For Students
A calm, grounded space with clear, gentle birth education and support.
MotherWit Midwifery Collective
MotherWit is a community-based midwifery collective rooted in shared care, cultural congruence, and sustainable practice. The focus is building a collaborative model where providers work together.
A direct link to the NARM CIB outlining the core competencies required for midwifery certification. This resource supports students in understanding the skills, knowledge, and standards needed for competent, entry-level midwifery practice.
A curated playlist for midwifery students and birth workers focused on foundational knowledge, clinical thinking, and real-world practice. These videos support learning around pregnancy, labor, postpartum care, and culturally grounded midwifery education.
MotherWit Midwifery Collective
Who is this program designed for?
This space was built intentionally for those who view birth work not just as a career, but as an act of community protection, resistance, and healing. We center Black, Indigenous, and birthing people of color, alongside those dedicated to dismantling obstetric racism and restoring autonomous community care. If you see midwifery as an ancestral legacy and a tool for birth justice, you are in the right place.
How is the curriculum structured? Is it online or in person?
We believe midwifery cannot be learned entirely through a screen; it is a relational, hands-on craft. Our program utilizes a hybrid model. Theoretical coursework, foundational maternal-child health studies, and policy modules are completed online and via independent study. However, intensive hands-on clinical skills labs, community circles, and practical workshops take place in person right here in Birmingham.
How do clinical apprenticeships work?
You will be paired with experienced preceptors to gain hands-on, out-of-hospital clinical experience. You will progress from an observer to an active assistant, and finally to a primary student under direct supervision, charting and managing prenatal care, births, and postpartum windows.
Does this program prepare me for certification?
Yes. Our curriculum is specifically mapped out to meet the rigorous portfolio and educational requirements of the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). Upon successful completion of your classroom hours and clinical requirements, you will be eligible to sit for the NARM exam to earn your Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) credential.
What is the tuition, and do you offer payment plans?
Traditional financial aid systems were not built to fund community-led revolution. To keep this program accessible, we offer flexible, interest-free monthly payment plans through Affirm. Our goal is to ensure that financial barriers do not keep brilliant, called birth workers out of this movement.
Scholarships are available and information can be found here.
What is a Midwifery Collective?
A midwifery collective is the antithesis of the isolated, burnout-heavy model of modern healthcare. It is a cooperative ecosystem where autonomous midwives pool resources, share burdens, and protect one another’s peace.
Historically, our ancestors never caught babies in isolation; they worked in community. By coming together under one collective banner, we radically lower the steep financial and emotional barriers to practicing community midwifery. We share the overhead, we share the call, we share the knowledge, and we share the responsibility of keeping our families safe.
How our collective works
Shared Call & Sustainable Backup Schedules: Midwifery care demands intense on-call availability. To protect our practitioners from burnout and ensure they can show up fully for their own families, we utilize a cooperative, rotating on-call and backup schedule. Your midwife will always be a familiar, trusted face, backed by a team that rests so they can serve.
Pooled Financial Overhead & Startup Costs: Starting an independent practice is cost-prohibitive for many brilliant birth workers. Our collective model lowers that barrier by sharing the essential, high-cost infrastructure required to run a safe, modern practice, including:
Electronic Health Records (EHR): A shared, secure system for seamless client charting and history.
Group Liability Insurance: Comprehensive protection that is often financially out of reach for solo practitioners.
A Dedicated Medical Biller: Shared access to a professional biller to handle insurance, verification, and community care funds, ensuring our midwives get paid and clients get covered.
An Integrated Student-Assistant Pathway: We do not believe in separating education from real-world practice. In our collective, our advanced students serve as vital clinical birth assistants. This gives our practicing midwives highly trained, culturally aligned second-hands at every birth, while providing our students with invaluable, paid, hands-on clinical experience before they step into the role of primary midwife.
To keep our practices sustainable and fully protected from day one, our founding members contribute a flat $225 per month. This shared investment completely covers your individual professional liability insurance and your split of our Sena EHR network. Any remaining balance is held in our collective fund to manage shared administrative costs like our website and collective infrastructure. All client-specific costs, such as the medical biller's percentage and fair compensation for our student birth assistants, are built directly into our client packages and paid out per birth. This ensures our fixed monthly overhead stays low and predictable as we build.