I'm so glad you're here!
Growing a human has always blown my mind, the science behind it takes my breath away just thinking about it. Just as important as that though, is making sure we are advocating for bodily autonomy. The decisions you make as a birthing person are yours and yours alone; it's really important to me that you feel empowered to make those choices.
MY DOULA STORY
Becoming a doula was always this far-fetched idea for me. Pregnancy was always fascinating: supporting others, seeing a life brought into the world - the most amazing; but life always has a way of telling you that the timing is all wrong for things.
I was immersed in the restaurant world for years and years, it seemed the end-all be-all for me. NOT a bad thing - I love hospitality, it's literally in my blood. Talking about food and drink and having a conversation over a good meal - you cannot beat that. But when I found myself as a stay-at-home mom, needing to have something to pull me out every now and again, I needed something besides the restaurant industry. After our second birth, I think I said something to my husband like, "Being a doula would be cool." He responded with something along the lines of, "you'd be so good at that." And... my doula life began.
So, for my personal birth stories...
We had a prenatal doula in Seattle since my husband was out of state for a bit during that first pregnancy. She would have also been our labor and birth doula had we not had a move planned out of state. She was a dear friend, but also so unbelievably important and supportive in that time. She came to appointments with me, chatted with me afterwards and was such a rock for us.
Since we moved to New Hampshire so late in the pregnancy, and were busy getting our life set to welcome a baby, we neglected to hire a doula for the birth - it was a big regret of ours. Our midwife, OB team and hospital that we birthed at was wonderful, don’t get me wrong - we had a healthy baby, delivered vaginally, without medication as planned, but encountered a couple hiccups we believe could have been smoothed out with a doula there.
Flash forward a little over a year after that birth and we learned we were expecting twins... that alone was a huge shock. We knew a doula was number one on our list of things to have for the pregnancy and the birth. We interviewed four or five local doulas and hired ours very early in the pregnancy. It was really important to me that we try hard to deliver both babies vaginally if possible so I wasn’t recovering from both a vaginal delivery and a cesarian. Our doula was an amazing, AMAZING, advocate for that. She helped me comb through my prenatal appointments, figure out what questions to ask the next time, and made both Matt and myself feel so much ease going into this delivery. We had known for a month or so before delivery that Baby B was breech. It was still important to me to talk through with my OBs and figure out what a vaginal breech delivery would look like, which OB in my practice would be comfortable delivering breech and what it would look like if it was no longer safe to do so.
We came up with a plan, we talked about what questions to ask both beforehand and during labor and delivery and she was able to help us successfully navigate to deliver both vaginally, even though Baby B was still breech. It was unbelievably empowering. Our successful deliveries, the navigation we did to get there, the advocating for myself for our wants and needs, these are all things I'm not sure I could have done for myself and my babies had my doula not been there for support. I learned so much from her and I'm excited to be able to pass along personal birth experience, training, and knowledge to help you have the birth you want and the birth you deserve.