Nourish Midwifery + Take Root Home Insemination — An Honest Editorial Review
Among fertility clinics in California, a meaningful share of East Bay patients — especially LGBTQ+ couples, single parents by choice, and people who want to try low-intervention conception before stepping into an IVF center — begin not at a reproductive endocrinology clinic but at a licensed-midwife practice. Nourish Midwifery & Take Root Home Insemination, the Berkeley-based home-visit practice run by licensed midwife Michelle Borok, fills exactly that role and carries a clean 5.0 rating across 28 Google reviews.
It is worth setting expectations up front: this is a midwifery practice, not an assisted reproductive technology (ART) program. Nourish does not operate an IVF lab, does not appear in CDC ART Success Rates or SART reporting, and does not advertise a medically directed IUI program with ovulation induction. What it offers instead is something many East Bay families actively want — continuity of care, fertility-awareness-based planning, in-home insemination guidance, and full-spectrum prenatal and postpartum care delivered in the patient's own home.
About the Practice
Nourish Midwifery and its sister service, Take Root Home Insemination & Fertility, are run by Michelle Borok, LM, CPM — a California Licensed Midwife credentialed through the Medical Board of California's Licensed Midwifery program. Borok trained at Maternidad La Luz, a freestanding birth center in El Paso, Texas, and holds a B.A. in Social Welfare from U.C. Berkeley. She is openly queer and describes her practice as LGBTQ-competent; much of the Take Root caseload is queer couples and single parents by choice. The practice brand is organized into three arms: Take Root (home insemination and fertility), Nourish (midwifery and wellness), and Thrive (classes and workshops).
California Licensed Midwives (LMs) are autonomous primary-care providers for low-risk pregnancy, birth, and well-woman care. They are not reproductive endocrinologists and do not run IVF, egg retrieval, embryo transfer, or an embryology lab.
Services Offered
Verified offerings across the two service lines include:
- In-home insemination appointments with a midwifery-style of care
- Fertility-awareness counseling and natural-cycle tracking
- Pre-conception planning and education
- Full prenatal care (45–120 minute home visits on the standard prenatal cadence)
- Home birth and water birth (with rental tub)
- Six weeks of in-home postpartum visits for parent and baby
- Well-person care: pap smears, breast/chest exams, STI testing, and blood work
- Birth-control and family-planning counseling
- Breastfeeding and chestfeeding support
The practice does not publish a full fee schedule online; prospective clients are directed to contact Take Root / Nourish directly for service scope and pricing.
What This Practice Is — and Isn't
To be explicit: Nourish + Take Root is not an IVF clinic. California LMs do not prescribe Clomid, letrozole, or injectable gonadotropins, do not perform egg retrieval or embryo transfer, and do not run an embryology lab. There is no ART reporting because there is no ART program. Take Root's home-insemination service is delivered in the client's home and is not a hospital- or clinic-based IUI cycle with trigger shots and monitored follicular ultrasounds. Patients who need diagnostic infertility testing, ovarian stimulation, IUI with washed sperm under medical supervision, or IVF should be under the care of a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist (REI). Take Root is transparent about this scope and will refer when clinical care is indicated.
Patient Experience
A 5.0 rating across 28 Google reviews is a small but unusually clean public record for any health-care practice. Reviews for home-visit midwifery practices like this one typically emphasize unhurried appointments (often an hour or more), continuity with a single provider across the entire episode of care, and the logistical advantage of never sitting in a clinic waiting room. Because Michelle Borok practices as a solo home-visit midwife serving Berkeley, Oakland, and the surrounding East Bay, scheduling is relationship-driven rather than slot-based.
California SB 729 and Coverage
California passed SB 729 in 2024, expanding the state's infertility benefit: beginning in mid-2025, large-group state-regulated health plans are required to cover diagnosis and treatment of infertility, including IVF. As with every mandate, self-funded (ERISA) employer plans are exempt, and the benefit is administered through contracted in-network providers — typically REI clinics, not midwifery practices. Midwifery care and at-home insemination supplies are generally not covered under the new fertility benefit and are usually billed as cash-pay or under routine maternity/well-woman benefits when applicable. For the full national picture, see our fertility insurance mandates by state guide and the IVF cost by state breakdown.
Considering At-Home Insemination?
Because "home insemination" is literally in the practice name, this is an unusually native fit. For patients with no known fertility diagnosis — particularly LGBTQ+ families using donor sperm and single parents by choice — at-home intracervical insemination (ICI) is often the first reasonable step before escalating to a clinic-based IUI cycle with washed sperm. ICI places unwashed, thawed donor sperm at the cervix; clinical IUI places washed sperm directly into the uterus and is performed in a medical office. The two are not interchangeable, and some donor sperm is sold as "ICI-ready" vs. "IUI-ready" precisely because of this distinction.
MakeAMom kits are reusable, ship in plain packaging, and pair well with the cycle-tracking and midwifery guidance Take Root already provides. They are not a substitute for medical care if you have a known fertility diagnosis, a history of tubal or uterine disease, or an abnormal partner semen analysis.
When to Add a Clinical REI
A midwifery-led conception path is reasonable for many patients, but there are clear moments to escalate to a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist:
- Twelve months of timed intercourse or home insemination without a pregnancy (six months if the egg-carrying partner is 35+)
- Irregular or absent cycles, suspected PCOS, or known endometriosis
- Known tubal, uterine, or fibroid pathology
- Two or more prior miscarriages
- An abnormal partner semen analysis
- Any desire for egg freezing, embryo banking, or preimplantation genetic testing
If you are heading toward an REI consult, our how to read IVF success rates primer and the IVF overview page will make the first visit more productive.
Location and Contact
Service area: Berkeley, Oakland, and the surrounding East Bay (home-visit practice; no public street-address clinic) Phone: (510) 735-7830 Email: takeroot.nourish@gmail.com Website: michelleborok.com
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Nourish/Take Root perform IVF or clinical IUI? No. Nourish is a California Licensed Midwife practice. It does not run IVF, embryo transfer, egg retrieval, or medically supervised IUI cycles with ovarian stimulation. Take Root offers in-home insemination and fertility-awareness counseling; patients needing clinical ART are referred to a reproductive endocrinologist.
Can I work with them alongside a fertility clinic? Often, yes. Patients who are simultaneously under REI care for diagnostic testing or timed cycles sometimes keep a midwifery relationship for preconception wellness and hand off to the midwife for prenatal and birth care once pregnant. Share your full care plan with both providers.
Do I need a referral? No. California LMs practice autonomously; prospective clients can contact Take Root / Nourish directly to schedule a consultation.
Editorial note: Independently written by the Fertlo editorial team; not sponsored. See our editorial policy.