A Nurturing Space

Melinda Hoskins, MS, RN, CNM, IBCLC

Melinda is the owner and founder of A Nurturing Space.   She brings more than
thirty years of experience in maternal and child nursing, including newborn intensive care, labor and delivery and working in the office of her family physician husband, David Hoskins.  In addition, she has taught pediatric and maternity nursing at nursing programs in Oregon, California and Nevada.

The Hoskins have three grown daughters, who have helped to mold our philosophy and programs at A Nurturing Space.

In 1999 Melinda first became an Internationally Board Certified Lactation
Consultant, or IBCLC.  The decision to become certified as a lactation consultant
grew out of her longstanding interest in breastfeeding and support of mothers in
establishing this most important aspect of the mother-baby relationship.  All three of the Hoskins' daughters were breastfed for an extended period of time.  Melinda's interest in breastfeeding preceded the birth of her first daughter and is reflected in her master's thesis (completed in 1979) which looked at telephone support of first-time breastfeeding mothers!

In 2004 Melinda fulfilled her long-term dream of becoming a Certified
Nurse-Midwife or CNM, when she completed the Community-based
Nurse-midwifery Education Program, or CNEP, through Frontier School of
Midwifery and Family Nursing and passed the certification exam.  One of the
strengths of the CNEP program is the educational emphasis on the development of
free-standing birth centers as the ideal place for the practice of midwifery.

In the fall of 2004 through August 2005, Melinda participated in a fellowship in
birth center midwifery at the Women's Health and Birth Centerin Santa Rosa,
California.  This allowed her to have first hand exposure to the art of midwifery in a  well-established birth center.