Countryside Midwifery Services
50 William St N0K 1G0 Milverton, ON, Canada

Calling out to all past clients!! If you have been discharged from our care and still have one of our purple binders laying around your house, we would love to get it back! Please call the office to arrange a time for drop off. Thanks in advance :)

To Our Families of Countryside Midwifery Services: At Countryside Midwives, our goal is to provide excellent care through your pregnancy, delivery and postpartu...m, while keeping everyone healthy. During these challenging times, that care is going to look a little differently than it has in the past. In order to lessen the chances of bringing the virus, COVID-19, into your home, and to keep our families and midwives safe, we are going to temporarily make the following changes: ALL VISITS WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE CLINIC. We will, for an uncertain amount of time, be providing all your visits in our clinic space. We will continue to provide home care in the first week after your baby is born, and the remainder over the phone or in the clinic. This is to reduce the possibility of the virus being spread from one home to another when the midwife travels from home to home. If home visits have been scheduled prior, you will receive a phone call or letter to inform you of changes in time and location. WE REQUIRE EVERYONE TO WEAR A MASK. When you and your care provider properly wear a mask and sanitize hands, it dramatically reduces the chance of transmission of the virus. We will provide you with a proper mask at your visit. Those with a health exemption may inform their midwife. WE ASK YOU TO COME ALONE. While we understand that your support person is an important decision maker in your pregnancy, we are required to keep the number of people in our small clinic spaces to a minimum. This means no family members may attend. We would be happy to have a conversation with you and your family over the phone or Zoom at any time to involve them in the decisions you make. WE WILL CONTINUE TO OFFER HOME BIRTHS. While it may seem strange that we are unable to provide home visits, but can offer home birth, remember that when we are doing home visits, we are travelling through many homes. When we have a home birth, we are in just that home, and take many precautions before, during and after the birth to reduce transmission of the virus. DRIVERS. If you need to hire a driver to visit our office, please wear a mask while in their vehicles. Our goal is to keep our entire community safe. SCREENING PROCESS You may now be familiar with the screening questions that we and our staff have been asking you. It is extremely important to answer these questions honestly, and to consider all who live in your home. If you come to the clinic with any of these symptoms, we will re-book your appointment. Please DO NOT come to your appointment if any of the following is true for you and/or your family: Required Screening Questions - In the LAST 10 DAYS: If you or your family members have any of the following symptoms, please stay at home and arrange for testing in your community. Symptoms should not be chronic or related to other known causes or conditions. It is important that even if you believe these to be a cause other than COVID, that you acquire testing. Even if the virus seems mild to you, it can very severely affect many higher risk individuals in the community around you. - Fever or chills - Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath - Cough - Sore throat, trouble swallowing - Runny nose/stuffy nose or nasal congestion (with the exception of small children) - Decrease or loss of smell or taste - Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain If you answer YES to either of the questions below, contact your midwife’s clinic. Have you travelled outside of Canada in the past 14 days? Have you had close contact with a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19? PUBLIC HEALTH CONTACT INFORMATION FOR TESTING HURON-PERTH: 1-888-221-2133 NORTH WELLINGTON: 1-800-265-7293 We truly value the families of Countryside Midwifery Services and only wish to keep everyone healthy through your time with us. It is also crucial that our midwives remain healthy and not in quarantine. If we are fewer in number, it is possible that your care and birth plans could look very different. Thank you for your help in keeping our communities safe!

We have been so grateful to our community and the support they have shown our clinics through this pandemic. Today we want to give a big thanks to our friends at Palmerston Home Hardware on their generous donation of 1500 masks. They have helped us source various PPE throughout all of this and today they showed us again how much they care. Another big thanks to Grant’s Service Centre who helped us with a quick response to a client who’s car needed a boost! ... We are all in this together. Continue to support your small town stores. We can get though this and all come out on top.

We would like to introduce our 2 new midwives that have joined our practice. Michelle Brawley will be working our Palmerston office. Imke Bertens will be working at our Milverton office. ... Welcome Ladies! We are so glad you have joined us. Being able to add them on has given us a chance to take on some new clients. We have had to start a large waitlist due to the increase in people wanting midwifery care. We are very grateful we can now reach more woman and provide a great and much needed service. We also would like to take this opportunity and thank everyone for your support as we navigate through these stressful times. We are so lucky to be surrounded by a great community!

Countryside is making some adjustments to support meeting the needs during COVID 19. We have always held ourselves to a high standard of cleanliness and infection control and we will continue to do that. Starting Monday, some midwives may opt to space out visit plans in accordance with the guidelines put forth by the WHO. Please have patience with us while we work on our scheduling. ... If you would like to cancel or rebook your visit, please call the office you attend. At this time we are following public health's lead and recommending only people necessary to attend your visit should be present. This may mean minimal support persons, or having them attend digitally. We are also asking that no children attend any clinic visits for the time being. If you would like to discuss your chosen planned place of birth, your midwife is happy to discuss that with you during your visits. Thank you for your understanding, we appreciate your patience! Our number one goal as always is to keep our community as healthy as can be! Huron Perth Public Health: 1-887-221-2133 x 3267 Wellington Public Health: 1-800-265-7293 x 7006 Telehealth: 1-866-797-0000

Please travel accordingly today friends! If you have a scheduled appointment at either of our offices and you wish to rebook please call the clinic. Stay warm :)

To all the amazing midwives of Countryside, Happy International day of the Midwife! . . These ladies are hard working, caring, and SO dedicated to providing excellence in rural care! .... . Give a shout out to your midwife team, or share a favourite story from your care with us today! . . #IDM2018 #countryside #midwives #ontariomidwife #canadianmidwife #dayofthemidwife #welovemidwives #ruralhealthcare See more