It all started with my own experience of navigating a very broken maternal health care system.
Its like this open secret.
We know about it, but nobody wants to look at or talk about it.
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Everyones waiting for someone else to fix it.
And then its your turn and you feel suddenly like youre the only one whos experiencing these things.
It feels like a moment has come where there is a will to do something about it.
The CDC tells us that midwifery care can help prevent up to 80% of these maternal deaths.
That was the aha moment where I was like, Wait a minute.
So, we dont have to be dying at three to four times the rate of white women?
To me, this is white space.
We know that investing in midwifery care in this country would have better outcomes for our families.
So, what is stopping us?
And so I thought, What if we just started super small?
Thats where it started.
BirthFund grew out of that.
Someone like Serena doesnt just put her name behind anything.
How difficult or easy was it to get people to say, Yes, I support this idea.
I want to do it?
Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, it wasnt hard.
Because all it takes is a family going through this.
Its enough for them to say something needs to change.
What I wanted from my birth experience was to feel joy, not dread or fear or pain.
One of them sent me a video of the moment that her baby was born.
It was an unbelievably beautiful thing to watch.
She caught her own baby.
I was so blown away.
I didnt think that thats what it could ever even be like.
Those psychological changes are embedded in the midwifery model.
But its an unlearning of the way that I think society has made childbirth essentially punishment for women.
I would also say the system is designed for women to not make decisions.
They should just put their trust in the system.
I think it has just turned out that that is not good enough.
Theres a bias toward not encouraging women to be a part of the process.
Look, Im not a doctor, youre not a doctor.
There are things doctors know that we don’t know.
Thats obviously the case.
I am not anti doctor; neither is anyone thats a part of this BirthFund movement.
What we are is pro-choice in the sense that were making informed decisions about our birth experiences.
I also felt discouraged by my doctors from asking too many questions.
This was the eighth doctor that I met with.
You want to feel like youre in partnership with your caretaker.
Theyre educating all of you.
I actually want to ask you a question, Abby.
Your original birth plan did not include a home birth.
But you not only ended up giving birth at home, you also had complications.
You walked out of that experience saying you had a trauma-free, joyful, peaceful birth.
Talk to me about that.
I felt like I couldnt get that if I entered the hospital system.
I took a six-week birth class with my husband.
We learned everything there was to know about what would happen in our labor.
We talked at length with our birth team about under what circumstances I would go to the hospital.
But then I realized my midwife was doing what she told me she would do if that happened.
I knew what was going on.
I wasnt rushed anywhere.
There wasnt any panic.
I felt so safe.
I was up and walking around within minutes of my labor.
It was honestly a great experience.
Postpartum is so hard.
In a way, labor and delivery has a beginning and an end.
But then once its over, the real work begins.
What I know is I would not have been able to peacefully hold my baby through that experience.
I probably wouldve been wheeled out of there and given blood transfusions.
Hemorrhages, they are serious, but midwives are trained to deal with them.
Theyre also trained to know when to make that call for a hospital transfer.
Doctors, doulas, and midwives can all coexist in a functional maternal health care ecosystem.
Unfortunately, right now midwives are being forced out of that equation.
In most places in this country, midwives are not admitted into hospitals.
They dont have the ability to attend to births in hospitals.
Some hospitals allow this, and thats amazing.
I wish I had access to that kind of a hospital.
I dont think out-of-hospital births are for everybody.
There should be a hybrid model that embraces both.
How can a mom nurse a baby when no ones nursing her back to health?
Just understanding that theres a role for all of these different forms of care is crucial.
A midwifery model is more community-based.
There are more touch points with the patient and the mother and the family.
There is more postpartum care that I think is not just a luxury, but actually a life-saving thing.
So it is actually a medical necessity for there to be more postpartum care.
Postpartum is so hard.
In a way, labor and delivery has a beginning and an end.
But then once it’s over, the real work begins.
I remember struggling with breastfeeding my daughter.
I didnt have to call a 1-800 number, deal with a bunch of bureaucracy.
It was a people-to-people kind of thing, which made it accessible.
Just from my experience, I didnt really know how to account for the support I would need postpartum.
We make the biggest sacrifice ever to continue expanding the population.
The least we could be given is some postpartum support.
But how can a mom nurse a baby when no ones nursing her back to health?
To your point, Abby, these shouldnt be considered luxuries that are only afforded to the privileged.
Elaine Welteroth is a mother, journalist, TV host, and founder ofBirthFund.
Abby Phillip is a mother, and the anchor of CNNsNewsNight With Abby Phillip.
