Give Your Time to Something You Care About: It Takes a Village

Amanda Rhodes (left) and Sarah Kilpela, cofounders of It Takes a Village, smile at their office in downtown Cape Girardeau. The nonprofit gives prenatal and postpartum education and support to women, men and families in Southeast Missouri and surrounding regions. (Photo by Bailey Bagot)

According to World Population Review, the state of Missouri is 31st in the nation for infant mortality, where No. 1 is best and No. 50 is worst. According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, from 2017 to 2021, Missouri had 32.2 pregnancy-related deaths for every 100,000 live births, barely avoiding the category the bottom-performing states fall into, which starts at 34.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

The nonprofit It Takes a Village, founded in 2019 by Sarah Kilpela of Cape Girardeau and Amanda Rhodes now of Rolla, Mo., is working to change this. They provide physical resources for families through events like a baby shower they hosted this fall, which approximately 100 mothers who make low wages attended to receive supplies for their babies. They also connect families with doulas, birth educators, lactation support, and information about pregnancy, childbirth and the fourth trimester, the 12 weeks after giving birth. In 2024, they received more than $30,000 in grants.

The nonprofit started informally as a breastfeeding support group between friends Kilpela, Rhodes and a few other moms in the area, quickly evolving into a Mornings With Moms weekly hangout as more women started attending. As the women got to know each other, they realized they had a doula, midwife assistant and lactation support professional in the group, as well as a lot of collective knowledge that could help other women who were mothers. They decided to start teaching classes to mothers in the community and to become a nonprofit in order to officially support this work, with the goal of improving prenatal and postpartum education and support for women and families in Southeast Missouri and the surrounding areas.

“We can only each do so much on our own, but together, in your village, you can do so much more,” Rhodes says. “Whether it’s raising a child or making a change in the world, it takes a village.”

In 2021 and 2022, the organization partnered with Healthy Blue, part of MOHealthNet, Missouri’s Medicaid program, which provided funds to get more women certified as doulas in Southeast Missouri. Through the partnership, It Takes a Village then connected local doulas with women who were pregnant and insured by Medicaid to provide support throughout the pregnancy, birth and fourth trimester.

As of September 2024, the state of Missouri requires Medicaid to pay for doula services for women insured through Healthy Blue, which Kilpela and Rhodes say is a “huge” win for mothers, fathers, babies and families in Missouri, as women who have doulas have shorter labor times, a decrease in maternal anxiety and depression, 28% to 56% fewer cesareans, improved communication between health care providers and mothers, and increased success with breastfeeding, among other benefits, according to March of Dimes.

To connect with the community and support each others’ work, It Takes a Village also works with the Bootheel Perinatal Network, providing doula consultation and receiving scholarships from the network to train more doulas throughout the region. During the past three years through various programs and partnerships, they have sponsored doulas for 52 women who would not otherwise have been able to have access to them.

Rhodes says in order to change many of the issues that currently exist in the world, intervention needs to start prenatally.

“If you’re trying to change the world, start as early in life as you can,” Rhodes says. “If we can give someone a safe and healthy pregnancy, a safe and healthy and supportive birth, and then they come through the postpartum period more positively and they’re able to better engage with their children who are then going to have a more attached and healthy and safe infancy and development and childhood, you can change the world.”

Kilpela, a mother of six children, had difficult experiences with her first three children’s births, including having an emergency C-section for her first child’s birth and scheduled C-sections for each of the others. Due to trauma with the first birth, she wasn’t able to breastfeed her first child, and she couldn’t breastfeed her second and third children long-term because of undiagnosed oral ties.

Having access to a community of women with varying experiences and expertise through It Takes a Village when she had her fourth child was a game-changer, though, she says: These women helped connect her with the resources to get her fourth child’s oral ties diagnosed, helped with the correct positioning and helped her get chiropractic care so Kilpela could nurse. Because of this knowledge, she nursed her fifth and sixth children, as well.

