Our Team
Jenn DeWaard, LM,CPM
Licensed Midwife (MI) and Certified Professional Midwife
Crystal Enyih, LM/CPM
Licensed Midwife (MI) and Certified Professional Midwife
Crystal is a Licensed Midwife in the state of Michigan and has been a Certified Professional Midwife since 2006. Originally from metro Detroit, Crystal completed an apprenticeship with a local Detroit midwife and an internship at a birth center in Texas before moving to Pennsylvania to join a homebirth practice. She then spent six years in India before returning back to metro Detroit in 2020. She has experience working in a wide variety of birth settings ranging from rural homebirth practices in Pennsylvania to a busy hospital based birth center practice in urban India. Witnessing birth in such varied settings created a passion for global midwifery and public health while strengthening her belief that all birthing people in all settings need improved access to respectful reproductive healthcare care through informed decision making, quality childbirth education, and increased access to skilled midwifery care. Outside of the clinic, Crystal loves to travel, knit, and spend time with family. Crystal has been a midwife at Nine Short Months since February 2021.
Contact Crystal at crystal@nineshortmonths.com
Kelsey Dean, LM, CPM
Licensed Midwife (MI) and Certified Professional Midwife
A Metro Detroit native and Grand Valley State University graduate, Kelsey developed her interest in midwifery during a Spanish hospital internship in 2014. Before becoming a midwife, Kelsey assisted families as a birth and postpartum doula in Ann Arbor, Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids, and the Bay Area, CA. Kelsey is passionate about providing families with support and information to allow them to make the best choices for the specific needs of their family. Kelsey completed her midwifery education at National Midwifery Institute where she worked with a busy home birth practice in Grand Rapids as well as a rural practice in Northern Michigan. This balance between rural and urban care informed her midwifery philosophy to include respect for both evidence-based standards of care as well as ancestral traditions around pregnancy and birth. When she is away from the birth center, Kelsey enjoys practicing yoga, learning about herbalism, hiking with her doodle, and taking a night off call to go dancing.
Contact Kelsey at Kelsey@nineshortmonths.com
Mercedes Reifsnider
Sr Student Midwife
Mercedes is a student midwife in the final phase of her training. She began her training in 2018, attending a MEAC program before deciding to finish her training through the PEP process. She has already attended over 60 births during her student career and hopes to finish the requirements to sit for the NARM exam by summer 2023. There are currently zero CPMs in the county that she lives in and she looks forward to being the first to begin to fill that gap. In her free time, Mercedes stays busy with her 5 kids and husband. She loves to hike, trail run, and do Crossfit and can almost always be caught with a coffee and a big water bottle.
Wendy Pinter, LM,CPM- retired
Licensed Midwife (MI) and Certified Professional Midwife, Founder and Former President of Nine Short Months
Please Note: Wendy is no longer taking clients as of Jan 1, 2022. Any questions regarding past records should call the center or email info@nineshortmonths.com for assistance.
What a ride it has been, this past 22 years of business! You all have trusted me with the most important moments in your lives, and the heaviness of that responsibility was never lost on me. I have had the honor of practicing the art of midwifery for two generations of many families, and as I stand here at the close of my career, it almost seems unreal that I was the person you chose to do that for you!
Even as a practicing midwife and founder of this company, I spent the entire time in complete denial of the position I held or the importance of our work here in the metro Detroit area. In case anyone has wondered what was going on at Nine Short Months in 2022- it was a challenging year. I was tagged for an involuntary military mobilization overseas in September of 2021, and I served the entirety of 2022. It was so much for me physically and mentally having to learn a new career and the hours were even tougher than being on call at the center. It was a real strain on the resources of the birth center to keep the excitement for what we were doing going while I was gone. It was really clear that the birth center, her staff, and her clients deserved to have a President that was physically present. I am so thankful to Jenn for answering the call to midwifery and for taking on the unique challenge of running a birth center that went through what ours did.
As I say goodbye in this capacity to all of you in order to continue to serve in active duty, I would like to request that all of you who have loved your experience at the center continue to support it. Donate money or fundraise for the center. Volunteer your talents to things you see needing updating if you know how to do it. Offer encouragement to the staff. You all have always been so great with that, and I just want you to know that this work is very overwhelming and expensive to provide. Community support will be key for the survival of all birth centers in our area because it is impossible to offer affordable births and cover the costs of running a center without outside support.
Thank you all again for the decades of trust you have given to us. I have been blown away by what I have experienced while guiding you all through the hardest things you may have had to do in your lives. You inspire me and are why we have done everything we know how to keep this center going.