Burr Ridge Birth Center - Preparing for Pregnancy

7000 County Line Road
Burr Ridge, IL 60527

Additional locations listed below

Services in a nutshell

Sometimes pregnancy can catch us by surprise. Other times, we’ve been avoiding it until parenthood (or another baby) becomes an adventure we’re ready for. Preconception planning with one of our midwives can help clients get a sense of their current state of health and ways to nourish their own body before it nourishes another!

More about us
What can a preconception visit look like?
  • A head-to-toe physical assessment much like in an annual well body visit

  • Deep discussion regarding all parts of your health: what type of birth control you may be on, your menstrual cycles, nutrition and fitness habits, current medications, any medical conditions you’ve been navigating and your family health history

  • Exploration of supplements and lifestyle changes that can enhance fertility

  • Fertility and conception awareness, education and empowerment

  • Counseling options for intracervical or intrauterine inseminations (ICI/IUIs, for short) and additional treatments for folks looking to achieve pregnancy outside of penetrative sex

  • Additional lab work for clients over 35 and those with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) to assess fertility hormone levels before trying to conceive

Our team

TRAINING & CERTIFICATIONS
Sarah Stetina, MSN, APRN-FPA, CNM

As a soulful, charismatic leader, Sarah believes building a birth center culture includes ensuring this model is accessible to all who desire it. She is an advocate for evidence-based care, client autonomy, and informed consent. Sarah is passionate about respecting client choices, facilitating physiologic birth, and emphasizing personal empowerment.

Sarah stumbled upon her calling for midwifery during nursing school and fell quickly and deeply in love with all facets of the profession. Upon learning that midwives were linked to improved birth outcomes, she knew the midwifery model should be the standard of care, rather than the exception. Her pursuit of becoming a midwife truly ignited after witnessing obstetric violence as a labor and delivery nurse, and while also observing the exceptional care midwives were providing in home, birth center, and hospital settings.

Sarah graduated from the University of Cincinnati and joined a hospital-based midwifery team with a reputation for providing evidence-based options to clients and achieving remarkable outcomes. She attended hundreds of births during that time and served countless individuals for their prenatal and gynecological care. Her strong love for community-based birth led her to seek an out-of-hospital birth setting and eagerly joined the Burr Ridge Birth Center team.

Sarah’s philosophy of healthcare and birth are well aligned with the birth center model. She is an advocate for evidence-based care, client autonomy, and informed consent. She prioritizes shared decision-making by putting clients and their families at the center of education and care decisions. She is passionate about respecting client choices, facilitating physiologic birth, and emphasizing personal empowerment. Sarah is dedicated to providing trauma-informed care and providing competent and respectful healthcare to the LGBTQIA+ community. For Sarah, building a birth center culture includes ensuring this model is accessible to all who desire it, and a focus on improving birth outcomes for all; especially black and indigenous families who experience markedly higher morbidity and mortality rates in traditional medical settings. Sarah is motivated to create a place that is welcoming, safe, and empowering.

She lives in Downers Grove with her partner, Nick, and their dog, Finley. She is an avid reader and house plant enthusiast. She is also quite fond of traveling around the world with her friends and family.

Corinne Westing, MSN, APRN-FPA, CNM
Corinne always seeks to honor the gift of being invited on a client’s reproductive health journey — whether through fertility, gender transition, birth, postpartum, mental health, menopause, or general wellness — by being fully present, respectful, and as an equal partner in health.

Corinne is thrilled to be joining the BRBC team and continuing their passion for community birth and trauma-informed, evidence-based birth and wellness care in this new setting. Corinne’s background since completing their nursing and midwifery education at the University of Illinois at Chicago includes over two years in community health at a Federally Qualified Health Center on Chicago’s South Side, a year as a laborist midwife in a large teaching hospital, and over three years in a busy group home birth practice — and as a result of finally getting to follow their dream of working in home birth, Corinne cannot foresee returning to hospital-based midwifery.

Corinne came to midwifery circuitously through an interest in reproductive rights and justice, fueled by a feminist commitment to bodily autonomy and social change, starting with volunteering in a small, feminist-run abortion clinic in Oakland, California in the 2000’s, where they had an opportunity to have a well person exam from a holistic midwife, which opened their eyes to the connections between birth and abortion issues. Years later in nursing school, Corinne met more midwives and attended their first birth, and they never looked back from their decision to learn and grow within the midwifery model of care as a nurse-midwife.

Corinne thrives in a team-based professional environment that promotes shared clinical decision-making between client and provider and highly prizes evidence-based client education. Corinne always seeks to honor the gift of being invited on a client’s reproductive health journey — whether through fertility, gender transition, birth, postpartum, mental health, menopause, or general wellness — by being fully present, respectful, and as an equal partner in health. They have a special interest in serving the whole person, drawing on resources and resiliency, community, and the client’s chosen team, to address physical and emotional aspects of health and wellness.

Corinne has long served as an advocate for reproductive rights and justice, against racism, and for environmental justice. They are also deeply committed to equity in birth and midwifery, especially in BIPOC and LGBTQ communities of birthing people and birth workers. In Corinne’s free time, they enjoy getting outdoors in all kinds of weather, both alone and with beloveds, including her kiddo, who she co-parents with her former partner and who was born at home attended by a CNM. Corinne also savors locally-roasted coffee, West coast and Argentinian red wines, and local foods, as well as making a cozy home in an intentional community on the West Side of Chicago.

Maria Escamilla, DNP, CNM
As a provider, Maria’s warmth and compassion simply radiates. Her dedication to supporting all people as they navigate puberty, reproductive health and choices and growing their families is apparent to all of her clients.

Maria was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico. During nursing school, she was introduced to midwifery by an inspiring teacher, who was, herself, a midwife. While in nursing school, Maria worked at a private OBGYN practice where she realized she wanted to support people as they progressed throughout their lifecycle via midwifery.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Maria completed her undergraduate nursing degree at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, Mexico in 2016. In 2017, she moved to Chicago, IL, to pursue her dream of becoming a midwife. She studied at University of Illinois at Chicago and graduated from the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program in the summer of 2021. Maria’s training as a student midwife was performed at Federally Qualified Health Centers in Chicago with high volume of clients, which further solidified her interest in community-based birth and wellness care.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Maria is convinced that clients should have the right to access the necessary resources to ensure their health and well-being; she is an advocate of informed decision-making and consent. She believes that all clients deserve an evidence-based, trauma informed, and culturally sensitive approach. The care she strives to provide is founded in social and reproductive justice. If you were to ask her what she most enjoys about midwifery, her response would be: “having the opportunity to make connections and learn from the clients and families that come in my path”.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Currently, Maria lives in Bolingbrook, IL, with her fiancé, Ozan, their cat, Tobias, and dog, Orion. She spends her free time hiking, reading, and cooking. Maria always looks forward to traveling back home to Mexico to be with her family and friends.

Testimonials

ADDITIONAL LOCATIONS

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