Thirty-seven-year-old Nicole McFeely didn’t want the drugs, clinical procedures or Cesarean section she feared would be the likely outcome of having her baby in a hospital.
Instead, she visited the Long Beach Birth Center, seeking a holistic, unmedicated birth.
The business had a good reputation, with positive reviews and glowing coverage in the press as a solid choice in a region with increasingly fewer birth centers.
So, despite the distance — a 40- to 65-minute drive, depending on traffic – and the $8,620 cost paid either in full or by installments with a $2,000 deposit, McFeely went for it.
“We were going to put everything that we have into this … because it’s what I really want for my baby and birth,” McFeely remembers thinking.
On a bartender’s salary in Orange County, and with her husband still early in his career, McFeely put $8,120 on her credit card. She took advantage of a $500 incentive offered to cut the cost, something she regrets to this day.
On Jan. 1, she and other birth center clients got a jarring, cryptic text message: “With a profoundly heavy heart,” it read, “we must share the devastating news that Long Beach Birth Center is being forced to close its doors due to circumstances entirely beyond our control.”
Those who checked found the center’s social media deleted and a 404 error on the website. Calls to the emergency midwife phone line went to static. Attempts to log into their transfer portals — used to access medical records — were blocked, according to several mothers who spoke with the Long Beach Post.
When one of them, Shaina Berry, attempted to make her scheduled prenatal appointment on Jan. 2, she found the center’s door locked, its blinds shuttered and lights switched off. The stickers once on the front door were scraped, and calls to the owner, Meredith Bowling, went unanswered, she said.
Former employees and clients said that for all practical purposes, Bowling had disappeared, leaving midwives unpaid, medical records inaccessible and expectant mothers scrambling to adjust their birth plans and find hospitals that could admit them.
With many of them laying thousands of dollars on the line like McFeely, they wondered if they’d just been scammed.
Bowling, who recently filed for bankruptcy, has acknowledged the wreckage left in the wake of her business’ dramatic collapse. But, she insists, she had nothing but good intentions.
“I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone,” she said in a recent interview with the Long Beach Post. “This is not why I came into this business.”
Promises made
Before Bowling entered the picture, the clinic that would become the Long Beach Birth Center was up and running for years, having been licensed by the state since 2013.
Bowling took it over in November 2021, shortly after the death of its former owner. Under her leadership, the birth center’s pitch was compelling for women who felt devalued by the medical system.
Clients said that during their consultation, Bowling’s business was described as “above community standard” for comprehensive care, intentionally taking on only a handful of births per month, according to families.
“You’re not just like some kind of another number, … like an insurance claim we get to file and make money off of,” McFeely said of her first visit. “It’s like they individually cared about you as a person.”
It also attracted employees who shared that philosophy.
On the confidence of a job offer, Nalah Morrow and her family — two kids, two cats, two turtles, a husband and a dog — drove across the United States last October so she could take a midwife position at the center.
The drive took nine days, starting on the Maryland side of Washington, D.C., and ending in California. Without relocation assistance, it was a trip on a tight budget — no more than $2,500, Morrow said, and consisted of nights in crummy motels and early mornings on the road, before the kids fully awakened. There was also nausea, as Morrow was newly pregnant.
Once at work, signs of trouble quickly emerged. By her second paycheck — boxes still unpacked in her home — Morrow said her wages started arriving several days late. The checks then started to bounce, forcing her and others to shoulder the bank fees.
After paychecks delivered on Dec. 18 were found to be insufficient, Morrow said, “I went and sat in my car and cried for an hour, two hours.”
“‘Oh my God,’” she thought. ‘“I’ve accepted a job and they can’t pay me. I’m pregnant, and I also don’t have my paycheck. and I need to pay bills.’”
Morrow and another midwife, Ray Weber, said they tried to raise the alarm before the center’s sudden New Year’s Day closure. They complained to Bowling in a letter on Dec. 22; five days later, Weber and Morrow say, they were fired.
Casting blame
“We’re not the bad guys,” Bowling’s partner, Elizabeth Medina, said recently on the steps of the Downtown Long Beach courthouse, where they’re now facing a flurry of lawsuits.
“We’re also victims in this whole debacle,” she continued.
At least six families have taken Bowling to small claims court, demanding she reimburse them for cash payments, some as high as $8,120, for maternal care they said they never received.
Workers, meanwhile, say Bowling still owes thousands in unpaid wages, with some accepting new clients into late December and delivering babies without pay. Some filed with the California Labor Commissioner, whose office is investigating the claims.
Bowling and Medina say the decision to close came as a last resort after their plans were detailed by an unfair medical system, predatory insurance practices and the bellied weight of debt.
The center, they said, had run for months at a loss while they subsidized it with their personal income. They’ve since filed for bankruptcy, facing $284,600 in debt across 41 claims from credit card companies, unpaid employees, attorneys and clients, according to a Feb. 26 filing.
In the three years after she took control of the Long Beach Birth Center, Bowling said she was repeatedly denied insurance contracts and a state license, which would have allowed her to take patients on Medi-Cal, the state’s public health insurance program for low-income residents.
