Beth Rodriguez
Beth Rodriguez was born to immigrant parents in New York City. She grew up in a multicultural neighborhood where she learned to honor people of many nationalities. She excelled in math and science in high school and hoped to receive an academic scholarship to study quantum physics. However, she became an orphan at the age of 15 and attended Brooklyn College, where she met her first husband, Roberto. They were married and quickly started a family. She loved being a mother, but her academic education was temporarily postponed.
Eventually, Beth returned to college and entered a 4-year BSN nursing program. She attended her first birth in 1977, and the miracle of birth guided her to her profession. The experience of birth and the responsibility for the safe passage of mother and baby was both challenging and life-changing. She began to study diligently with the impassioned goal of becoming a nurse midwife. Recently, she celebrated her 43rd year as a midwife and has never doubted her decision.
Her midwifery career spans many years, during which she was fortunate to attend births in traditional hospital settings, birth centers, and planned home births. She was trained as a waterbirth provider by Waterbirth International and has attended more than one hundred waterbirths. In addition, she was credentialed for many years as a childbirth instructor and a lactation counselor. She continues to provide lactation services at the HOGA practice.
Beth is the mother of three grown children: Carlos, a drug and alcohol counselor at the Veteran’s Administration; John, a family practice physician who lives and practices in Mexico; and Samantha, a family nurse practitioner who provides well-woman services at an OBGYN practice in St. Augustine.
Beth’s husband, Peter, was a successful commercial fisherman in the Florida Keys before he recently passed. Beth has welcomed eight grandchildren into her family. She will always be thankful to her husband and her children for their constant love and support. She is also grateful for the opportunity to have served thousands of birthing mothers throughout her career.