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October 2010

Baby Bump Services / 2010 / October

Who BEcomes a Doula? A Baby Bump Services Blog Series

29.10.2010
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On BEcoming a Doula

What do you do? I am a doula. What is a doula? I have a better question…WHO is a doula? Who are the women (and men) who are able/willing/longing to do this? How did they know they wanted to? How did they start? What keeps them going? To find out the answers to these, and many more questions, I have chosen to conduct my own interviews of some of the many doulas who have influenced and inspired me and some I would like to know better. To make these interviews interesting (and to get to what matters to me) I am modeling some questions after Brene Brown's Inspiration Interview Series, To say that discovering Brene Brown changed my life is an understatement. I continue to be amazed...

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Just “BE” and you’ll find “YOU ARE”

28.10.2010
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On BEcoming a Doula

In the August BEcoming a Doula™ Training the discovery of the power of being present with a laboring woman and the connection and sense of safety that occurs as a result was a joyful and exciting realization for all the women in the workshop. The collective epiphany of this simple truth was magnified through the experience of the practical ways we do this—starting from our first interactions with a pregnant woman and her partner. To celebrate and honor the collective appreciation we all had for BEing doulas, Natalie Taylor came to the final day of the workshop with a precious gift for us all. Natalie had gone home to look up the word “be” in Greek and then, in between days of the workshop and...

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Communities of Practice

28.10.2010
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Sharing Trust

A long time ago, I read somewhere that people typically make life-time friends around two major chapters in our lives: at college, or other graduate learning communities, and after we have a baby. I witness this possibility each time I teach a childbirth class series and come back to the class reunion. While pregnant in the childbirth class, couples may be more or less communicative with other couples. Some are quite interactive, others not so much, but come to the reunion, and you will see nearly all the proud (and awestruck) parents easily communicating with each other, sharing stories, laughing and encouraging each other. Parenthood brings camaraderie in a way I have seen little else do. It makes sense. Parenting is the quintessential "on-the-job training". We have...

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How much longer? As long as it takes.

21.10.2010
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Birth Journals

It’s not easy to prepare parents for the patience that is sometimes needed during a long birth. However, I have attended long births many times and I think it is essential to let couples know that sometimes, that is just how a birth needs to be and a long labor, while a variation from normal, is still normal. The long births I have attended have taught me so much about the patience that is needed for some mother-baby dances. These lessons in patience have certainly come from caregivers (usually out-of-hospital midwives), but more often the profound lessons I have learned about strength in waiting have come from the laboring mothers and their partners whose trust in normal birth sometimes peaks my own. I have repeatedly been in...

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Six Impossible Things

21.10.2010
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Sharing Trust

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the queen. "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." ~ Lewis Carroll This became one of my favorite quotes when I lived in Washington State. A midwife I worked closely with said to me one day: "You just have to give everyone some time to catch up to your vision. You are usually a few months out ahead of the rest of us." Later that day I found this card. I have had it ever since (you can see the latte stain on the card-a reminder of my 11 years in Seattle and the beginning of a love for...

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