The BloomWell roots in the Pensacola community run deep...established in 2011 as an independent doula company begun by our (now) midwife, Amber, Belly to Cradle, LLC, evolved into a full-service doula and lactation agency in 2017 which has since served hundreds of local families. This agency became the basis for the BloomWell birth center model. In 2020, administrator, director, and certified birth assistant, Lindsey Roderick became a co-owner, and Belly to Cradle became a partnership. Together, with their mutual passion for serving families during birth, they set out to build a boutique birth and women's care center to meet a long-standing need in the Gulf Coast for safe and competent community-based maternity and women's healthcare.
Our Midwives
Amber Roman, MSN, CNM, APRN is nationally certified and licensed in the state of Florida as a nurse-midwife. Her calling as a midwife began at the age of 17, long before her journey as a mother or birth worker began. From 2010-2019, serving families through Belly to Cradle as a doula fulfilled this calling. During this time, she co-founded Project Birth Center Pensacola, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing out-of-hospital birth options to the local area. Doulas are ultimately the most powerless participants in the birth process and it was experiencing this powerlessness that helped her realize that the most meaningful way to make a difference in the care of her clients was to forge ahead and become a medical care provider. After a prolific, decade-long career as a doula and childbirth educator, she began the process of realizing this calling by obtaining her Bachelor of Nursing degree from the University of South Alabama in 2019. She immediately began working as a labor & delivery nurse, and ultimately received her MSN from Frontier Nursing University and board certification as a nurse-midwife in 2022 after completing clinical rounds at Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola. Amber loves to provide patients with safe, supported, natural, low-intervention obstetric, gynecological, contraceptive, birth and postpartum care. Her intuition and experience in almost every area of women's health from participating in the care of hundreds of women and babies and attending hundreds of births makes her an ideal candidate to provide care to local low-risk women. Amber is the mother of four--three sons and a daughter. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Amber considers Pensacola home after living in the area for over 20 years.
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Cindy Messer, APRN, CNM has served the Gulf Coast area as a certified nurse-midwife for well over thirty years. A graduate of Frontier Nursing University class #21, Cindy was one of the few original certified nurse-midwives to serve Alabama. She has held privileges at multiple Alabama and Mississippi hospitals, and has extensive experience in both hospital and out-of-hospital birth. After largely retiring from midwifery, Cindy spent several years providing relief services as needed in a Texas birth center before returning briefly to the hospital setting in Mobile in 2022. Cindy's faith and her love for safe, protected, and honored birth led her to obtain her Florida license, shortly after which she was connected with the BloomWell birth center, and her desire to continue to provide midwifery care in our community was fulfilled! As a PRN midwife, Cindy will be providing consultant services and relief care in the clinic and birth center, dependent on need. Her warm and nuturing spirit, and vast experience will provide yet another level of comprehensive care for birth center patients. Cindy lives in Saraland, Alabama, with her husband. She can't wait to continue providing midwifery care while still being able to enjoy her children and grandchildren who also live in the area!
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Our Executive Director
Lindsey Roderick, CBA is a birth assistant certified through American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) after completing her certification homebirths with Clarksville Midwifery in Clarksville, TN. She was brought to birthwork by her own birth journeys and a desire to support families in whatever way they choose to give birth. After joining Belly to Cradle in 2017, she was trained and certified as a doula and childbirth educator through BEST Doula Training and The VBAC Link. From 2017 through 2021 she attended dozens of births of all kinds in local hospitals, leading her to see the impact she could make in helping women have the births they wanted. She jumped at the chance to join Belly to Cradle as an owner/partner in 2020 so that she could increase her impact on the local birth community. She loves educating families on all of their options and helping them discover what their best births look like! As executive and quality assurance director, Lindsey manages patient interactions, hosts initial client consultations, maintains the Belly to Cradle doula agency, and leads our team of birth assistants. She enjoys providing quality and safety improvement in birth care and is constantly looking for ways to make the birth center experience better for all families. Lindsey is a USAF veteran and Georgia transplant to the Pensacola area. She lives with her husband and their three kids—a boy and two girls—in Milton.
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Our Birth Assistants
Our birth assistants are trained and competent in CPR/BLS and Neonatal Resuscitation (NR) specific to out-of-hospital birth, and all have extensive experience in birth work, either as registered nurses in Labor & Delivery, or as veteran doulas. Each birth is attended by one birth assistant who is also a registered nurse, and one trained birth assistant. Birth assistants provide vital sign and fetal heart tone monitoring, education, physical and emotional support, and directly assist the midwife in clinical tasks. If transfer to a hospital is necessary before, during, or after your birth, one of your birth assistants (along with the midwife if possible) will accompany you to the hospital to provide support as a doula until you have given birth or are stable and no longer need/desire support.
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