Meet the Midwife
Photo by Emily April Allen Photography
Arielle Fears is a homebirth midwife and childbirth educator providing prenatal care, homebirth, and postpartum care for growing families in Nashville, TN and immediately surrounding areas.
Arielle began supporting families and pregnant individuals as a prenatal youa instructor, birth doula, postpartum doula, and childbirth educator in 2015, and has been running a successful doula agency in Nashville ever since, connecting families and doulas in the community. Arielle began to feel pulled toward out-of-hospital midwifery as they witnessed a pressing need for respectful and relationship-centered perinatal care, and an mis-prioritized healthcare system failing families and healthcare providers. Arielle believes healthcare should be both up-to-date and evidence-based, and should revolve around informed consent and the autonomy of the individual and family. They began their midwifery studies in 2019 and became credentialed and licensed in 2024.
Arielle is passionate about consent-based midwifery care, and strives to build connection and trust with clients and other healthcare providers to improve pregnancy outcomes and early parenting experiences. Arielle practices through a health-at-all-sizes lens, and has experience working with families of all creeds, backgrounds, and class across Tennessee and Kentucky. Arielle considers it an honor to serve all she can with low-risk pregnancies in the community who seek out-of-hospital midwifery care, including LGBTQIA individuals and families, neurodivergent individuals, and survivors.
Arielle has lived in Nashville for a decade with their partner, with whom she has two children. They are often in their large garden, growing food, flowers, and medicinal herbs, making herbal supports, or working to replace their lawn bit by bit with native plants. Arielle is also an avid knitter of sweaters, and listens to audiobooks about history, social theory, and public health in the car.
Arielle Fears, CPM-TN, LM, CBE
Midwife Assistants
Ashley R. Gordon MSM, CPM-TN, CLE
My journey to midwifery has been somewhat of a winding road, but I've always loved working with families and have done so in several different capacities over the years. After growing up in Nashville and then graduating from Harding University, I began photographing families and births which led me to doula work, which eventually led into my training in midwifery and lactation. I began attending births in 2016 and in the spring of 2023 I completed the requirements for a graduate degree in Midwifery with an emphasis in clinical herbalism from Bastyr University in Seattle, WA. I also became a Certified Lactation Educator, and am currently building on that knowledge by pursuing a IBCLC certification. In 2024, I was privileged to have the transformative experience of birthing my own son at home under the care of community midwives. Experiencing midwifery care as a consumer has only solidified my passion for natural, out of hospital birth.
In our spare time, my husband, son, and I enjoy spending time gardening, fixing up old houses, eating homemade ice cream, and rock climbing.
Emma Zaayman, MSN, RN, Student Nurse Midwife
Emma has been working in the birth world for almost 10 years. She knew she wanted to deliver babies at 7 years old watching “Baby Story.” She completed Nurse Midwifery school at Frontier University in 2024 and is awaiting to take her boards. Emma has years of experience caring for growing families as a nurse in Labor and Delivery, Postpartum, and the NICU at St. Thomas Midtown in Nashville. Her roles have ranged from charge nurse to OB supervisor, but she has always enjoyed a physiologic birth in the birth suites best! She is passionate about supporting physiologic birth and pregnancy in all its stages.
When not attending births, Emma enjoys hiking with her husband and toddler and curating her house plants. She is so excited to help Maypop’s clients experience the transformative experience of birth!