Bonnianne Ratliff and Angie Sonrode

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Bonnianne Ratliff and Angie Sonrode

Bonnianne Ratliff is an autistic activist committed to intersectional feminism. She is a single mom to two teenagers in Southern California. She graduated from San Diego State University in 2018 with a degree in English and a minor in Women’s Studies. She started The Shape of a Mother in July of 2006 because she saw that there was a distinct lack of representation of realistic postpartum bodies in the media at the time. She realized that if people were able to see photos of real, unretouched pregnant and postpartum bodies, it could heal some of the unnecessary shame held by the unrealistic expectations society demands. Bonnianne wants people to know that, above all, bodies are functional and that beauty is a construct; all bodies are good bodies. In addition to The Shape of a Mother’s original user-run project, Bonnianne also uses the site as a platform to educate about feminism and related topics through her series on Badass Bitches From History and her educational infoposts and flyers. In her free time, Bonnianne likes to play Animal Crossing way too much or give her teens a cultural education by making them watch old John Hughes movies.

Angie Sonrode is the co-founder and president of Mid Drift Movement. She is a birth/postpartum doula, feminist, lactivist, breastfeeding counselor, parent educator and cheerleader of parents everywhere. Since becoming a mother herself almost 15 years ago, she has been dedicated to finding ways to build circles of support around parents and families, including working with several local nonprofits. Mid Drift’s roots were planted when Angie started looking at the realities of the body she has after having given birth to her four kiddos and the realization that things are a bit…um different. As a body love supporter, the fact that this was intuitively interpreted as negative was a shock. Where were these ideas coming from and why were they so prevalent? With the love and fervent support of her sidekick and partner Mike, she set out to question these things and search out some answers, while along the way helping other people learn to love their bodies wholly.

Jackie Griggs and Trish Perkins

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Jackie Griggs and Trish Perkins

Jackie Griggs, RN, CNM, has been a Nurse Midwife in the Houston area for the past 30 years. She is a mom of five sons, three born at home with the help of midwives. Jackie owns two birth centers, one in the Houston Heights and one in Beaumont. She helps with babies at home and birth center. She is also on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Birth Centers.

Patricia “Trish” Perkins, RN, CNM, is a Certified Nurse Midwife who began her career as a labor and delivery nurse at Jefferson Davis Hospital. She is the mother of four children all brought into this world into the hands of midwives. The first two were born in the hospital and the last two at home with Pat Jones! After raising her own family, she realized her lifelong dream of studying midwifery. She worked as a midwife at a freestanding birth center and for Baylor College of Medicine at The Centers for Children and Women. Her experiences also include working as a lactation consultant at St. Joseph’s Hospital, helping them achieve Texas Ten Step status. She is now the owner of a beautiful freestanding birth center just north of The Woodlands, Bliss Birth Center. Trish is passionate about providing quality, woman-centered, compassionate care and has the unique knowledge, skills, and experience to provide comprehensive, evidence-based midwifery care that women deserve.

Heart of Houston Birth Center

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Heart of Houston Birth Center

Meet the team of Heart of Houston Birth and Wellness Center

Mary Love, APRN, CNM, NP-C
Owner, co-founder, clinical director, nurse-midwife

Mary Love’s first encounter with a midwife was on the night she was born as she slipped into her awaiting hands. It was in her early twenties that she heard the call and set out on her own path to become a midwife, first attending workshops and assisting Pamela Hunt and the other midwives at The Farm. She received a bachelor’s degree in nursing science from Tennessee State University and her master’s degree in nursing from Vanderbilt University. In addition to being a Certified Nurse-Midwife, she is also a Family Nurse Practitioner with experience in pediatric primary, urgent, and emergency care.

Mary believes in a person’s right to make their own decisions regarding their health and well-being and believes how a baby is born, whether it be an “natural” birth or one with all the bells and whistles, is not as important as the way the birthing person internalizes the experience. After giving birth a person should feel strong, proud, empowered, and confident, because this sets the tone for what comes after – the long hard task of parenthood.

Mary also believes collaboration between professionals and systems is vital. Developing collaborative relationships that optimize client care and strengthen professional relationships is key to improving maternal and neonatal outcomes. Building respectful relationships and bridges across professions at the heart of her work. When not catching babies or thinking of ways to fix a particular problem, Mary enjoys cooking, gardening, sewing, and folding laundry. She is married and shares four wonderful children with her husband.

