Photo by Betty Nikia
Tamara Thompson, Lucky Tomaszek and Tori Freund - Transition Birth Services
Left to right: Tamara Thompson, Lucky Tomaszek and Tori Freund
Midwives are responsible for the clinical care of birthing parents and babies during childbirth. They are different from doulas, who provide emotional support to mothers during childbirth and advocate for their clients’ voices to be heard. Lucky Tomaszek is a licensed midwife who has also worked as a doula, and with her business Transitions Birth Services, she provides welcoming and inclusive midwifery in the Greater Milwaukee Area. Transitions is located at 2610 N. Fratney St. in Riverwest, through the yellow door on the building’s rear.
Tomaszek emphasizes care for parents and babies as a unit rather than as individuals, and she adopts an inclusive model for her practice that sees, hears and caters to queer, Black, Brown, disabled and unhoused clients, or anyone who has felt excluded or unacknowledged by the healthcare system. “If you choose to move forward with a pregnancy and want to work with us, we are going to take such good care of you physically and emotionally in every possible way that we can,” Tomaszek affirms.
Her business’s full name is Transitions: Birth Services For Every Body, titled to challenge the cisgender, heteronormative, whitewashed paradigms of parenting and birthwork. “In my time as a sexuality educator, and as a queer woman, I have learned more and more about what queer folks face in healthcare,” Tomaszek explains. “When I was seeing doctors for things, I got really different responses after I came out to my providers as queer than I did when I was married to a man.”
She continues, “I saw highly trained and skilled midwives still carrying a lot of different biases—against Black and Brown people, against poor people, or even just cluelessness. I worked with one midwife who told people to eat four to six cups of kale a day, but many of our clients were too poor to do that even if they wanted to. People have been given ridiculous recommendations or suggestions that aren’t culturally or socioeconomically appropriate.”
Client Autonomy
Transitions recognizes each client’s autonomy in making their own informed decisions. “Nobody touches you in our practice without specific consent—not even to check your pulse,” Tomaszek mentions. Services offered include community-based midwifery care for people who want to do homebirth or give birth in a private birth suite. Prenatal care follows the same schedule recommended by American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), while postpartum care includes at least five visits for both parent and baby. All appointments last about an hour to ensure that Tomaszek and her team, comprising student midwives Tamara Thompson and Tori Freund, engage in best practices with each individual client.
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“You can have any friends or family with you,” Tomaszek adds. “When it comes time for the birth itself, we want it to be a family-centered event to the degree that you want.”
They provide all standard prenatal tests and lab work, and there is always a plan for hospital transfer in case of emergencies. Transitions accepts Medicaid and is flexible regarding payment. Tomaszek and company are often found tabling at community events and periodically host events of their own, including an open house for International Day of the Midwife every May. “You don’t actually have options if you don’t know what those options are,” Tomaszek notes. “People don’t even know that homebirth is still an option.”
Turning Point
Originally from Iowa, Tomaszek has loved babies since she was little. A turning point for her was at the age of 12 when she cared for her cat Duchess while she gave birth to a litter of kittens. “When Duchess went into labor, she came and got me, meowing at me until I followed her. From that point on, I knew I had to do something in this world.”
While pregnant with her first child in 1995, Tomaszek would go to the Des Moines library and learn all about childbirth—specifically, procedures she did and did not desire. For her second pregnancy a few years later, Tomaszek’s family practice doctor assured her that she would be perfectly fine giving birth at home with a trained midwife instead of a hospital. “That was really affirming,” Tomaszek recalls. She now has three adult children.
Tomaszek began her birthwork career as a doula. She moved to Milwaukee in 2000 and completed midwifery training in 2006. After a few years, Tomaszek took time off from midwifery to finish school and became a sex educator in the interim. “I still missed it the whole time,” she remembers. After several years of re-certification, Tomaszek resumed midwifery in 2020 and subsequently launched Transitions Birth Services.
Outside of midwifery, Tomaszek has hosted the six-part Birthworker Inclusivity Training Series and previously wrote the MKE Sex column for Milwaukee Record. She served as Sexuality Educator and Education Coordinator at The Tool Shed for 12 years and continues to partner with them for community events.
In terms of goals for Transitions, Tomaszek shares, “We would like to get our own building in the Riverwest neighborhood that we have control over. We have been looking for something affordable.”
Contact Transitions Birth Services at transitionsbirthservices.com/contact-the-midwife.
