Ep 46 Has Midwifery Changed? With Sara Edwards CNM

Dr. Sara Edwards has devoted her 35-year career to transforming nurse-midwifery
research, education, and clinical practice caring for women before, during and after pregnancy and birth. She is also a nurse researcher examining how the mother’s gut microbiome health impacts fetal and maternal health. Over her career, caring for tens of thousands of women and delivering 3000 babies, she noticed that women have frequent issues which she also experienced during her two pregnancies. Issues such as poor sleep, exhaustion, brain fog, rapid weight gain, poor digestion, heightened stress at work and at home, often lead to or coexist with anxiety and depressed mood. She sought to understand this all better, so she began her pioneering research of the maternal brain-gut axis and gestational weight gain in the perinatal population most atrisk, Black women and their infants. This NIH-funded and published research has the power to improve the lives of millions, particularly Black women, who are 3.5 times more
likely to suffer perinatal complications and death compared to U.S. White women.
Throughout 20 years as a clinical professor at Emory University, her work extended to research protocols, educational programs, and multidisciplinary practices worldwide, enhancing the global visibility of nursing science. Her extensive clinical leadership in various practice settings, including as a founding midwife of the Atlanta Birth Center and now in solo practice at Pregnancy and Wellness Maui, together with her academic acumen have informed her work at the state, national and international levels. In Spring 2024, she launched a free preeclampsia screening app she co-designed called Materna BP, available for iOS and android phones. Today, Sara is CEO and founder of Sara Edwards Wellness, an online perinatal health coaching business for women wanting evidence-based support and guidance for an empowered pregnancy, strong baby, and a transformative labor and birth. What she has learned is that the fundamentals are key to robust health and these truths are largely ignored, if not undermined, by healthcare practitioners today. High tech interventions are not what promotes health or saves lives in most cases, rather the time-honored truths of eating and living well lead to the greatest degree of flourishing. She looks forward to sharing these truths which form the basis of her signature program, The Pregnancy Protocol.

Sara Edwards LLC Instagram https://www.instagram.com/saraedwardsllc

Sara Edwards Coaching Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/saraedwardscoaching/

The Optimized Health in Pregnancy Facebook Community
https://www.facebook.com/groups/384818263924730/?rdid=h9boBD0rBsh62qO9&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2FKtd6JP9BkakNvZfP%2F

“What You Won’t Learn in Your Regular Prenatal Appointments” Pregnancy
Preparedness Guide: Top 3 Strategies for a Healthy Pregnancy (Free guide)https://pages.saraedwards.co/free-guide-1


Pregnancy Mentorship Call (Free 45-minute private phone consultation with Sara) https://pages.saraedwards.co/calendar