A woman squatting in an inflatable tub releases a purposeful moan— followed by a deep, soft scream, as licensed Georgetown midwife Ashley Collie instructs the expecting mother to “Get your baby! Your baby’s in front of you. Get your baby.”
The mom swoops her baby up out of the water while dad comforts her from the other side.
“Oh my god, oh!” the mom said. Her baby releases a healthy, choking scream. A nurse in the background prepared the couple’s bed by placing a sheet of plastic painters drop sheet beneath a fitted sheet. Instead of rushing them to cut the umbilical cord, Ms. Collie allows the mom to hold the baby to her chest.
Haven Birth and Wellness is a pregnancy care and birth center that operates out of converted historic homes in Georgetown and west in Burnet. Ms. Collie owns the clinic.
“I think every woman deserves a midwife, truly,” Ms. Collie said. “We’re not just winging it, you know, we know what we’re doing. We maintain our certifications.”
The Georgetown clinic has a birthing suite, an exam room and an emergency “flex room” in case multiple women come in laboring at once. There are two midwives, two nurses and one student currently working between both Haven Birth and Wellness locations.
“I wanted it to feel as close to home without being home as possible,” Ms. Collie said. Her team offers home births if a client desires.
A mother herself, Ms. Collie had all three of her children in the hospital. However, she said she was disappointed by the impersonal “conveyor belt” style of deliveries. After arriving at the hospital to deliver her daughter, the doctor rushed her to get the induction so he could make his golf tee-time. Her appointments leading up to the birth were only a few minutes long and she wasn’t educated about how to take care of herself or her newborn baby.
“They were gonna react if needed, but there was not a lot of proactivity about things,” Ms. Collie said.
Her clinic’s check-in appointments with pregnant mothers are 45 minutes to an hour in length and go from monthly to weekly just like a traditional obstetrician. At the beginning of the pregnancy, Ms. Collie tests the mother’s vitamin levels and thyroid — evaluating her supplement and dietary needs. She then offers multiple birthing classes, including a two hour workshop with a pelvic floor therapist who demonstrates helpful positions and pelvic floor exercises. Birthing classes cover the appearance and sounds of labor and birth, coping mechanisms, breastfeeding and newborn care.
“The midwifery model of care versus the medical model is very different,” she said. “We trust and believe that childbirth, pregnancy and childbirth is a normal physiological event. It is not a condition or an illness. It is not something that needs to be highly managed and treated, unless it becomes that way.”
Ms. Collie only works with mothers who have low-risk pregnancies. She is very grateful for the medical system and considers them part of her team. In cases of gestational diabetes, she uses Austin Maternal Fetal Medicine to make sure the patient and their baby are doing well. She will ‘risk-out’ certain patients out of care if their pregnancy requires taking insulin or needs other medical intervention. Preeclampsia, issues with placenta or the baby’s growth will also ‘riskout’ patients.
“We want to make sure mom and baby are safe at all times,” she said. “I know that some would say, ‘Oh, well, ‘They should just be in a hospital.’ That is an opinion of some, and that is their absolute right to have that opinion. It is also a mother’s right to choose where and how she gives birth— and who cares for her.”
Before birth, Ms. Collie goes over what happens in the case of a mom needing to transfer to a hospital, but she said this is pretty rare. In 2025, 60 women gave birth between both of her locations and only 6 percent of them were risked-out during pregnancy or had to be transferred to a hospital during labor. The cesarean rate was 5 percent.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has supported access to midwifery care and integrating midwives into maternity care systems since 1971. The midwife model of birth appeals to some moms because they don’t have to be hooked up to monitors or have an IV. Every 15 minutes, the midwife checks the baby’s pulse using a Doppler machine. The midwife is available to the mom at all times during her birth, which isn’t the case with obstetricians who have multiple patients at once.
Women usually give birth within a few hours under Ms. Collie’s care. She can usually tell what stage of labor the woman is in by the tone of her voice. Her voice deepens as she shifts from coping with painful contractions to an involuntary pushing reflex— called spontaneous bearing down.
The most magical moment Ms. Collie has had while assisting a birth was helping a surrogate deliver. She was able to help the biological, receiving mother “catch” her baby as it was born. “It was really special,” she said.