OUR APPROACH
Desert Rain Midwifery is a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) led homebirth practice offering highly individualized care for women and birthing people in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Our approach is focused on the whole person, and we are an evidence-based practice.
Working with Desert Rain Midwifery means care that is both deeply personal and clinically comprehensive. Your voice and lived experience are at the center of every decision. Care with us is grounded in the full scope expertise of Certified Nurse Midwives. You can expect transparency around risk, respect for your autonomy, and true discernment built on extensive experience in natural birth. From your first appointment through postpartum and beyond, you are supported by a provider who remains consistently present.
OUR PHILOSPHY
At Desert Rain Midwifery, we believe...
Women/individuals are the experts in their own body.
Birth is a normal, healthy, and powerful life event for a woman/birthing person and her family. The role of the midwife is to trust a woman’s/birthing person’s capability to birth her baby, provide a safe and individualized birthing environment free from unnecessary intervention, and recognize and manage deviations from the normal birth process with appropriate and safe interventions.
Breastfeeding provides optimal nutrition for babies and bestows numerous health benefits for mother and baby; health research is well-established on this. We encourage and support breastfeeding for all infants. We fully respect and support clients who do not wish to or cannot breastfeed.
Education is essential to excellent healthcare. We freely exchange knowledge, recommend and require educational classes, and encourage women to make informed decisions about their healthcare, contraception, childbirth options, and motherhood.
Current research and technology is extremely valuable in providing the best possible care when integrated with clinical expertise and client values; these components together comprise evidence-based care.
Shared decision-making is critical to safe community birth. Both client and midwife assume responsibility for decision-making and the consequences of those decisions.
Compassionate midwifery care for women throughout their lifecycles, especially during childbirth, has a substantial and beneficial effect on the family and society as a whole.
CORE VALUES
Every client is known, not just seen. We take time to build genuine relationships — listening deeply, respecting individuality, and working collaboratively with each person we serve.
As a CNM-led practice, we bring advanced medical training and evidence-based expertise to every appointment and every birth, while remaining grounded in natural birth. Safety and integrity are the foundation everything else is built on.
We see and attend to the full picture of each client: their physical health, emotional wellbeing, personal history, past trauma, and existing medical context.
We believe women and birthing people deserve to be heard, respected, and empowered in their own birth experience. This starts with providers being self-aware and reflective. We advocate fiercely for our clients, honor their boundaries, and support their right to make informed decisions about their bodies and their births.
Desert Rain Midwifery is proud to be both a women-centered practice and an inclusive and safe space for all birthing people. We are committed to serving the full diversity of our New Mexico community, bridging gaps in access, and building a practice where everyone who walks through our door feels seen, respected, and genuinely welcome.
OUR HISTORY
Desert Rain Midwifery came to be when Dar a Luz Birth and Health Center, New Mexico's only accredited birth center, discontinued its labor and birth services. Our founder, Eliza, chose to leave Dar a Luz’s beloved group of midwives to create Desert Rain Midwifery in 2026 to ensure New Mexicans have an option to receive CNM care in a community birth setting.
Our name, Desert Rain Midwifery, was chosen with intention. In New Mexico, rain is life-giving, valued, and a respite from the dry. Rain here is a visceral experience - it brings fresh scent on dry earth, sparkly drops falling through sunlight, moody blues and grays, flashes of lightning and deep rolls of thunder, shifts from breezes to gusts, trickles that turn to floods, changes in temperature, tender shoots of green that sprout upon the calming. Desert rain can fall gentle and soothing; it can be torrential and dangerous; it can overwhelm; it can comfort. Desert rain is often brief, intense, and almost always welcomed. It is natural and needed. Desert Rain comes when it will, honors its own rhythms, is truly a force of nature.
Becoming a parent and giving birth share endless qualities with desert rain. So too, does receiving attuned midwifery care; care of this kind can feel like rain quenching the desert’s thirst. Desert Rain Midwifery seeks to provide this care and serve as a respite amidst our culture’s increasingly medicalized health care model. We respect the force of nature that is birth; we walk with you and help you navigate your way through, safely.
ABOUT OUR NAME
Our name, Desert Rain Midwifery, was chosen with intention. In New Mexico, rain is life-giving, valued, and a respite from the dry. Rain here is a visceral experience - it brings fresh scent on dry earth, sparkly drops falling through sunlight, moody blues and grays, flashes of lightning and deep rolls of thunder, shifts from breezes to gusts, trickles that turn to floods, changes in temperature, tender shoots of green that sprout upon the calming. Desert rain can fall gentle and soothing; it can be torrential and dangerous; it can overwhelm; it can comfort. Desert rain is often brief, intense, and almost always welcomed. It is natural and needed. Desert Rain comes when it will, honors its own rhythms, is truly a force of nature.
