Ray Rachlin

I founded Refuge Midwifery in 2017 to help families feel safe and empowered in their journey to parenthood inside a system that doesn't always make that easy. In the past five years in this practice, I have had the privilege to midwife hundreds of families to parenthood and catch so many adorable babies along the way. My road to midwifery may have begun when I was caught by a midwife in a New York hospital, but I came to midwifery through doula work and activism in the (other) labor movement. I began attending births in 2010, and two years into doula-ing in New York City hospitals I attended my first home birth. I watched the midwife provide safety and support while quietly working around the needs of my client instead of my client having to work around the needs and environment of the hospital system. The birth looked unlike anything I had ever seen before. By the time I was making my way home around daybreak I knew that I would become a home birth midwife. I needed to help families birth with respect and dignity. In 2013, I moved across the country to Portland, Oregon to attend Birthingway College of Midwifery, a three-year MEAC accredited program. While in school I apprenticed under five midwives at a busy birth center and with a naturopathic midwife providing primary care to transgender patients. Three years of no sleep and almost a hundred births later, I became a midwife. I worked as a midwife at Alma Midwifery and internationally in a refugee camp before deciding it was time to come back to the east coast and start my own midwifery practice. In Refuge Midwifery, I seek to create a home for families not served by our current healthcare system - providing warm relationship-based care that improves birth outcomes and nurtures parents to help them get their best start. If you're interested in my professional credentials, I am a Licensed Midwife (LM), Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC), and a member of the Queer and Transgender Midwives Association. I earned my Bachelors of Science in Midwifery from Birthingway College of Midwifery in 2016. I trained as a birth doula with DONA (2010) and a postpartum doula with Ancient Song (2010) and later CAPPA (2011). Before midwifery I was involved in political organizing for tenant’s rights and labor movement. I also hold a BA in Political Science, Urban Studies, and Labor Studies from Queens College, City University of New York (2009). Education has always been a part of my activism, and I now teach community workshops to help bring aspects of the midwifery model of care to a larger community. I have also been training health care providers on evidenced-based reproductive care for transgender patients for the past four years, and am now co-writing a book - Babymaking For Everybody - which is coming out in April of 2023. Midwifery is the fabric of who I am and how I want to change the world. I am proud to serve my ever-growing community as an affirming, empowering community midwife. Outside of birth, my life is also rooted in community. I married my partner Asher in 2018, and we live in West Philadelphia with a very busy kitten. When I'm not midwifing I enjoy spending time with my partner and friends, cooking and baking, reading, knitting, and powerlifting.