Linda Cole of the Lisa Ross Birth & Women's Center

WHEN IT COMES TO PREGNANCY CARE AND CHILD
DELIVERY, many  women choose to utilize birthing centers instead of traditional hospitals and doctor’s offices. Linda Cole is a certified midwife at the Lisa Ross Birth & Women’s Center in Knoxville, a non-profit organization providing health care to women to promote wellness, empowerment and family involvement during the process of birth. The center is located at 1925-B Ailor Ave. in the downtown area and provides various options for mothers to be, including maternity and gynecology care with licensed specialists and a breast feeding center that assists new mothers. Cole says the center places decision-making power in the woman’s hands, leading to a more natural and stress-free birthing experience.

What is a midwife?
The word “midwife” means “with woman.” A midwife is someone who is trained in the art and science of taking care of women through their entire life cycle. Midwives look at pregnancy and birth from a non-disease prospective, that pregnancy and birth are normal life events.

How long have you been a midwife?
Fourteen years. I’m a certified nurse midwife.  There are several different kinds of midwifes. There is the traditional learn-through-the-apprentice model, which doesn’t require formalized education but [requires] an examination, and there is the certified nurse midwife, which does go through the formalized education process. 

What made you want to be a midwife?
I was a labor and delivery nurse for eight years before I was a nurse midwife. When I started nursing school, I did a project, a paper comparing the midwifery model of care with the medical model of care for childbirth and just became very passionate about women’s health care through that. I experienced the realm of childbirth all the way from home birth to high-risk care in a large hospital in Asheville, N.C., and knew that I wanted to practice out of a hospital setting but didn’t want to practice home birth. I wanted to be in a birth center away from the hospital.

What is the difference in midwifery and the medical model?
The midwifery model believes the woman is the best person to make decisions regarding her care. We see birth as a normal event as opposed to a medical event. The medical model has historically dictated to women what they should do and sees birth as a medical event, which has led to the embrace of technology. With this model, we have seen the increasing numbers of c-sections and late pre-term deliveries. Late pre-term deliveries are from the doctor inducing the birth when the babies are not ready to come.

What percentage of women giving birth in Knoxville do so at Lisa Ross?
I do know that 11 percent of babies in the United States are born through the hands of certified nurse midwifes … We have had problems with lack of awareness of the center. Over the years we have heard time and time again, “Well I didn’t even know you were there. I didn’t know there was a birth center in Knoxville, if I would have known I would have come to you for my baby.” We have now purchased the building, [and] we will be able to have a more visible presence with the front of the building.

Who is Lisa Ross?
She is one of the founders of the very first birth center in Tennessee, which was in Madisonville [and is] still operating. Then Lisa came here to this birth center in 1994 and was the director of midwifery services. She died of cancer in 1998, and in 2001 we decided to change our name from The Maternity Center of East Tennessee to the Lisa Ross Birth and Women’s Center to honor her.

What are the advantages of having a baby here?
You develop a partnership with your provider. Decision-making is very much done together instead of the patient being told what she should do throughout the pregnancy. We believe that a woman given correct, accurate information can make the best choice for herself when faced with these kinds of choices that she needs to make throughout her pregnancy. That goes for choices of prenatal testing, where she’s going to deliver, pain relief measures she’s planning to use, pediatric care and family planning. If they deliver at the birth center they get one or two visits, (depending on circumstances), in their home one day and two days after they deliver by one of our nurses.