At Mamatoto Village, we refer to the people who offer labor support for birthing families in Washington DC Metro Area, Community Birth Workers (CBWs). As emerging members of the maternity health care team, they are culturally reflexive, rooted in the community, and fill in systemic gaps in care.
Their role is strictly non-clinical, allowing them to focus instead on the emotional and physical needs of the birthing person and the partner. CBWs provide a sense of continuity in the birthing person’s care that is typically lost in an institutional setting.
Provider shift changes, rotating on-call schedules, and the myriad of other new faces that expectant parents must navigate can be overwhelming at a vulnerable time. The CBWs presence is a reassuring constant in the midst of what is essentially a challenging and transformative, though too often stressful, experience.
What is the benefit?
Community Birth Workers (CBWs) partner with families well before labor begins supporting the birthing person in creating a birth plan that reflects their values, preferences, and vision for their birth, and providing education to both the birthing person and their support people on comfort measures and what to expect during labor. During labor, CBWs offer continuous, hands-on comfort and support, including massage, breathing and relaxation techniques, positioning support, and steady encouragement.
CBWs honor the birthing person’s chosen support people, warmly inviting partners and loved ones into the experience and equipping them with the tools and confidence to participate in ways that feel meaningful to the family. Rooted in our commitment to autonomy and informed choice, supporting clients in engaging confidently with their health care providers sharing evidence-based information, walking through the full range of options, and affirming each parent’s right and power to make the decisions that are best for themselves and their families.
What Role Do CBWs Play?
Community Birth Workers (CBWs) are fierce advocates that stand alongside families in clinical spaces, helping ensure that every birthing person is seen, heard, and treated with dignity and respect. They amplify the birthing person’s voice, preferences, and choices throughout their care.
While CBWs do not provide medical advice, they support families before, during, and after birth by meeting them where they are. Through teaching coping techniques, supporting the development of a birth plan, and providing evidence-based education on late pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and newborn care, CBWs help families feel informed, empowered, and supported throughout their birthing experience.
Community Doula [doo·luh]
A doula is a trained, non-medical companion who provides comfort, encouragement, and support during labor. Community Birth Workers (CBWs) do all of that and more. Rooted in the communities they serve, CBWs are part birth companion, part advocate, and part resource connector, supporting the whole person and their family across pregnancy, birth, and beyond. Trained through a rigorous program grounded in reproductive and birth justice, CBWs bring cultural congruence and lived experience to every family they serve, filling systemic gaps in care as emerging members of the maternity health care team.
Black women have consistently held space for one another during our reproductive journeys, particularly birth and mothering. Historically, the responsibility of a “doula” was that of sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and aunties; women who were a part of the community and experienced the journey of parenthood. At Mamatoto Village we are honored to continue that tradition. It is our greatest hope that the families we work with feel the spirit of that intention to reclaim Black birth, sustain our families, transmit knowledge, and carry forward ancestral wisdom.