A BIT OF HISTORY: After 20 years attending births, first as a doula and then as a homebirth midwife, Katherine Bramhall carefully surveyed available choices in maternity care providers and settings in both Vermont and New Hampshire. What she found was that available choices were filled with gaps, and options were rapidly dwindling for low-risk, healthy families. Not everyone felt comfortable with homebirth and many wanted another choice besides a hospital.
Additionally, she held a deep belief that every individual deserves access to quality, equitable, and respectful maternity care. The recent consolidation and closing of maternity units all over the region left the Upper Valley community and beyond with limited choices for care.
The clear solution was to create a new choice in maternity care: an independent, midwife-led, freestanding birth center in a region of the Upper Valley where there remained no other choice but a large hospital for families to get low-intervention care for their low-risk pregnancy.
Gentle Landing Birth Center is a free-standing, independent, midwife-led birth center and is based on the need that we all want to be seen and cared for as a whole person; that our health exists within the context of our entire life history. Gentle Landing Midwifery and Birth Center holds this wholeness as essential to uncompromising health care. We are deeply committed to caring for you from this position.
Why a birth center
nice to meet you!
Katherine Bramhall
midwife (LMvt, NHCM)
Katherine Bramhall is a certified professional midwife, licensed in Vermont and New Hampshire. She is a graduate of a nationally accredited midwifery school and has practiced home birth midwifery in Vermont and New Hampshire since 2008. She blends her philosophy of kindness and acceptance with her depth of knowledge and life experience to provide gentle, peaceful and safe home birth midwifery care.
Katherine blends over 30 years of birth experience in a wide variety of settings and situations, a compassionate heart, deep listening and a scientific mind to offer comprehensive, creative and individualized care to each family she is blessed to work with. She is a fierce advocate for informed choice, committed partnership in care and evidence-based midwifery.
Katherine has worked for years to establish peaceful, collaborative relationships with health care providers all over the state of Vermont and New Hampshire, including hospitals, obstetricians, pediatricians, naturopathic doctors, nurse midwives, family doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and much more, so that if the need arises, a family's care can be collaborative and/or transferred in a peaceful and respectful way.
Katherine served on the Vermont Maternal Mortality Review Board for 4 years and is past-President of the Vermont Midwives Association from 2018 - 2021.
In 2004, in response to the Bam, Iran earthquake, Katherine began her intensive years of disaster relief work, focusing on the long-term effects of trauma on family and maternal/child health systems. In addition to Iran, her relief work has taken her to Russia, Aceh and Bali Indonesia, New York City, post-Katrina Louisiana and Haiti. She is the founder and President of Bumi Sehat Foundation International in the US. Katherine developed and served as the director/organizer of the student midwife program at the Bali, Indonesia birth clinic until its closure in 2014. She traveled to Bali each year as a volunteer midwife, fundraiser and a US liaison until 2018.
Bumi Sehat Foundation International has been an integral part of Katherine's midwifery and humanitarian service work since January 2006. Bumi Sehat is a non-profit, village-based organization that runs two by-donation community health centers in Bali and Aceh, Indonesia, with a mission to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality and to support the health and wise development of communities. Katherine's role has evolved from midwife volunteer to also include creating a student midwife program, international doula training, and serving as President of the U.S. office. In 2011, midwife Robin Lim of Bumi Sehat was nominated for and won the CNN Hero of the Year Award, and Katherine has been deeply involved in Bumi Sehat's unfolding path as the organization becomes internationally known, funded, and loved.
In early 2010 Katherine co-founded and served as Director at the Bumi Sehat birth clinic in post-earthquake Haiti. She worked closely with the Haitian Minister of Health in Jacmel, delivered babies to earthquake-affected women and capacity-built Haitian healthcare workers and midwives on safe maternal/child practices.
"My daughter Katherine is one of my four children. She grew up in a cabin in the woods in upstate New York in farm country. Living in the woods kept Katherine close to nature and as a result, she became self-sufficient and strong in body, mind and spirit. She was bright in school and spent a great deal of time outside, riding horses, walking, skiing and gardening.
When she was 15 she volunteered at a hospital for the summer. That began her life of caring for people.
Katherine got married and birthed two of her own daughters. She and their father raised them together on a lot of land and home schooled them. During that time she trained for and became a Polarity Practitioner and started a private practice in her home. My daughter has an overflowing abundance of compassion and can't not take care of people. She is a natural caregiver and has been since she was young. She is calm and strong in a crisis, upbeat, optimistic and warm. And she is always learning. She never stops learning."
About Me....From My Mom
"My own birth history includes a midwife-attended labor, with my first daughter born via cesarean birth, and a successful VBAC for my second baby born 13 months later.
I went into my VBAC trial of labor knowing that my body and spirit were strong and had healed sufficiently to birth as it naturally knew how.
I hold that knowledge and hope for all women."
-Katherine
Ali and Devin running from bedtime
Moriah Pena
Senior midwifery student
Moriah is a senior midwife student at Gentle Landing. She joined our team in 2022. Moriah has a gentle tender nature and a natural sense for the midwifery model of care.
Moriah has a huge interest in homebirth. She assists with clinic during the week and attends births alongside Katherine.
Ada White
Admin Assistant, Birth Assistant, doula
Ada is the Administrator/Office Manager and Birth Assistant at Gentle Landing. You can catch her in the office, over the phone, as well as in a birth room.
