No mother should face her darkest moment without her baby.

**Help launch Virginia's first baby-welcome perinatal crisis center where moms in crisis heal with their babies, not separated from them.**

When a new mother is in crisis due to postpartum depression, anxiety, or a mental health emergency in the weeks after birth, getting help today often means leaving her newborn behind. Inpatient psychiatric care isn't built for babies. So, mothers go without treatment, or they get treatment and lose those first irreplaceable weeks with their child. Neither is acceptable.

With your help, Mother Up will build the very first baby-welcome perinatal crisis center in Virginia. Imagine a place where a mother in crisis can get real, clinical stabilization care with her baby by her side. No impossible choice. No barriers.

Studies show mothers and babies do better together in all aspects. Separation at the most critical of moments is a clear loss.

We're a Virginia nonprofit founded by people who have had these exact moments needing Mother Up! We are professionals who've sat with mothers in their crisis wishing we could send them to a crisis center with their baby. Now, we are creating that center. We're licensed under the state's behavioral health framework and building this the right way: clinically sound, regulated, and designed around what mothers and babies actually need.

But we can't build it alone, and we can't build it later. Mothers in our community are facing these moments right now.

Your gift helps us open the doors. Every dollar moves us closer to a Virginia where no mother has to choose between her own survival and staying with her child.

Will you be one of our founding supporters?

Please note: Mother Up! Inc.'s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status is pre-pending. Until our application is approved, donations are not tax-deductible. We're grateful for your support at this early, critical stage. We're committed to keeping our donors up to date. If you have any question please email Katie at founders@motherup.org * founders, with an s.

Mother Up! is Virginia's first baby-welcome perinatal crisis center.

Our goal is to open our doors on May 1, 2027, mothers in crisis will be able to bring their babies with them into treatment.

Our center will include a 24 hour, 10-bed crisis receiving center (CRC) for immediate stabilization and a 7 day 16-bed inpatient unit (CSU) for mothers who need longer care. Bassinets next to beds, pumping rooms, bouncers around ever corner.

Our nurses, therapists, aids, and operating staff are trained in perinatal mental health. Each patient that comes in receives psychiatric evaluation which enables her to access treatment and medications after her program with us ends.

In center, we provide mental health support, parenting skills training, coping skills training, and more. When a mother leaves our facility, it's not a hard goodbye. We follow up with her in the days and weeks after returning home, we connect her with community resources, and we make sue she is ok.

Postpartum mood and anxiety disorders are the most common complications of childbirth. They hit hardest where support is thinnest: single mothers, women of color, LGBTQ+ parents, survivors of trauma, families without a safety net.

Virginia's emergency departments and crisis units are already over capacity. Mothers in psychiatric crisis are being turned away, separated from infants, or sent home with a phone number and a prayer. Mother Up! changes that. For the mom. For the baby. For the family. For the community that absorbs the cost when she goes without care.

We accept every mother who walks through our doors pregnant or up to one year postpartum, regardless of her ability to pay.

What your gift does today

This $10,000 campaign isn't the whole journey. It's the first mile, and we can't take a single step without it.

Your donation today funds the foundation that makes everything else possible:

Legal structure: incorporating, securing nonprofit legal counsel, building the entity that will hold the license
Specialized leadership training — Provides leadership the opportunity to attend one to two professional development program to obtain the skills required to run a baby-welcome facility
Our digital front door — a website where mothers, donors, and partners can find us
Operational infrastructure — the nonprofit management and administrative tools that turn a vision into a working organization

Every dollar in this round is a dollar that gets us to Phase 2 — the capital campaign that builds the facility itself.

Your contribution is a testimonial that you care about the mother-baby bond and maternal mental health. Moreover, it's a vote that mothers in Virginia deserve better.

Mother Up! For you, for baby, for better.

📧founders@motherup.org

Donate to Mother Up!