Birth & Midwifery in Costa Rica
RESOURCES FOR PARENTS AND PRACTITIONERS

Connect with many more midwives and birth enthusiasts from around the world by joining IAM, the International Alliance of Midwives!

Some of the following sites may not be in English; an online translator may be useful.

Midwifery Today Country Contact

Uva Meiner, Marie Tyndall and Nati Steverlynck

Uva Meiner is a direct entry homebirth midwife working out of her home-based office ("The Womb"). She has been involved with spiritual psychology, natural medicine (herbs, Flower essence therapy, homeopathy, hypnosis, etc.) which, along with water, are all tools on the way to a conscious birth. She is involved in helping women to become conscious about themselves, their bodies, their births and their babies. She has two apprentices, wonderful young women, dedicated to making a change.

Marie Tyndall is a midwife who has worked in diverse settings—from hospitals in Canada and England to rural communities in Iraq and Nicaragua. Originally from Canada, she now resides in Costa Rica where she works with her midwife partner Rebecca Turecky offering holistic homebirth and waterbirth services for intimate and gentle birth. Marie also teaches childbirth classes and works as a consultant for government health care services to help Costa Rica improve the care women receive in hospitals. Marie has been working for several years to support traditional midwives in Central America and currently has a project with a group of 20 traditional midwives in the north of Costa Rica. She can be contacted through her Web site: http://www.central-american-midwives.org/ which promotes the sale of a DVD she produced about traditional midwifery in Central America, the proceeds of which go to support the work of the midwives.

Nati Steverlynck, CPM, was born in Argentina and moved to Costa Rica in 1997, where she has been practicing midwifery since 2002. Nati has done intensive clinical practice at the hospital, birth center and home setting in Honduras, Texas and Costa Rica, and she is co-founder of Acompañando Mamás al Nacimiento (AMAN). Nati and Ansu Coto, a doula and massage therapist, offer a childbirth class in hypnobirthing. Nati is also a member of Women With Women (www.womenwithwomen.org), an organization that supports woman-centered maternity care in underserved populations around the world. She has a career in Arts and Ceramics and birth shows frequently in her art work.

To contact Uva Meiner, Marie Tyndall, Nati Steverlynck or any other Midwifery Today Country Contact, please log in to the International Alliance of Midwives (IAM), or write to the IAM administrator.

Birth/Midwifery

• Acompañando Mamás al Nacimiento

Parenting/Breastfeeding

• La Leche League (in English and Spanish)