A Gentle Beginning

We love A Gentle Beginning!
We we’re referred by several friends who delivered from home with them with excellent results.
After miscarrying our first child I was pretty nervous to be pregnant again. Our consultation with Catherine put us at ease and we decided to move forward. At our second visit we heard our sweet babies heart beat and Catherine was excited right along with us!
My pregnancy went smoothly and we loved our visits to AGB. All of our questions were answered and we were at complete ease.
At the very end of my pregnancy I was having signs of pre-​eclamsia and Catherine and her team were very quick to test me and get the ball rolling for induction if needed. They even brought an acupuncturist to the office! I didn’t end up having the condition but I’m so grateful for how diligent they were.
I went into labor at 40wks 5days and labored at home for 30hrs before Catherine recommend we go to the hospital because I was absolutely exhausted and near hysterics. My husband and I trusted her judgement completely.
After another 18hrs of labor at the hospital our beautiful baby girl was born! Catherine stayed with us the entire time (for a total of 27hrs with us) and was so helpful in encouraging, checking me, guiding me during pushing and just being a delightful birth companion. She never seemed tired or annoyed. She really put my husband at ease as this was his first time experiencing a birth!
Our little girl ended up needing to get her tongue clipped due to a tongue tie and Catherine met us at the office at 8pm to do it! Still as cheery as can be!
All of our postnatal visits were excellent and we have decided to continue with AGB for pediatric care.
We will certainly be using AGB for our next pregnancy!

I have had four children at home with A Gentle Beginning, and cannot recommend them highly enough. They give intentional, dedicated attention to each client, and their hearts are in their work. They offer Family Naturopathic Care as well, so for us, our journey began over 8 years ago with prenatal care and continues now for our whole crew.
Catherine is an experienced Certified Nurse Midwife with a mother’s heart. She has a comforting presence that you desperately need in labor. At every appointment I have felt considered, listened to, and cared for. I have never felt like a number or like just another person she has to cycle through for the day.
AGB takes a conservative approach when screening clients before proceeding with a home birth, ensuring safety by eliminating possible risk factors. There may be other midwives in town who will take on higher risk clients, but at what cost? For this reason (and many more), I recommend AGB first to anyone I meet considering a home birth. From where I sit, they value the health of mother & child above adding another client to the queue. Their office is a beautiful and peaceful, and on the seldom occasion I have to wait an extra few minutes for an appointment, I just pretend I’m at the spa. With my kids. Close enough.
It is a smaller business than a few of the other birth outfits in town, so I’ve certainly had my share of appointments cancelled because someone’s in labor, but I figure they’ll have to cancel on folks when it’s my turn, so it all works out! The size also ensures that you will feel well acquainted with your birth team when the time comes.
They travel ready to watch for any hiccup in the labor process, and will call the need to transfer when it is required. After my last delivery, there was more bleeding than we expected, but with care and skill Catherine and the crew gave me homeopathics, and then a quick shot of Pitocin to remedy the situation. I recovered quickly and easily at home after birthing a baby over 11lb.
I work as a doula, and have witnessed many different birth scenarios. When it’s all said and done, I love home birth with an experienced midwife, and would do it again with the AGB staff any day.

A Gentle Beginning was the right fit for my husband and me. We had heard wonderful things about the care and competence of the staff from a family member who had used their homebirth services seven times.
As this was our first baby, there were many unknowns, but the staff at AGB helped us navigate thru all of that. The office was homey and peaceful; Catherine and Regina exhibited understanding, knowledge and grace when we met with them. Catherine explained how the whole processed worked and we felt that a homebirth was right for us. I realize having your baby at home is not for everyone, I am a homebody and love being in water; Hospitals give me a bit of anxiety. Having my baby in water in my home sounded very appealing.
There were no complications with the labor or delivery, My baby was born in the tub provided by AGB. The Attending nurse was so gracious and calming. After the birth, the team got me showered, dressed and in bed and learning how to breastfeed. The house was cleaned up, the laundry started and the meal I had prepared was heated and served to my husband and I in bed.
My baby and I had some difficulty learning to breastfeed without causing pain. The Nurse came the day after to check in on me and make sure everything was going well, she helped me again with the latching problems. On the 5 day check in my milk had come in and I was having trouble regulating my supply. The nurse helped me again and gave some very practical tips to help regulate. My family received the utmost prenatal, labor, delivery and postnatal care from the team at A Gentle Beginnings.
I have continued to use AGB for my child wellness check ups as well as my womens health checkups. I feel that they have an excellent balance between modern and traditional medicine. I feel my daughters and my health and wellbeing are the forefront of their interest.