In applications, she claimed being denied on the grounds that the center needed an OB-GYN resident and a nurse on staff. Private insurance simply refused her, she said, over “politics.”
“We did everything the bureaucracy indicated, we followed it to a T,” Medina said. “We sunk so much money and got denied on all three — insurance contracts, state licensing and Medi-Cal.”
A state license isn’t required to operate a birth center, but it makes it nearly impossible to run a profit without one; many insurers and Medi-Cal will work only with licensed facilities and nurse midwives, according to three people in the industry.
Unable to earn money through insurance billing, the birth center was forced to rely on those patients who could afford the out-of-pocket expense that reached up to $8,800.
Had they been able to bill insurance, “we could have been serving 10 times more clients,” Medina said.
Even if the center had secured Medi-Cal reimbursement, Bowling said, the reimbursement rate was far outpaced by the center’s expenses.
California is known for having some of the strictest licensing requirements for birth centers in the country, according to the American Association of Birth Centers. Only eight centers are licensed by the state.
While Bowling is blaming the state, it’s pointing the finger right back at her.
In an email to families, Bowling blamed the closure on “new California regulations” that make it increasingly difficult to run at a profit. Yet a representative with the California Department of Public Health, which oversees “alternative birth centers” including the Long Beach Birth Center, said there have been no changes to regulations in the last five years.
Bowling did not respond to follow-up questions about the process, and a spokesperson with the California Department of Public Health kept his comments brief, saying delays were caused by Bowling.
The public health department said it received a license application in December 2022, but it was withdrawn a month later and filed again in July 2023. It has since been “pending a licensing survey.”
A health department spokesperson said surveys often take a few months to schedule.
“For this application, after our District Office scheduled the survey, there were delays on behalf of the applicant where they requested to reschedule,” said Mark Smith, of the California Department of Public Health. “Rescheduling the initial survey several times created additional delays that are specific to this applicant.”
To obtain a license, a birth center must be in close proximity to a hospital or other qualified medical facility, meet state building codes and file a number of documents to prove its legitimacy. There is not an average time for obtaining a license, the spokesman said.
Birthing pains
Industry insiders agree with Bowling that she’d picked a challenging business.
Nearly half of California’s 400 birth centers operating in 2020 have since closed, accompanied by the closure of more than 50 hospital maternity wards, according to CalMatters reporting.
Midwives have reportedly struggled in California, with some forced to leave the state as it was too difficult to operate.
Meanwhile, even successful birth centers struggle to eke a profit.
“My husband keeps telling me, as does my accountant, when are you stopping your hobby?” said Maria King, owner of The Natural Birth Place clinic in San Bernardino.
King said her clinic has contracts with several insurance companies, but they still aren’t enough to keep up with rising costs to operate. She works at a hospital as a nurse midwife with advanced credentials to subsidize her business. After a rough year in 2024, she worries she will not keep up with payroll.
Insurance contracts last three to five years, she said, and in that time, costs for wages, equipment and rent rise while companies continually try to lower reimbursement rates with every new contract.
For every patient, her clinic gets anywhere from $1,800 through TriCare — insurance for the U.S. Armed Forces — to $2,200 from some private companies. These cover, on average, less than half the price of services rendered.
Reimbursement rates for each client are often random, King said, and dispensed at varying rates without a formula. Sometimes companies send reimbursement checks months after a baby is delivered, only to then ask for the money back.
“I can submit my claim, only to then be told, ‘Oh, by the way, you don’t deserve this money. We’re not paying you,’” King explained. “They can’t justify it, but if you don’t pay it, they stop you from taking their future patients.”
It’s this unfair system, she said, that has forced birthing centers out of business, including Best Start Birth Center in San Diego — the state’s first licensed and accredited center.
After 30 years of operation, the facility, which delivered more than 5,600 babies annually, closed down last year, citing its inability to keep up with rising costs.
“The system is broken and it needs to be fixed,” King said.
King, who was familiar with the Long Beach Birth Center’s prior owner and operations under the Beachside Birth Center name, said it was licensed only through a clause that allowed it to be grandfathered into insurance plans with Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Today, she said, those options are not offered to birth centers.
Coming to terms
Outside the courthouse on Feb. 4, Bowling and Medina said they plan to pay back families, possibly through fundraising like a GoFundMe, while looking for a buyer or nonprofit to take over the center.
As of Monday, no family has been repaid. Settlements in court have extended past payment dates, likely forcing some to re-enter court proceedings.
Bowling’s former landlord also claims she stopped paying rent in October and reneged on her lease agreement to properly vacate. He said the lease, which runs through September 2027, requires Bowling to convert the space into offices upon vacating. This means demolition work, which can run upward of $70,000.
Berry, the mother who was met by locked doors when she showed up to her appointment, was among the center’s final clients and the first to settle in court, for a payment plan under which Bowling would reimburse her for a portion of her $2,000 deposit.
She’s yet to see a single payment.
Some women have since filed police reports, as well as complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, claiming fraud that needs a deeper investigation.
Others believe Bowling was simply overwhelmed, taking on something she had no business running.
“The worst part,” said midwife Morrow, “is that she never once apologized to me, not one time.”
Following their interview on the courthouse steps, Bowling and Medina have not responded to any further questions from the Post.