Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Buck.
Hi Stephanie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Stephanie Buck is a Certified Professional Midwife and Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition, a Filipino-American and lifelong daughter of the DMV, now rooted in Southern Maryland. She is licensed to practice midwifery in both Maryland and Virginia, where she serves families throughout Charles, St. Mary’s, Southern Prince George’s, and Calvert counties, as well as King George County in Virginia.
But the story of how Stephanie became a midwife did not begin with a degree or a calling she could yet name.
It began with loss.
In 2015, Stephanie experienced the devastating loss of her middle son. In the midst of that grief, a midwife came alongside her—not to take away what had happened, for such things cannot be taken away, but to walk beside her through it. That experience changed the course of her life.
After giving birth, Stephanie returned to school, pursuing a master’s degree in holistic nutrition with a particular focus on pregnancy. She became a DONA-certified doula, supporting women both in hospitals and outside them, learning firsthand the profound difference it makes when a woman is truly seen, heard, and cared for.
Her path eventually led her to Birthcare and Women’s Health, where she began working as a birth assistant. There, she witnessed birth after birth and came to understand something that would shape her philosophy forever: midwifery was not simply about attending a birth. It was about knowing the woman, caring for the whole of her, and trusting that birth was not an illness to be managed, but a profound passage through which a woman could be supported.
Those births awakened another kind of curiosity in Stephanie—the desire to understand where her own people came from and how the women in her family had given birth before hospitals, monitors, and modern medicine became the center of the story.
She began looking toward the Philippines, toward the traditions carried by generations of Filipino women. In that search, she found Mercy in Action, an organization with birth centers throughout the Philippines. There, Stephanie received her degree in midwifery and found herself not only learning a profession, but reconnecting with something ancient: the knowledge that women have always carried women through birth.
Today, Stephanie is the founder of Southern Maryland Midwifery, where she brings together the knowledge she has gathered from many worlds—midwifery, nutrition, birth work, traditional wisdom, and her own lived experience.
Her approach to maternal care is integrative and functional, grounded in the belief that the body possesses an extraordinary capacity to heal and restore itself when given the nourishment, knowledge, time, and support it needs.
Her work encompasses the whole journey—not simply the hours of labor, but the woman who arrives at them: her fertility, her pregnancy, her birth, her recovery, and the tender months that follow.
For Stephanie, midwifery is more than a profession.
It is something that was born from loss, shaped by experience, nourished by tradition, and ultimately transformed into a way of helping other women find their own strength.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There are chapters of a woman’s life that she never imagines she will have to live.
During my last pregnancy, I found myself fighting a rare adenoid cystic carcinoma growing in my trachea—a battle for breath unfolding while I was carrying new life.
Then came the medicines, some of them toxic, and the loss of the ability to nurse my baby. I learned, slowly and stubbornly, how to relactate, reclaiming something I had thought the drugs had taken from me.
I underwent a resection of my trachea and radiation treatments while caring for a newborn, learning to mother through pain, exhaustion, fear, and the strange demands of a body being rebuilt even as it was expected to nurture another.
And all of this came after the stillbirth of my baby.
Looking back, I cannot help but wonder whether the two losses—the stillbirth and the cancer—were somehow connected. I may never know the whole truth of that. What I do know is that I survived a season that asked more of my body, my heart, and my spirit than I ever believed they could give.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At Southern Maryland Midwifery, we believe true health begins long before a symptom appears. It begins with the foundation—the nourishment, balance, strength, and care that allow the body to do what it was created to do.
Our approach brings together evidence-based medicine and personalized nutrition, while leaving room for something equally important: listening to the individual woman in front of us. No two bodies are the same, and no two journeys through fertility, pregnancy, birth, or motherhood should be treated as though they are.
We take the time to understand what your body is asking for and what you need at each stage of your life. An appointment may take an hour, because sometimes an hour is what it takes to truly listen, to ask the questions that matter, and to understand the whole story—not simply to gather enough information to fill fifteen minutes.
We believe care should not be measured by how quickly we can move from one patient to the next.
It should be measured by whether you leave feeling heard, understood, supported, and equipped to care for yourself.
Through holistic wellness, thoughtful nutrition, evidence-based care, and the time to truly know you, our aim is not merely to help you get through pregnancy or birth.
It is to help you thrive.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
After losing my son at thirty weeks, the life I had carefully built no longer felt like the life I was meant to live.
I walked away from a six-figure career in the defense industry and stepped into the uncertain world of women’s wellness. It was not a decision made lightly. I knew what I was giving up. I knew there was a very real possibility that I would never again earn the kind of money I had once considered ordinary.
But grief has a way of stripping away the things we once thought mattered most.
What remained was the question of what I wanted my life to mean.
I could continue along a path that was financially secure, or I could follow the quiet, persistent calling that had begun to take shape in the aftermath of losing my son.
So I chose the calling.
I chose work that felt meaningful. Work that allowed me to serve women. Work that gave purpose to a loss I could never undo.
It was a risk, certainly.
But sometimes the greatest risks are not the ones we take by leaving what is secure. They are the ones we take when we ignore the voice within us telling us that we were meant for something more.
I chose happiness over certainty.
And I have never regretted choosing the life that called me forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://southernmarylandmidwifery.org
- Instagram: SouthernMarylandMidwifery
