Certified Professional Midwife, massage therapist, artist, healer, grass-roots organizer

The heart of the art of midwifery is to support healthy, natural, and gentle birth experiences which honor mother, child, and family. Hope provides personal midwifery care with a friendly touch. She educates and encourages families to understand and remain empowered with birth options, and assists them to make decisions based on their own values. This approach increases healthy outcomes and happy families.

Choosing to approach pregnancy and birth as natural life processes is aligned with the birth practices of many countries in Europe, where statistical outcomes for both moms and babies are better than they are here in the United States.

Hope Medford has been attending births since 1997.
She trained at the Northern New Mexico Women's Health & Birth Center under the supervision of Elizabeth Gilmore in Taos, New Mexico.
That birth center is unique in that it serves more births per capita with midwifery care than any other birth center in the U.S.- approximately 25% of families choose to give birth outside the hospital, as compared with 1-2% in the rest of the country.

Hope graduated from the National College of Midwifery in 1999 and became a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) in 2000. After a small private home birth practice, she moved to Portland to work at the Andaluz
Waterbirth Center and earned her Oregon State Midwifery License in 2001. Working at Andaluz, the first Waterbirth Center in the United States, she earned confidence in her experiences with waterbirth.  

By 2002, a small Portland community farm under threat of development caught and held her attention, and by 2003 she was one of the founding board members and grass roots organizers who formed a non-profit, Tryon Life Community Farm. With earned support of the city, the new non-profit purchased the land, put it into public land trust to protect it. Hope became the education coordinator for an education program which continues to serve youth from all over Portland, teaching classes about environmental sustainability, natural building, permaculture, social justice, and environmental arts.

During this time, Hope continued a small private practice attending home births.

Though she loves to act locally, she thinks globally- In early 2007 she worked in a birth center in Senegal, West Africa with the African Birth Collective. The African Birth Collective is a non-profit organization that has
grown out of the need for greater safety and empowerment of women in their birth experiences and a desire to bridge the gap between traditional and modern midwifery in West Africa.

   Hope with Amy Diam, the midwife she worked alongside at

Mboro Birth Center in Senegal, West Africa

Hope just returned from visiting midwives and doulas in Peru, South America. She was both learning about traditional healing and birth practices, as well as teaching natural birth techniques to staff in a local hospital.

Hope was recently selected to represent Tryon Life Community Farm at an international communities conference in Zimbabwe, Africa in October 2008. This conference, The Berkana Exchange Project, connects pioneering leaders from 14 intentional communities from throughout the globe around their shared commitment to making a difference in their country. These leaders are developing the capacity to solve their most pressing problems—such as community health, ecological sustainability and economic self-reliance—by acting locally, connecting regionally, learning globally and sharing what is learned through education projects.

Hope recently founded The Artemis Institute of Women's Healing Arts. This is an integration of her skills as artist, midwife, drummer, and education coordinator. She is very excited about this opportunity to offer a powerful curriculum which reintegrates the creative arts with the healing arts.

The creative spirit is the heart of birth. As an artist, Hope's paintings often express aspects of women and pregnancy (fullmooncreation.com). As a musician, she has co-facilitated drum circles for around 2000 participants, encouraging communication, confidence and community building.

"Hope's gentle encouragement, firm support and grounded education gave me the confidence to have the birth I truly longed for. My baby, my partner and I are forever grateful to have found her" - Jen

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Learn about Hope's artwork at fullmooncreation.com