Tender Gifts Midwifery & Birth Center, Fort Collins: a closer look

A freestanding birth center in Jessup Farm

Tender Gifts Midwifery & Birth Center sits in the Jessup Farm Artisan Village at 1817 Jessup Dr in Fort Collins, Colorado. It holds a distinction worth stating plainly: it was Northern Colorado's first freestanding, state-licensed non-hospital birth center, receiving its state license in November 2020. "Freestanding" simply means it is a birth facility that operates outside a hospital — a middle path between a home birth and a labor-and-delivery unit.

The Fort Collins location has four birthing rooms, each set up as a private suite with a large tub, alongside a full on-site lab so much of the routine prenatal work can happen under one roof. The practice also runs clinics in Grand Junction and Delta, extending its reach across Colorado's Western Slope, though births and the core birth-center experience center on Fort Collins.

Who cares for you

A birth center is only as good as the people in the room. Tender Gifts is led by its founder and clinical director:

• Althea Hrdlichka, CPM, LM, RM — founder, owner, and clinical director. Her path started in 2009 as a doula, after her own home birth; she became a midwife in 2016 and has since attended more than 1,000 births. She holds credentials as a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), Licensed Midwife (LM), and Registered Midwife (RM).
• Brecklen Ables, CPM — a Certified Professional Midwife who holds a B.S. in Midwifery and was licensed in Colorado in 2022.

The clinical team is supported administratively by Chrystal Boulden, MBA. If continuity of care and knowing your midwife matters to you, a small practice like this is worth weighing against a larger group model, where you may meet several providers across a pregnancy.

Services offered

Tender Gifts offers a fuller menu than "just" birth. Here is what the practice describes providing:

Pelvic-floor therapy is offered at the Grand Junction location. Childbirth education and lactation support are mentioned by the practice as well. As always, confirm current offerings and scheduling directly, since services can change.

The philosophy

Tender Gifts frames its approach around a single idea: "birth as a natural event, not a medical emergency." Its stated mission is empowering families through holistic, personalized care that supports mind, body, and spirit, combining evidence-based care with a homelike setting, client education, and an emphasis on respect and dignity.

That orientation will resonate strongly with some families and less with others, and neither reaction is wrong. A birth center is designed for low-risk pregnancies and low-intervention births; part of choosing one well is understanding both what that philosophy offers and where its boundaries lie — which is what the next section is about.

What a freestanding birth center is — and what the evidence says

A freestanding birth center is a homelike facility, staffed by midwives, for people expected to have a straightforward, low-risk birth. It is not a scaled-down hospital: there is no operating room and no obstetric anesthesia on site, so the model depends on careful screening and a clear, fast plan to transfer to a hospital if labor stops being low-risk. Understanding that trade-off honestly is more useful than any marketing language.

The evidence on birth centers is broadly reassuring for the right candidates. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers hospitals and accredited birth centers to be the safest settings, while respecting a family's informed choice. In the large U.S. National Birth Center Study II (nearly 15,600 women), about 84% of those who began care in a birth center gave birth there, roughly 12% transferred during labor, and fewer than 2% needed an emergency transfer; the cesarean rate was 6.1%, well below the national average, with no maternal deaths in the study.

Two honest caveats belong here. First, "as safe as a hospital" is an overclaim if stated flatly for everyone; the fair statement is that outcomes are comparable for carefully selected low-risk families in a system with a qualified attendant and rapid transfer. Second, the strongest outcome data comes specifically from accredited centers — which is why Tender Gifts' in-process CABC accreditation is worth tracking. None of this is a verdict on Tender Gifts; it's the frame any family should bring to any birth center. For a fuller walkthrough, see our guides on what a freestanding birth center is and home vs. hospital vs. birth center.

What families say

Across review platforms, Tender Gifts holds an aggregate rating of about 4.4 out of 5 from roughly 150 reviews (aggregated from Google via Birdeye). Ratings are a starting point, not the whole story — but a couple of families' own words give a feel for the experience:

As with any provider, we'd encourage reading a range of recent reviews yourself and asking the center for references, so you get a current and balanced picture rather than a curated one.

Visiting and contact

If Tender Gifts sounds like a fit worth exploring, the best next step is to reach out directly — most birth centers offer a free tour or meet-the-midwife consultation where you can ask your own questions.

On cost: Tender Gifts does not publish standard pricing. The practice accepts insurance and offers payment plans and third-party financing, so a direct conversation is the way to get an accurate quote and verify your coverage. Birth-center care is generally substantially less expensive than a comparable hospital birth, though the exact figure depends on your services and insurance.

Frequently asked questions