Discover Women’s Birth & Wellness Center
Located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Women’s Birth and Wellness Center is dedicated to providing people of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds with comprehensive primary, maternity and lactation healthcare throughout the life cycle.
Family-Centered Comprehensive Care
Every person who seeks care at Women’s Birth & Wellness Center will discover the distinctive benefits of our family-centered care. Our midwives, nurse practitioners and nurses consider themselves partners with their patients in the health care process and work to ensure personalized care.
In addition to prenatal care, WBWC offers primary care to all people, as well as to transgender people. We believe that pregnancy, birth, adolescence and menopause are natural processes. Our approach fosters a close relationship between provider and patient that is mutually enriching and informative.
Prenatal Care
Since 1996, the midwives and advanced practice nurses at Women’s Birth & Wellness Center (WBWC) have provided evidence-based prenatal, birthing, and primary care for thousands of families and assisted in the births of more than 8,000 babies. WBWC is home-grown and home-owned!
Women’s Birth & Wellness Center is an independent, private, non-profit practice supported by patient fees and the generosity of donors. WBWC accepts and files with most major insurance companies and Medicaid. Payment plans and sliding fee scales are available for self-pay patients.
The Word Midwife Means “With Woman”.
Women’s Birth & Wellness Center is North Carolina’s longest-operating freestanding birth center. Our home-like center is conveniently located in Chapel Hill. The first floor of our center houses our roomy birth suites, each with its own tub, and our family living room and kitchen. The clinic is upstairs with a family-friendly waiting area, exam rooms, and our Boutique, with our Lactation Center, administrative offices, and community education space on the third floor.
Our Providers
All of our Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) are nationally-certified, licensed by the state medical board, and covered by malpractice insurance. Our CNM’s have privileges at UNC Women’s Hospital; if a transfer becomes necessary, your WBWC midwife will continue to care for and support you in the hospital setting.
Our Statistics
WBWC patients consistently experience better outcome statistics than women and infants nationally. Historically, 89% of women in our practice who start labor at WBWC have a successful out-of-hospital birth. Our C-section rate is under 5%, compared to 32% nationally. Our breastfeeding rates are 99.5% at birth and 85% at six months, whereas the national rates are 81% and 52%. (National data from 2013)
Our Philosophy
We believe that every woman has the right to a standard of excellence in her healthcare, to be treated with respect for human dignity and cultural preferences, and to be an active partner in her healthcare. We believe that the establishment of a freestanding birth center and women’s health center provides the best opportunity to succeed in our mission.
Our Purpose
- To offer a comprehensive program of well health education that encourages patients to take responsibility for their well being. To support developing and maintaining healthy lifestyles, which will ultimately benefit not only themselves, but their families and communities.
- To provide safe, satisfying and affordable healthcare services in a caring, supportive and culturally sensitive environment. To welcome people of all ages, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds who desire the nurse-midwifery model of care.
- To support the family, the cornerstone of our social structure, by recognizing and respecting those individuals who are identified by the patient as members of their family unit.
- To respect a person’s right to informed consent. To encourage them to be an active partner in their care and to support the decisions they make in matters of their health care.
- To offer and participate in community education focused on the benefits of midwifery care for people of all ages. To offer the birth center option for childbearing families.
- To provide, to the extent possible, student midwives and other healthcare providers with a clinical experience of the midwifery model of maternity care. To participate in related research and evaluation.