No. In New York State Licensed Midwives are independent practitioners. We can prescribe, diagnose, treat, and do procedures just like physicians. You don’t need to see a doctor during your pregnancy, and there won’t be a doctor at the birth. In a low risk pregnancy you might never meet with a doctor at all!

If needed we will refer you to an appropriate specialist (Maternal Fetal Medicine, Hematology, Endocrinology, etc), but the majority of your care will continue with us. If you’ve been getting care with another practice (with ObGyns or midwives) prior to starting with Cosmos Midwifery, you’ll completely transfer your care to us during the pregnancy.

We can, and will, offer all of these things to you as well. Blood work and other testing is done in our office. We have an ultrasound machine in our office as well, which we use to confirm a pregnancy or confirm that a baby is head down, for example. For diagnostic ultrasounds (such as the 20 week anatomy scan) we refer you to an ultrasound clinic that accepts your insurance.

No. Though Jenna and Chloë have both practiced in hospitals in the past, this practice currently only attends births in your home (or friends’ home or hotel).

No. Neither Jenna nor Chloë have admitting privileges at any of the NYC hospitals. We will accompany you to the hospital to support a smooth transfer, and continue to provide your care once you have been discharged from the hospital, including all normal postpartum home visits.

We choose which hospital to transfer to based on where you live and why we need to transfer. Our goal is always to facilitate a midwife-to-midwife transfer so that we’re handing you off to midwives that will care for you with all the passion and understanding that we do.

In 2022:
Total clients planning homebirth: 37
Births at home: 28
Transferred before labor: 7 (18%)
Transferred during labor: 2 (6.6%)
Water births: 8 (28.6%)
Cesarean: 2 (6.25%)

In 2023:
Total clients planning homebirth: 54
Births at home: 45
Transferred before labor: 4 (7.4%)
Transferred during labor: 5 (10%)
Water births: 13 (25%)
Cesarean: 4 (8%)

Yes! We love doulas. We strongly encourage working with one, especially for our clients having their first baby. We don’t employ or provide doula services, but we have a list of favorites and as we get to know you we can make recommendations for doulas we think you would click with.

Yes, we have a few.
- Tests at the beginning of the pregnancy: blood type, iron level, and STI testing
- Gestational Diabetes Screening: we have many options for how to do this screen, we just require some kind of screening for Gestational Diabetes
- 20 week anatomy ultrasound
- Childbirth education classes: this is only a requirement for people having their first baby, though everyone is welcome to take childbirth classes

We are well trained in catching breech babies, however we do not plan breech births at home. If we know ahead of time that your baby is in breech position (bottom down), we’ll make alternate plans.

Yes! In fact we almost never cut the cord before the placenta is born, and even then it’s usually 1-2 hours after the birth that we actually cut the cord!

We take turns being either on call or in the office. The on-call midwife attends births with a Birth Assistant, who will occasionally be the other midwife. If the office midwife is unavailable, however, the on-call midwife will bring one of our team of Birth Assistants.

We work out-of-network with all insurances. We have a fantastic medical billing team who work incredibly hard to get all of our clients' births covered by their insurance, including Medicaid. This almost always works out quite well and you’ll find most, if not all of our fee is covered.