About the Founder

~ Mother ~ Midwife ~ Healed Healer ~ Visionary ~

Greetings

I am a midwife, Nurse (RN), Birth Emergency Skills Training (B.E.S.T.®) Instructor, Birth Advocate, Preceptor, Mother, Herbalist, Alternative Practitioner, Motorcycle Adventurer and I am the founder, creator and owner of the Midwife Method and it's programs.  

I have spent my entire adult life dedicated to providing women and birthing people with the most optimal care model possible that not only keeps themselves and their babies safe throughout the entire process but happy, empowered, joyful and thriving. 

Pregnancy, birth and lactation are normal, physiological processes. Aside from providing clinical expertise and hands-on care, my job is and has always been to provide birthing families with the education, support, guidance and atmosphere they need to optimize their own innate biological, emotional and spiritual wisdom. This is done by following the lead of the client and by providing a balanced, woman-centered approach, combining the wisdom of generations of midwives and parents with modern obstetrical science. I have worked with families as a midwife since 2003 and as a doula, educator and midwifery student since 1998.

picture of Avril Bowens

About my Work

With a firm foundation in holistic, natural health practices and a comprehensive education in advanced nursing, I draw from an incredibly rich and varied education and skill set, to effectively care for the whole birthing parent. My approach is centered on optimizing physical, emotional, social, and spiritual health and wellbeing of the parent and baby while monitoring safe passage through the incredibly transformative experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Everyone who works with Avril, grows in confidence, and enters into motherhood feeling empowered, ready, and engaged. 

My approach to caring for pregnant people, or training student midwives is the same: I believe that when you provide a comprehensive education-preparedness, expert guidance-clear path, and compassionate support-safety and growth, an environment is created for parents to take charge of their experience and feel empowered to make decisions. Whether you are newly pregnant needing help in navigating the sometimes overwhelming experience of pregnancy and finding your way through the maternity health care system or an aspiring midwife learning all the long list of skills, knowledge, attitudes, actions, and compassion necessary to help keep women and babies safe while helping them grow, the same three principles are used to create a firm foundation for learning. 

Now that you know about me in my professional self, who am I as a person?

Above all else, I am a human being on this planet focused on making a positive impact within my family, for women, for people, animals and the world we all live in and on. I am a deeply passionate woman who has always been willing to risk everything to fight for what is right. I have danced to my own rhythms throughout my life and have enjoyed deep loves and painful loses and have learned to thrive through it all.

I am an incredibly resourceful and resilient woman who has a huge and open heart. When I give, I give from all of me and I don't hold back!  I make quick and decisive decisions and go ALL IN!

 So, if you have me on your side, you have a powerful and supportive source of inspiration, information, love and compassion!

I love, love, love nature and spending time adventuring. I have lived off the grid in the Arctic circle with my young family, have fished on small boats in Alaska, gone on long and arduous hikes and mountain bike trips. I am not afraid to get my hands dirty (in fact I prefer it) and probably my favorite thing to do is to go on long, solo, motorcycle camping trips...like thousands and thousands of miles of open road kind of camping trips. 

I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and never stop learning and sharing what I know to benefit and inspire those around me. 

 

What do I mean by being a healed healer? I know what it is like to be broken, to be shattered into a million pieces, AND I intimately know the path that brought me back together again. I know what it is like to be broken and to make myself whole again...because I will tell you, no doctor, no support person, no one else can make you whole :)

I bring the entirety of my authentic self into the Midwife Method. I incorporate this whole self concept into Thriving through Pregnancy and the future Thriving through Midwifery program to create truly holistic and powerful programs that help women, birthing people and midwives grow and transform into their highest expression of themselves and their profession. 

Tammi Nowack's MEND; an ongoing project that explores scars and the people and stories behind them.

After 2 years of mending and recovering, and astronomical physical, emotional and spiritual growth, following a devastating motorcycle accident, I was featured in the talented Tammi Nowack's Project: MEND.

Click below to view the the project and my story in its entirety. 

View Project

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