Certified Nurse Midwife & Co-Founder

Hi! I’m Corinne, but people close to me call me Corrie, and I use they/them pronouns. My journey to midwifery started with an interest in reproductive rights, and I initially intended to pursue a future as a Nurse Practitioner, but knew I had to enter birth work when I attended my first birth. I earned my Master of Science degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing and haven’t stopped learning and growing as a clinician dedicated to improving perinatal and reproductive health.

I spent my first several years as a midwife working in hospitals to gain experience, but I left hospital midwifery in 2017 to the community birth world and haven’t looked back. While I treasure all I learned in the hospital setting, I always had a passion for physiologic birth and did not mesh well with the rampant medicalization of birth and recurrent traumas I witnessed. I have since worked for other home birth practices and at a freestanding birth center, and finally in 2023, I had the opportunity to launch Birth Roots.

I wanted to start this practice because I saw a need for truly client-centered midwifery care that prizes not only client autonomy in birth through evidence-based practice, but also leads with a loving and trauma-informed approach. Too often, the relationship between midwife and client is constrained by the needs of a practice that is in network with insurance, leading to short appointment times, overbooking the midwives; or focused on serving such a broad swath of clients that the most marginalized are left behind. Further, as a gender non-conforming birth worker and parent myself, I have long been an advocate for a gender-inclusive approach to birth and birth work, and I knew that practicing with integrity would mean being loud about being a practice for ALL birthing people.

I love birth, but I especially love physiologic birth – which is why I have been practicing as a community midwife since 2017. While I value the experiences I gained as a hospital-based midwife, I thrive in an environment where the default is that birth is a normal, physiologic event in someone’s intimate life. Home birth is where the birthing person and their family are at the center of the experience – the team comes to you, and you get to focus on laboring in the comfort of your own home, while the team is there exclusively to support your process and experience. It’s always a deep honor to be invited to any aspect of someone’s healthcare, but especially to be welcomed into someone’s home for that most transformative experience that is birth. I treat that invitation with the utmost respect and always endeavor to bring my best, most loving and present self (professional, too, but not in that unfeeling, sterile way that “professional” evokes!) to every birth.

While I treasure the relationships I build with clients through their prenatal and birth experiences, and I get so sad when the frequent pace of meeting with clients ends after that last official postpartum visit – I maintain connections with the people I serve across the reproductive lifespan. My whole-person approach extends to preconception, adolescent, well person, reproductive health, family planning, mental health, and gender-affirming care.

While I'm on call 24/7 for my clients, in my spare time, I am an avid sourdough baker, pretty low-key native plant gardener, adventurous hiker, and a proud mamx to an awesome pre-teen (born at home with the support of a midwife!). I make my home in Oak Park and nurture and prize my community here and beyond.