Military personnel are known for their discipline, preparation, and commitment to service. As a former Naval Officer, Frontier Nursing University graduate Jake Mearse, CNM (Class 137), PMHNP, DNP, continues to display those same traits as he breaks down barriers in service to those in his community.
Today, Dr. Mearse is a certified nurse-midwife with his own practice, offering home births and clinical care in Midway, Georgia. Being a male nurse-midwife does not make him one of a kind, but he’s in rare territory. The American Midwifery Certification Board’s Demographic Report released in January 2024 found that less than 1 percent (88 out of 14,198) of all AMCB-certified midwives identified as male. There’s no data on how many of those 88 served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years, but it’s safe to assume it is an exclusive group.
“I’m third generation Navy, so that was kind of expected almost. That’s what our family does,” said Mearse, who grew up in Bend, Oregon, and joined the Navy when he was 18. “While I was in the Navy, I got into the medical field as a Navy Hospital Corpsman and served aboard submarines mostly in that role. Eventually, the Navy sent me to nursing school.”
The Navy’s Medical Enlisted Commissioning Program allows sailors and Marines to earn a nursing degree and become a Navy Nurse Corps Officer. Mearse utilized this opportunity to attend Hawaii Pacific University while stationed at Pearl Harbor.
“I had absolutely no interest in labor and delivery or midwifery or anything related to that,” Mearse said. “I spent most of my time as a nurse in the ER/trauma world. I loved the ER/trauma nursing. I was deployed in the Middle East a couple of times doing Mobile Trauma Bay. Once I got a commission, I worked as an RN full time.”
Mearse met his wife April in the Navy, and in 2004, they had their first child with the help of FNU graduate Michelle Munroe, DNP (Class 11), APRN, CNM, FACNM, FAAN.
“She was our midwife for two of our kids,” said Mearse, who now has seven children. “She’s the one who talked me into becoming a midwife. She pulled me aside during a prenatal visit and said, ‘I think you might want to look into doing this. You might be good at this.’ That seed that Michelle planted in my head just kept growing. Unfortunately, if you are a nurse and you’re a 6-1, 200-pound man, every time you say, ‘I want to go into labor and delivery’, they say, ‘That’s very nice, you’re going back to the ER.’ So, I had to do it on my own time.”
During his last few years in the Navy, Mearse used his accrued leave time to finish his midwifery training. He then entered the Navy’s “Duty Under Instruction” program in which participants stay in active duty while pursuing a degree. He attended the University of Washington with plans to become a nurse-midwife, but the Navy approved him for the psychiatric-mental health nursing curriculum instead.
“The whole time I was going through my DNP program studying psychiatric nursing, I was taking extra classes in women’s health, labor and delivery, trying to get as close into that world as I could,” Mearse said. “I wanted to be a midwife.”
Inspired by Dr. Munroe, Mearse approached FNU about enrolling in the nurse-midwifery program.
“Best decision I ever made,” Mearse said. “The biggest thing that was helpful with Frontier was the flexibility of the program. I was coming to them saying, look I’ve got my DNP in a field I don’t necessarily want to spend the rest of my life, and I’m active-duty military, so I’m going to have long stretches where I can’t do school and I’ll have to jump back into it. Frontier was the only school that said, ‘You know what, tell us what you need, and we’ll make it work.’ They were just incredible.”
Still, Mearse faced more hurdles before achieving his goal of becoming a nurse-midwife. He encountered significant pushback against the idea of a man being a midwife.
“On my very first day of clinical rotations, at my first clinical site, I was with a group practice, and one of the midwives in the group pulled me aside and said, “‘Just so you know, I don’t think men belong in midwifery. I do not want to help you. Please don’t ask me for anything.”’ It was a little discouraging Day 1,” Mearse said. “I had a very similar experience in a midwifery job that I took. One of my new partners pulled me aside and said, ‘I am not working with you. I am offended that you’re here. I don’t believe that men belong here, and I will do anything I can to get you out of here.’”
