INC.
ERGOBIRTHING DESIGNS INC.
Childbirth products designed BY a childbirth professional FOR childbirth professionals
Ergonomically supportive products
with the work of childbirth in mind
designed
Our Solutions...
Our Story...
ErgoBirthing Designs, Inc., was founded in 2023 by Sherah Bassard, an RN with 30 years of experience in women's health and over 20 years experience as a labor and delivery nurse.
At the bedside, she refined her craft by developing a deep understanding of the biomechanics of labor, assessing the utero-fetal ergonomics of her laboring patients, and providing hand-made implements to support labor progress.
In so doing, she became adept at resolving labor dystocia whenever possible. She even eventually learned to prevent the arrest of labor (in the absence of true cephalopelvic disproportion) and, in recent years, prided herself in having a low cesarean section rate among her own patients as well as very rare instances of infection and excessive blood loss.
But, her improvised implements had to be re-made with each patient, and she began to wish that "someone" would create the tools she needed to improve the efficiency of her care.
In 2023, between travel nurse assignments, she began to explore what it would take to become that "someone" - the designer and manufacturer of her own line of childbirth products.
In mid 2023, while visiting India between travel nurse contracts, Sherah began working with a CAD designer to help her transform the shapes of the folded towels and pillows she had relied on in the labor room into simple implements that would accomplish the same functions.
Eventually she taught herself CAD design basics and put all her ideas into 3D form, developing a collection of products that she envisioned would eventually replace those labor room "hacks" for herself and for other childbirth professionals across the spectrum of care.
ErgoBirthing Designs, Inc., was thus established to present a suite of supportive devices designed to enhance labor management and improve breastfeeding success and general maternal and child health, both nationally and internationally.
Our flagship product, the ErgoBirthing Fetal Rotation System ™ is a toolkit of positioning aides that gently encourages the fetal rotation process, vital to the natural progress of labor. When fetal rotation is unsupported or hindered, typically it will become the mechanism that halts labor.
Our Fetal Rotation System is the first childbirth toolkit of its kind that is simple to use and capable of generating consistent, reproducible results, working with the natural biomechanisms of labor - at any phase of labor - to correct labor dystocia and encourage childbirth's natural and timely progression.
Because abnormal fetal lie and asynclitism are the cause of over 50% of all cesarean sections nationally, this product will serve to disrupt the status quo average of 30% cesarean section rate in the USA, with widespread use resulting in across the board improvements in maternal and infant morbidity and mortality and billions of dollars in healthcare cost savings annually.
CONTACT US to inquire about or invest in the development and launch of this transformational device.
Our Mission
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We seek to create innovative solutions to persistent challenges faced by childbirth professionals in the antepartum, labor and postpartum care environments.
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Our goal is to improve obstetric and breastfeeding care globally so that optimal physical wellbeing can be achieved and maintained for all mothers and their children.
Our Vision
A powerful but very delicate sweet spot exists at the nexus of Nature and Technology.
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Nature is the most advanced technology in existence - the human body operates with an innate, divinely perfect, generative balance of design and function that we call bioergonomics.
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While in the course of caregiving, in any instance where physiologic functionality is unavoidably impeded by a technological intervention or a natural dysfunction in design, a bioergonomically supportive solution exists to realign and reestablish the natural process.
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We believe Technology should serve Nature, not the other way around.
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We actively seek to put our experience, imaginations, and commitment to bear within that nexus to discover new ways to improve the health of women and their newborns in caregiving environments.
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With each new product, we envision a world in which all women on the childbirth continuum, and their newborns, experience a powerful, joyful, & healthy beginning in their journey together.
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We especially seek to bring healing to communities that have historically been underserved and harmed by inequitable conditions inherent to the dominant medical industrial complex of their locale ~ environments characterized as indifferent, exploitative or hostile to women and their infants ~ when a nurturing and healing environment should rightly be provided. We endeavor to create products that encourage the return of these communities to health, enabling them to experience a measurable and statistically significant improvement in recognized indicators of health and wellbeing, marked by a pronounced reduction in severe morbidity and mortality rates worldwide.
