About Katherine Bramhall
Why else are we here but to love and to serve?
Midwife
Katherine is a graduate of a nationally accredited midwifery school and has been receiving babies in out of hospital settings as a certified professional midwife since 2008. She serves families in Vermont and New Hampshire and blends her philosophy of kindness and acceptance with her depth of knowledge and life experience to provide gentle, peaceful, inclusive, individualized and safe care.
Katherine blends over 30 years of birth experience, receiving almost 900 babies in her hands in out-of-hospital settings at home, in birth centers, and in disaster areas. She is a fierce advocate for shared decision making, committed partnership in care and evidence-informed midwifery.
Co-Founder/CEO Gentle Landing Birth Center
In response to the closing of many small hospital birth centers throughout Vermont and New Hampshire, Katherine spearheaded the founding of Gentle Landing Birth Center in Hanover, NH.
Katherine is a member and past president of the Vermont Midwives Association, a member of the New Hampshire Midwives Association, and has served on the Vermont Newborn Hearing Screening Advisory Board, as well as the VT Maternal Mortality Review Board.
Katherine has worked for years to establish peaceful, collaborative relationships with health care providers all over the state of Vermont and New Hampshire including obstetricians, pediatricians, naturopathic doctors, nurse midwives, family doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and many more.
Stories From A Midwife
Katherine has been present for countless magical moments as she attends families birthing their babies, and their hope for the future. She uses her compassionate heart, deep listening and scientific mind to offer comprehensive, creative and individualized care to each family she is blessed to work with. Over the years she has been the receiver of many stories, blending them with perspective, knowledge, and experience. Katherine believes deeply that sharing this these stories helps families more naturally transition into new life with love, hope and compassion for themselves and humanity.
You can experience her work!
International Work
In addition to her work as a midwife, Katherine is the Executive Director and Founder of Bumi Sehat Foundation International (BSFI) in the US, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supporting midwifery clinics in underserved communities. BSFI has supported families and clinics in Bali, Aceh, Yogyakarta, Padang, Indonesia, Haiti, Russia, New York City, post-Katrina Louisiana, the Philippines, and Nepal, among other locations.
Katherine's humanitarian efforts through BSFI include a worldwide PR campaign that helped Bumi Sehat's founder Robin Lim win the 2011 CNN Hero of the Year award along with a $350,000 prize to help fund a new clinic. In 2008, Katherine created the ‘A Million Mothers’ fundraiser, raising $40,000 for Bumi Sehat. Some of her work in Iran, Haiti, and Bali is featured below.
IRAN
In 2004, in response to the Bam, Iran earthquake, Katherine began her intensive years of disaster relief work, focusing on the long-term effects of trauma on family and maternal/child health systems.
BALI
She is the founder and President of Bumi Sehat Foundation International in the US. Katherine developed and served as the director/organizer of the student midwife program at the Bali, Indonesia birth clinic until its closure in 2014. She traveled to Bali each year as a midwife and US liaison from 2006 until 2017.
HAITI
In early 2010 Katherine co-founded and served as Director at the Bumi Sehat birth clinic in post-earthquake Haiti. She worked closely with the Haitian Minister of Health in Jacmel, and capacity-built Haitian healthcare workers and midwives on safe maternal/child practices.
Bumi Sehat Foundation International
Bumi Sehat Foundation International has been an integral part of Katherine’s midwifery and humanitarian service work since January 2006. Bumi Sehat is a non-profit, village-based organization that runs by-donation community health centers in Bali and Aceh, Indonesia, with a mission to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality and to support the health and wise development of communities. Katherine's role has evolved from midwife volunteer to also include creating a student midwife program, co-founding the Eat Pray Doula training program with Robin Lim and Debra Pascali-Bonaro, and serving as Executive Director of the U.S. 501(c)(3)organization. In 2011, Robin Lim, midwife and founder of Bumi Sehat was nominated for and won the CNN Hero of the Year Award, and Katherine has been deeply involved in Bumi Sehat's unfolding path as the organization becomes internationally known, funded, and loved.
As her mother would describe her…
"My daughter Katherine is one of my four children. She grew up in a cabin in the woods in upstate New York in farm country. Living in the woods kept Katherine close to nature and as a result, she became self-sufficient and strong in body, mind and spirit. She was bright in school and spent a great deal of time outside, riding horses, walking, skiing and gardening. When she was 15 she volunteered at a hospital for the summer. That began her life of caring for people.
Katherine got married and birthed two of her own daughters. She and their father raised them together on a lot of land and home schooled them. During that time she trained for and became a Polarity Practitioner and started a private practice in her home. My daughter has an overflowing abundance of compassion and can't not take care of people. She is a natural caregiver and has been since she was young. She is calm and strong in a crisis, upbeat, optimistic and warm. And she is always learning. She never stops learning."
After your baby’s birth, if there are times when it feels as if chaos reigns, that there isn’t ‘enough’ support, resources, love, nurturing, that you just can’t do it, try to remember those times in labor when you knew in your heart of hearts, in every cell of your body that you couldn’t do it. Try to remember that something inside you guided you through that time, gave you strength…in the most rudimentary way maybe, but got you through nonetheless.
Katherine views her greatest accomplishment as birthing and raising her two now-grown daughters, who inspire her with their kindness, brilliance, and integrity. She lives an uneventful and peaceful life in Barre, Vermont with her husband and twin cats.
“My own birth history includes a midwife-attended labor, with my first daughter born via cesarean birth, and a successful VBAC for my second baby born 13 months later. I went into my VBAC trial of labor knowing that my body and spirit were strong and had healed sufficiently to birth as it naturally knew how. I hold that knowledge and hope for all women.”
-Katherine Bramhall
Featured Article
Featured Podcast: ‘On The Shoulders of Giants’
Katherine Bramhall, Founder of Gentle Landing Midwifery and Executive Director, Bumi Sehat Foundation International, Inc. in the US
I’d Love to Hear From You
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