My personal experiences
By the time you would choose me as your doula I will have enjoyed over 40 births. I will have been in attendance during the births of babies born after previous cesareans,born cesarean, babies born with and without pain medication, born elective cesarean, born of same sex parents, single women, and teenagers. I have attended births at both home and hospital. I have discovered along the way that I am comfortable and quite compatant to attend a laboring family anywhere - the hospital, at home with or without a midwife, or a birth center. I have also discovered that there is no greater job than that of a birth attendant.
I have lived in a lot of places, and continue to enjoy traveling and different cultures. I have two children - one was an epidural/hospital birth, the second was a home water birth. I was inspired to become a doula after having been present for the homebirth of one of my best friend's children. Watching the birth process and seeing new life changed mine. In preparation for the birth of my second child, my appetite for reading everything I could about birth was never satiated. I started to yearn for being a closer part of birth and was seeking a way to do that. I discovered a job called - doula! The more I read and trained the more I knew it was the path for me. While attending my first births as a doula, I discovered that no other job I had ever had used the best parts of me - my desire to help people, my intuition, and my calm under pressure - like being a doula did.
As a mother and laboring woman, I have made use of several different pain management techniques and consider them a part of my endless resources to help any laboring mom. I have used Hypnobirthing, Lamaze, and Bradley techniques. As a doula, I am particularly intent on helping mom find the optimum position to help alleviate the intensity of labor, as well as optimize baby's exit. Also, I am educated in conditioning and believe that much of pain management is in the reconditioning of mom's response to pain from tension and focus on the pain, to relaxation and visualization. As a doula, I employ many of the different techniques, depending on the situation and the mom.
What am I personally passionate about? Lots of things! When I first became a doula, I thought I was in it only for the unmedicated birth. Then I met a mom who intended on getting an epidural and helped her through her labor. She changed my whole perspective and opened my mind to all kinds of birth. It was then that I realized my job is to help parents maintain the birth choices they have made - to help the mom who wants to avoid pain medication do so, and to help the mom who intends on obtaining pain medication get as far as she can and have the safest epidural experience possible. Mostly though I am passionate about making sure parents are able to make the most educated choices about their birth they can. I am also passionate about Midwifery and keeping it available to all who want it. I am passionate about educating parents about Midwifery, and about all their birth options. While I do love the physiological, spontaneous, unmedicated birth, I am just passionate about the every other type of labor and birth experience. There is nothing sweeter than the look in a mother and her partner's eyes when they look at their baby for the first time, feeling they have birthed the best way for them.