Meet the Midwife

 

I’m a community based midwife, a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) since 2018, and a NJ Licensed Midwife (LM). Midwifery is my vocation, and I serve families with kindness, calm, and a sense of humor. I’m humbled to witness families grow and transform. I believe that what we do matters.

  • We offer personalized care and reject approaches that treat people as numbers or bundles of risk factors

  • We emphasize natural ways to nourish fertility and a healthy pregnancy and to correct imbalances early on

  • We take a functional approach to preconception, pregnancy and the postpartum, supporting you in feeling your best at all stages of life, as well as growing a healthy, thriving tiny human

  • We respect your body as an interconnected system nested within interconnected systems of family, community, ancestry, and society

  • We address the underlying factors to imbalance and dysfunction while celebrating the ways in which you’re thriving

  • We value your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing and resources

  • We value traditional wisdom as well as current, evidence-based practice, and strongly believe that great midwifery care provides the best of both

  • We work collaboratively with our network of compassionate medical providers and complementary medicine professionals to quickly connect our clients to support as needed

  • We value culturally sensitive care to serve many different families

My Story

Bismillah! In 2004 I was studying anthropology in New Orleans, and I particularly loved a course on the anthropology of sexuality and reproduction. We read a study on childbirth support in Mexican hospitals. I was struck not only by the better birth outcomes for the people who had doula support, but by the fact that even the women who labored alone but with a researcher taking notes behind a curtain had better outcomes than women who weren’t part of the study and were laboring completely alone. Just the fact that there was someone there with a woman through her labor made a difference.

Flash forward to 2009, when I was studying Arabic in Doha, Qatar. I met a doula named Sara, serving women in a medical system that did not value labor support. She lit a fire in me to make birthwork my own. In 2010 I trained with the doula support organization ToLabor in Boston and quickly plunged into the world of childbirth and grassroots reproductive health.

In 2013 I began my midwifery training with Womancraft Midwifery in Amherst, MA, and spent two years in an apprenticeship with Boston midwife Khadijah Cisse. In 2014, she was my midwife at my home birth. In 2018 I finished a second apprenticeship at the high-volume Concord Birth Center in Concord, NH, graduated from the MEAC accredited National Midwifery Institute with a Certificate in Midwifery, and received my Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) credential from the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM).

After a year of practice in New Hampshire, I relocated to New Jersey in the fall of 2019. I now serve the greater Philadelphia and Central/South Jersey area, providing compassionate care, connecting with community, and catching babes.

I strongly value continued learning from diverse perspectives and approaches, and expanding my own knowledge base. In 2026 I'm doing deep dives in functional medicine for maternity, breech birth skills, and attending the International Confederation of Midwives conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Among the many things I love to be and do, I'm a mother, a beekeeper, permaculture microfarmer, seeker, knitter, and avid reader. When I’m not at a birth, you'll find me foraging for mushrooms with my dog, growing persimmons, or reading dystopian novels.

Professional Training

  • Functional Maternity with Sarah Thompson, 2026
  • Birth Emergency Skills Training (BEST), 2020, 2024
  • Breech Without Borders, 2021, 2022, 2023
  • Spinning Babies, 2013, 2021
  • Concord Birth Center, clinical midwifery preceptorship, March 2017 - April 2018
  • National Midwifery Institute, 2016 – April 2018
  • Heart & Hands Midwifery Training, 2015 – 2016
  • Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss with Amy Wright Glenn, 2016
  • Womancraft Midwifery Training, 2013 – 2014
  • Boston School of Herbal Studies Apprenticeship Program, 2011 – 2013
  • HypnoBirthing Practitioner Training, 2011
  • Herbal Medicine for Women (Aviva Romm), 2011
  • ToLabor Childbirth Doula Training, 2010

Licensure & Certification

  • New Jersey Licensed Midwife 2019-present
  • Virginia Licensed Midwife 2025-present
  • New Hampshire Licensed Midwife 2018-2021
  • Certified Professional Midwife, National Association of Registered Midwives, 2018-present
  • Neonatal Resuscitation
  • Basic Life Support & CPR

Education

  • Certificate in Midwifery, National Midwifery Institute, 2018
  • Certificate in Religion and Education, Harvard Extension School, 2015
  • MA in Cultural Anthropology, Tulane University, 2008
  • BA in Middle East Studies and Anthropology, Tulane University, 2007

Teaching & Speaking

Anti-Oppression

Pregnancy and birth are places where systemic oppression, including but not limited to expressions of misogyny, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and colonization manifest. I believe that empowered and informed decision-making disrupts systemic oppression and returns agency to the individual and away from systems that--by design--fail many kinds of bodies and many kinds of families. These are our bodies, our families, our lives, our histories, our cultures, and our choices.

I recognize that individuals and families and communities are discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, age, religion, size, ability, gender identity, and more, and that this bias manifests in medical care. I am committed to providing sensitive and culturally appropriate care to all clients. Whenever possible and as desired, I try to co-create a birth team with my clients that reflects their identities.

Graduated Midwifery Apprentices

  • Jaci Bonanno 2025
  • Adina Hoffman 2025
  • Barbara Verneus 2024

Krystina Derrickson, CPM, NJ Licensed Midwife

 

Meet the Team

Jaci Bonanno, CPM LM

Jaci is a midwife and breastfeeding educator who also brings years of experience as a hospital L&D nurse. We attend birthday parties together in South Jersey and Pennsylvania. The “Jaci Protocol” will have you walking like Steve Urkel and hanging out in a Flying Cowgirl.

Adina Hoffman, CPM LM

Adina is a beloved community midwife, Spinning Babies and prenatal yoga instructor, and doula. I love listening to her figure out how she’s related to everybody. You’ll find us up all hours in the Lakewood, NJ area.