- Multiple prenatal visits with family
Because every family desires a birth that matches their unique expectations and goals, it is extremely important that we learn from you what you want for this birth! We typically meet with our clients in their home several times prenatally. Together, we will work to define our roles, help assess your wants and needs, work with you through some values clarifications exercises, help you with any issues or concerns you may bring to your birthing, and practicing hands-on labor coping. We credit this extensive prenatal preparation to faster and easier labors as well as increasing our clients' satisfaction with our role and their birth. - Provide prenatal education, information binder, and lending library
Through our phone calls, emails and multiple prenatal visits as well as throughout your birth, we will be provide you with information and education. Our responsibility to you is to keep you informed of your options and give you the information to help you make educated choices about your birth (and ultimately, support and respect you for the choices you make!) We will provide you with a binder full of information on common childbirth procedures, coping measures, suggestions on what to pack for your birth, and birth-related resources in our area. We also have a number of books and videos available for checkout from our lending library. - Provide assistance in formulating a birth plan
Through information presented in your binder as well as during our prenatal visits, we will assist and review your birth plan. Further, we will help you understand the benefits and limitations to a birth plan and help you maximize its benefits for your birthing. Our extensive experience with area doctors, midwives and hospitals will help you customize your birth plan to the specifics of your practice and birthplace. - Practice hands-on coping techniques to build confidence, familiarity and learn what might work best in labor
We bring our birth ball and practice a variety of labor coping techniques and positions. Your support person will be taught effective massage techniques, positioning guidelines and helpful comments for your labor. We will guide you with exercises we have found useful as well as learn from you any techniques you enjoyed from your childbirth classes. Once in labor, most women are not very teachable; our prenatal preparation will help you to understand our suggestions and information and help you to work with your contractions as effectively as possible. - Teach techniques for Optimal Fetal Positioning and prevent back-labor
We know the position your baby takes in your pelvis is important and includes so much more than just a baby that is head-down. Our knowledge includes teaching you to assess your baby's position and exercises and positions to encourage your baby to take the best possible position for birth. - Explore options and procedures that may occur in labor to help you discover your own ideal birth goals
Through values-clarification exercises and discussions we will learn what is most important to you for your birth. If your birth takes an unexpected or unwanted turn, we will have continued dialogue built upon the information discussed prenatally to assist you in decision-making. We will help you to obtain the information you need to make informed decisions and ultimately, support you in the decisions that you make. - 24 hour on-call support from hiring date
From the moment of hiring us, we are available to you. In addition to our prenatal visits, we are available by phone or email for any questions, concerns or updates about your pregnancy. We will provide doula support to you whenever you need it, including preterm births.
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Before the birth...
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Childbirth is an experience in a woman's life that holds the power to transform her forever passing through these powerful gates remembering all the generations of women who walk with her. She is never alone.
Just as a womanÕs heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth.
Being pregnant and giving birth are like crossing a narrow bridge. People can accompany you to the bridge. They can greet you on the other side. But you walk that bridge alone.
Birth is like the sea: One can swim in it, be swept away by it, float, but Heaven help the fool who thinks she can control it.
Treating normal labors as though they were complicated can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If a doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it.
Normal birth is indeed possible.
I think one of the best things we could do would be to help women/parents/families discover their own birth power, from within themselves. And to let them know it's always been there, they just needed to tap into it.
The whole point of woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve, help, but in essence, she always had, currently has, and will have the power.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
The knowledge of how to give birth without outside intervention lies deep within each woman. Successful childbirth depends on an acceptance of the process.
Perhaps we share stories in much the same spirit that explorers share maps, hoping to speed each others journey, but knowing the journey we make will be our own.
Women today not only possess genetic memory of birth from a thousand generations of women, but they are also assailed from every direction by information and misinformation about birth.
Birth is an experience that demonstrates that life is not merely function and utility, but form and beauty.
Today, it seems that a tradition of womanhood that properly belonged to women themselves has been replaced by a tradition of technology.
Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences. We have only ourselves to blame.
Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Women's bodies have their own wisdom, and a system of birth refined over 100,000 generations is not so easily overpowered.
300,000 women will be giving birth with you today.
Relax and breathe and do nothing else.
Labor is hard work, it hurts and you can do it.
A healthy woman who delivers spontaneously performs a job that cannot be improved upon.
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