Our Team
Kate Paxton, CNM, CPM
Hello, I’m Kate and midwifery is my life’s work. After a decade of births in hospitals, birth centers, and homes, and inspired by my own delightful homebirth, I’m coming home to homebirth! I founded Lantern Midwifery in 2022 to provide a unique model of midwifery that centers on somatic health and optimizing every birth for the most ideal experience. Prior to attending my first Midwifery Program, I worked as a doula & a midwife’s assistant in Post-Katrina New Orleans. I experienced births in homes and hospitals and helped families navigate birth with minimal resources. I saw the differences in how birth was managed by midwives and obstetricians. It solidified my understanding of midwifery as the best model of care for supporting normal, healthy pregnancies.
Training
I attended Columbia University’s Midwifery Program in New York, graduating in 2010 and beginning practice in 2011. I worked in a group hospital-based midwifery practice in Arizona for several years, honing my skills with a team of CNM’s and Obstetricians - doing everything from helping with prenatal care to catching babies to first-assisting in Cesarean surgical births. My next practice was an in-hospital birth center in Louisiana and my love for natural birth truly blossomed here. The Pharmacy Museum asked me to curate an exhibit on Midwifery in Louisiana and you can visit it next time you’re in the French Quarter. I finally reached my goal of working out of hospital with Babymoon Inn Birth Center in Arizona from 2018 - 2022 and obtained my second midwifery certification with my CPM. My sweet midwife colleagues supported me during the simple homebirth of my child, which became a new lesson in birth and mothering.
Approach
My personal midwifery craft is a combination careful listening along with attentive assessment, study of evidence based care and experiential wisdom. I love practicing midwifery and especially working at a sustainable, calm pace! I'm committed to providing affirming care that celebrates people of all different backgrounds - be that ethnicity, race, gender, faith, body size, trauma background, or substance history - you will receive non-judgmental, kind, attentive care in my office.
I love to help people accomplish their goals by working in a collaborative space - whether that’s planning for motherhood, natural birth, sobriety, getting anxiety under control or just maintaining health - that’s my jam. You carry the expertise on your body and I bring my clinical expertise and experience. I look forward to getting to know you, to helping you along on your life journey and to seeing positive outcomes in your life whatever those may be.
Leah Conquorgood
Hi! I’m Leah Conquorgood, nice to meet you! Ask my closest friends, and maybe some strangers, and you'll discover that I LOVE talking birth. I'm that gal that gazes at your adoringly from afar or who wants to (with permission) offer you any help I can to make your pregnancy and birth the best. Like many doulas and midwives, I feel like this is what I'm meant to do and I have been encouraged by many who feel this over me. My own beginning was a homebirth, delivered by my father in a rural tobacco town in North Carolina (who doesn't love a dreamy setting?!) and I have never thought I'd want to have a hospital birth experience for myself. In fact, I've had 4 very beautiful homebirths with a range of highly-skilled and very loving midwives.
Background
While living in Baton Rouge, LA, I was gifted the experience to attend multiple births which led to my certification as a Doula in 2021. This skillset, along with my previous Yoga training and my own birth experiences are my guide to helping you reach your goals. I am SO excited to be joining Kate at Lantern Midwifery to further my education and to support each of you that comes our way.