The Nurse-Midwifery Service at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center (AIMMC), founded in 1974, is the second oldest midwifery service in the state. AIMMC certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) brought childbearing alternatives to women in the Chicago area at a time when less than one percent of all hospital births were CNM attended.

Illinois Masonic is well known for offering unique and innovative birthing options to women and their families. Staff CNMs assisted in planning and implementing the Alternative Birth Center (ABC), the Midwest’s first facility of its kind.

The AIMMC nurse-midwifery service provides full-scope care for women of various ages, races, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds at six separate locations.

The AIIMC nurse-midwifery service has participated, and continues to participate in, the teaching/precepting of midwifery students offering experiences in a traditional labor and delivery unit, as well as the ABC with its home-like atmosphere.

All 10 staff CNMs are ACNM members and several of them hold or have held leadership positions in the local ACNM Chapter IV-2. Many of the original midwifery “pioneers” that began the practice at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center are still there and the majority of the staff CNMs have been employed at the hospital for at least 10 years.

The Illinois Masonic Medical Center nurse-midwives are committed to keeping the “heart of midwifery” at the center of everything they do.