Lindsay Mputubwele was already a practicing doula when she noticed the disparity in care for her clients based on factors like race, class and primary language.
“I realized I needed to change the model for how I was approaching my work,” she said.
Indiana has invested millions of dollars into infant care and yet the infant mortality rate remains above the national average. The state reported an infant mortality rate of 6.1 deaths per 1,000 live births from October 2024 to September 2025, but the rate for Hispanic and Black Hoosiers during the same time period was 6.9 and 10.4, respectively.
In 2023, when the infant mortality rate was even higher, Mputubwele started Transformed Birth Services, an organization that connects expecting parents with other doulas who also want to address maternal health disparities by providing birth and postpartum support at little or no charge to underserved families in Tippecanoe County.
By the end of 2023, Transformed Birth Services had assisted 15 families. That number grew to 53 by the end of 2024, and by the tail end of 2025, the organization had served 109 families with the birthing and/or postpartum process.
The organization has 12 doulas now — and will soon grow thanks to an over $720,000 three-year grant from the IU Health Foundation. Mputubwele said the funds will sustain the work Transformed Birth Services has already been doing while also expanding opportunities to hire more doulas and provide more services to their clients.
“We’ll be able to offer even more support to families who need more than we can offer. More mothers and more babies are going to be OK,” Mputubwele said.
Many of the families served by Transformed Birth Services do not speak English as their first language and come from cultures where prenatal and postnatal care would be managed by sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins and close community members.
“If they were pregnant at home, they would have multiple people they already know to help them. But once [the clients] come here, they’re normally on their own,” Rania Abdalla, who started working for the organization when there were only two clients, said.
Abdalla spent her life traveling between the United States, where she was born, and the deserts of her Egyptian father’s youth. The idea of having or being a doula had always been normal to her. It wasn’t until she moved to Indiana that she encountered people who didn’t know what a doula even was.
She explains doulas this way: “Basically, a doula is a complete support system, a backbone for a mom. She will run miles for you. She will do research for you. And she’s the type of person who can help you through the pain of new parenthood.”
Black women have a long history of doulaing for one another, but as doctors and hospitals became more accessible, they left the tradition behind.
However, in the last decade, there’s been a resurgence of this work as an effort to combat high infant and maternal mortality. “This is the single most life-changing moment for a mother,” Abdalla said. “The last place she should be facing discrimination is while giving birth.”
One way Transformed Birth Services is committed to providing care for all mothers is by partnering with the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department to offer doula services to incarcerated pregnant women.
“I had to build up two years of credibility before I could approach the sheriff’s office on this, but I had been taking my opportunities to drop little nuggets into the ears of local officials,” Mputubwele said.
The collaboration began in September 2025, and Transformed Birth Services has since provided birth and postpartum doula services to six mothers.
According to Mputubwele, women who are incarcerated often face challenges in bonding with their newborn, addressing birth-related health issues such as mastitis, a painful breast tissue inflammation often caused by blocked milk ducts, and trouble finding support after release.
“We are set up to continue offering care to women once they’re back in society, and it’s truly necessary, because newly postpartum mothers are most in need.”
Caring for mom after birth
Transformed Birth Services offers birth doulas and also postpartum doulas, who are meant to relieve new mothers of stress.
“No matter how many times you’ve given birth, a new baby changes the family dynamic yet again. I like to tell people that I can take the edge off of that,” Genevieve Wang, a postpartum doula for Transformed Birth Services, said.
Wang started working with Transformed Birth Services because it aligns with her personal values.
“A lot of times, people have never heard of postpartum doulas. They’re like, ‘I didn’t know that was a thing. I didn’t know that was something you could have,’ because for most people, birth is an unknown,” Wang said. “No one knows what it’s going to look like, so it’s nice to have someone around who has walked the path before you.”
A postpartum doula’s tasks can range from holding and feeding the baby while the parents rest, bathe, or take a break, to doing dishes, doing laundry, monitoring snack and water intake, and even noticing and addressing early signs of postpartum depression.
“Babies need a lot of care,” Wang said. “I can take care of things to try to avoid new parents, especially the one who gave birth, becoming completely exhausted.”
While the majority of infant deaths occur within 27 days of birth, almost 40% happen in months 2-12. This indicates that parents could greatly benefit from continued support beyond the birthing process, and well into the child’s first year of life.
“People just don’t realize how much their lives are going to change. And when you’re dealing with a vulnerable, fragile infant, postpartum care has to be a concern to keep them safe,” Wang said.
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Ashley Ford is a Free Press Indiana reporter focused on issues affecting women and girls across Indiana. You can reach her at ashley.ford@freepressindiana.org.
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