What We Believe
Principles guiding the work ahead.
This work is grounded in a simple question:
What would maternal care look like if it were designed around families instead of institutions?
This work didn’t begin as a concept. It emerged from patterns I kept encountering again and again:
Families making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information.
Essential information bound by private appointments and one-on-one support.
Holistic approaches to pregnancy and birth largely absent from mainstream education.
Birth workers translating complex systems in real time, without shared tools.
Borne exists to change how that knowledge moves — to document it, distribute it, and make it usable.
The beliefs below guide how this work is shaped — what we prioritize, what we challenge and what we refuse to normalize.
These aren’t slogans. They’re the lens through which we gather stories, conduct research and decide what gets built next.
What We Believe In
Family-Centered Care: Maternal care should begin with the needs of the mother, baby and family — not the institution.
Whole-Person Care: Support and decision-making must reflect a person’s values, culture and humanity, not just clinical metrics.
Informed Consent: Every person navigating reproductive care deserves full transparency, context and real choice — not pressure and partial information.
Physiological Birth: Birth is a natural process. Medical care should be available when needed or desired, but not positioned as the default.
Innate Wisdom: The body holds intelligence. Communities hold knowledge. We honor both.
Generational Healing: How we care for families during birth shapes what carries forward — physically, emotionally and culturally.
Redefining Safety: Unnecessary intervention is a risk — not a safeguard. Safety includes dignity, autonomy and long-term wellbeing.
These beliefs reflect what families and birth workers have long known — and what systems have consistently failed to support.
What We Refuse to Accept
Normalized Trauma: Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s okay.
Survival as Success: “Healthy baby, healthy mom,” is insufficient.
Profit Over People: Care should be led by values — not billing codes.
Uniformity & Elitism: There is no single “right” way — only what is appropriate, supported and informed.
Burnout as a Badge: Birth workers should not have to self-sacrifice to sustain their work.
Power Struggles: Hierarchy has no place in healing.
Refusal is not rejection for its own sake. It’s the first step toward designing something better.
Family-Centered Maternal Care Framework
These beliefs are a piece of the foundation of a practical framework we’re developing around family-centered maternal care — not as a buzzword, but as a working model. A framework informed by decades of research, centuries of ancestral wisdom, lived experience and present-day conditions and constraints.
Right now, this effort is being built through primary research, documentation and synthesis.
Who Informs This Framework
Providers
Birth workers and clinicians — OBs, CNMs, doulas and nurses — especially those navigating the gap between what families need and what existing systems permit.
Families
Parents and families willing to speak candidly about what shaped their experience — what supported them, what caused harm and what they wish they’d understood earlier.
Systems & Infrastructure
People working within hospitals, insurance, public health, policy and funding who understand how incentives drive outcomes — and where change is actually possible.
Advisors
I’m also convening a small circle of trusted voices to guide and pressure-test this work as it develops, spanning clinical, community-based and cross-sector perspectives.
The goal is integrity, not consensus.
If you’re aligned with these values and see yourself in this work — as a birth worker, seasoned parent, advocate or someone carrying hard-earned wisdom — I welcome hearing from you.
This is not about having the “right” answers. It’s about capturing what’s real so we can build upon what already exists, to create something more honest and useful for families navigating birth.
If you want to learn more, I invite you to share your interest or book a conversation HERE.