Kilpela says the impact of the work It Takes a Village does can’t be measured, because it changes generations. She knows because she has experienced it herself.

“I came from a family, no one breastfed. Just not what we did. And because of the support that I’ve received [through It Takes a Village], it’s changed my life so much,” Kilpela says. “I was able to breastfeed my kids and accomplish a goal that I never thought was possible. And that’s going to change my three daughters’ [lives], because when they’re ready, if they choose to have children, I will have the education and the knowledge to support them, and they’ll be able to have hopefully, God willing, physiologically normal births.”

For Rhodes, the mother of two children, It Takes a Village is a place where she can share her experiences to help others. When her oldest daughter was born, her daughter struggled with a diaper rash that wouldn’t go away. When her daughter was nine weeks old, Rhodes did some research and discovered elimination communication, teaching infants how to urinate and defecate in the correct place by paying attention to the signals that show they need to relieve themselves, which she says is a method often used in societies that are tribal and do not have access to diapers.

Although skeptical at first, one day, she had a to-go container, and when her daughter woke up, she held it under her daughter, and her daughter urinated in it. From then on, her daughter used a potty with diapers as a back- up, and Rhodes says her diaper rash cleared up “right away;” by 18 months, she was fully potty trained. Her second daughter never had a diaper rash, because they taught her to use a potty from day one.

When an acquaintance who was a doula and couldn’t serve a client reached out to Rhodes to ask if she wanted to go through doula training to serve the mother, Rhodes decided to become a certified doula. While doing the training, she realized there had been many more options than she had been aware of when giving birth to her two children and that she could have done many aspects of their births differently.

Because of these experiences, she works to educate mothers and fathers on the many options available to them and their children throughout pregnancy, birth and the fourth trimester.

“There’s a lot of things in life in general [where] ‘this is what you do’ is because that’s what you’ve been marketed to your whole life,” Rhodes says. “I just want people to know you don’t have to do the mainstream thing. You can. If that’s what you want, awesome. Do it. But you just need to know your options, and then if you know your options, you’re more empowered, you feel more secure in your choices. … And feeling more empowered and confident, you’re going to be less likely to have as strong of postpartum depression or postpartum issues by having that support.”

Kilpela, a business owner, says she believes being a mother is a calling and should not be taken lightly, and although women are created to nurture, not everyone is called to parenthood; some women might be called to nurture companies or to live a generous single life. As someone who feels called to be a mother, Kilpela says “all of it” is the most difficult part, and especially time management, but the hard aspects are worth it.

“There are so many, so many, so many hard, hard things about being a mom, and we really, really try to prepare you for those, but we really can’t tell you about all the joy,” Kilpela says. “Even through the really hard stuff, it’s the best thing, because you’re growing in virtue and character, and even when things are just absolutely so bleak, it’s absolutely the best feeling that you have the privilege of sacrificing yourself for someone that you love.”

Rhodes, a stay-at-home mom, agrees and says she experiences double standards in how society teaches people to perceive work. She says it’s important for people to realize that when stay-at-home mothers have a difficult day and complain about their children acting “crazily,” it doesn’t mean they want to change the fact that they have children and are staying at home to raise them; it might mean, instead, that the mother would like 10 minutes to herself. In the same way people who work outside of the home are allowed to complain about their work and have bad days, women who work as mothers inside of the home are allowed to, too, she says.

Rhodes points out that no matter what one chooses — to be married or single, to have kids or to not have kids, to work at a certain job — people will find ways to criticize, so it’s important to choose what is best for each individual or family and not worry about what others think.

Because people are often isolated in American society and live away from relatives who could help with parenting, Kilpela and Rhodes encourage people who choose to have children to reach out for support. This is why they founded It Takes a Village.

“You might feel like you’re alone, but you’re not. … But it does take being willing to ask for help and accept help when it’s offered,” Rhodes says. “And it’s OK. You do not have to do this alone. We are not designed to do this alone. We are supposed to be in community.”