When considering a home birth, take one thing into account: the health of your unborn baby. A home birth experience is not worth it with AGB! I was transferred to the hospital by Catherine and team and I am SO glad I was. My baby was born with a blood disorder that A Gentle Beginning would not have caught until my baby was seriously ill. Because my daughter was born in the hospital they were able to quickly diagnose and treat her. If her care had been left to A Gentle Beginning, I might not have my daughter. In the future, I will DEFINITELY be giving birth in a hospital and won’t try to birth at home again.
We ultimately picked AGB because Catherine is a CNM and their website stated she attends all the births (which actually isn’t true, its Catherine OR Regina). My prenatal care was mostly done by Regina. She is wonderful. She always took the time to explain things and was very patient. The few appointments I had with Catherine seemed very hurried and she didn’t take time to answer questions. One giant red flag was that they didn’t keep good medical records, it took several months of visits for them to get my dose of thyroid medication onto records and I was the one who had to remind them when I needed blood work etc. They actually missed one of my blood draws at an appointment for which I had to drive 2 hours to go back and get.
We had several headaches with the front desk: Messing up our billing plan, and messing up appointments, we would show up for appointments only to discover they mysteriously weren’t on the books.
During my actual labor things went very downhill. Their setup was so unorganized I couldn’t believe they had been doing this for years. You’re supposed to have a bin set up for garbage and for laundry and yet they mixed garbage and laundry all together so that my poor husband had to to sift through tons of garbage to get our laundry done. There were bloody paper towel and towels with vomit sitting on the table with the «sterilized» items. SO not ok! They seemed more concerned that we didn’t have (in their opinion) «enough» candles, instead of the fact that my water had been broken for 2.5 days.
After 3 days of labor I was transferred to the hospital to get an epidural so I could rest and pitocin to try to speed up my labor. Catherine and her student came along. While I was getting my epidural Catherine was bragging to the doctor how her daughter had had twins and didn’t even need an epidural. Not something a woman wants to hear after being in labor for 3 days. At that point we should have asked them to leave, but we didn’t and I regret that. I was supposed to try to rest so I could have strength for later on, but Catherine and her student were playing a noisy game on their phone and laughing loudly and talking the whole time. So unprofessional. I did finally give birth to my daughter after 10 hours of pitocin and the doctor and nurse were exceptional. I wish I had started out at the hospital. They were so encouraging while Catherine made me feel like I was wasting her precious time.
We had such a great experience at the hospital, we had to stay 2 extra days for my daughter to be treated and every single nurse was wonderful, the pediatrician was great, and I wish we had been there from the start!
We had the home visits from AGB nurse when we were discharged from the hospital. I was having some trouble with breastfeeding and the AGB nurse gave us a nipple shield which we found out months later was not even CLOSE to fitting right and contributed to decreased milk production and my daughter not gaining weight well. They shouldn’t be handing those out unless they know how to use them! One selling point they used at our first visit was telling us that they had a lactation consultant on staff, but when we needed one suddenly there wasn’t one. THe nurse and mid-​wife gave us really bad breastfeeding advice. Thank god we later found a good lactation consultant who rescued us (someone not affiliated with AGB).
At my daugters 6 week visit they measured her wrong saying she was an inch longer than she actually was and said she was only in the 20^th percentile for weight which was too low. They really freaked us out that something was seriously wrong. At this point we went to a real pediatrician and found out she was actually in the 50^th percentile and AGB is just using very outdated percentile charts.
The only positive was the kindness Regina showed us. Other than that it was just a very disappointing experience, they are very unorganized and I wish they could have done things more professionally.

