“I enjoy bringing life into the world. It’s amazing,” Laura Selvidio, nurse midwife, says about her profession.

Earlier this month she became the second nurse midwife to join the staff of Blanchard Valley Obstetrics and Gynecology, Bluffton.

Selvidio, a certified nurse midwife (CNM), practiced in Georgia and Alaska since 2015 prior to coming to Bluffton. She joins another nurse midwife, Missy Moore, on the staff. Selvidio is in the Bluffton office four days each week.

Explaining that the birth experience of the first of her own children was difficult, she became a midwife because, “I wanted to make birth a better experience for women.”

“People don’t realize that a midwife’s role is not only in childbirth,” she said, adding that it’s more than that – it’s all about women’s health.

I see women from adolescence through post-menopause. In the birthing process, Selvidio says she follows her patients throughout the pregnancy to delivery and post-partum. All local deliveries take place in Bluffton Hospital.

A medical staff person at the Bluffton office sees each pregnant woman patient each four weeks up to the 28 week of the pregnancy. After that it’s visits each two weeks up to the 36th week and then weekly until the birth.

Growing up in a military family,  saw much of the world early on in her life. Selvidio was born in Greece, and has lived in Mississippi, Georgia, Alaska, and on the small Portuguese island of Terceira in the Atlantic Ocean.

However, Bluffton is not new to her, as her parents, David Earl and Kathy (Binkley) Earl, are both Ada High School graduates. Her grandmother, Donna Binkley, lives in Ada.

“I have fond memories of Ada visiting as a youngster, which includes snow – much of my life was spent is places where there was no snow,” she said.

She and her husband, James, are parents of five children ranging in ages from 2 to 12. They are boys Donovan, Beckett and Alistair and girls Vala and Pagan.

Selvidio holds two master’s degrees. The first is a master’s of science in clinic nurse leadership. The second is a master’s of science in nurse midwifery. She is a registered nurse (RN) and is board certified in midwifery.

She is accepting patients. Contact her at Blanchard Valley Obstetrics and Gynecology, 559 Harmon Road, Bluffton, phone 419-358-8856.