Deirdre and Robin work together with you to give you personal, individualized and holistic care throughout your pregnancy, birth and postpartum.
We believe that pregnacy and birth are normal, healthy and transformational events in womens' lives. Our goal is to support your healthy pregnancy with information, education, monitoring, attentive listening, and nutritional and herbal counseling.
We think a team approach, with time to get to know your midwives together and individually, provides the best of one on one attention and group support. If you choose to work with us, we will come to your home for prenatal visits together, then rotate one midwife at a time, then back as a group, and so on... This way you get to know us, and we get to know you, as a team, and on an individual basis. Both of your midwives will attend you at your birth.
Please read our bios below and feel free to email or call us with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you! If you would like to schedule a no-charge conult visit, call or email either one of us with some possible good times to meet.
Deirdre Sulka/Meister, CPM started Open Circle Midwifery Services. She has been in practice as a midwife since 1995. Deirdre attended a program at an accredited midwifery school in El Paso, TX. This school combined didactic education with clinical experience in a high volume birth center. In addition to this formal education, Deirdre also apprenticed with a homebirth midwife in Texas and with traditional midwives in Mexico. In addition to being a midwife and home-herbalist, Deirdre is a mom to Violet who was born at home.
Robin Doolittle Illian, CPM
Robin has been a midwife in Maine since 2005. She began her training at Birthwise Midwifery School in 2002, and then worked in homebirth practices in California and Colorado before returning to Maine as a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). In addition to practicing homebirth midwifery, she is a midwife-owner at The Birth House, a freestanding birth center in Bridgton and is on faculty at Birthwise Midwifery School. Robin loves being able to offer women empowering choices in childbirth, and to be witness to the amazing and transformational journey that is pregnancy/birth/parenthood.
