Love Made Real: My Journey to Beloved Birth

Guest blog post by Leseliey Welch, MPH, MBA

My heart’s work in the world is to make love real – in how we care for birthing families and our communities. I believe all people deserve access to all safe birth options. I believe we can create a world where every birth is safe, dignified, and surrounded by love.

I say this as a mother who cared for a premature baby (now my healthy 19 year old daughter!) and who suffered a miscarriage at 20 weeks, then went on to birth and raise a beautiful rainbow baby years later. I say this as an auntie who cried at the sight of the tiniest casket I had ever seen, my nephew, born too small and too soon to stay with us in this world. 

And I say this as a former local public health department leader who was once responsible for addressing the systems failures that resulted in severe racial inequities in maternal and infant health in a city I love. 

After all this, I began to ask: What is missing? What aren’t we doing? What aren’t we trying? What haven’t we invested in? 

These questions — and my wonderful birth experiences with midwives in hospitals – led me to learn more about midwifery care and freestanding birth centers. I came to understand the vast body of research that shows midwifery care is not only safe but optimal birth care for most pregnancies. I came to understand the benefits of birthing in a freestanding birth center – and how most people in the U.S. lack real access to  midwives and birth centers. It became crystal clear to me that the challenges we face are not only about inequities in birth outcomes – but about inequitable birth care options.

My questions led me to one key observation: Midwives are missing. The US divested from midwifery care in the 1920s and has never corrected this grave mistake. Today, midwifery offers the power and promise of safe, quality, loving care through pregnancy, birth, and beyond. All people deserve access to midwifery care, whether in a birth center, hospital, home.

My deep commitment to midwifery became my North Star, leading me to co-found Birth Detroit – the first and only freestanding community birth center in the city of Detroit – with my dreammates Elon Geffrard, Char’ly Snow, and Nicole White. With the love, wisdom, and support of those in my hometown and in my growing birth center networks, I went on to co-found BIrth Center Equity (BCE) with Nashira Baril of Boston’s Neighborhood Birth Center. At BCE we work to ensure that every community has access to safe, culturally-reverent midwifery care, by investing in birth centers led by Black, Indigenous, people of color. BCE honors and builds on a rich legacy of birth justice activism and the ongoing work of so many, and seeks to bridge a critical gap: connecting birth centers led by people of color to the capital and resources we need to thrive. BCE’s unique contribution is the building of collective power among Black, Brown, Indigenous, people of color-led birth centers in order to grow and leverage financial resources for birth center growth and sustainability – and a better birth care system for all.

In just five years, BCE has cultivated a values-driven network of nearly 60 community birth centers and invested more than $5 million to grow and sustain community birth infrastructure that will last for generations.

It astonishes me that despite all the known benefits of midwifery care — relationship-based, personalized support; improved birth outcomes; greater autonomy and respect; and cost effectiveness— less than 15% of birthing people in the U.S. have access to midwives. And it angers me that the gap is even wider in communities of color. Of the more than 400 freestanding birth centers in the U.S.—the only facilities designed to center the midwifery model—fewer than 7% are owned and led by Black, Brown, Indigenous, people of color.

This is why we created Birth Center Week. In 2023, with artist and birth justice advocate China Tolliver, we launched Birth Center Week to celebrate and amplify the transformative power of birth centers—especially community birth centers that provide safe, culturally-reverent midwifery care for all. In 2024, Birth Center Week was recognized by a U.S. congressional resolution. Each year, September 14–20, we lift up birth centers as the only facilities explicitly designed to center the midwifery model, and as essential to improving outcomes for families nationwide.

This year, Birth Center Week 2025 carries the theme “We Are Beloved Birth”—a call that echoes our boldest initiative yet: Beloved Birth 50 By 50.

Beloved Birth 50 By 50 is a national initiative with one audacious goal:
By the year 2050, 50% of babies in the U.S. will be born with the care of midwives.

Beloved Birth 50 By 50 is more than a goal—it is an invitation. An invitation to parents, grandparents, neighbors, and teachers. To providers in birth centers, hospitals, and homes. To leaders across finance, workforce, education, health systems, design, policy, and media. Together, we can expand access to midwifery care and build a culture of health and wellness where every birth is beloved.

At the heart of Beloved Birth 50 By 50 is a profound shift in our culture of birth: A shift from a birth culture that is physician-centric to a birth culture that is family centered. A shift from birth that is physician-led to birth that is midwife-led with physician collaboration. A shift from birth care that is structured by hierarchy to birth care that is rooted in the inherent value and dignity of every person.

This Birth Center Week I extend to you my personal invitation to join me and so many others across the country to sign the Beloved Birth 50 By 50 Pledge. Please join me on September 13  in taking the Beloved Birth 50 By 50 Pledge because, together, we can expand access to midwifery care and build a culture where all people can birth safely with dignity and love. Together we will make history. Together we are unstoppable.

 

LESELIEY WELCH, MPH, MBA

Leseliey Welch is a public health strategist, social entrepreneur, writer, and professional dreamer whose guiding value is Love. As a founder of Birth Detroit and Birth Center Equity, her work is grounded in making communities stronger, healthier, and more free – starting with ensuring all people have access to all safe birth options. Birth Detroit opened its first freestanding community birth center in the fall of 2024.  Birth Center Equity is a national effort to invest in Black, Indigenous, people of color-led birth centers at scale to make midwifery care a real option in all communities. She has two decades of leadership experience in city, state, and national health organizations, including having served as Deputy Director of Public Health for the City of Detroit. Leseliey is the vision behind National Birth Center Week and the collective impact initiative Beloved Birth 50 by 50. She is also a poet and an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow.