Welcome to Our New Center | Charleston Birth Place

Welcome to Charleston Birth Place! This year has been nothing any of us expected, but something pretty exciting 2020 brought us was a brand new birth center! We recently relocated to 1300 Hospital Drive, Suite 270, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. There is a lot to love about the new center location, particularly our proximity to the parks of Mount Pleasant, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and the new Shawn Jenkins Hospital, where our midwives have privileges.

Charleston Birth Place started as Lesley Rathbun’s dream to bring better woman care to her community. She was not happy doing medicalized birth in the hospital setting and wanted to get back into midwifery work. The best way for her to do that was to create her own job. Year after year we have grown and added new midwives to the practice until we couldn’t grow anymore. This is what led us to move to a bigger and better space so we can continue to provide the women of Charleston the care they deserve!

We are thrilled to introduce you to our new space, featuring some exciting upgrades for a more empowered birth and healthcare experience.

Clinic

Our rooms are large and offer plenty of room for you to bring in a stroller or a guest or two to a prenatal visit. We love it when siblings get to participate in the prenatal care. We have 6 prenatal rooms, one of which we use for our fetal monitoring so we can accommodate more than one patient at a time.

The fetal monitoring room is a great asset to have when needed. We can spend time monitoring you and your baby in a comfortable, relaxed environment. We have our own ultrasound machines so our midwives can do basic ultrasounds to see your baby’s development and measure other important things like the fluid and position of the baby.

Classroom

Here at Charleston Birth Place, we think education is a huge piece of your prenatal care. Our prenatal visits range anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on where you are in your pregnancy. We use that time for education even outside of the classroom to go over your questions and things that are important to you so you can have the birth you want.

We have a large classroom meant to hold childbirth education classes and seminars at any time of the day. In most birth centers, like our old one, the waiting room doubles as the classroom. Having this classroom allows us to hold classes throughout the day, even during clinic hours. During the pandemic, we have limited our classes. There are some still held in person, like the infant massage class, but they are one family per class. The others are held via Zoom.

Birth Suites

We have four birth suites in our center. They are all very similar with just a slightly different layout so you can know what to expect no matter what room you choose. All of the rooms have adjustable queen size beds for plenty of room to fit you and your partner. You will also find an aromatherapy diffuser, mini-fridge, and weight-bearing sling that can be positioned over the bed, floor, or tub to assist you during labor. All of the rooms except for one have a beautiful view of the woodlands behind the center. The last room’s design gives off a more of a cave-like experience with lighting features for the moms that want a warmer, darker room.

We have four new custom Active Birth Pools from Europe that are some of the best out there! They are shaped to provide the mother with the ability to move around easily for all labor positions, as well as allow for partners to get in with them or sit on the outside comfortably. The birth pools also provide access for our midwives all around the tub so they can move around with you during labor.

Each room has a bathroom with a therapeutic shower, three massaging heads, an overhead rain shower, and a handheld sprayer with a fold-down seat. Some women love rolling a birth ball in there and laboring under the shower water instead of the tub. The last amenity in the bathroom is the bidet installed on every toilet. This is perfect for our postpartum moms to help clean up after labor.

Labor Lounge

The labor lounge gives you another space beside your room to move around freely during labor. In the labor lounge, you will find comfy chairs, birth balls, rebozos, a fridge with snacks and drinks, and a microwave to heat your food!

The most important thing everyone enjoys in this room is our ice machine! It makes “Sonic” ice, which is perfect for those craving ice to crunch in labor!

The Exchange Charleston

One of the advantages of moving to a bigger birth center was we were able to expand our services. We have partnered with a group of allied professionals called The Exchange Charleston that can now offer our families services including psych/mental health, chiropractic, massage therapy, pelvic floor physical therapy, and childbirth education. And there is more to come soon like acupuncture, a nutritionist, yoga, and more!

To see our birth center in action, watch our virtual tour below! If you are ready to start your journey with Charleston Birth Place, send us a message. We look forward to seeing you for your care!