NORWAY – Two certified nurse-midwives are establishing a private midwifery practice in Norway.

Jane Mills of Paris is leaving Western Maine Obstetrics and Gynecology after eight years to team up with Cathy Heffernan of Bethel, a certified nurse-midwife formerly associated with Rumford Hospital.

Together they are buying the former Hutchins Jewelry building at 176 Main St., and plan to open Blue Moon Midwives in early 2005.

“It’s really exciting,” said Mills. Of the 50 or so certified midwives working in Maine, only a few have established independent practices.

“This will be a true midwifery service,” said Heffernan, offering personalized primary care to women from their childbearing years through menopause.

“This will be a really small personalized practice where you know everybody.”

The women say their practice will offer holistic health care, including prenatal care and labor and delivery care, care after birth, gynecological exams, newborn care, menopausal management and counseling in preventive health care.

Certified nurse-midwives are health care professionals licensed by the American College of Nurse-Midwifery who are independent practitioners. They can do deliveries and dispense medications on their own; by law they are required to have a doctor on call during deliveries in case of complications.

“We’re not doctors, we’re midwives, we offer something different,” said Heffernan. “This way they’ll have a choice.”

Thus the name of their practice, Blue Moon Midwives, which they say indicates both the feminine aspect of women and “a very unique service to the community,” Heffernan said.

Mills said both she and Heffernan “have a low threshold for asking for help” when necessary.

The women hope to establish a relationship with the hospital’s parent company, Western Maine Health, that will allow them to deliver their patients’ babies in the birthing center there.

They have made a formal request of the hospital, and have yet to hear back, they said.

Hospital spokesperson Tracey Geary said the hospital was awaiting more details about the practice and declined further comment.

If they are not able to deliver at the local hospital, Heffernan said they will be disappointed, but not defeated.

They will pursue delivering at other hospitals.

“It may be an option down the road that we would open a birthing center” at their Main Street practice, Heffernan said. “Our long-term goal is to offer other options,” including classes and group support workshops on prenatal and birthing issues.

Mills said her last day at Western Maine Ob-Gyn will be Nov. 5. She said she wasn’t surprised when she got a termination letter Aug. 5 from Western Maine Health Chief Executive Officer Timothy Churchill.

She said she’d been told informally that the hospital was planning to phase out its midwifery service.

At one time, Western Maine Ob-Gyn had two midwives, Mills and Eileen Small. Small was let go in 1997 and has moved to Alaska, Mills said. Earlier this year the hospital, which does around 200 births a year, hired Dr. Carolyn Costanzi to join Dr. Gregory Hardy at Western Maine Ob-Gyn.

Mills, 46, has been a certified nurse-midwife for half her life, beginning in England at age 23. She has lived in the area for 18 years, and is raising two sons.

Hefferan, 50, and a mother of four, has been a certified nurse-midwife for 24 years. For 17 of those years she did home births. Heffernan worked out of Rumford Hospital from 1996 to 2002, when she moved to Portsmouth, N.H. After a year working as a midwife there, Heffernan returned to Maine and has been working at Central Maine Obstetrics and Gynecology.