Jessica Gonzales
Co-founder, director of operations and programming, birth assistant and certified doula

Jessica Gonzales has worked in the field of women’s health for over 20 years. The midwives who mentored her taught her that pregnancy and birth should not be treated as an illness, but embraced as a transformative life event. Her passion for birth has fueled her love for educating, supporting, and empowering families.

Her experience includes medical office and lab administration as well as medical business startups. She trained as a midwife’s assistant in Summertown, Tennessee, with the midwives at The Farm. Jessica founded Village Birth and Babies, a full-service doula service for families in the Houston area. Jessica has facilitated support groups for new and expectant people for over a decade and is passionate about creating lasting connections and strong communities.

Jessica and her wife Amanda are parents to two incredible little girls conceived via IVF and Reciprocal IVF. She is committed to reducing the maternal mortality rate in Houston by improving access to evidence based care for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities. Every family is unique and every family deserves support before, during, and after birth.

Bethany Horton, APRN, CNM
Certified Nurse-Midwife

Bethany Horton has been immersed in the birthing world from a young age. Growing up with a labor and delivery nurse mother, hearing birth stories at the dinner table and talks of “birth goo” and placentas were normal occurrences. But it was at the age of 16 that Bethany first felt the calling to be a midwife as she watched her best friend go through pregnancy and give birth for the first time. She received her Master of Science in Nursing from the George Washington University and her Post-Master’s Certificate in Nurse-Midwifery from Shenandoah University in 2019.

Bethany has a passion for family-centered care that focuses on empowering each person to be an active participant in their health care decisions. She believes that most pregnancies and births are normal life events and should be treated as such. She is excited to provide care in a place where birth is viewed as a natural process that is not unnecessarily interrupted. Bethany is a proud mom to one daughter, who was born in a birth center. Bethany and her family are new to Houston and looking forward to exploring all this great city has to offer.

Lynn Schulte, Postpartum Health

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Lynn Schulte, Postpartum Health

Lynn Schulte is a Pelvic Health Physical Therapist for over 30 years and founder of the Institute for Birth Healing. She has been helping moms heal from all the issues women experience after birth and is now teaching courses to bodyworkers to help them do the same. She found a common birth pattern that shows up in the pelvis after birth and knows how to effectively release these patterns. Knowing we are more than just our bodies, Lynn works on all levels, physically, energetically, and spiritually with women to help them access their full potential. She also teaches bodyworkers how to work with the energy of the body and how to access and use your intuition in your bodywork sessions. She offers a certification process to help birth professionals become Birth Healing Practitioners.

Andie Wyrick, Jaelin Stickels, Shanna Willis

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Andie Wyrick, Jaelin Stickels, Shanna Willis

Andie Wyrick, CNM, DNP

A certified nurse midwife and doctor (she is so fancy), Andie has been in the Houston birth community for over 15 years. Her experience includes elementary school nursing, hospital L & D, birth center, and home birth. Andie is confident in a person’s ability to grow and birth their baby. She feels a partnership in care is empowering and hopes to foster that relationship with families. She has been joyfully dating her husband of 20 years since junior high and has five children. Her passions beyond bellies, birth, and breastfeeding are mission work, reading, and movie theater popcorn.

Jaelin Stickels CNM, MSN

A certified nurse midwife and women’s health nurse practitioner who is honored to work with women and their families as they experience pregnancy, labor, birth, and the postpartum period. Jaelin followed her passion into midwifery and has been practicing with women and babies since 2010. She has spent the last 36 blissful years married to her high school sweetheart. She has three children and one grandchild. In addition to her passion for women’s health; she loves quilting and spends her spare time enamored with her granddaughter. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree.

Shanna Willis CNM, MSN

A certified nurse midwife, Shanna attended Frontier Nursing University for her master’s degree in midwifery. She has been part of the birth community for many years and carries with her an intimate knowledge of midwifery care. She has worked in all three birth settings (home, birth center, and hospital). Her model of care and philosophy of birth melds with the familiarity of HHH and she is a perfect fit. Outside of midwifery she has four kiddos and a supportive hubby. She has had her own homebirths with midwives. She works hard for a close-to-her-heart nonprofit, Brennan’s Buddies. She is a chicken lady and spooky stuff is her jam. She can whip up homemade goodies (lip balm, laundry detergent, vanilla extract, bath bombs, etc.) like no one else. Her heart is big. Her laugh is contagious. She has a one-eyed pup named Pirate. Her adoration for supporting families is second to none.

