You have our admiration, our respect, and our commitment to doing everything we can to keep you safe and enable you to do your job." THANK YOU Artist: @jennliv See more

BC Families! Your feedback, experiences, and unique stories of birth have been weaved into a play performed at the Vancouver Library next week (put on by the Birth Place Lab at UBC)- check it out https://www.facebook.com/events/656695704869881/

As midwives we know how crucial it is that research is carried out to support families to achieve their healthiest outcomes! Our colleagues at UBC are working hard to improve perinatal mental health research and support, and are developing a Pregnancy-Specific Anxiety Scale! Please consider signing up for their study (whether or not you have ever experienced perinatal mental health issues yourself) Thank you

As we sink into 2020 and reminisce on the past months, there are so many mammaries! There were lots of changes in 2019 at Bloom- for our families, midwives, office administrators.....! - We welcomed 178 Bloom Babies in 2019 - The most popular baby names in 2019 were: - Benjamin, Luca(s), Spencer - Maya, Sophia/ie, Olivia... - Our french-speaking midwife Patricia Rohlfs joined our Bloom team! - Our lovely German Blue Team Midwives, Katherina and Rashmi, both moved back to Germany with their young families - Our previous MOA Gina went off to Midwifery school at UBC! - .....meaning Erin joined Bloom as our new Office Administrator! - We weathered nutty birth storms in April and September.... And another new year rolls on! Wishing happiness and warmth to your lovely Bloom families Stay tuned for more updates on our new team at Bloom! @ West End, Vancouver

After serving as a Bloom Midwife for 5 years (mainly on the Blue Team), Rashmi (and her adorable son) have journeyed back to Germany! Always cheerful and lighthearted, she couldn’t help bring great vibes and laughter with her into birthing spaces and visits. We miss her dearly, and wish her brightness and positivity as her family plants its roots back in Germany. Wir lieben dich Rashmi, sie sind Deutsche Qualität!! ... . . . #aufvidersen #bloommidwives #positivebirthvibes #wemissyoualready #stpaulsmidwives @ Vancouver, British Columbia See more

We couldn’t be more thrilled to have seen all of our Bloom Families at our Autumn Gathering! The wee ones streaming in in costume was WAY too cute and loads of fun. So lovely to catch up with our sweet families- hope you made some new neighbourhood friends. Thanks so much for everyone who stopped by to see your costumed midwives and office managers- you made our day!! #wemissyou #bloombabies #bloombabiesenensamble #vancouvermidwives #purpleteam #blueteam #bcmidwives #stpauls #bcwomens #hospitalbirths #homebirths #allbirths! #halloweenbabiesaretoocute @ Coal Harbour Community Centre

We are so looking forward to seeing and catching up with our Bloom Families tomorrow for our Autumn Bloom Gathering at Coal Harbour Community Centre from 1:30-4pm! Cutie-pie April Bloom Baby Monsieur Skeleton seems to find his first Halloween a rather non-humerus event

Dear Bloom Families, Autumn is in full swing, and it’s that annual time of year that Bloom Midwives would love to see those lil’ Pumpkins and how they’ve grown! Please join us for a family-friendly afternoon to see old and new faces, meet other Bloom families in the community, and to get that oxytocin flowin' from those sweet baby snuggles. We will be at the Coal Harbour Community Centre from 1:30-4pm for you to pop by for a visit with tea and snacks, some Halloween treats, and a play-area for those busy little people on-the-go. Please feel free to show off those adorable Halloween costumes to your midwives- we’ll be dressing up too! Looking forward to seeing you there!

Shared with permission and we declare no conflict of interest sharing this post. Lovely Bloom clients please see attached description, any help would be appreciated for one of our clients Hey people,... As some of you know and as none of you know - Lauren was being monitored for a heart condition prior to deliverying new baby Alma. She was considered a high risk pregnancy and was carefully walked through her pregnancy and delivery with a fantastic midwife and obgyn team. She successfully delivered baby girl Alma Birgitta on Sept 24th and appeared to doing really well. She was discharged from the hospital two days post birth. The following morning Lauren experienced heaviness in her chest and difficulty breathing. The new fam headed back to emerge (thank goodness) and it was confirmed that her accending aorta was dissecting (very bad and what she had been monitored for). Lauren is currently in surgery at Vancouver General Hospital where she is undergoing a procedure where they will hopefully spare her valve and replace a section of her aorta with an artificial tube. This will be a 6-12 hour procedure and she will require multiple blood transfusions throughout. This is scary and a lot... But will hopefully go smoothly. Please pray. Now - if you know Lauren and Josue, you know two people who give generously, love fiercely and support others without a second thought. This procedure is a huge setback when it comes to acclimatizing to life as a new family as Lauren will be hospitalized for an extended period of time and unable breastfeed or lift anything. Josue will be juggling supporting her, caring for Alma and managing life things. Emotionally, physically, mentally... This will be tough. They need support. They are surrounded by family and friends but a huge way we can shroud them in love is to take some financial strain off of these two marvellous individuals. Please consider donating - I have not set a limit to this fund as anything is appreciated (limit may be set later). Monetary donations will go towards: Formula (Lauren can no longer breastfeed) Ordering food Groceries Hospital Parking Transport Living expenses Survival expenses that I haven’t thought of I will be updating this page as I receive more information - please share like it’s hot - share, share, share. Much love, Logan http://gofundme.com/support-the-quezada-family