{"id":86454,"date":"2026-01-14T11:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T11:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/86454\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T11:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T11:44:13","slug":"philadelphia-midwives-to-open-birth-center-in-germantown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/86454\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia midwives to open birth center in Germantown"},"content":{"rendered":"

A shortage of birthing centers, maternity care<\/p>\n

Nelson knows that birthing programs and maternity care aren\u2019t money makers, especially for independent midwifery centers where the goal is to guide women through pregnancy and childbirth with as few medical interventions as possible.<\/p>\n

Other types of revenue sources are few and far between.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere aren\u2019t big pools of money set aside for this,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need these spaces, but there\u2019s nobody just walking around ready to fund them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson has seen these challenges play out at Birth Care Midwifery and Family Health Services in Lancaster and Lifecyle Wellness and Birth Center in Bryn Mawr, some of the oldest independent birth centers in the country.<\/p>\n

Lifecyle recently announced it would permanently close<\/a> by March due to financial pressures and other operational difficulties.<\/p>\n

The future birth center in Germantown will remain a much smaller operation, Nelson said, in the hopes of keeping the business financially manageable and sustainable.<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Midwifery Collective also plans to support the new location with a strong fundraising arm. Already, current and former clients have come together to donate and invest in the project.<\/p>\n

Leah DiMatteo and her husband, Joel Thomas, were early champions and bought the property in Germantown for the new site. The Mt. Airy couple had home births for their two children under the care of the nonprofit\u2019s midwives and health staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a really peaceful little bubble and it allowed my body to do what it needed to do to birth my children,\u201d DiMatteo said. \u201cWe want other women, other birthing people in the community to have similar experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LeahLeah DiMatteo (left) and Autumn Nelson (right), a certified nurse midwife and clinical director at Philadelphia Midwife Collective, stand on the front steps of what will eventually be a new birth center in Germantown, slated to open in 2027. (Nicole Leonard\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

The organization aims to raise another $150,000 to complete the first-floor transformation and open the center to patients next spring while renovations continue on the second floor.<\/p>\n

Her dream, Nelson said, is for more birth centers to open in and around Philly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese spaces are sacred,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd there just aren\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A shortage of birthing centers, maternity care Nelson knows that birthing programs and maternity care aren\u2019t money makers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[41076,14780,43249,69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-86454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-birth","9":"tag-germantown","10":"tag-midwifery","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","13":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}