Who We Are

We are Registered Midwives with a passion for providing individual, expert midwifery care to women and newborn babies. We work together as a team of two, and are therefore able to offer our clients and their families the opportunity to get to know us very well, to feel comfortable and confident in us, and to receive personal and sensitive care. We intentionally care for a small number of families each month which enables us to provide very personal and satisfying care.

Joy West-Eklund

I have been practicing community based midwifery care for many years and was a founding member of the longest established practice in the Calgary area. I was born and raised in the Springbank, Alberta area, completed my R.N. in Calgary, and apart from living in Australia while completing my midwifery education, have lived in the Cochrane rural area most of my life.

My husband , Lindsay, and I ranch in the Jumping Pound area southwest of Cochrane, where we raise and market natural beef. I was blessed to have given birth naturally to three amazing daughters, Jennifer, Lara and Emily. I am privileged to be step-mom to Travis, Shane and Lori-Anne, and now enjoy three beautiful grandchildren!

I was actively involved in the development of the Arbour Birth Centre in Calgary and was a founding member of the Foothills Midwifery Project, and of Briar Hill Midwives where I cared for hundreds of families over many years. I have been involved politically for over twenty years in the areas of midwifery regulation, the establishment of regional hospital privileges for Registered Midwives, and in the successful integration of midwives into the Alberta health care system . In addition to serving as president of the Alberta Association of Midwives, I was for several years the Regional Division Chief of Midwifery for the Calgary Health Region.

My strong and passionate belief in the innate strength and ability of women to give birth, and in their right to make informed decisions about where and with whom they choose to do this, are fundamental to my practice of midwifery.

Shianna Pace

Since I was a young girl I have had a passion for babies and pregnancy. This passion flourished while growing up in a large family, and gained focus after experiencing the birth of one of my younger cousins. The realization that this passion could become a career was made when I chose to “career shadow” Joy in a grade nine work experience project. I later discovered that my paternal great grandmother had also been a midwife. After graduating from Cochrane High School I began actively pursuing a career in midwifery. This led me to a midwifery education program in the USA which involved a year of practicum in the Philippines, fulfilling my longstanding desire to aid the less fortunate in the developing world. While in the Philippines, I was able to acquire extensive midwifery skills while working with the diverse maternal and neonatal complexities facing the third world. After six months in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, my husband Brad and I had the opportunity to establish a charity birth center serving poverty stricken families and woman from the tribes who were unable to access health care. Upon completion of my year in the Philippines I returned to Cochrane, obtained Alberta Midwifery Registration, and joined Cochrane Community Midwives.

While working as a midwife I have developed a strong commitment to enabling woman to make their own personal health care decisions. I believe that a woman should leave midwifery care empowered by her birth experience, and confident in her body. I look forward to helping more women to accomplish their goals.