Our Charis Family

Tammi McKinley

Midwife Tammi, holding newborn baby Daniel.
 Picture taken by his big sister, Maggie.
(Tammi wrote her intro  for us on her way to his birth.)
 

Hi, everyone!

I’d like to introduce myself,  I’m Tammi McKinley.

I am a wife of 12 years, and mom to 11 year old Regan and 8 year old Braeden. Regan was born by cesarean and Braeden was my HBAC (Home Birth After Cesarean). Today, I am a licensed CPM in Virginia.

In my 20's, I was moseying along on my road as a lead Program Analyst for a Navy agency up here in Arlington, VA. I have a Master’s degree in Public Administration. Although my mother is a nurse, my sister a NICU nurse, and my dad an EMT, I had decided not to pursue working in the health care field. Silly me! My cesarean birth of Regan woke me up, and I will be forever grateful for that. I became a doula, doing both birth and post partum doula care. When Braeden was but a few months old, I began my distance learning to become a CPM, under the wonderful guidance of Susan Oshel. I studied and nursed at the same time! I could gush on and on for days about what a wonderful teacher she is and continues to be in my life. Even though I’m a midwife, I don’t hesitate to call her when I have a question. She’s usually been there, done that and has gentle words of wisdom to share.

I became active in Virginia birth politics and helped get CPMs licensed (I wasn’t a CPM yet at the time). I continue to stay involved in problem solving for birth and midwifery wherever I can. Right now I’m working on initiating licensed CPMs as official TRICARE providers (one by one, TRICARE is taking this certified status away from CPMs, and the only way to fix this is to integrate  CPMs in their manual once and for all). Another of my projects came from noticing that, across the country, we really had a disconnect among homebirth information resources and  lacked a unified one place to turn. I've headed an organizational project to gather and record homebirth information, visit  homebirth-usa and you can help us build this site, too!

Right now, I am excited about Charis growing and honored to help Charis become incorporated, so that we can then go on to become an approved Florida midwifery school and onward toward MEAC approval. Yahoo! The one thing about my Navy work – I’m good at the nitty-gritty details and a dog at getting it done just right. My family and I are relocating from Arlington to Jupiter, Florida. My husband has quite a nice amount of family in that general area, I love the beach, and it is a great area to homeschool our children, so there you have it! We will be moving in November.

I love, love, love serving moms and babies at home. I learn something new from each mother and baby, from each birth.   It's indeed humbling.

I am also humbled by the work that Kristin and all of Charis is doing. I am honored to be able to support Charis in whatever way I can.

Thank you for taking time to read this. I look forward to getting to know all of you.

Tammi
 

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Two Year old Beth Thompson
(Beth is now almost 13 years old.)