Thames Valley Midwives

Thames Valley Midwives offers services to women living in London and the counties of Middlesex, Elgin and Oxford, as far east as Woodstock. We attend births at home, and in the following hospitals: St. Joseph's Health Centre, London Health Sciences Centre, St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital and Woodstock General Hospital. The midwives in our group work as a partnership, and we ensure that you will have an opportunity to meet three midwives in the practice. One of us will be assigned as your primary midwife for the pregnancy and birth. Should your primary midwife be unavailable due to off-call time, illness or being at another birth, then one of the other midwives you have met will act as your primary. Each midwife in our practice has at least one off-call weekend per month. Two midwives will attend your birth, whether at home or in the hospital. In rare circumstances, the unavailability of midwives may necessitate women planning a home birth coming to hospital to give birth. Similarly, women may very occasionally be required to give birth at a hospital other than the one they had planned to use, either due to midwives already attending a birth at another facility or lack of available labour/delivery beds at an individual facility. We are a teaching practice which provides clinical placements for students of the Ontario University Midwifery Education Programme. Students with varying skill levels will be working with us over an extended period of time, allowing women to become familiar with them. Because of the importance of educating more midwives to serve Ontario's women, we encourage you to have students involved in your care. However, we fully respect your needs to meet and feel comfortable with any student who may be involved with you, and to decline student involvement in any aspect of your care. Students are closely supervised according to their level of education in the Midwifery Education Programme; of course, your midwife is ultimately responsible for your care.