San Diego Community Birth Center

The mission and vision of San Diego Community Birth Center is to provide the Midwifery Model of Care to our community, and to make Midwifery care accessible to marginalized populations of birthing folk in San Diego. From the foundation of building community, we provide holistically based, comprehensive, culturally aware and inclusive evidence-based care in a collective care model. 

At this time where the Black Maternal Health Crisis is at its worst, in the United States, Black women are currently 3-4 times more likely to die than any other racial group from simple complications while giving birth in a hospital setting. These numbers are not only deeply unsettling, they most directly impact a particularly marginalized group of birthing people...that includes you. So what do you do? If you are a Black midwifery student, you start thinking about the best, fastest way to make an impact on your community. For Nikki Helms, it was building community by building a birth center.

San Diego Community Birth Center is a unique and magical place. We are a team of all female-identified, BIPOC providers. Some of us are part of the LGBTQIA2+ community.  We are members of the communities we serve.

The birth center is an inviting and warm space where families are held, where babies and their families are loved on and known by their first names. People come together in community, avail themselves of our many resources and get comprehensive, holistic reproductive health care from our team of providers. Our collective contains: a midwife, a nurse practitioner, 2 massage therapists, a lactation consultant, a childbirth educator/doula and an acupuncturist. At San Diego Community Birth Center, clients here receive hour-long appointments, where they have our complete focus, to discuss their reasons for visiting us and how we can help. 

We are often able to make visits more convenient for families by offering all our holistic services under one roof. Need a prenatal massage? Schedule one with one of our massage therapists, park once and take care of two birds with one stone: get your massage in the same location after your appointment. Do you need some support with fertility issues? Just don't have sperm in the relationship? Come in and have a consultation with our midwife and our nurse practitioner, who is a fertility specialist.

We organize a twice-annual Community Baby Shower where items that have been donated to us are made available to any members of the community that have a need. We are often giving away clothing, diapers, wipes and other baby gear from former birth center clients and generous community members. We have organized Juneteenth celebrations, Black Maternal Health Week events, Black Breastfeeding week events and annually participate in numerous community outreach activities like San Diego's SheFest and San Diego's Pride festival. Our new venture this year will include us joining other birth center owners to celebrate the first annual national Birth Center Week, September 14-20 this year.

We work tirelessly with other outstanding community partners in order to provide our midwifery services to a broad population. We provide supplemental midwifery care to Black and low-income families through the Global Communities Healthy Start Program, as well as working with The Children's Partnership, helping to formulate impactful legislation that will support all families, from newborn to age 5. Our work with California Black Women's Health Project also provides additional resources and access to families that we work with. We ensure that our families have support for their birth by involving For The Village, another community partner that we've supported and been supported by, from the beginning. We take great joy in and are honored to be invited to teach consent-based sex education to high school students at High Tech High Mesa and give talks to their LGBTQIA2+ and female-centered student groups.