No matter if you plan on birthing in the hospital with an OB, or at a birth center with a midwife, or have plans change halfway through, your choice is vital to your wellbeing . Above all, be sure you feel heard, respected, and have ample opportunities to ask questions, have discussions, and make informed choices. Your providers are there to care for you! And with any decision made for your pregnancy and birth, it is better to know all your options and make a choice that best suits you and your unique story.

When I’m asked why I became a doula, the answer is most certainly never “to hold babies”. I am here to hold mothers, fathers, siblings, and grandparents.

Being that food is more than just a nutrition label, I recognize the healing quality of comfort foods, following cravings, and counting moments of deep nourishment rather than calories. The intention of this article is to share some food love from my own heart. To honor foods that I found so helpful, nurturing, and delicious during both of my pregnancies.

A doula’s support does not waver or end if you choose to utilize any interventions that the hospital has to offer... It is our never-ending work as doulas to leave our biases at the door. As I say to my clients who ask me what my philosophy of birth is, “when we’re working together, my philosophy is your philosophy.”

Cesarean birth does not have to be inherently sad, disempowering, or terrifying. Whether you have your baby vaginally or with the support of doctors through a cesarean, you are still the one giving birth to your baby. It is your birth to claim. It is yours to decide how the environment should feel.

Every new parent deserves to be held in a gentle yet fierce love, honoring where they have been, where they are, and where they are going. They deserve true understanding and deep listening. They deserve all the love and celebration, even when things do not look or feel as planned.

The birth plan is the essential oil of the pregnancy and birth pharmacopeia: highly concentrated, potent, taken from all of the various harvests of information, intuition, and preferences. Also like an essential oil, it can be too strong if too much is used, or if relied on too heavily. This blog post aims to view the birth plan in a holistic sense, to see it as part of the whole, and not the whole itself.

My goal of this article is to begin and add on to the conversation happening around care after loss. Because wherever you are on your fertility journey, whatever experiences you have had, no matter the outcome, you deserve competent, confident, compassionate care. Period.

If a client of mine has been laboring for a while and decides to get a cervical exam, sometimes they will say “what happens if I haven’t progressed?”, meaning “what if I’m still at 3, 4, 5 centimeters?” First, I’ll often remind them of all the amazing holy work they are already doing. That there is no such thing as “not making progress” in labor.

Our birth stories are our tender places, our strengths, our ancestral patterns, our yearnings, our biggest fears, our greatest moments of softness and our little victories of the wildest courage. They are ours…not the hospital’s, not extended family’s, not our expectations, manifestations, or representations of who we are or what we are. And we do not need to love them.

The body is a wilderness of interconnected processes, and not just physical ones. The way we experience life through our bodies means that memories and stories of experiences themselves are stored in our cells. These interact with how we use our bodies, how we build relationships, what foods we eat, and of course, how we birth and raise our children.

When looking at the decision to certify or not to certify, it is crucial to take in all that is present, and ask the bigger questions: who are these agencies and organizations? Who are their Board of Directors? How are decisions made? Whose voices are centered? What are their intentions, goals, and missions? How do they address the current disparities that face BIPOC birthing people and their families?

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the sudden necessity to not only be aware of what policies are in place in our healthcare system, but also how they impact public health, and the day to day life of pregnant, birthing, and parenting people

Just like interviewing your providers with important questions, the same can be done when choosing a doula. It’s important to find the right fit for you, your birth plan, and your family.