Rising Stars: Meet DENISE MUNGUIA of Chino

Today we’d like to introduce you to DENISE MUNGUIA.

Hi DENISE, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I began this journey when I was 20 years old and pregnant. My husband was deployed at the time and I felt alone and needing so many questions answered during my pregnancy. At my last OB visit, where I sat in a gown freezing for about an hour and my OB was finaly being in the room she didn’t even see me as a person, it felt like just anothe chart that she had to get through. I was asked if I had questions and I responded “Yes” and she still walked out the door! I felt I needed to look for something else if I was going to get my needs met.
At the time I was not working and my dependent military insurance only covered a birth center that was 1.5hrs away from me. I made the decision to travel the distance for check ups and labor. I had such an AMAZING experience and knew that was the kind of care, education and nurturing that I wanted to provide pregnant mothers. When my daughter turned 2y.o I enrolled in midwifery school and hae strived everyday to provide care to pregnant clients and have worked as hard to continue doing it almost 14 years later.
After graduation I joined a very busy birth center practice where I obtained so much experience and knowledge as well as oportuites to network with different doctors, hosptials and other medical providers.
As of 2021 I took over the practice I had interned at once the previous owner retired. Now, I run my own practice providing care to expecting families. Over the years there have been many birth centers that have opened and many that have closed. Currently I am the only licensed midwife with a birth center in this part of the Inland Empire. I currently train future midwives and just helped my previous senior intern pass her national accreditation while waiting on my current intern to finish her training hopefully in the next 6 months so that we can continue to provide midwifery care to families.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There have been so many challenges along the way. I went through a divorce during the first year of midwifery school and lost my job my last year that almost caused me to drop out of school. Fortunately my family was not willing to let me stop and encouraged me especially since I was so far in my schooling. Financial aid would have been very helpful but at that time my school was not accepting any.

Finding a facility to train in was difficult but worth the wait. There are many midwives who chose to not train students due to the extra time and effort it takes while also trying to care for their clients.

As far as running the business, it has been very difficult keeping up with all of the changing regulations as well as the cost of providing care has increased drastically while not being able to have insurances cover our services. We constantly have to make sure that the care we provide is adequate as well as making sure that we stand out to be able to bring families in our doors and stay open.

The on call life is very demanding but it is also rewarding in many ways. We sacrifice so much of ourselves physically and mentally but like everything there are pauses to the busy scheduels.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My midwifery practice is a birthing center offering families a good medium between a hosptial and a home birth setting. We focus on low risk care and ensuring our families remain low risk inorder to have a healthy patient and baby.

I am fluent in Spanish, so much so that the news station Telemundo did an interview on my facility and shared with the community that we are available to serve them.

I am very proud to be one of the only midwives to have a collaboration with an Obstetricain that is our back up in the event of any complication or emergency throughout pregnancy or during a delivery. I am currenlty working very hard to build this same kind of connection with two other hospitals and more OBs as well as spceailist such as maternal fetal medicine doctors and high risk obstetric doctors to provide my patients the best care when it is needed.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I see midwifery becoming very hard to obtain for many families. This is one of the main reasons I try to work very hard to train more midwives so that we can continue to provide servicces when htey are needed. There are many families seeking out of hospital services and with many labor and delivery units closing their doors we will continue to see an influx in how many families come through our doors. We need to find better ways for insurances to help families with the cost of midwives since OBs are becoming very limited for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aamidwiferycenter.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aa_midwifery/?next=%2F
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aamidwifery
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/aa-midwifery-center-chino-2?osq=AA+Midwifery+Center