Ada is also a birth doula who has been providing care to NH and VT families for over a year. She discovered her passion for birth after her own birthing experience at a freestanding birth center in Alaska.
Ada also offers birth photography and birth art, dedicating herself to ensuring women have the birth experience they want and the memorabilia to cherish after.
Emily McNamara
Nutrition Consultant
Emily McNamara joined our team as Functional Nutritional Therapist in June 2025. She loves to puzzle together the root cause of people's symptoms, taking a holistic approach to affect lasting change.
Clients at Gentle Landing Midwifery can expect two to three sessions with Emily reviewing their daily food intake to build a nutrient dense toolkit, optimizing digestion, hydration, blood sugar regulation, healthy fat, and mineral handling.
Her main goal in working together is to create a shared space to ask questions and discover answers of how to best nourish each individual's pregnancy journey, postpartum, and beyond!
To learn more about Emily and her private offerings, visit buddingnourishment.com
Melinda Ricker
Birth Assistant
Peiper Thomas
Admin Assitant, Birth Assitant
Peiper works as a birth assistant at Gentle Landing. She also provides all-aound clinical and administrative support. After working at Gentle Landing in the summer of 2023, Peiper has returned to continue her education in client-centered healthcare. She hopes to apply her growing experience in evidence-based, empowered perinatal, antepartum, and postpartum care to a career in nurse midwifery.
Maria Lord
Student Midwife/Birth Assistant
"Community birth has been my passion since I found out I was pregnant with my first, twelve years ago. I’ve birthed all four of my babies in free standing birth centers and have loved the care and support I’ve received. Women are so strong and deserve to be heard, especially in a birth room. Compassionate, evidenced-based, and thorough care is what every family should have in this beautiful time of transition. I am eager to continue learning from Katherine and Moriah, and to share an extra added measure of love to the mix." -María
"I feel like given the choice, I could never go back to a hospital setting. Nothing prepared me for how beautiful and calm (amidst the birth chaos) my birth would truly be at the birth center."
"The wisdom, love, and years of experience that the Gentle Landing midwives bring to their clients is unlike any other experience you will have in this area. My husband and I always felt heard, seen, respected, and loved when it came to our care throughout this pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Bringing a baby into your life is so much more than the physical act of pregnancy and birth, it’s about your life and your family and the well being of all members in it."
"I knew right away when I found out I was pregnant that I wanted a more personal experience than what is afforded to women opting to have routine checkups. The midwives are approachable, knowledgeable, nurturing and do an amazing job helping you journey into parenthood."
"...I also appreciate fully, the intimate care and regard the midwives gave me, from encouraging my full openness to my emotions, physical experience and all realms of energetic health and well-being. I feel better prepared on this journey as they’ve walked along with me."
"The midwives were amazing during my birth experience. They not only helped me birth my baby, but they nurtured my soul as well. The midwives at Gentle Landing give the whole woman care, not only physical care, but spiritual care. I couldn't have been happier with my birth experience."
"There are so many wonderful things I can say about my birth experience at Gentle Landing, but I think the best way to sum up the love, grace, tenderness, and wisdom is to simply say this: they almost make me want to have a third child, just to be able to visit with them more often... almost!"
"Working with Gentle Landing has been an absolute dream. I appreciate that they are both supporting and loving while also confident and matter of fact. It is clear they live for what they do, making sure clients are well-informed and supporting women in their birth choices once they have all the facts from every standpoint. Thank you for all that you do and for standing up for women, their bodies and their choices."
"I've never known someone so briefly and loved so deeply as the midwives at Gentle Landing. Ever. Thank you for your lovely card for my baby's birthday. I will always, in all ways, be thankful that your hands gave her to me."
"I came to the midwives at Gentle Landing a couple of months pregnant with my second child. They gave me not only excellent prenatal care in a medical sense but also gave me courage and rallied community support for me in becoming a single mother to my new baby. They were always available for any questions or needs I had and provided amazing support during labor for pain relief/management. I feel blessed to have had them attend the birth of my beautiful daughter."
"We are so lucky to have found your practice. The peaceful and loving demeanor at the birth center is contagious. You-all helped me be incredibly confident in labor, and I know my husband would have had a very hard time without your support of him. In the end, even though I had to go to the hospital for my birth, your strength beside us reinforced our optimism, patience and courage which gave us such a positive start in our lives and our new family."
"The team at Gentle Landing were like angels tending to all that needed tending to... so that I could labor. I had nothing to worry about but birthing and welcoming our newest little one into our lives. Once you have your baby in your arms, they literally tuck you in with your family and tend to EVERY detail. Thank God for this Choice in Birth."
"The midwives listened with such skill and intuition; they connected with our entire family, not just me and baby. Many friends back home were so uncertain when they heard we were planning a birth center birth, and I just couldn't explain how I had never felt more safe. "You just need to meet these midwives...you would totally understand," I said time and time again."
"I arrived at Gentle Landing at seven months pregnant. My partner and I were brand new to the Upper Valley. Our sweet boy was born peacefully and respectfully at the Birth Center after just a few short hours of labor. Our family is wholly impressed and forever touched by the love and care we received from our midwives!"
"As a first time mother, I could not have asked for better care in my pregnancy, birthing and motherhood journey. I feel extremely lucky to be part of the Gentle Landing family.."