Jackie Griggs and Trish Perkins, Midwifery

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Jackie Griggs and Trish Perkins, Midwifery

Jackie Griggs, RN, CNM, has been a Nurse Midwife in the Houston area for the past 30 years. She is a mom of five sons, three born at home with the help of midwives. Jackie owns two birth centers, one in the Houston Heights and one in Beaumont. She helps with babies at home and birth center. She is also on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Birth Centers.

Patricia “Trish” Perkins, RN, CNM, is a Certified Nurse Midwife who began her career as a labor and delivery nurse working with the Baylor midwives at Jefferson Davis Hospital. After raising her own family, she realized her lifelong dream of studying midwifery. She worked at a freestanding birth center as a full-scope midwife. She was recruited by Baylor College of Medicine to be a part of opening The Center for Children and Women at Greenspoint, where she did prenatal care including high-risk prenatal care, well-woman care, and centering pregnancy. Her experiences also include working as a lactation consultant at St. Joseph’s Hospital, helping them achieve Texas Ten Step status. She has realized her dream of opening a beautiful freestanding birth center just north of The Woodlands, Bliss Birth Center. Trish is passionate about providing quality, woman-centered, compassionate care and has the unique knowledge, skills, and experience to provide comprehensive, evidence-based midwifery care that women deserve.

Elizabeth Gaffney and Rowan TwoSisters, Newborn Hearing

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Elizabeth Gaffney and Rowan TwoSisters, Newborn Hearing

Elizabeth Gaffney, a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist and Certified Auditory Verbal Educator along with Rowan Twosisters, CPM, licensed midwife, and licensed massage therapist, plus more, will tell us why newborn hearing screen is important and what barriers the birth worker community face along with the barriers families face – as well as why hearing screening is so important and what families need to know.

Elizabeth Gaffney is a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist, Certified Auditory Verbal Educator. She co-authored Auditory Verbal Strategies to Build Listening and Spoken Language Skills, which can be downloaded for free from her website www.bridgesavp.com.

Her professional interests include increasing parent education and engagement in her community and the family perspective of how a diagnosis is delivered. She works to eliminate the extremes of bias in the field of Deaf education with the hopes of more practitioners and parents finding a comfortable place, radically in the middle. Additionally, she is a talented watercolor, mural, and fabric artist currently showing at Prime Art Gallery.

Rowan TwoSisters is a Hottie Hooper Healer in Houston, Texas, uses she/her/they pronouns, is a CPM, a licensed midwife and a licensed massage therapist. She provides Arvigo Therapy, Maya Abdominal Massage therapy, is a Spinning Babies Aware Practitioner, and professional Urban Curandera.

Crying is her hobby, and she feels that love and humor are the solutions to most everything.

Addiction Series: Dr. Gabor Maté

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Addiction Series: Dr. Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in twenty-seven languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his ground-breaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection; Scattered: How ADD Originates and What You Can Do About It; and (with Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. Gabor’s next book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is due spring of 2022. To learn more, join his e-news here: drgabormate.com

Jen Kamel, VBAC

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Jen Kamel, VBAC

Jen Kamel is the CEO and founder of VBAC Facts® whose mission is to increase access to vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). VBAC Facts works to achieve this mission through their educational courses for parents, online membership for professionals, continuing education trainings, and consulting services. As an internationally recognized consumer advocate, Jen speaks at conferences across the world, presents Grand Rounds at hospitals, advises on midwifery laws and rules that limit VBAC access, educates legislators and policy makers, and serves as an expert witness and consultant in legal proceedings. VBAC Facts envisions a time when every pregnant person seeking VBAC has access to unbiased information, respectful providers, and community support so they can plan the birth of their choosing in the setting they desire.

Addiction Series: Julie Denofa, Lew Mickley, Jordan Adams, Kash Williams

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Addiction Series: Julie Denofa, Lew Mickley, Jordan Adams, Kash Williams

Changing Your Life Through Recovery
Positive Recovery Center staff – Julie Denofa, Lew Mickley, Jordan Adams, and Jordan’s son, Kash Williams – join us to share their experiences with recovery.