18-03-2025
Remarkable Women: Katherine Bramhall
Hanover, NH (ABC22 FOX44) – Katherine Bramhall gave birth to her first daughter under the care of midwives.
At the time, it was a financial decision.
'We were pretty poor,' Bramhall recalls, 'and midwives were affordable.'
Struggling to understand the public healthcare system, she felt lost and frustrated with the lack of resources available.
That all changed when she met midwives Trudy Cox and Winnie Thomas.
'They saved my life.'
Under their guidance, Bramhall finally saw what true health and care looked like for the perinatal time.
'I used to sit in the rocking chair next to the desk for the first half hour and I was just encouraged to talk, and they just listened,' Bramhall says.
The birth of her second daughter looked a bit more traditional.
'We had insurance at the time, I went with an OB – it was a really different experience. What it gave me was a really good perspective on the value of this type of care.'
Since then, Bramhall has dedicated her life to supporting women during the most transitional and transformational period of their lives.
She received her degree from a nationally accredited midwifery school and has been performing out-of-hospital births in Vermont and at her New Hampshire based birthing clinic.
'In as much as I grew up in a time when women didn't have a voice, I knew I didn't want my daughters to have that same group of options that weren't there.'
Statistically, 85% of women with a healthy, normal, full term pregnancy are good candidates for an out-of-hospital birth with midwives.
'Midwives do full prenatal care with the same schedule of care you'd get anywhere else,' Bramhall explains,' the only difference is there's shared decision making – actual shared decision making.'
But Bramhall says her work goes so much deeper than just preparing for delivery.
'In this model of care, women come in with so many questions. In an out-of-hospital birth setting, what a provider has is the luxury of time.'
She takes the client's ethics, culture, challenges, and hopes – integrating them into the course of their care before, during, and after childbirth.
To date, Bramhall has helped deliver over 900 babies. She's even gone on to publish a book titled 'Transformation Through Childbirth'.
'What are the things you want to know about? What's the standard of care? What are the tests…so that at the end when they're holding that little baby – wherever and however they are – they know what just happened mattered, because that is where hope is born.'
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