Your best friend and sister are planning your baby shower.
You’ve saved enough Pins on Pinterest to become a nursery decorator.
You’ve spent hours upon hours researching the best strollers and car seats for the new arrival, which, according to your baby tracking app, is the size of a lime.
You just want to make sure that you are all prepared for motherhood – but something feels missing.
You’ve constantly heard from Grandma that it’s “not a big deal – women have been birthing children since the beginning of history”.
The childbirth class that you attended seemed like it was kind of impersonal and filled with so much information that you didn’t feel like you were even able to retain a lot of it.
Oh! – and your friend told you about her birth from hell and told you to yell for the epidural at the first sign of a contraction! Now you don’t know what to think or feel!
Sister, I feel you! You’re feeling overwhelmed, your spouse is amazing, and you love him to bits and pieces but even HE doesn’t understand fully because he isn’t the one with the baby growing inside of him. You need a doula who is experienced in childbirth who will help support you emotionally, physically and with the information that you need to make your informed and empowered choices – no matter what those choices are. As your childbirth doula, I will provide you and your family continuous support throughout this beautiful and extremely vulnerable stage in your life. Nurses and doctors may change throughout your labor, but I will stick with you through it all. I want to ensure that you have a satisfying and fulfilling birth experience.
You might be thinking “but my mom/sister/cousin/husband will be there, I don’t need to hire a doula.” I have to ask you, do your mom/sister/cousin/husband support every decision that you make? Do they agree with everything that you say without giving you their unbiased (unsolicited) advice? If you even have to think about these answers, consider investing in a doula for one of THE most if not THE most important moment in your life. The other key thing to realize is that as a doula, I am not here to replace any of the other support systems that you have in place. Rather, I am there to complement them. We will work in unison to ensure that we are providing you the support that you deserve!
As a part of your birth doula package, you will receive:
2 Prenatal Visits:
The purpose of these meetings is to help prepare you for birth. They will also be a great opportunity for me to get to know you better and learn about your birthing preferences and feelings about pain medication. These visits are about 1.5 hours long each.
We will cover a variety of topics including pain management techniques, labor and birth positions, breathing techniques, postnatal care, breastfeeding, newborn care and sibling adjustment. We will also talk about medical interventions and pain medications, should you need them. We will also have the opportunity to work together and create a birth plan that will suit your needs. In the case of a cesarean birth, there are also many ways in which you can benefit from a surgical birth doula.
24/7 On-Call Period in Late Pregnancy
When you are between 37 and 42 weeks pregnant, I commit to being within 50 km of Irvine at all times as I wait to welcome your labor. This ensures that I will be there for you when you need it. I have contingency plans in place and have backup doulas that I work with to cover me in the event that I am not able to make it to your birth. During this time period, we will be in regular contact so that I can help you to recognize the early signs of labour and understand when it would be a good time to go into the hospital or call the midwife.
Continuous Labour Support
Hospital staff may switch shifts. Your doula will be your constant throughout your childbirth experience. From the beginning, until the end, and then 1-2 hours after the birth to help with initiating breastfeeding, I will be there for you. Things that I can help with include:
- Providing comfort measures
- Coaching you through contractions
- Facilitating position changes throughout labor
- Giving back rubs and massages
- Applying acupressure
- Relaxation and breathing exercises
- Guided meditations
- Visualization techniques
- Providing aromatherapy with certified pure essential oils
- Being that constant voice of reassurance that you need to get through the really tough bits
- Being present for emotional & physical support till you give birth to baby, and immediate postpartum period (2 hours after baby is born and 1 meeting in the 2 weeks postpartum).
- Breaking down the technical jargon that labor staff don’t always take out the time to explain
- Finding community resources for you
Postpartum Visit:
I meet with you one final time within the first two weeks after the birth see how you are physically recovering, provide feeding support, if needed, babywearing support and review the birth with you to help process everything.
For extended support, you can choose to add on more hours for postpartum support for a fee as well.