Rainier Valley Birth and Health Center Executive Director, Tara Lawal, greets U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) on a recent visit
You can see Ryan Harris’ entire interview with the leaders of Rainier Valley Midwives and Birth and Health Center in the video below:
Pregnant women in a vastly underserved neighborhood have a comforting and safe environment, where they can find alternative for pregnancy care that can also help them find any option for that care they desire.
South Seattle is what’s known as a “health care desert”. “We’re federally-designated, medically-underserved. We have a provider shortage, and yet we have the most diverse community here with the most languages spoken in this zip code in the entire country,” says Jodilyn Owen, co-founder of Rainier Valley Midwives and its Birth and Health Center, “We have a lot of big families here. We have cultures who support big families, and we don’t have the health care infrastructure to support it.”
At Rainier Valley Birth and Health Center, they provide pregnancy care and other wrap-around services that continue well after birth with options for having babies there, at home or in a hospital. They also work with a network of provider partners, which includes doctors and hospitals so that the mothers and their families can be referred to whichever option makes them most comfortable.
Owen says it’s hard for working moms with no transportation to get over to the nearest hospitals on Seattle’s First Hill for pre-natal visits, so they just don’t go, and then when the baby comes, she says they’re hit with the list of care they should have had. Owen says the message that sends is, “‘What a burden you are to us.’ That’s how you just welcomed somebody in…Then they have to have their baby, so they just want to have their baby and get out.”
That’s why the first rule for Rainier Valley Midwives is kindness because they say that care and support can help ease the stress and make birth a whole lot easier.
