Birth Doulas
Our Role As Doulas
As doulas, we are present to help expecting parents create the birth they envision for themselves and to experience birth fully and actively. This means we:
Support parents’ choices fully, whatever form that takes, or however their vision needs to evolve throughout the birth.
Help parents remember that birth is a normal natural process, even when it’s easy to forget!
Assist parents in making educated and empowered decisions during the birth process.
Birth works best when Mom feels comfortable, safe and supported. Our role in creating that feeling is to keep the birth space comfortable physically and emotionally, to provide continuous labor support – from comfort measures to taking pictures, and to provide information whenever it is needed to help parents make the right choices for them. Because we are there to enable the parents’ vision, we try to facilitate partner participation to whatever extent is right for each family, whether it’s holding mom’s hand or catching the baby!
Our Partnership
We find a team approach to doula care affords benefits to us personally and allows us to offer a greater depth of service and commitment to expectant families.
How Does it Work?
We work together as a team throughout the whole scope of our care, including prenatal appointments, support during pregnancy, birth attendance and postpartum follow-up. Most of our work is done in tandem, and we are in excellent communication with each other throughout our clients’ pregnancies and births.
1. Prenatally:
a. Appointments: We prefer to conduct our prenatal meetings and interviews together and make sure that both of us know our clients and their wishes in detail. This allows us both to get to know our clients and for them to be comfortable with both of us equally.
b. Throughout your pregnancy: As you may have already experienced, pregnancy can often come along with lots of questions and needs for new resources. To help you navigate the path to parenthood, both of us are available whenever you need us to help answer any questions, give information, and direct you to further resources.
2. At your birth: When it’s time for your baby to make his/her arrival, whichever of us is on-call at that time will be the doula who attends your birth. Sometimes birth can take a long time and in that circumstance, we can always call on each other to help make sure you always have a well-rested and ‘fresh’ doula.
3. Postpartum: After your birth, we provide at least one postpartum visit. Some parents elect to have both of us attend this meeting, while others prefer to visit one-on-one with the doula who attended their birth.
What are the benefits of our partnership?
A partnership offers a well-rested and well–prepared doula to a laboring mom, even during long labors. During pregnancy, having two doulas means you also have twice the sources of information, twice the wealth of experience to draw from, and twice the perspective to help you approach all aspects of birth preparation. Finally, because there are two of us working for you, the odds of having to call in an external backup doula for your birth are practically negligible. You can have confidence knowing your doula will be able to attend your birth, and because we meet with you together throughout your pregnancy, no matter which one of us gets to be there for the big day, you can be assured she will know you and your wishes intimately!
About Kristen
After a life-long interest in childbirth, I finally decided to pursue my goal of becoming a doula after the birth of my daughter in January 2009. I had to abandon my plan for a home birth when I developed preeclampsia at 37 weeks and had to have a hospital induction that same day. I learned from that experience that you can still have an empowering birth experience that is radically different than what you had envisioned as long as you are informed about your choices and have a good labor support team. It is now my pleasure to be able to help other women to have a joyful and empowered birth experience as well.
About Ann
Like many women involved in birth, my journey to becoming a doula started with my own births. I birthed my first child in 2004. I knew I wanted a “natural” birth, but unfortunately, I didn’t know what that meant to me or how to find out! Although we took the hospital’s 1-day childbirth preparation course, we were anything but prepared for my journey into motherhood! Because I was so uneducated and unprepared, I ended up feeling like a helpless passenger on that journey. From that experience I decided that I would be actively involved and aware during the birth of my next child, and when I found out I was pregnant again, I approached the whole experience differently, resulting in a wonderful, healing and joyous birth with our second son. These two births experiences inspired me to become a doula, to help women to have the births they deserve. I’ve experienced birth in hospitals, birth centers and at home, in unmedicated and medicated forms, and in all of these situations, a supportive, comforting and compassionate companion is the most valuable and indispensable component.
Our Experience
Both of us received our doula training through Doulas of North America (DONA, Int'l.) and have attended numerous midwifery conferences and continuing education opportunities, including infant CPR, neonatal resuscitation, meconium, herbal medicine, optimal fetal positioning and genetic testing topics. Together we have a combined experience attending over 100 births in hospital, birth center, and home settings, both with and without medications. We are both mothers of five children in total, which offers us never-ending hands-on birth and parenting experience! In addition, Kristen has completed the Advanced Practice Doula Training and has begun classes in Advanced Midwifery Studies at Ancient Art Midwifery Institute.
