NATALYA LUKIN

I have attended hundreds of births in very diverse locations, from big cities to isolated villages in the U.S., Mexico, and even Scotland. My philosophy is that birth is powerful, challenging, beautiful, transformative, and fundamentally a normal, healthy function of the human body. I believe that all woman and birthing persons have the right to give birth in safety, dignity, and power... I grew up in and around San Francisco as part of a multilingual, immigrant family. I owe my love of nature and science to my mother- an animal lover- and my paternal grandmother- a research physiologist. My first introduction to midwifery took place when I was 9 years old and my semi-feral cat went into labor on my lap. As an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, I majored in Environmental Studies: Agroecology, but along the way Women's Studies courses and exposure to homebirth and social justice movements sparked a passion for women's health. Then a dear friend invited me to her birth at UCSF and I found..