Services

Homebirth Fund

Birthing with the Black Home Birth Initiative

The Black Home Birth Initiative provides full scope midwifery care and home birth for local Black families accessing homebirth services in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. We provide culturally matched care, meaning our families see a Black midwife for their entire care course.

Our services include:

Comprehensive prenatal Care
We provide full spectrum prenatal care from conception on. We see our families on the standard prenatal schedule: every four weeks until 28 weeks gestation, every two weeks until 36 weeks gestation, and then weekly until birth. We see our families in our cozy St. Paul office for hour-long prenatal visits, and offer all standard labs, testing, ultrasounds. The biggest difference is that our clients are the drivers of their care, meaning whether you accept or decline labs, testing, and ultrasounds is your choice. We provide education, resources, and information to aid you in your decision making processes, and have an informed consent process for every single decision you’ll make during your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

Home Birth
We support unmedicated, physiological birth in the family’s home for families with a low risk pregnancy. We believe in unhindered birth, and know that when the birthing person is able to listen to and trust their bodies and intuition without time limits or constraints, birth works best. Birthing in the comfort of your own home supports this natural, physiological process.

We bring a quiet, calm presence into your birthing space and focus on facilitating your own individualized birthing process. We believe you should lead the way. When needed, we are skilled at supporting your process with comforting touch, massage, positional support, gentle guidance, encouragement, and suggestions for progress and comfort.

Partners, families, and loved ones are always welcome to visits, births - it’s really whatever you’d like! We are guests in your home. You, your partner, or your loved one can catch your baby, cut (or burn or do neither!) the cord, take photos and videos, and generally do as you please during your labor. We highly encourage the use of a doula, and provide resources and recommendations for Black doulas for our families.

After your baby is born, we tuck you into bed with your family to snuggle up, bond, eat a nourishing meal, and establish nursing. We monitor you and baby while baby is skin to skin with you. Once you’ve had a few hours to bond and recuperate, the midwife will perform a head to toe newborn examination, perineum examination, and we’ll complete our final assessments. Then, we clean up your birthing space and leave you to bond with your new or expanded family

Each birth is attended by midwife Britt and an assistant midwife certified in CPR/BLS and neonatal resuscitation. We bring medical equipment and medications to manage common birth complications, which are used with the utmost discretion. If needed, we have the capability to do IV’s and perineal repairs.

Water Birth
All families birthing through the Black Home Birth Initiative have the option of using a birthing tub during their labor and birth. We provide a spacious birth tub as part of your care, and you are able to use the tub as you see fit throughout your birthing process. We are typically able to perform routine monitoring for both parent and baby while you are relaxing in the birthing tub.

Postpartum & Newborn Care
We view the birthing person and baby as a unit, and see each of you together at every postpartum visit. After baby is born, baby goes right up on your chest and remains there through routine monitoring and assessments. We do delayed cord clamping until the cord is completely drained, white, and limp routinely, and support lotus birth and cord burning as desired by each family.

A couple hours after baby is born, we’ll perform a full newborn examination, including weight, measurements, and any newborn procedures you’d like us to perform right next to you in your bed. We offer Vitamin K and newborn eye prophylaxis, as well as all newborn screenings as desired by each family.

We see the birthing person and baby on days 1, 3, 7, and 2 weeks in your home, and do a final visit at 6 weeks back at the Black Home Birth Initiative office. We provide complete newborn care during this time, including filing of your baby’s birth certificate and social security number. Most parents do not begin bringing their baby to the pediatrician until 8 week of age.

We are here for the entire family during the postpartum transition, focusing on how everyone is adjusting, your healing, emotional wellness, providing ample time to answer questions and discuss any concerns you have. We provide ongoing lactation support throughout the entire postpartum, and provide extra lactation visits as needed by the family.

Lactation Support
We are passionate about increasing the rates of breastfeeding for Black families, and are dedicated to supporting families in their lactation goals. We check in on lactation at every postpartum visit to help you navigate any hurdles you may face and to ensure you have everything you need for a successful nursing relationship with your baby. The midwife is always available for questions and concerns, and we provide extra lactation visits as needed by the family. We have a rich community of birth workers and make referrals to local Black lactation professionals as needed for needs outside of our immediate scope of practice.