FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Maybe you’re wondering why you can’t just show up at the hospital and have a baby like “normal” people do, no 7-week course needed. You are not alone! A beautiful, empowering birth can feel like an unnecessary luxury item - sure, you’d like to have it if you can, but you’d also like to go to an all-inclusive resort next week. We like to think of birth as more like hiking the Appalachian Trail. It’s a transformative journey that you are embarking on and will get through, one way or the other. If you show up unprepared, you leave yourself at the mercy of the guides who happen to be there when you arrive (many of them wonderful!) and the weather that happens to come your way. If you train and plan and carefully choose your hiking companions, you’re bound to have a more fulfilling and impactful experience - one both you and your partner can look back on for a lifetime. You will walk away feeling well-equipped to navigate and love your own birth experience.

Our class is taught to the non-pregnant partner as much as the pregnant person. If you are a single parent or your partner is not willing or able to take the class with you, we hope you can find a family member or friend willing to take it with you and become part of your continuous labor support plan. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any concerns about this.

In the most simple terms, a birth doula is a continual support person who serves a woman and her partner throughout labor and delivery. One of the most important things a woman can do to help herself and her baby through labor is to relax her body and embrace what it is doing. Yet, this is often the hardest thing to achieve during the rigors of labor! The role of a doula is to help a laboring woman feel safe and relaxed, equipped and empowered, as she and her baby make their journey into each other’s arms.

Doula support can take a variety of shapes. Labor is physical, mental, and emotional, so as a doula we are trained to offer support in each of these areas. Doulas provide physical support by helping the woman find comfortable and efficacious labor positions and physically supporting her in these positions. Doulas also provide mental support by helping laboring women focus on one contraction at a time through breathing techniques, rhythms, visualizations, etc. Perhaps most importantly, doulas provide emotional support by empowering women with knowledge regarding their choices, and encouraging and affirming those women emotionally throughout labor.

We generally reserve our doula services for students of our childbirth class. We have found we can best serve clients who take a thorough childbirth class, and it is not feasible or effective for us to cram that in as part of the prenatal doula appointments. Please consider enrolling in our class! (Occasionally we do take on clients outside our class who have taken or are taking a comparable class. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in exploring this option.)

We are monitoring the situation class by class, determining what is safe to do as each new class begins. The safety and health of our expectant couples is our highest priority. Some classes may be limited in size and may also be held outdoors (in a cute, comfortable setting, we promise!). As vaccines become more readily available, the risks present in each class may vary and we will plan accordingly, communicating with our classes before they begin. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns about our current protocols.