About Mama Lion

Mama Lion is the solo practice of Nile Sennett Nash. In 2010 Nile graduated from UCSF’s graduate school of nursing with her masters degree in the science of nursing. She finished with her licenses as a registered nurse (RN), a nurse practitioner of women’s health (NP), and as a certified nurse midwife (CNM). Nile has her undergraduate degree from UCLA in women’s studies and has an educational history in the study of languages. Nile also speaks fluent Spanish.

Nile currently attends home birth in the city of San Francisco and has a well person care practice at her private clinic located at her office in Space 692 in the Mission district. Attending home birth means that Mama Lion provides in-home prenatal, birth, and postpartum care. The care is comprehensive and can manage your pregnancy from conception to your final postpartum visit.  Mama Lion can do all your lab work in home, including blood draws, GBS swabs, and your gestational diabetes screen at 28 weeks.

Having been born at home herself, Nile attended her first home birth at the age of seven and has known ever since that she is a midwife. With a firm foundation in the philosophies and practices of home birth Mama Lion Midwifery blends in the science and structure of a hospital-based education. As a home birth midwife and a CNM, Nile tends toward very low intervention style but is ready and willing to use her skills to take care of emergencies quickly and effectively. For example, if a mama is dehydrated she will be encouraged to drink lots of fluids, but if she were losing more fluids than she can drink then Nile would place an IV in a flash!

The general philosophy of Mama Lion’s practice is that a woman’s body is extremely wise. She was able to get pregnant and grow a baby, perhaps with a little help, but without micromanaged instruction from outside sources. A woman’s body truly creates miracles. Mama Lion seeks to empower a woman and her family to make the best decisions for themselves with the best information available. The goal at Mama Lion is to empower you to make healthy and safe decisions regarding your body, not only during your pregnancy, birth and postpartum but also preconception and post-fertility.  Nile’s primary job is to help you help yourself so that once all is said and done and you’ve got your little one in your arms, you can be the strongest and most capable parent you can be.

Of course, sometimes even smart bodies need a bit of guidance and so Mama Lion Midwifery practice offers pregnant couples good information, distilled by Nile through years of study, and recommendations for health and wellness. We talk a lot about diet and nutrition, exercise, emotional wellness, and alternative therapies such as herbs and chiropractic work.

Following the community standard of good practice, Nile regularly attends a peer review with other licensed midwives to discuss challenging cases and keep abreast of current research. She also abides by the community standard of having two licensed midwives at every birth. That means that when you hire Nile to be your midwife, you are assured that the second midwife who attends your home birth will be another lovely, skilled, and licensed community midwife. If you’ve got another midwife in mind that you’d like to be the assist at your birth just let Nile know.

Mama Lion’s philosophy can best be articulated by an Aristotle quotation, “A midwife should have a lady’s hands, a hawk’s eyes, and a lion’s heart.” Mama Lion will take excellent care of you and your growing little one as ferociously as she would care for herself and her own.