Welcome to our Oasis!
As Richmond, VA’s leading waterbirth center we offer a ‘home-away-from-home’ sanctuary where you can bring your little one into the world safely and gently.
EXPERIENCED:
Licensed and Nationally Board Certified Midwives
Safe:
An evidenced-based and natural approach
Compassionate:
Empowering support and care you’ll adore!
We believe your birth should be so much more than just getting your baby safely into this world.
Your experience of this birth will stay with you for a lifetime. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event you can’t do over, and how you birth your baby matters.
What if it could be an empowering and transformative experience that helps you remember your inner strength and the superhero you really are?!
If you’re looking for a birth that feels joyful, sacred, beautiful, comforting, and fun, instead of clinical, sterile, and fear-inducing, then you’ve come to the right place!
If you’re looking for a care team that will feel like family, deeply listen to you, and greet you with a big, warm hug, then you’re going to want to book a tour with us to witness it firsthand.
The Embrace model of care
We’re specialists in combining all the safety you need with all the warm fuzzy pieces you want.
We bring together the timeless wisdom of midwifery with modern care, wrapped in a judgment-free environment that celebrates your right to autonomy and choice. Our holistic care honors your experiences, respects your choices, and celebrates your journey to motherhood.
We will honor and respect your individuality, needs, and preferences.
We are an inclusive space that recognizes that families come in many shapes and sizes. Your birth partner could be a husband, partner, grandma-to-be, best friend, aunty…Whoever your partner is, we understand their importance. Everyone is welcome at every visit, every time (including your kids!) We ensure the whole family’s experience is filled with warmth, compassion, and respect.
You bring ALL of you: your ancestry, race, religion, culture, and a lifetime of lived experiences and we will bring our wisdom alongside current information and evidence.
Meet the Team
that believes birth should not be a battle.
We believe birth should be a calm, peaceful, gentle, respectful process that lets you focus on listening to your body and letting nature do its work while being kept safe and supported by women who believe in you.
Marie Meakin
Owner & Clinical Director, Senior Midwife, Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM)
Cierra Hossle
Student Midwife
Addie Herschler
Office Manager
Corina Hossle
Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) and Licensed Midwife (LM).
Although most people in America are still birthing in hospitals, a growing number are looking for something different.
Women need safety, but they want a birth that honors the profound journey of bringing life into the world too.
Prenatal care in America is a long series of impersonal medical appointments and procedures. It is normal to birth in a hospital room full of strangers, with bright lights and strange sounds.
Instead of feeling like the main character in her own birth story, a woman may find herself feeling like a passive observer.
• Everyone can envision the epiduraled mother
• her partner watching TV
• the nurse watching the monitor
• the doctor pushing protocols and interventions
• in a brightly lit room full of wires and beeping.
This mother often no longer has access to her own instincts and desires. The doctor will deliver her baby, but she may not feel like she gave birth.
For some women, choosing midwifery care is a deliberate step of defiance —
off the patriarchal conveyor belt of modern medicine, a decision to reclaim ownership of one’s birth experience.
You might have found your way to us out of desire to not have to fight for your choices.
You may desire a water birth, or to not have a male provider, or to lower the chance you will need a caesarean birth.
You might come to us so wounded with the trauma of a previous birth that you cannot imagine going back to that system, unless there is an emergency.
Most find us after doing days, weeks, months, years of research around childbirth and know that for low risk women, midwifery and birth center care is our safest route.
Above all, choosing Embrace is a woman’s clear desire for a birth experience that balances evidence based care and safety with choice and intuition.
At Embrace, women find a place to feel heard, supported, and respected, where the profound journey of birthing their baby is integrated seamlessly with the clinical care of midwifery expertise.
No matter if you have had no babies yet, or 10, every woman deserves a midwife!
My life’s calling is to help families birth babies with midwifery care that is evidenced based, inclusive and welcoming.
But it’s so much more than just me…our whole team is here for you and your family!
One family, one baby, one day at a time, we are changing the world. We all have seen the huge difference love, support, respect and choice make and we all believe that.
Every Woman Deserves a Midwife
It’s why we became midwives and it’s why we are passionate about women’s health care.
We have witnessed hundreds of mothers and babies…and we would love to help you too.
Let's Create Your Beautiful Birth Story!
KEEP READING TO DISCOVER MORE
Water Births
Women sink into a tub full of warm water, and everything changes. It’s MAGIC.
About Embrace
Meet the Embrace team and discover just how different your beautiful birth could be.
Midwifery Care
Whether you’re birthing at our center or the hospital, our midwives can help!