Meet Jan Yanello, Mother, Midwife, and Founder of MotherRoot Birth and Wellness
Jan began witnessing births in her early teens, beginning when her mother invited her to be present for the midwife-tended home births of her youngest siblings. Life subsequently extended a series of invitations, and at age sixteen she began accompanying her mother, a home birth midwife, to births when clients requested her presence as doula and midwife’s assistant.
Despite originally walking a path of preparation for a long-held dream of medical school, she found herself called instead to the path of holistic traditional midwifery. She completed five years of traditional midwifery apprenticeship, after which she has continued to care for women as an autonomous community midwife. In the course of training and independent practice, she has been honored to support hundreds of births, as well as offering fertility support, well-woman care, and support through miscarriage and pregnancy loss. She currently maintains a small home-based practice in southern York County, PA, where she lives with her family and a growing flock of sheep.
Jan maintains continuing education and peer review in keeping with the standards set by the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) for Certified Professional Midwives, a certification which she carries. This includes regularly recertifying hands-on skills in neonatal resuscitation, as well as continuing to take accredited continuing education classes and participating in peer review with other midwives for accountability and professional development.
She is a certified INNATE Postpartum Care Practitioner, and offers support for clients through the first twelve weeks postpartum and beyond. She is deeply interested in the role of storytelling and story integration in birth experiences, and continues to study the influence that birth imprints and somatically-held traumas have on the wellbeing and unique needs of mothers and babies. She also continues to expand her awareness as a practitioner by learning from leading teachers and wisdom-keepers in areas such as physiologic breech and twin birth, physiologic menstrual and menopause care, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, applied herbalism, endocrinology, and mental wellbeing.
Jan views her most vital ongoing education as taking place in relationship. This includes relationship with her elders (including those who sit at the feet of birth) and with the mothers, babies, and families she serves within her community. This also encompasses her most intimate relationships, including with her body, her family and lineage, and with the land upon which she lives.