Doula Strong

Happy New Year!

#2025

Let's Gooooooo!!!

💪🏾

Sad, but not a surprising move given their love/hate relationship with birthing there. I do feel bad for the midwives who has used this space for years and years, and the scramble that they have to do to find another hospital. All of this, and all the hospital had to do was make their cleaner, more inviting, and have better more humane care.

The only way to dispel shame is to lend our voices and create spaces that are safe, informative, and welcoming to new mothers and their experiences.
Keeping my experience as a first-time mother at the forefront of my mind is how I support other new parents. Listening to and supporting mothers through their fears is really the first step in creating safe spaces.

My client had these simple words posted at her birth this week. Every time a contraction was coming, she stared at her little banner dug deep and powered through them.
Such simple but powerful words.
It was a great reminder to me as a doula to focus on the simplicities of birth and lactation support.

💪🏾

Obligatory headed to a birth elevator pic

💪🏾

This is what I've learned from clinicals this weekend.
So many people want to just be heard. They're gaslit by drs and family (even partners🙄) and made to think that their parental instincts are wrong. I've been around so many women lately who have called us in, only to be proven correct, and after we validated and spoke to them about a plan, had them break down because they thought that they were just crazy bc that is what everyone was telling them.
Further validating why I chose to study lactation at this level. I hear you. I see you.

💪🏾

Supporting mom while she labors at home.

Laboring for as long as you can sometimes looks like snacks, yoga mats, and Poirot (Agatha Cristie).

💪🏾

Restocking my belly binding muslins. Tried a new store on etsy called the bare foot mama shop. Honestly, this is some butter soft muslin!

💪🏾

It's been a crazy couple of weeks, I had to stop and take the time to get my workspace together for when I start classes again.
A lot of my energy has been going to clinical hours, births, and signing clients, so hopefully, this will be a good change of pace for me.
What have you been up to?

💪🏾

My mentor gave me tons of books to read through a couple of weeks ago. This one has been so interesting, I wish it were a mandatory read for birth and postpartum doulas. I have seen so much misinformation about breastfeeding, and it's frustrating for me to hear that so many women did have doulas giving them the wrong info (at one point, incl myself!).

💪🏾