Review on:

Joey Pascarella, CNM

Jenga’s Rating

Purchase Price: $1,200.00

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Community Rating:

(16 reviews)

I hired Joey based upon a friend’s recommendation. Joey told me she was a CNM and could bill my insurance company, she seemed really easy to talk to and she was very attentive. This was my third birth, my second VBAC, and it would be my second natural birth. I birthed my first VBAC with midwives in Europe and I wanted a similar experience.  Joey misled me, and let her license lapse literally days after I became her patient. We are supposed to trust our providers to take care of us and our babies; to grow a loving bond “with woman” but how can that happen when the midwife herself is lying to the patient? It turns out that she did not have a license for the rest of the time I was her patient. I have no problems with CPMs, but I believe a midwife should be honest about her credentials and her training with her patients. There should be an open and honest relationship between a woman and her midwife and this is what is the most troubling about the whole thing to me.

Gradually, she seemed to become flaky and distant. She was not returning calls or e-mails and she was not just extremely late to appointments, but she was also cancelling them without telling us. She became hostile with my husband and told me that she didn’t have to worry about his concerns because he wasn’t her patient.  This placed an extreme amount of stress on me, her patient; because my husband was upset by the way she treated him.  Joey forgot about tests that had been done, several times. It took her months to get back to me when I asked about my mid-term ultrasound.

Joey refused to answer questions about who would be the back-up in case we needed one and what to do if they were late or if the baby was coming and they were not there.  My husband asked Laura, Joey’s assistant, for materials or books or information about what he should do if the baby came quickly or if we were alone. We wanted to be prepared for an unassisted birth if it happened and we needed information. Quite quickly, Joey got hostile when we told her we just needed her to talk to us and respond to our concerns; it seems that if we did not just do as we were told 100% she was not happy. It genuinely angered her that we would ask questions, it seemed.  Joey was so quick to anger, over and over, that it troubled me. She dropped me at 37.5 weeks and refused to continue care because “she couldn’t trust us if we didn’t trust her” - she abandoned me as a patient in the last few weeks of my pregnancy.

Joey told me she had called around and no one wanted to take me on as a patient this late in pregnancy except a friend who was a CPM. Not only we were unsure of this person, we could not afford to pay the new CPM after we had already paid Joey and her assistant Laura. We had paid 1200 dollars to Joey and Laura and we did not have the extra 3600 to pay this new person. Joey did not seem pleased when I told her we would find someone else because this person was not right for us and she then took her over a week to give me the records, even after I told her I needed them to receive care. I called  other midwives and birthing centers and several *were* willing to take me on, providing I had records to show them. I did need something to show people who were unsure about taking on a patient in the last weeks of pregnancy but Joey seemed unconcerned with this problem.   I did not know that Joey was not allowed to just drop me and refuse contact .

When I found a midwife group to take me on as a patient, they had apparent troubles with Joey as well. I assume that getting information or records from her was very difficult and she was not willing to comply. Not only did she abandon me as a patient but then she made it difficult for my next providers to treat me as well. In the end, I had a successful and natural 2VBAC with a great midwifery team, just about a week and a half after I was taken on as their patient.  My insurance company (Tricare) was, when I checked last, investigating her for fraud because of the license lapse. I do not doubt that people have had good experiences with Joey, but ours was downright traumatizing.