Making Mothers

The Family Health and Birth Center (FHBC) in northeast D.C. serves the area’s primarily African American community and provides prenatal, birth, postpartum, gynecological and other pediatric care in a community-friendly environment. It educates women to participate in their own prenatal care so as to reduce the risk of preterm delivery, the leading cause of neonatal deaths or developmental disabilities.
The film focuses on the efforts of Lisa, a midwife, who offers expectant mothers the option of a peaceful and sensitive home-birth experience, and Joan, a breastfeeding peer counselor, who passes on to others her experience as a teenage mother. Both women explain how and why they got involved in maternal health care and offer their views on the need for greater diversity in the field. In showing Lisa and Joan at work, Making Mothers reveals how the passion and sensitivity they bring to their work empowers the women they serve, the community in which they work, as well as themselves.