I am taking this doula business to the streets! Well, the Crozet Library–close enough. Come on out, y’all! We’re going to spend 90 super fun minutes on November 8 talking about ways to make your birth better. If you’re pregnant, please come, and bring partners or support people if you like. This is a free…

I recently attended my first UVA birth, and in preparation for it, I scheduled a hospital tour with Diane Sampson. She’s the Education Coordinator for Labor and Delivery and well-loved by local doulas. Now I know why! She was so welcoming to me. She went out of her way to make me feel that I…

I spent last weekend in Richmond adding a big new tool to my doula toolbox. ToLabor sponsored a training for doulas to gain skills in acupressure for pregnancy and labor. This was a whole new realm for me—in general doula training we learned an acupressure point or two, but this took it many levels beyond…

When I say I’m a doula, I often get the same questions. One question I often get, and always surprises me a little, is this: “So most of your births are home births?” I think there’s some confusion out there about how doulas are different than midwives. Doulas, of course, are labor assistants, whereas midwives…

Here’s a sort of personal crusade that I’m on as a doula: Let’s stop calling it a “birth plan” and name it what it actually is: “birth preferences.” Why not call it a plan? The obvious answer is, you can’t plan your birth. You don’t know when it will start or how it will end,…

I stumbled on a great magazine a few weeks ago: Hip Mama. It’s published in Berkeley and I’ve never seen it before, though this is its 55th issue. I bought it because I liked the cover: a woman breastfeeding a preschooler, like on the famous Time Magazine cover, but way more funny and ironic (there’s…