Birth Retreat STL

Jamaa Birth Village Capital campaign: Funding Missouri’s 1st Black Led Birth Center & Postpartum Retreat Haven"

Currently there are zero freestanding licensed birth centers in Missouri, a state with rising negative birthing outcomes and disparities, ranking 44th in the nation for maternal deaths. 84% of maternal mortality deaths are preventable, with mental health, SUDS and DV accounting for most deaths. Due to historic mistreatment, disrespect, bias and racism towards Black women, they are 4x more likely to not survive childbirth, in hospital settings. We have to act now!

Jamaa Birth Village's new Birth Center & Postpartum Retreat Haven™ will provide low-risk birthing people the opportunity to receive respectful, risk appropriate, culturally congruent care, allowing families to give birth, rest and heal in a safe & sacred space, while being nourished and cared for by experts in their community who look like them.

Jamaa Birth Villages’ future “Birth Center and Postpartum Retreat Haven™️” model proves to be the first in the nation to address the Maternal Health crisis through this innovative urban model. With the help of our community, Jamaa Birth Village has purchased 1-acre of land with creek access to create transformative change for STL families.

OUR GOAL: $3,600,000

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Your contribution will help:

  • Break ground & build a 5,000 sq. ft. eco-friendly birthing center, in the heart of Ferguson, featuring a library and learning space, prenatal & well-family care rooms, and birthing suites equipped with spa like and indigenous amenities, all integrated into nature.
  • Build earth based round Postpartum Retreat Haven™️ huts, with living roofs to grow herbs & foods for nourishment, in-suite kitchenette, full baths and healing spaces.
  • Create a spiral land based food garden and year round green house for perinatal wellness.
  • Restore our land based creek, transforming the surrounding space as a living oasis.
  • Forge a movement of birthing families learning sacred postpartum care practices through education & modeling, to combat maternal morbidity and mortality.

Our Goal: $3,600,000

Birth Center & Postpartum Retreat Haven

Community birth centers provide safe, culturally-reverent midwifery care for all. Community birth centers are crucial to creating a world where families, communities, and midwives thrive.- Birth Center Equity 

We are expanding our current model of care from a traditional Midwifery-Doula care practice, to a birthing and postpartum retreat center model. It is time for our community to have a BIPOC led Birth Center & Postpartum Healing Space.

We've purchased 1-acre of land, just 1-block from our current Historic Midwifery Clinic to create Missouri's first community ran Birth Center and Postpartum Retreat Haven right in the heart of Ferguson, Missouri! The new Birth Center & Postpartum Retreat Haven will provide low-risk birthing people with the opportunity to receive high quality, out of hospital Midwifery care through a holistic care model, with the opportunity to give birth in, rest and heal at our Birth Center a safe & sacred space nestled into our community.

Postpartum, care will continue in one of our Postpartum Retreat Havens where mothers and babies can be nourished, nurtured and cared for by community healers, care providers and their peers.

We will provide on-site holistic birthing services, extended-traditional and wrap-around retreat style postpartum care with mental health support for the first 7-days following birth. With abundant community gardens and green houses on the land, families will be fed and cared for, creating a solid foundation for a thriving postpartum period.

Do you want to be a part of the change we need to see in black maternal health?

YOUR DONATION MAKES A DIFFERENCE!

Why build a birth center?

Midwifery care in community birth centers results in improved outcomes, enhances the birth experience, increases rates of breast/chestfeeding and parent engagement, reduces racial disparities, and is cost-effective. Moreover, cost analyses project “an annual savings of $189 million with a shift of 1 percent of births from hospital to birth center.” (Source: Community Birth Settings)

“A birth center is a health care facility for childbirth where care is provided in the midwifery and wellness model. The birth center is freestanding and not a hospital [or in a hospital].”-AABC
Birth centers are associated with:
  • ✨Very successful normal spontaneous vaginal births. 94% who entered labor planning a birth center birth achieved a vaginal birth.
  • ✨Decreased chances of a c-section. The C-section rate for low-risk individuals who chose to give birth at a birth center was only 6%—compared to the U.S. C-section rate of 27% for low-risk patients.
  • 98% of patients recommending birth centers to their loved ones
  • ✨Cost-saving benefits for families, states and insurance companies. Vaginal births in birth centers simply cost less. In 2011, the average Medicare/Medicaid facility services reimbursement for an uncomplicated vaginal birth in a hospital was $3,998, compared with $1,907 in birth centers. This factor alone can save up to 30-million.
(American Birth Center Study II)
Why a Postpartum Retreat Haven?
Our haven lives by this motto, “When we replenish a mother, we replenish our nation.”
A Postpartum Retreat Haven, is a new care model created and coined by Traditional Midwife Okunsola M. Amadou, to normalize sacred, ceremonial and replenishing care for birthing parents immediately postpartum. She created this model after witnessing deeply restorative care in her journeys throughout Africa. Her model incorporates 7-key metrics to ensure a fully restorative 1-week postpartum, which is the duration of the stay, immediately following birth.
While retreat means a quiet or secluded space in which one can rest and relax, haven means “a place of safety or refuge”. Postpartum Retreat Haven this denotes a place where women can be held, honored, cared for, adored, and uplifted, during the most vulnerable moments, post-birth.
In the current hospital model of care, postpartum parents are constantly woken up from rest by providers gathering vitals, and other tests and routines, making hard for the body to rest, be replenished and begin its healing journey. Despite the constant checks, mothers are still facing preventable causes of morbidity and mortality, with babies quality of life being impacted. The current birth center model allows mothers to go home within 7-10 hours postpartum to rest and be cared for by their families. However, many women who go home, continue to raise their other children, cook, clean and over engage instead of fully resting & healing.

How to join and support our work

Donate! Share our capital campaign with your employer, friend groups, church and family circle. We're all in this together and the future of our region depends on the ability to receive quality care and support throughout the perinatal journey.