My name is Julia and I was born at home, in my grandparents’ bed in upstate NY. I grew up in Woodstock and studied sociology at Smith College.

During my senior year I traveled to Guatemala to work at a birth center in Antigua, where I attended my first birth. I was blown away by the power and transformative nature of birth for all who are lucky enough to be a part of the process. I knew immediately that I had to become a midwife!

After graduating from Smith, I moved to the Bay Area in California. I got my nursing degree at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, CA and took a job as an ER nurse.

When life and love brought me back to the east coast I worked as a nurse in a number of different settings including another ER in Brooklyn, an elementary school in Pine Plains, a summer camp in Vermont and a large OB-GYN practice in lower Manhattan. 

When I decided it was time to become a midwife, I choose the midwifery program at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY. I was the only student in my class to opt for a home birth setting for my residency. I came back to the Hudson Valley to study under the exceptional River and Mountain Midwives in New Paltz. I earned my Masters of Science in Nursing and Midwifery in 2012.

Following my graduation, I took a brief hiatus from healthcare, moved to the desert town of Moab, UT and learned to build straw-bale houses. After swinging by northern California to attend the birth of my goddaughter, I found my way back to Woodstock and took a position with Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, NY as a full scope midwife—providing prenatal, birth, postpartum and GYN care to women of all ages. I spent 7 years with that practice during which time I had two homebirths of my own.

When CMH decided to close its birth center, I decided it was time to return to my true passion of homebirth and open a practice of my own; thus MoonSong was born.

Today I live in Woodstock with my partner Rob, my children Auggie and Joy, and my father “Grandpa” Bob.