About

North Star Midwifery believes that birth works best when it is interfered with the least. As a Twin Cities Homebirth Midwife, we  practice evidence-based care and enable you to birth your baby however you wish. With  well–trained, experienced, compassionate midwives supporting you, you know you are getting the best in physiologic care for you and your baby!

North Star believes that every person in labor has different needs. If that means you need to labor alone in a dark room, great! If you need a more hands-on approach, with support through every contraction, we do that too. We meet you wherever you are in your journey to becoming parents, whether it is your first baby or your 7th!

I have had three births with North Star Midwifery, and though they all have been different, I have wonderful memories from them all, thanks in large part to my midwife.

About Aly:

Aly Folin, CPM, LM

I founded North Star Midwifery in 2005 after finishing school in 2004 at the Seattle Midwifery School (now the department of Midwifery within Bastyr University).  I am a Certified Professional Midwife and a Licensed Midwife in MN and WI. Having been in practice for over 16 years, I can say that I have seen a lot. However, it is amazing how unique every each birth is, and I learn something from every family I work with!

The first time I heard the word “midwife,” I knew it was my calling. To me, being a midwife means holding the space and fiercely guarding the safety and experience of the birthing family. In my practice, the people giving birth are at the center of their care. Families feel empowered to make the choices that are right for them for their prenatal care, their births, and beyond. I have been serving families for long enough to help some welcome their new babies multiple times! This has allowed those relationships to deepen over time; I often feel like a part of the family!

I have two children who were both born at home in the water (in 2007 and 2010), and giving birth myself, after I was already a midwife, deepened my understanding of the process and the transformational power of birth. As a midwife, I am actively involved in supporting the art of midwifery. Since 2007, I have actively served on the Advisory Council on Licensed Traditional Midwifery to the Board of Medical Practice. I am also a former board member of our state professional organization, the Minnesota Council of Certified Professional Midwives (MCCPM).

Recently I have been honored to be named one of Blooma’s Care Providers of Distinction both in 2014 and 2015. I also was a nominee for the Twin Cities Birth and Baby Expo Best of the Twin Cities Awards in 2015. It is a privilege to serve this community and it is an honor to be recognized for doing the work I love!

Twin Cities Homebirth Midwife Aly Folin
My Family!

About Kelsi:

Kelsi Hines, CPM, LM

I’m Kelsi. I am a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) licensed in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. I have worked as a community midwife since 2018, supporting families both at home and in the birth center setting.

I was trained within the traditional apprenticeship model of midwifery, where I had the opportunity to learn from some of the most skilled and loving midwives around the world. My clinical midwifery training includes a 3-year midwifery apprenticeship doing rural homebirth in Western Wisconsin and a 12-month global midwifery training program at 3 birth centers in an international context. I completed 3 years of coursework in Holistic Midwifery, as well as years of guided self-study.

My journey into birth work started as a Sociology undergraduate at University of Wisconsin – Madison. There, I studied global maternal health using a social justice lens and focused my work on the inherent differences in outcomes for people birthing in high-resource versus low-resource settings. I spent time learning about the maternal health system for birthing families in Kenya and came home to witness my sisters navigate birth here in the U.S.  At that time I imagined working to improve health outcomes for pregnant people through policy work. However, that quickly changed in 2010 when I became a Doula and started attending births with families in Washington, D.C. I fell in love and ultimately went on to train as a community midwife to learn how to use my hands, knowledge and intuition to determine when it is safe to birth at home and when higher levels of intervention are truly needed.

Throughout my time as a midwife, I’ve had the honor of supporting hundreds of families from a variety of backgrounds as well as across multiple continents and communities, and have been taught so much by each one. For me, it is not necessarily about where you give birth, but how you feel during and afterwards.