Elaine Welteroth is pregnant with her second child

During the event on Thursday (13.06.24), Elaine said: "This was not part of my plan. This is God's plan. But as we were building birthFUND, I happened to find out that my baby's going to be part of the first birthFund cohort. So, let's go! Let's go ... "

She added to PEOPLE: "[I feel] so good and so much better than I did last time because this time I have a midwife from the beginning. Last time I didn't even discover midwifery until my third trimester.

"I didn't even work up the nerve to do a home birth until week 36. So this time, my experience of pregnancy has transformed because I have access."

She went on to add: "I think I'm just in such a different stage of life. My mindset is in a different place. I found out about this pregnancy when I was in the beginning of building birthFUND. I was building my team. I was making hires. I was working around the clock, literally 16-hour days, just back-to-back.

"I guess this is part of the bigger master plan, and it deepened the meaning of this work because it felt even more personal. I'm like, wow, these families that we're supporting, they're going to be giving birth at the same time as me. We're going to be doing this together."

Elaine previously opened up about her plans for the charity revealing she wants to help keep pregnant women safe and provide them with knowledge and advice on options before and after the birth.

She told Harper's Bazaar magazine: "We deserve to make informed decisions about our healthcare and unfortunately our system has been set up in a way that's kept us really ill-informed about our own bodies and our options and access to resources ...

"Our hope is that we can help reframe birth as a joyful, sacred experience because it can be ... But it's also not just for delivery-postpartum support is vital. I learned so much from my postpartum doula about how to take care of my baby, and how to take care of myself and how to nurture myself back to health in order to be able to nurture this baby ...

"What's been missing from this whole maternal health conversation is a focus on solutions. There's a certain level of awareness now, but how many times can you hear these sad stories and these alarming stats before you just shut down?

"We need to galvanise the community around this call to action where people can actually help and do something about this and make change in real time. To me, that's what's been missing and that's why birthFUND was born."