I recently had my first baby, and I cannot imagine having a more wonderful pregnancy or birth. The ladies at A Gentle Beginning were so important to my experience, and I loved every visit. Beyond feeling safe, I also always felt warmth and genuine caring and compassion from these women. Everything they did seemed to invite me to be at ease and enjoy the miracle of pregnancy and birth.
Thank you to both Regina and Catherine for giving me an experience that I will always treasure!

We are beyond thankful for the amazing care we have received from the team at A Gentle Beginning. Both our children (now 3 months and 3 years old) were born at home with the help of Catherine and her experienced nurses. Thanks to them my husband and I had a wonderful, calm and safe experience and have recommend them to multiple expecting friends. Catherine and Regina have gone on to become our children’s doctors and the seamless relationship has been invaluable. We truly feel lucky to have chosen them to help us grow and nurture our little family into the world!

A great establishment with very helpful staff. Did a great job of working with us and our insurance through the paperwork nightmare.
When we weren’t able to have our child at home, our midwife was able to come with us to the hospital. She had a relationship with the OB that allowed continuity of care, and generally helped us get through a difficult time (not to say it wasn’t special, just also, whooooo, difficult).

**Note: I have not yet delivered my baby but I am planning a home birth and going though my prenatal care with the midwives at A Gentle Beginning. I will update with my future experiences.**
A Gentle Beginning is how health care should be! It’s calm, it’s quick and most of all; it’s very personal.
With this pregnancy I started my care with OSHU in Scappoose. The office waiting room smelled horrible, was full of sick people and the wait times were extremely long. I had 3 appointments there and all took at least 2 hours for a simple prenatal check up. I never felt quite right about have a trained surgeon try to naturally deliver my baby and I really didn’t enjoy the hospital setting. All this and more propelled my search for midwives I could trust to have my best in mind. That’s when I stumbled across A Gentle Beginning.
After exchanging a few email with them, finding out the cost ($ 4,000 for prenatal care and delivery/​many insurances accepted), we made a consultation appointment.
At our first appointment, we walked into the quaint «home» office setting and were greeted by the friendly front desk ladies. They actually said, «You must be Alison? We’ve been expecting you.» This blew me away that they new my first name. We filled out some paper work in the front living room waiting room and Catherine (the founder and midwife) came out and met both my husband and I. Catherine then took us back to her office where we sat on a love seat sofa and chatted about all our questions and concerns. She was very helpful and we enjoyed her calm and knowledgeable demeanor. We left that consult with lots to things to discuss but in general were blown away with the polar opposite experience we had compared to the «clinical» setting.
My first prenatal appointment at A Gentle Beginning was with midwife Regina. She too was a complete joy. She’s very knowledgeable and has that same calming demeanor; perhaps all midwives have this? She listened for the heart beat with me on the sofa. It all seems so much more relaxed than the doctor office setting.
We are very impressed with the care we’ve received this far and look forward to this journey with our new found partners in our birthing experience.

So happy with our experience at A Gentle Beginning. We were fortunate enough to have an uncomplicated pregnancy, but whenever questions came up, they were always answered to our satisfaction. Otherwise it was just nice to have a very relaxed environment. The birth presented some challenges, to say the least, but I had complete faith in Catherine to get me through it. She knows what she is doing. We did not love their childbirth classes and would do something different if we were to do it again, but otherwise would not change a thing.

Absolutely amazing experience having our baby boy at our house with Catherine and the team. Our first birth was in a hospital and the second at home… way better at home. Very professional and compassionate team. Highly skilled and 30 years experience. DO IT!!!