Some days I  feel like birth work has called to me from the time I remember putting a Cabbage Patch Kid up my shirt and having my best friend pull it out as I "gave birth". I'm not even really sure where that idea came from. We could have only been 4 or 5 when we started playing this, along with house and store. But the memories are vivid of this being one of my favorite childhood play games. Along with anything involved with me carting my multitude of babies around the house or neighborhood. 

I was 18 when I gave birth to my first baby, a sweet pink cheeked dark haired beauty. I gave birth in the hospital, with a pitocin drip and an epidural. With only my petrified looking boyfriend, soon to be husband by my side. It is a wonder I made it through in 8 hours with very little interventions besides the ones I mentioned. 

I’ll back up a little and mention that while I was pregnant with her I often went to Barnes and Nobles. Back in the day (2000) when you would curl up in a cozy big arm chair for a while and read as if you were in a library. I would grab a stack of pregnancy and childbirth books to devour while my boyfriend caught up on the latest dirtbike magazines.  I am unsure of when the first thought hit me, if it was something from one of those books I read or somewhere else, the idea that homebirth would be a beautiful way to have a baby! 

Unfortunately being only 18 led to my parents quickly squashing my dreams of homebirth. They also nixed the idea of a birth center that was 3 hours away. I wish I could say at that time I was ready to do with my body as I wanted, but I was not quite there yet. Which leads back to birth in a hospital that turned out as well as it could have considering the interventions I had. 

I did however learn somewhere along the way about birth doula’s. Almost as soon as I could I found a doula training and was trained by DONA by the time I was 19 and before my daughter would have her first birthday. I knew that I wanted women to have the labors they wanted, where they wanted, with a woman who would believe in them at their side. 

I would really love to be your birth doula. Please contact me and let me know how I can help you best have the birth that you dream of.