Today we’d like to introduce you to Meredith Bowling.
Hi Meredith, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I have been a doula, childbirth educator, and Evidence Based Birth Instructor. I became a birth worker due to the birth of my children. I felt very inspired and powerful from those births that I wanted more people to know that they to can birth with confidence and without medication. Through my journey of becoming certified, I always wanted a space in Long Beach, my hometown, where people could get the resources they need during pregnancy and postpartum. I had spent many births with clients in hospitals, and I was getting burnt out; I was going home traumatized by how my clients were being treated and wasn’t sure if I could continue working in hospitals. I was able to start supporting clients at the birth center in Long Beach, and it changed my world. The midwives were so supportive of the physiological birth and gave clients the risks and benefits of procedures so they could make the best choice for them and their families. It was night and day to a hospital.
About two years ago, the birth center in Long Beach was going to close their doors, and I just could not let that happen. Birth centers are already hard to come by. The past two years have had its ups and downs, but I know that providing my community with midwifery care and an alternative place to give birth was so important. While I am managing this birth center, I am now also starting to advocate for midwifery care in commercial insurance companies. Not just Certified Nurse Midwives, but Licensed Midwifes. There is a big discrimination between the two when it comes to insurance coverage.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The value of giving birth at a birth center is an investment that I believe our community should be encouraged to recognize. Our society spends so much time planning and investing in weddings but not a lot of attention in bringing a human into this world.
So, my biggest struggle is commercial insurance companies. A majority of our community believes their insurance should be paying for a birth center birth, but it’s more political than that.
We are still a small business, and getting the word out that there is an alternative place to give birth in Long Beach takes money that we don’t always have for advertisement.
Overall, the struggle is a lack of education about birth and birth centers.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a birth worker, doula, childbirth educator, evidence-based birth instructor, and owner of Long Beach Birth Center. My goal is to provide and educate my community on the normality of birth, to change their fear into educated confidence, showing them they are powerful and capable of giving birth naturally. That’s what we have learned in society is wrong and misleading to keep hospitals in business. There are not a lot of birth centers near us, and there should be more. We should have the reverse approach to birth; all is normal and low risk until it is not. That is when an OB and hospital to come into play. I am creating an educated village for our Long Beach families.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I am an Evidence Based Birth Instructor, and I became one because of the evidence around birth, pregnancy, and postpartum. Not the fears that are put into policy. We are a society with high cesarean rates that are not necessary, and our community believes in corrosive language. This needs to stop, and we need to be educated so everyone can make a decision that is best for themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lbbirthcenter.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lbbirthcenter/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lbbirthcenter/
Image Credits
Black and white photo Alaina Nunez photographer. instagram @alainanuenez_birthstories
