As interest in midwives rises, Cambridge birth center reopens
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The largest suite in CHA's birth center includes a birthing pool. Photo: Steph Solis/Axios
Cambridge Health Alliance reopens its birth center next month.
Why it matters: The Boston area once again has a health care facility dedicated to services by midwives and doulas — six years after CHA's original birth center closed.
Driving the news: The birth center reopens July 6 with roughly 17 certified nurse midwives and 19 doulas speaking 13 languages, including Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic and Portuguese.
- Despite the birth center's closure, CHA continued to have midwives and see prenatal patients in Cambridge, Revere and Somerville.
- The center will launch with eight deliveries planned next month and aims to conduct up to 100 deliveries in its first year, says Kim Amsley-Camp, CHA's director of midwifery.
Zoom in: At first glance, the birth center looks like an Airbnb with three bedrooms, large showers and a pair of birthing pools (tubs for water delivery or hydrotherapy).
- The first floor includes medical exam rooms as well as a kitchen and a living room set up as a family waiting area.
- Amsley-Camp says that's because the staff want patients to eat, walk, shower and bathe as they please to facilitate a natural birth — with no IVs attached or epidurals.
What they're saying: "If you move, you can tolerate the pain so much better," Amsley-Camp tells Axios. "Water is a natural pain reliever; you're buoyant in water."
- "So the family is directing the efforts."
Yes, but: The birth center has a portable monitor and other medical equipment for pregnant patients and newborns.
Reality check: High-risk pregnancies aren't necessarily suited for a birth center, she added.
- Patients who smoke, have high blood pressure, diabetes, twin gestation or a previous C-section likely need to be at a hospital.
- Some low-risk patients also decide to transfer to a hospital birth for an epidural.
Zoom out: Doula care and deliveries by midwives have existed for centuries, but they've regained popularity in recent decades as patients seek out alternatives to hospital births — especially women of color who have experienced medical racism and co-morbidities.
- Black women in Massachusetts are more than twice as likely as white women to die from childbirth-related complications.
- Black babies are nearly three times as likely to die as white babies.
- CHA officials see the birth center's reopening as a way to tackle maternal mortality and reduce C-sections.
What we're watching: The birth center aims to ramp up to 300 births a year in three years in hopes of increasing access to doula care and midwives.