Get to know us

Hannah Deriemaeker is a passionate certified midwife from Belgium who made a home for her heart in Guatemala. In 2011, she finalised her training by working for several months in the labor and delivery ward in Nyakibale, Uganda. After this intense experience, she worked for several years as the medical director of the Belgian + Guatemalan joint venture NGO, Vivir en Amor, located in a remote village in the mountains of Huehuetenango.

While living and working here, Hannah specialised in attending birth at home and attending obstetrical emergencies in remote and low-resourced settings. She worked side-by-side with traditional Guatemalan midwives and developed a deep and unique sense of what it truly means to be a midwife. Hannah was taught by traditional midwives on how to use herbal medicine during and after pregnancy, the use of the temazcal (Mayan sauna), and traditional Maya abdominal massage.

In 2016 she started working in a clinic in Rio Dulce but was called to Lago Atitlan to start attending births at home from the expat community. After attending several home births at the Lake, she became pregnant and gave birth to her son at home at the shores of the lake in early 2017. Later in 2017 she founded her homebirth practice ‘Midwives of The Lake’. At the end of 2020 she relocated to Europe and is currently working and living in Central Portugal where she is part of APEO (Associação Portuguesa dos enfermeiros obstetras). In 2023 she gave birth at home to her second son in Portugal.

Hannah is a teacher for Doula School International Canada and is an international traveling midwife, teacher, offering guidance and assistance for birth at home and hospital. She is also the creative director of Escola Regenerativa, a rural teaching and hosting centre for sustainability, heritage restoration and cooperative living. At the beginning of 2026 she created Luz do Nascer to symbolize the start of her 14th year in midwifery and integrate all she has learned throughout the last years.

Hannah believes in the essential importance of how we give birth, no matter the location of birth. Every woman and every family deserves to be fully informed, to be treated with respect, to have the chance on having a phsyiological and undisturbed birth. When interventions are needed and indicated, also then, every health professional should vow to treat every mother and every baby with reverence and respect. This first experience of giving life will determine the future physical, mental and emotional health of the mother and family unit. Birth matters to all of us.