Oregon midwife gets trial date for delivering Kennewick babies without a license

A midwife who has never been licensed to practice in Washington pleaded innocent Wednesday to allegations she delivered at least two babies in Kennewick.

Sherry Lee Dress, 69, appeared in Benton County Superior Court with her attorney, John Jensen.

Her trial is scheduled for June 5 on two charges of practicing a profession without a license. One count is a gross misdemeanor and the second a felony.

Dress, who lives in John Day, Ore., is a certified professional midwife (CPM) and a licensed direct-entry midwife (LDEM), according to her professional Facebook page. She says she has been practicing midwifery since 1975.

She was hired by two Kennewick mothers to help with their pregnancies and handle their labor and deliveries in the spring of 2015. Both families were given birth certificates by Dress that falsely said the babies were born across the state line in Oregon, according to court documents.

Dress reportedly has traveled into southeastern Washington for years to work as a midwife during at-home births.

Washington’s secretary of health in November 2013 issued a permanent cease-and-desist order telling Dress to stop practicing in the state.

She had been licensed in her home state of Oregon, but health officials there did not renew it in September 2015, citing violations of unprofessional conduct. The violations included two births in Pasco and three in Walla Walla in which Dress filed birth certificates in Oregon saying the babies were born at her then-home in Canyon City.

Oregon State Police were investigating Dress for practicing midwifery in several jurisdictions and other criminal activities when they contacted Kennewick police about the two cases here, documents said.

This is not the first time Dress has been accused of illegally practicing.

She pleaded guilty last May in Walla Walla County District Court and was sentenced to 364 days in jail, with all of it suspended on the condition she paid her court costs and fines and stayed violation-free during her two-year probation period.

Dress came to the attention of public health officials after the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin published a story in October 2015 about a couple who said the midwife’s bad practices resulted in the stillbirth of their full-term son.

The woman labored for more than 50 hours at home before going to a Walla Walla hospital for emergency surgery. The baby boy died before he was delivered from a prolonged labor with inadequate oxygen, the story said.

Dress was not investigated for the baby’s death.

This story was originally published March 15, 2017 at 7:11 PM with the headline "Oregon midwife gets trial date for delivering Kennewick babies without a license."