California Midwifery Service

This review is long overdue.
We met Rosanna when I was around 4 months pregnant with my first baby.
We had just moved from San Diego and had just learnt about midwifery.
I came across California Midwifery Service website and checked her reviews on yelp.
After our first appointment (interview) we were sure we were going to stick with Rosanna.
Our care with Rosanna and her team was great, much better than I had imagined.
She is very thorough with her clients care and very caring with your well being.
But what I love most about this type of care is the informed consent.
She doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. She informs you of what's going on, she gives you possible solutions and then you can decide what works best for you.
During both my labors and births Rosanna and her team were amazing. They helped through the rough time, they reassured me when I was in doubt and they have great knowledge and skills. I was never scared or afraid (even when I realized my second baby was stuck).
Have no doubt, nothing is more important for Rosanna and her team than your safety (yours and your baby's).
She will always be our midwife. Present tense :)
Our daughter is 3 and her favorite pretend play is "Be Rosanna".
She follows all the steps Rosanna goes through on your appointments.
Oh and Rosanna is a great teacher. I've learnt so much about childbirth and pregnancy with her.
So, if you are looking for a great midwife, that knows what she is doing, works with you and not against you (or for you), than Rosanna is THE one!

We planned a home birth in SF for our first child. Our child had other ideas about how he wanted to come into the world and was born via C-section at UCSF. When we moved to Sunnyvale, our SF midwives (Nancy and Ami at Rites of Passage) recommended Rosanna as a possible midwife for our second pregnancy.

When we met with her, she was warm and open, and asked thoughtful questions about our previous experience with pregnancy and childbirth. She let us know that she did not consider herself to be the most experienced midwife in the area in terms of VBACs, but that she was willing to take us as clients.

We are so glad she did! We really enjoyed the Village Prenatal care she offers and it was great meeting other couples/families expecting a child. She was very thorough with her care and helped us through a few bumps along the way, always calm, practical, and kind.

She was unbiased about presenting all of the options for various situations and supported the decisions we made. We have no doubts that we received the best care available.

We ultimately had a very quick labor (Rosanna arrived 40 minutes before our baby burst into the world) and an easy recovery (at least compared to the first). Lots of thanks to Rosanna, Maeve, and Pearl for an incredible experience!

xoxo
Joni & Isao

We currently have two children and one on the way. With our first child, we followed the same track that our parents did and went with OB care and a hospital delivery. The experience was okay, but, overall, it just seemed rushed and unnatural, which is why we decided to look into alternatives the second time around, including birth centers, doula care, midwife assisted hospital birth, and other midwifery practices. When we finally got the point in our research that we were ready to interview possible caregivers, we started with Rosanna. From the moment we sat down with her, we knew she was the midwife for us and decided to look no further. Over the course of that initial interview and through all of our prenatal, delivery and postpartum care, Rosanna demonstrated a sincere desire to take care of us, to listen to us, and to empower us on our journey. The birth story of our second child was so drastically different that our fist. It was not rushed or unnatural, rather, it was beautiful and sweet, and we owe that to Rosanna and her team. Needless to say, we plan to use Rosanna again with baby number three which is due this coming fall.

I had the amazing honor of having Rosanna Davis and her two assistants assist me during my second child's birth, but better than that, I also had her available to me throughout my pregnancy, building a report, bond, and connection.

My first daughter was born in the SF Kaiser, and while that was a pleasant enough experience for a hospital birth, I knew that my family as well as myself needed the personal approach and flexibility that a homebirth offered.

I started to receive care from Rosanna at 36-weeks gestation, which is kind of late in the pregnancy. I was receiving medical care with a OBGYN due to some pre-term contractions. You could tell the stark difference in how they handled care.

While my doctor provided the medicinal aspect, potentially, in hindsight, that was intrusive and unnecessary, Rosanna provided fantastic emotional support. While my weekly/bi-weekly check-ups would be about 45-minutes for both, most of the visit with my OBGYN was waiting, a quick check, and then back out the door.

With Rosanna, she would always ask me if I had any questions and patiently have a open discussion with me about my concerns and provide some great articles to read to follow up on what we talked about.

So when weeks 40 and 41 came and went, she reassured me that after our check up that she had no concerns. We talked nearly daily, discussing how I was feeling, and I told her that I knew that my baby would come when she was ready.

41 weeks and 3 days later, my little one would be born a Valentine's baby. With a 2-hour active labor and 3-minutes of pushing, Rosanna's care didn't stop there. She was there to check my newborn and myself at least twice within the first 48-hours and then 2 more visits postpartum.

Rosanna is compassionate, warm, knowledgeable and ideal for anyone seeking emotional and medical support during this amazing time in their life.

Rosanna is just great. I chose her as the midwife for a planned home birth in 2012. I attended her Village Prenatal care, which combined very brief individual pregnancy check-ups with a longer group session to go over what was happening more generally to the bodies of the women in the group. It was wonderful to see how my pregnancy experience compared to that of other women in a supportive, nurturing setting. Due to complications I did not birth my baby with Rosanna, but she did include me in the post-birth get-together so I continued to feel a part of the Village Prenatal community, and received kind support from these other women as I processed the disappointment of a birth that didn't go as I'd hoped.

I chose Rosanna because my doctor recommended her and because she has a tremendous amount of experience.