Lucinda Chiszar, LM

Lucinda is a California Licensed Midwife (LM) since 1998.  She started going to births at home as an apprentice midwife in 1995 and also did a short internship at a birth center in 1997.  Simultaneously, she spent three years studying herbal medicine.  After completing her apprenticeship, she successfully challenged Seattle Midwifery School's three year accredited midwifery program and passed the California Midwifery License Exam.  She obtained her license in 1998 and continued practicing in the Bay Area for many years before moving to Modesto, CA in 2006. Her continuing education includes completion of UC San Diego Extension's Certified Lactation Educator Counselor program.

Lucinda came to Modesto intending to put her midwifery career on hold while her children were still very young.  At the time, the area was badly in need of a home birth midwife and on seeing our need she was persuaded to open a practice here as Big Valley Midwives.  Since then she has been providing care for mothers and has attended more than 500 births in the San Joaquin Valley.

Lucinda has two young adult children and a homeschooling teenager. She enjoys live performances, being outdoors, swimming, and reading both novels and nonfiction. 

Lucinda participated in an interview with our local Modesto Bee!  Read the article.

​​​​Brooke Myung, LM, CPM​

​Brooke is a California Licensed Midwife (LM) and a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). 
Brooke began attending births as a doula in 2001 in an effort to expand access to evidence based and informed maternity care in our area. At the time, she was one of only four doulas available in Merced, Stanislaus or San Joaquin counties. Those initial four doulas grew into a larger community group of childbirth educators, lactation consultants, and doulas called the Birth Alliance of Central California that worked locally to support families in making informed choices.
In 2006, Lucinda came to a meeting of the Birth Alliance of Central California to meet the local birthworkers. Our area had not had a local home birth midwife for some time and Brooke immediately made it a mission to help her get established so that the Modesto area could again have home birth midwifery as a choice. They’ve worked together since.
In those early years, Brooke homeschooled her young children while doing on-call childcare, administrative support and insurance billing for the practice. In the fall of 2012, her kiddos transitioned to public school and Brooke transitioned to midwifery school, starting the Associate of Science in Midwifery program at National College of Midwifery and attending prenatal care and births in a formal clinical apprenticeship. After completing the program and passing the licensing exam, she was granted the Licensed Midwife status by the Medical Board in 2017.

She enjoys spending time with her now-adult kids and husband. When she’s not on call, Brooke enjoys hiking, camping, roller coasters and live concerts.