PRODUCT LINE
ErgoBirthing Fetal Rotation System™
Artist Rendering // Patent pending
Our Flagship product, The ErgoBirthing Fetal Rotation System, is a clinical toolkit comprised of a collection of four strategically-shaped wedges and cushions with an accompanying protocol designed to resolve labor dystocia caused by asynclitism. Our toolkit makes use of the natural physics and biology of labor to resolve labor dystocia by gently assisting the unborn baby to rotate from occiput transverse or occiput posterior positions into the ideal position for delivery: the occiput anterior, or OA, position.
In addition, we will offer an accompanying HIPPA-compliant software interface which will aggregate data that will be used to help clinicians and institutions monitor and evaluate the health impacts and cost-effectiveness of this toolkit in their childbirth environments. On a subscription basis, we will provide facilities with realtime data to track its economic impact and drive quality improvements in maternal care across all modalities.
Fulfilling our Women-Centered Mandate
MINIMUM VIABILITY PRODUCT
Organic Development of a Solution to a Profound and Persistent Need
Our Fetal Rotation System evolved organically over time as our Founder worked with laboring women troubleshooting labor dystocia and supporting the natural progression of labor. In her efforts to help her patients achieve a vaginal delivery, she ideated and innovated the solution using resources in the labor room: towels, chux pads, pillows and pillow cases.
Through direct examination and assessment of the mother and unborn baby during labor, trying various supports and positions, and by evaluating the results of her efforts through the lens of the underlying biomechanisms of labor, she eventually found a system of supports that could be routinely created and positioned to achieve the same goal whenever possible: the resolution of labor dystocia and a timely progression of labor.
In so doing, she discovered that when dystocia persisted after proper fetal positioning was achieved, a cesarean section revealed that the infant was simply too large to pass through the maternal pelvis. This meant that her method could help to shorten the decision-making time around whether or not to proceed to a cesarean section, decreasing the potential for uterine atony and infection.
Ironically she was not actually intending to create a product; she was simply using her understanding and creativity to improve her own caregiving and help her patients achieve a safe, well-managed vaginal delivery whenever possible.
Time away from the bedside allowed her to reflect on her accumulated knowledge and transform her nursing experience into a useful tool which possesses the power to transform childbirth outcomes globally.
Having laid the groundwork for bringing this product to market, we are now ready to move forward and enlist the expertise and resources of an experienced team of industry and clinical experts.
MARKET DEMAND
We have more than market demand; we have a public health mandate
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Research has established that there is a significant care gap demonstrated by the fact that the cesarean section rate has risen from about 5% in 1970 to a steady average of 30% since 2006, despite other improvements in technology.
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To date, there have been no innovations in this area of labor management that adequately address the problem of labor dystocia.
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A persistently high cesarean section rate and the role it plays in unnecessarily elevated severe maternal morbidity and mortality has become so concerning that the United States government via the Department of Health and Human Services has included this in their Healthy People 2030 goals: "Most Recent Data: 32.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (2021) Target: 15.7 per 100,000. Desired Direction: Decrease desired. Baseline: 17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births occurred in 2018." (US Department of Health and Human Services, Healthy People 2030).
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According to the CDC's Wanda Barfield, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: “The majority of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable, highlighting the need for quality improvement initiatives in states, hospitals, and communities that ensure all people who are pregnant or postpartum get the right care at the right time.” Further, "Among pregnancy-related deaths with information on timing, 22% of deaths occurred during pregnancy, 25% occurred on the day of delivery or within 7 days after, and 53% occurred between 7 days to 1 year after pregnancy."
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The ErgoBirthing Fetal Rotation System takes aim at the 47% of maternal deaths and associated severe maternal morbidity and mortality that occur immediately around childbirth
Take the Next Steps of the Journey with Us
Become an Angel Investor in our Pre-Seed Round
By supporting our efforts to recruit executive leadership and contract with a reputable medical device designer, you will become a vital part of the imaginative work of improving the lives of women and their infants globally for generations to come