A birthing center in Midlothian offers families an alternative approach to pregnancy care and childbirth.

Gather Grounded Midwifery, which opened in August 2023, operates from a 1,200-square-foot cottage at 235 Wylderose Court. The center provides comprehensive reproductive health services, including breast exams, STI testing and fertility planning. It also offers a package that covers lab work, prenatal care, birth support and postpartum care for several weeks.

Racha Tahani Lawler Queen, the lead midwife and founder, established Gather Grounded as an alternative to traditional hospital settings, where she said Black families often face fear, racism and negative experiences during childbirth.

“It’s very difficult to disrupt from the inside and create change [inside hospitals],” Lawler Queen explained. “As a nursing student, I saw Black families harmed when they tried to advocate for themselves or have the births they wanted. It was very traumatic watching people be harmed in the hospital and not being able to do anything about it.”

According to 2021 CDC data, non-Hispanic Black women have the highest maternal mortality rates in the U.S. – 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic white women. To note, these specific statistics did not indicate whether such deaths occurred in hospital or non-hospital settings.

Lawler Queen, a fourth-generation midwife with over 20 years of experience, previously ran a birth center in South Los Angeles before moving to Richmond.

Gather Grounded offers families the option to deliver their babies in a comfortable “birth suite” outside of a hospital setting, when health conditions permit.

The center also addresses the national shortage of midwives of color. While less than 5% of midwives in the country are people of color, Gather Grounded has one midwife of color and is training three more through its yearlong Traditional Midwifery Freedom Path program.

Audrey Gentry-Brown, one of the apprenticing midwives, noted, “I knew that I didn’t like working in hospitals with clients. A lot of them just didn’t feel comfortable. They wanted culturally competent care.” 

The midwifery service saw its first birth in October 2023, a vaginal birth from a mother who had previously gotten a C-section for her first pregnancy.

Whitney Lewis, the mother, praised the personalized care she received: “Each of my appointments with Racha probably lasted about an hour to two hours long. It’s not like the normal doctor’s visit. If I had any questions about my eating habits or if the baby wasn’t moving a certain way, she had an answer to almost every question that I had.”

Lawler Queen emphasizes that Gather Grounded provides families with another option to consider, especially if they don’t feel safe in traditional hospital settings. She encourages families to assess the birthing and maternal/fetal death statistics of hospitals when making their choice.

“Maybe the numbers are low. Maybe the numbers are high. Whatever is their deciding factor, they now have another option … to at least consider, especially if they don’t feel safe,” Lawler Queen said.