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How do you make time to care for yourself and your growing family in the aftermath of a city-wide emergency?
This was the question that model, photographer, and doula Taylor McKay Smith had in mind when she and Life After Birth founder Molly Nourmand pulled a team of midwives, doulas, and other birth workers together to create Haven for Moms, a drop-in center for pregnant and parenting Angelenos affected by the fires, which opened last weekend at Riverbank Wellness Center in Mid-City. In addition to many racks’ worth of donated clothing, and bags of infant and child supplies donated by local organizations like Baby2Baby and Perelel, Haven for Moms offers free checkups with midwives and lactation consultants, prenatal acupuncture and massage, physical therapy, Reiki, sound baths, and other health and wellness treatments intended to replenish mothers all too accustomed to placing their family’s and community’s needs ahead of their own—even (and especially) during an emergency.
Smith, who began doing virtual doula work with expectant parents during the COVID-19 pandemic, recalls the interaction that inspired her to create Haven for Moms. “I was volunteering with my friend’s boutique in Santa Monica that she turned into a donation center after the fires, and I met a mom who had just given birth,” she says. “She was telling me that her baby was really sick and had lost consciousness and that their home burned down on the day he was released from the NICU. I immediately gave her my number her and offered her as many resources as I could think of, but when I went home that night, I thought, I have to create a haven and sanctuary for women who are in the pregnancy and postpartum phase, because it’s already such a vulnerable time of life.”
Haven for Moms also offers free childcare while visitors attend their appointments: On Saturday, I watched a remarkably placid baby be passed between the outstretched arms of several cooing volunteers while her mother got checked out in a private exam room.
“Obviously, with fertility and with motherhood, so much of it is already out of your control, which can be the most anxiety-inducing part,” Abbe Feder, the founder of InCircle Fertility, who was there donating her services, tells me. “When even more gets taken out of your control, it can feel like the floor has literally been ripped out from under you.”
Jamie Hatcher, an LA-based midwife providing medical information and checkups to pregnant people whose care was disrupted by the wildfires, also notes the extreme stress suffered by many of her patients who, on top of regular pre-baby anxiety, were also dealing with displacement.
“I met with one woman who had an ultrasound right before the fire, and the baby was transverse, and they can’t come out that way,” Hatcher says. “I was just able to talk through a birth and postpartum plan now that she’s at 36 weeks. I know people who have had to leave LA entirely, and now all of their birth planning is out the window.”
Smith, who has two young children of her own, was being pulled in a million different directions the day I met her at Riverbank. But in classic mom fashion, she radiated only serenity, beamingly sharing an update on the woman she’d met in Santa Monica: “She came in with her newborn, and they got to sit in a sound bath together, and she said it was the first time they actually got to bond in a way that wasn’t just survival mode.”
The mom asked if Smith would connect her with some of the other parents she’d met at Riverbank; now, that group is in the early stages of creating a support network—one that will hopefully outlast the damage wrought by the wildfires.
Smith and her team, meanwhile, are working to secure future locations and donations in order to make Haven for Moms’ drop-in hours a more permanent fixture of the LA birth and parenting community. In the meantime, they’re focused on “quality over quantity,” Smith says: just doing as much as possible for the parents who come through their doors.
