Director of Midwifery
Hannah Freiwald has twenty years of experience in natural birth, having attended over one thousand seven hundred births in Guatemala and the USA. She was born in Germany and since 1988 lives in Guatemala where she has raised her four children. She became a professional midwife in Maternidad La Luz in El Paso, Tx, USA.
In 1997 she became cofounder and Codirector of Ixmucane, a birth center in Antigua Guatemala. In 2000 she founded Centro de Parto Natural and became its general director and main midwife. From 2008 to 2013 she additionally was general director of Asociación Manos Abiertas, a nonprofit for integrated women’s health and midwifery education located in Ciudad Vieja, Sacatepequez, where she still acts as a consultant.
The births of three of her children with the help of a midwife made her experience the difference between a natural humanized birth with the support of her loved ones and the coldness of a c-section in a hospital without respect for the woman and with rigid regulations that do not benefit mother or baby. Ever since her goal has been to empower women to take pregnancy and birth into their own hands in order to achieve a healthy, happy and profound experience that shapes their, their children’s and their spouses future lives.
Hannah also attends routine gynecology and family planning, teaches midwifery and does workshops and talks on related topics.
