The Business of Birthing

Operated by three midwives brought together by that common goal, the center, at 1217 E. 33rd St., will open March 14.

Tiffany Koss, DEM, is an independent midwife who has been practicing in the Tulsa area for six years. She, along with Heather Forrest, who is training to become a certified professional midwife, and Kerrie Long, ND, who is a midwife, lactation specialist and naturopathic doctor, own and operate The Renaissance Center, which houses Renaissance Maternity Care, Renaissance Naturopathic Care and Renaissance Chiropractic Care.

All of the services provided at The Renaissance Center are geared primarily toward women and children and include midwifery care, naturopathic care, chiropractic care, massage therapy, doula and monitrice care, fertility specialty, lactation specialty, grief counseling, child birth classes (both hospital and homebirth specific), breastfeeding education classes and a variety of support groups. The center is privately funded by its co-owners.

Their approach to business is characterized by the same desire to provide warmth and comfort to birthing mothers.

“Initially, I hadn’t planned on doing this until my son (who is 3 years old) was a little bit older,” said Koss.

But, she received a phone call from Long, who is from Tulsa but was living in the Los Angeles area and exploring the possibility of moving back to town.

“My daughter (who is 14 years old) had asked me for some time to move back to Tulsa,” said Long over the phone as movers packed up her California home. “I told her, ‘If I can do my work there, we can go.’”

Long began making contact with local practitioners, calling and e-mailing midwives, chiropractors and other naturopathic doctors in Tulsa to find out how their practices were being received in Tulsa and what the likelihood of hers being successful was. Long was a practicing midwife, lactation specialist and grief counselor who was finishing her doctorate in naturopathy.

She made contact with Koss in November 2008, and, as both women explained, “we just hit it off.”

Together, they put down onto paper what they thought Tulsa’s needs were, what they’d like to offer and how they’d like to do it. By January, they had seen and signed a lease on a space in the small business center just off of Peoria Avenue where the center is located. They two women had only met face-to-face one time.

Home Care

The Renaissance Center has a decidedly homey feel, even though it was nearly empty when the Tulsa Business Journal visited. Koss and Forrest had just begun moving in, but the space is warm and inviting and resembles a house both inside and out.

The front room of the 1,800-SF space acts as a reception area. Koss’ office occupies one room, and there is one birthing room, an office for Long, an office for a resident chiropractor (Carlene Bolen, who practices in Broken Arrow, will offer her services a couple of times a week until Koss can either hire someone full-time or convince Bolen to stay on full-time) and a kitchen.

Koss’s office consists of a small desk, a couple of comfy chairs and a futon, which acts as her version of a medical table, on which she examines her patients (though she refers to them as her “moms”). The birth room, she said, will be set up much like a bedroom, with a bed and a portable tub so moms have the option of having a water birth. Most of her patients, though, will still birth their babies at home, she said.

“A lot of women are interested in having a birth with a midwife and having that experience, but they either live too far away from a hospital or they live in areas where the labor and delivery units have shut down, which a lot of the smaller towns are doing. Or, they just feel more comfortable going somewhere else.

“We’re not going to be that big of a difference between someone having a baby at home and someone having a baby here. A lot of women can just make that shift in their head, that they’re going somewhere else and they’re more comfortable there,” Koss said.

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