Bloomington is now home to the nation’s first postpartum retreat center, offering new parents round-the-clock doula care, rest and recovery in a home-like setting.
Tandem Postpartum House, located on 3rd Street, began taking bookings earlier this month after five years of planning and community organizing. The non-profit offers daytime and overnight stays, meals, emotional support and hands-on infant care provided by eight postpartum doulas.
The postpartum house charges on a sliding scale based on what people can afford. Donations ensure everyone has access.
Tandem’s first overnight clients are scheduled for early August.
“This is both ancient and intuitive—and at the same time, completely innovative in the context of American parenting,” said Julie Duhon, Tandem’s executive director.
Duhon and her business partner started Tandem in 2019 after a local petition calling for better maternal care in Bloomington gathered more than 1,000 signatures. The organization was founded in February 2020, running for only a few weeks before COVID shut it down.
The facility is designed to give parents a break during what Duhan called the most vulnerable and exhausting first months after birth.
“Most of the people coming in are looking for sleep, for support, for feeling not alone,” Duhon said.
Duhon said maternal healthcare in the United States heavily emphasizes prenatal care but often neglects the postpartum period. Tandem provides perinatal care, focusing on all aspects of birth from trying-to-conceive to labor and delivery to postpartum care.
“The due date is not the finish line,” Duhon said. “If anything, it's pretty much the beginning.”
She added that American culture assumes families will have the resources or support required to care for a newborn. That is rarely the case for a variety of reasons, such as living far from family and being unable to take extended leave from work.
“Our society is not set up to support families,” Duhon said. “There's a lot of isolation, there's a lot of struggle.”
According to the Tandem website, the organization believes that postpartum mothers should be able to focus on healing and getting to know their new babies.
Indiana State Senator Shelli Yoder, a longtime advocate for maternal health, praised the project in a post to Facebook.
“This is transformational for new parents,” Yoder wrote in the post. “Seeing it come to life fills me with so much pride and hope for what’s possible when a community rallies around its families.”
Now that the Postpartum House is open, Tandem’s next goal is to reopen its perinatal clinic and build two birthing rooms, staffed with nurse-midwives. The birth center would be the first in the region.
Yoder called the Postpartum House a national model and encouraged supporters to spread the word.
“Every family deserves this kind of support,” Yoder said. “Tandem is meeting a critical need and setting a new standard for perinatal care in Indiana.”
Tandem originally operated a clinic but closed it earlier this year when the organization’s sole nurse-midwife could no longer be on-call 24/7. The decision allowed Tandem to return to its founding goal of providing direct support to families during the postpartum period.
“No one was ever meant to raise a child alone,” Duhon said. “Everybody knows the phrase ‘it takes a village.’ What we're trying to do is really create several mechanisms to bring back that village.”