Becoming a parent and giving birth share endless qualities with desert rain. So too, does receiving attuned midwifery care; care of this kind can feel like rain quenching the desert’s thirst. Desert Rain Midwifery seeks to provide this care and serve as a respite amidst our culture’s increasingly medicalized health care model. We respect the force of nature that is birth; we walk with you and help you navigate your way through, safely.
My own experiences of becoming a mother called me to midwifery. My two children, now young adults, are the sparks for so much of my learning and their births were no exception. My son was born in a hospital with a physician and my daughter was born at home with a midwife. These journeys changed me; from them I learned that birth is a rite of passage, experienced in relationship, that affects the entirety of a person.
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As a midwife I am rooted in the rich ground of natural birth. I seek to meet clients where they are, helping them tune into their own knowing while providing holistic and individualized care. This care includes presence, deep listening, guidance, action, and advocacy as the situation dictates. Often my most important work is not getting in the way of the dance of a woman’s own rhythms. When something is veering from normal, I attend to it with the respect it deserves. Honoring personal autonomy and choice throughout the childbearing year (and all other years before and after) are fundamental human rights upon which my work rests.
My formal education and training are extensive. I hold a master’s degree in Nurse-Midwifery, a bachelor’s degree in Nursing, and a master’s degree in English – all from the University of New Mexico. I also hold a bachelor’s degree in Literature from American University in Washington, DC. For 18 years, I have helped people have their babies in a variety of roles: as a childbirth educator trained in the Birthing From Within model; as co-director of an educational and doula birth cooperative; as an apprentice to homebirth midwives in Oregon and New Mexico; as a doula to clients birthing in home and hospital; as a birth assistant to midwives in home and birth center births; and as a CNM in community birth. Prior to opening Desert Rain Midwifery, I spent three wonderful years as a full-time midwife at Dar a Luz Birth and Health Center in Albuquerque. I have been a CNM since 2023.
When not actively engaged in midwifery, I enjoy reading, writing, knitting, watching women’s soccer, swimming in the ocean, hiking in the aspens, traveling, laughing with my husband and kids, and snuggling my cats. As a born-and-raised New Mexican, it brings me true joy to build relationship with clients and serve my community as a midwife. I look forward to serving you.
ABOUT OUR FOUNDER
Eliza Serna, CNM
My own experiences of becoming a mother called me to midwifery. My two children, now young adults, are the sparks for so much of my learning and their births were no exception. My son was born in a hospital with a physician and my daughter was born at home with a midwife. These journeys changed me; from them I learned that birth is a rite of passage, experienced in relationship, that affects the entirety of a person. As a midwife I am rooted in the rich ground of natural birth. I seek to meet clients where they are, helping them tune into their own knowing while providing holistic and individualized care. This care includes presence, deep listening, guidance, action, and advocacy as the situation dictates. Often my most important work is not getting in the way of the dance of a woman’s own rhythms. When something is veering from normal, I attend to it with the respect it deserves. Honoring personal autonomy and choice throughout the childbearing year (and all other years before and after) are fundamental human rights upon which my work rests. My formal education and training are extensive. I hold a master’s degree in Nurse-Midwifery, a bachelor’s degree in Nursing, and a master’s degree in English – all from the University of New Mexico. I also hold a bachelor’s degree in Literature from American University in Washington, DC. For 18 years, I have helped people have their babies in a variety of roles: as a childbirth educator trained in the Birthing From Within model; as co-director of an educational and doula birth cooperative; as an apprentice to homebirth midwives in Oregon and New Mexico; as a doula to clients birthing in home and hospital; as a birth assistant to midwives in home and birth center births; and as a CNM in community birth. Prior to opening Desert Rain Midwifery, I spent three wonderful years as a full-time midwife at Dar a Luz Birth and Health Center in Albuquerque. I have been a CNM since 2023. When not actively engaged in midwifery, I enjoy reading, writing, knitting, watching women’s soccer, swimming in the ocean, hiking in the aspens, traveling, laughing with my husband and kids, and snuggling my cats. As a born-and-raised New Mexican, it brings me true joy to build relationship with clients and serve my community as a midwife. I look forward to serving you.
Ready to get started with evidence-based, whole-person care?