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July 2025
Volume 11 | Issue No. 98
When Tristin Dockery was in labor with her
first son in 2021, she only had one request:
To get up and walk around her hospital
room.
The nurse on duty said no.
So Dockery, then 20, stayed in her
uncomfortable hospital bed as one
contraction followed another. It was
at the height of COVID. She and her
husband were alone. And Dockery didn't
think she had much choice but to do as
she was told. "We were young and we'd
never had a baby," she said. "We didn't
know what we were doing."
Dockery, an esthetician who works
and lives 50 miles east of Kansas City in
Lexington, was determined that things
would be different last year when she
learned she was pregnant again. She
turned to the Maternal and Infant Health
Center (MaIH) in Lexington.
The organization provided a doula who
helped Dockery through her pregnancy
and the first months after she gave birth.
"I had someone who was going to be
there," Dockery said, "who was going
to help me focus on what I needed and
what I wanted."
On June 26, Altruism Inc., the nonprofit that
runs the MaIH Center in Lexington, will open
a second center. This one is in Kansas City's
urban Westside neighborhood.
The new Kansas City center, opening in
partnership with Samuel U. Rodgers Health
Center, will share space with the health
center's maternity care clinic at 2121
Summit St. and be called the MaIH Center
at Sam Rodgers.
This article was originally published by the
Beacon.
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"Pregnant women and birthing people whose births are covered
by Medicaid have a 7 times higher pregnancy associated
mortality rate compared with birthing people with private
insurance. Doulas address this disparity with the support they
provide and improve Medicaid-covered birthing outcomes."
- Tonia Wright, Altruism's CEO
