Dear Doulas,
Howdy folks ~ I’m a midwife/massage therapist and for those who are legit business-minded and have a strong entrepreneurial spirit, I’m throwing out an idea.
Birth Centers make midwifery scalable. As a midwife, I can, and have, attended 5 births in a 48 hour call shift comfortably, had a place to rest, ate my snacks, yadda yadda.
I had birth assistants and doulas that worked 12 hour shifts as a support team, plus I had my own student with me. It was GLORIOUS.
Birth centers, depending on state regs., don’t have to be owned by midwives. In some states yes, but not all.
There are a couple of birth centers owned and operated by doulas, consumers who didn’t find what they were looking for, and I think a breastfeeding educator.
Anyway, I digress, but grabbing an old grocery store, building out three birth suites, an education room, two exam rooms, admin space, laundry room etc, and renting extra office space to a psychologist, a bodyworker, etc is a banging model.
You can have an “in house” midwife team (closed model) or have a space where midwives apply to have privileges. That is called an open model.
2 things of note
1) AABC has a how to start a birth center workshop that is expensive AF, but also GOLD. It will save you so much money in mistakes not made, and also gives enough deets to see if starting a birth center is the right move. So it is super clarifying.
2) Medicaid is starting to wake up. So if your birth center took Medicaid as a facility fee, but the provider (midwife/doula/placenta encapsulator) was cash pay by the pt/client, that makes community birth more accessible.
Doulas make such a huge difference in the birth world, and for those who feel the call and have the energy, in my mind birth centers make a dent in the Black and Indigenous mortality/morbidity disparity.
Would you like to connect professionally? Find me on LinkedIn!