The future begins with the way we are born.
The National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) is the membership organization representing Certified Professional Midwives (CPM) in the United States. Certified Professional Midwives provide unique and critical access to normal physiologic birth, profoundly benefitting childbearing people and their newborns. Founded in 2000, NACPM ensures a powerful, collective voice for Certified Professional Midwives. NACPM directs its influence toward improving outcomes for all childbearing people and their infants, investing in a strong racially, ethnically, and socially representative CPM workforce, and helping to drive urgently needed changes in the systems that care for birthing people in the U.S. today.
There was a time when birth was sacred, when women, birthing bodies, and babies were held with reverence, love, sacred care and ancestral wisdom. Birth is a ceremony rooted in song, nature, spirit, and community. The childbirth journey historically has been guided by midwives anchored with calm nervous systems who brought balance, harmony and ancestral knowing into homes and birthing rooms, who walked with medicine and care as healers, storytellers, and spiritual protectors, carrying the knowledge of generations in their bones, hands, and hearts.