We are two self-employed independent midwives who have chosen career satisfaction over job security. We are on call 24 hours a day and can be reached easily, night or day. We share care of the clients we book, giving backup to each other to ensure good midwifery care.
Melody Weig, BGS, SCM, DHyp
I realised that I wanted to be a midwife while completing a degree in Women’s Studies in the USA. Having exhausted the possibilities for training in America, I left after finishing my degree to train in England, qualifying in 1979.
I came to independent midwifery in 1981 out of a passionate belief that getting to know a woman well by providing continuity of care was crucial to keeping the experience normal for her and her family. That belief has been realized many times over through years of satisfying work.
In the early ‘80’s I trained in homeopathy and baby massage. In 1985 I was a founding member and first secretary of the Independent Midwives Association (IMA), one of the organisers of the First International Home Birth Conference in 1987 and sole organiser in 1989 of the first national conference for the IMA, The Midwife as Practitioner: The Way Forward for Midwifery.
On my return to midwifery in the Unites States in the ‘90’s, I was vice president of the Iowa Midwives Association and chief lobbyist to the Iowa Assembly in our attempt to broaden the laws governing midwifery practice. While there, I trained in a method to assess the female pelvis externally. I returned to the UK in 2001.
I have lectured widely in England and abroad. Lectures and workshops have included such diverse topics as: breech birth; homoeopathy in pregnancy, childbirth and aftercare; alternatives to immunisation; the politics of midwifery; keeping birth normal; the importance of post-natal care; independent midwifery; assessing the pelvis; baby massage; suturing; and how to reduce the caesarean rate.
I qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist in 2004. I specialise in preparing women for labour and birth. I can also help people overcome phobias, stop smoking, lose weight, and to deal with various conditions and life transitions.
I am a mother and a member of the Royal College of Midwives, the Independent Midwives Association, the Association of Radical Midwives; and the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
My interests include tai chi, Buddhism, reading, dancing and travel. My son Alexei is now a young man working in London.
Emmanuelle Vallat, RM
I am a French midwife, having trained for four years in Belgium, where I discovered the joy of home birth and water birth. I then spent eight months in France as a midwife on the labour ward where I was disappointed by the ultra medicalisation of birth so decided to move overseas.
I worked for eighteen months on my own in New Caledonia, an isolated French island in the Pacific, where I provided antenatal care, home birth and postnatal care. In 2007, I worked in Africa for the Safe Motherhood Project at a humanitarian mission in Senegal.
These experiences confirmed to me that birth is a normal event in a woman’s life and that my role is to protect that experience. These experiences also confirmed to me that every woman has the ability to give birth and my place as a midwife is to help her find her own right way.
Now in England, I have decided to work as an independent midwife. I believe that one of the keys for a woman to find her way is a thoughtful relationship between her, her family and the midwife, with the midwife providing continuous support and individualised care. I am also finishing a postgraduate course at the University of Medecine in Paris, where I am learning foetal scanning.
I look forward to working with French women in particular as we speak the same language and this can be another way for her to relax in labour, speaking in her native tongue. And, of course, I will be happy to work with any woman, supporting her through finding her own right way.
When not working, my interests include travelling, reading philosophy, cooking and sports, and my mode of travel these days is on a bicycle.