Mearse said that the only times he has experienced such gender discrimination, it has come from colleagues, not patients. He noted that patients who asked for a different provider cited cultural or religious reasons.
“For the most part, in my experience, patients don’t really care what your gender is. They just want to be taken care of,” Mearse said.
Mearse took a position at an Army hospital at Fort Stewart in southeast Georgia, and he and his family fell in love with the area. In 2002, Mearse opened Coastal Midwifery and Women’s Health, which was a success from day one.
“Before I had even advertised or even posted on social media that I would be doing home births, we started getting calls,” he said. “We got full really fast. Now we are at a point where we are having to turn moms away every month because we are full.”
Mearse strives to keep his schedule to five or fewer home births per month, and the clinic is open three days a week. At the clinic, Mearse provides full-scope gynecology and primary care, including IUDs, contraception management, and colposcopies.
To make access to care as convenient and accessible as possible, the clinic is open from 1:00 to 10:00 p.m.
“Our hours are based on what I remember being a dad in the military and never getting to go to appointments because all of the OB offices were always open 9-5 Monday through Friday,” Mearse said. “We decided to do things a little differently. We are open from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., and we do two weekdays and Saturday because we really want families to be able to participate. We want to make this as family-friendly as we possibly can.”
Accordingly, running the clinic is very much a family project. Mearse’s wife, April, who is also a Navy veteran, is not medically trained but attends all the births to provide support and helps run the clinic.
“People come to the practice because they want a midwife. They stay with the practice because they meet April,” Mearse said. “Our kids are getting older now, but April is kind of the surrogate mom, especially to a lot of these young military moms who are 20, 21 years old, on the other side of the country from home. She helps set things up and take things down, but her most important role is being a hand-holder and encourager. She has that experienced mom energy where she can hold a young woman’s hand and say, ‘I’ve done this seven times. We’re going to get you through it. You’re going to be OK.’ I love the fact that a lot of our clients will text April instead of me.”
Yes, Jake and April have seven children, who are also active participants in the clinic’s day-to-day operations. They strip the beds, clean, and prepare rooms for the next client. They also help interact with the other children brought into the clinic, which features separate playrooms for older and younger children.
“We’re largely a military community, and we will have moms come in for their appointment, and they’ve got other little kids and the dad’s deployed,” Mearse said. “Because we have my kids there to help, moms can feel comfortable coming into their appointment they can relax and do their appointment without worrying about what the kids are doing.”
Mearse schedules 60-minute time slots for all his patients, ensuring ample time for questions and discussions about their care.
“We want our patients to be able to ask questions and get to know us and us to get to know them,” Mearse said. “I love the fact that we have a lot of moms who will come in and just hang out in the clinic even if they’re not being seen that day. They just want to come and sit and chat and drink coffee and be there. It’s wonderful.”
As veterans, Jake and April are particularly excited to be able to offer care to a large number of military families.
“When we first started this, one of the commitments we made is that we were going to try and make this affordable for military families,” Mearse said of the military discounts offered at Coastal Midwifery and Women’s Health. “We are just 10 minutes down the road from Fort Stewart. Even though we’re not able to do this for free for military families – I wish we could – they end up paying sometimes less than half of what they would pay elsewhere. If we’re making just enough to break even, I’m fine with that. We’re able to serve these people that are serving our country.”
Mearse hopes to be able to offer even greater access to care soon. He plans to hire another nurse-midwife as soon as she graduates.
“Right now, we are turning a number of moms away each month because we’re full, so it will be nice to be able to take more moms because there will be two of us,” Mearse said. “I’ve been on call 365 days a year for three-and-a-half years now. It will be amazing to be able to take a vacation and leave the practice in someone else’s hands for a little bit.”
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In 2025, Frontier Nursing University honored the 100-year anniversary of the inception of the Frontier Nursing Service. We are grateful for the alumni, students, couriers, donors, volunteers, friends, and employees who have made an incredible impact on FNU’s century-long journey. We celebrated this milestone year by capturing and sharing some of the countless stories that make up our history. Whatever your connection to FNU, we hope you enjoy these stories.
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