Our practice has two teams of midwives; we have a shared care team and a solo midwife team. Within our shared care model, all members of the team are your midwives, this means you will meet each of us several times throughout your pregnancy, and one of us will be with you in labour and at your birth. On our solo midwife team, midwife Raven will be your primary midwife and she will see you throughout your pregnancy and be with you in labour and at your birth.

Both of our teams support one another, so it is likely that you will get to know everyone a little bit throughout your care with us. All of our midwives are comfortable with both hospital birth and home birth in normal, healthy situations.

Shared Care Team

Lyanne Quirt, RM (She/Her)

Sarah-Jane (SJ) Steele, RM (She/Her)

Sarah-Jane (AKA SJ) is a second generation settler with Irish, Scottish and Welsh grandparents. Her great great Grandmother was an Irish Settler Midwife in the Bays of Nova Scotia. SJ grew up in Dartmouth, NS- the traditional unceded lands of the Wabanaki and Mi’kma’ki people. She now lives on and benefits from the land of the Songhees and Lekwungen peoples.

SJ came to Midwifery from a prior degree and career as a Journalist. SJ has travelled and worked in more than 15 countries before anchoring here in 2011 and is a graduate of the Midwifery program through the faculty of Medicine at UBC. She started off the program a single mother to her daughter and ended it with a new partner and another baby. She has worked in this community as Doula, Pre and Postnatal Yoga Teacher, Medical Office Assistant for a busy Midwife practice, and managing her own Birthpool Business which she recently sold to devote her life to Midwifery…and get sleep when she can steal it.

She does this work because of the question so well put by educator Penny Simkin “ How will they remember?” Evidence shows a person’s pregnancy and birth experience is etched into their brain, so the way it unfolds is important. SJ wants to hold space for that while providing safe, evidence based, trauma informed care.

When she’s not working, SJ digs running, stretching, volunteering, camping with her two children Bowie and Eena, and fixing old things and making them new again. If she hadn’t become a midwife she would have been a firefighter, guitar player in a cover band, or head of a soup kitchen.

She is absolutely stoked to meet all of you and your babies.

Beth Smit, RM (She/Her)

Beth is originally from Nanaimo, and has lived on Vancouver Island most of her life. She left in 2003 to attend McMaster University’s Midwifery Education Program, and graduated in 2007.

Beth practiced as a midwife in the friendly Northern Ontario town of Sault Ste Marie before getting homesick and coming back to the Victoria area in 2010. Beth has worked in a solo midwife model and in a group midwifery practice, and is excited about working as a team at Arbutus to get the best of both worlds: lots of time and visits with each woman and family so they can get to know each other well before labour, and back up if two women labour at once or one midwife has been up all night.

Beth loves the midwifery model of care in BC because of the opportunity for personal connection between midwives and women, and because of all the choices the midwifery model gives women with respect to their care and where they give birth. Outside of midwifery, Beth is the mother of two children, a son born in 2009 and a daughter born in 2012. Beth has a passion for the outdoors, whether that means working in her garden, or hiking and camping around Vancouver Island when she’s not on call.

Astrid Fritzsche, RM (She/Her)

Astrid is a second generation settler of immigrant Dutch and German grandparents, and though transplanted, has been home on BC’s shores since she visited as a child. She is grateful and aware of her position on the unceded territory of the Lkwungen people.

Astrid is a graduate of the Midwifery program through the faculty of Medicine at UBC, and came to midwifery with a prior degree in genetics, biopsychology and gender studies. She has spent almost all of her professional career in Victoria, and has worked in a variety of practices and team structures over the last 14 years. Astrid enjoys excellent relationships with our interprofessional colleagues – the nurses, obstetricians and family doctors – in the hospital, and is equally comfortable and supportive of home birth. She is a strong believer in facilitating pregnant folks to find their community connections and resources in their social and community circles, and defining chosen family for themselves in functional and supportive ways. She is a founding member of the Trans and Queer Pregnancy and Parenting group in Victoria.

Astrid identifies her critical foundation for doing the crazy work of midwifery as her supportive family: her chosen family friends, her eco-hippie parents, her outspoken and devoted partner and her four tolerant kids, who are between 2 and 18 years old. When not driving her electric car around the city on the way to clinic, births or visits, she can be found tending to honeybees, hiking up mountains, reading about conflict resolution and ranting about – and forever practicing- raising feminist boys.

Rowan Kennedy-Macdonald, RM (She/Her)

Rowan was born at home, outside, in Paradise Valley, BC. Her birth was attended by a midwife and Rowan believes this positive origin story has always kindled in her a deep appreciation of midwifery and of birth. After a childhood in the UK, Rowan came back to Canada and cozied in to all of the wonders of the BC West Coast.

After completing her Bachelors degree in Child and Youth Care, through the University of Victoria, Rowan spent several years working and learning within communities who were experiencing limitations to accessing care. Primarily working in shelters, transition homes, detox facilities and safe-consumption sites. During this time, she started working more within the world of reproductive justice, supporting people who were pregnant and struggling to access supportive care, as well as facilitating sexual/reproductive health and education groups for young people. From there, Rowan decided she needed more skills and resources to offer to the folks she was working with and midwifery was such a clear choice of direction. Rowan is a graduate of the Midwifery Program at the University of British Columbia. She is grateful to work on the unceded territory of the Lkwungen people and thoughtful about what this means in her practice as a midwife. Rowan is passionate about creating access to safe, respectful and dignified care for all communities, while working in a way which honours the individual’s resilience and strength…with a large focus on joy and delight in the process!

Rowan lives in the Quw’utsun (Cowichan) Valley, on a big piece of land which she feels lucky to call home and share with an incredible group of humans including her partner, her parents, granny and some dear friends…Plus, many dogs and cats and chickens and beehives and a whole lot of garden veggies.

Solo Midwife Team

Raven Thunderstorm, RM (She/Her)

Raven grew up in northern BC and spent most of her life prior to Midwifery supporting birthing families in some capacity or another. Her previous work has included pregnancy outreach, infant development, breastfeeding support, and many years as a Doula and Childbirth Educator. Raven is a graduate of the Midwifery program at UBC.

She became a Midwife because she is passionate about supporting families and birthing people to be informed and make choices that are right for them, as well as the wondrous honor of being a part of this time in people’s lives.

While she has felt drawn to midwifery for most of her life, she has also felt a pull towards Vancouver Island growing over the past few years. The mountains, the people, the proximity to the ocean, somehow ended up feeling like home to her and her family. She is considering how best to navigate her role as a settler on the unceded territory of the Lkwungen people. As she learns more she hopes to reach out, and connect with Indigenous leaders, to ensure she works and lives on this land in the most respectful way possible. She is beyond excited to connect with birthing families in the Langford and Victoria area.

Raven is a solo parent to 2 amazing children who still think Midwifery is the coolest job ever, even though it makes all their lives a little more unpredictable. Outside of midwifery Raven can be found reading a good book, digging in the dirt to try and grow things, and spending all kinds of time with her kids and her cat.

Midwifery Students

We are a teaching practice – midwifery and medical students may be involved in your care from time to time. They will always be supervised, and they will never do anything beyond their level of competence. Most clients find that working with students is a very positive experience, but please speak to one of the midwives privately if you would prefer not to involve students in some or all aspects of your care.

When the team is very busy, a midwife is sick, or additional support is needed for other reasons, Arbutus Midwives regularly makes use of our Community Support Midwife, MJ Harris. MJ is not an official team member, but if needed, we would like our clients to be familiar with her and the services she offers.