birth support | Gold Coast Doulas

Podcast Episode #23: Amber’s Cesarean Birth Story

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth support, cesarean birth, childbirth, childbirth education, Hypnobirthing

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Amber shares how her Gold Coast Doulas supported her through her C-section experience. You can listen to this complete episode on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas. I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula, and we are talking to Amber again. We talked to her last time about her story of hiring a doula, and we learned that after planning for a natural delivery and using hypnobirthing techniques and going through that course together, you found out that you needed a C-section. So tell me when you found that out.

Amber: At 37 weeks. So I have midwives, and I had not had an ultrasound since 20 weeks, and we definitely thought he was in position. We were getting ready to go to Chicago for the weekend to our friend’s cabin and just had a quick little visit with our midwives and we did an ultrasound during that, which I thought was obviously going to be super routine and just a little quickie, and then received the information that he was breech. So he was actually sitting across my pubic bone. It was shocking, to say the least. I thought with all the appointments that we had that he was face-down and ready to go, and that’s just what I knew and what I was comfortable with, and it definitely took us for a little bit of a roller coaster. I was a little bit in shock when I found out, and then as we were walking out, I just started bawling in the parking garage because it just really hit me. In the hypnobirthing class, one of the things that you do to release fear is just write down all of the things that you’re scared of, and the biggest thing that I was scared of was having a C-section because I’d never had a surgery before. I was emotionally and relatively physically prepared at that point for a natural birth. I was 37 weeks; I had done all of my classes; I had my doulas; I had my midwives. This is what was going to happen, and so it kind of flipped all of that upside down a little bit. It was difficult pill to swallow at first.

Alyssa: So what happened then at 37 weeks? You just said okay, it is what it is? Or what did you do?

Amber: Oh, no. No, not with my personality. At the ultrasound, my midwife definitely – she knew what we were doing. She knew that we were preparing for a natural birth. She knew that we had doulas, and I think she could see it on my face that I was relatively devastated by the news. She told me that we still had time, still three weeks to try to flip him, and it’s totally possible. So she did give me a little bit of hope in it, but then also did explain that I was relatively far along, and I didn’t have as much amniotic fluid for him to flip naturally and it was going to be a little bit more of a challenge. But I didn’t lose all hope at that appointment. I think that it just took me a second to, I guess, digest the news. Then with my personality, I just started Googling everything I could about breech babies and how to flip them, and I remember one of the first things I did was text Ashley and Kristin, and I was like, what can we do to get this baby down into position? So I did a little bit of a roller coaster of being sad and then almost getting a little bit obsessed, I think, with turning him.

Alyssa: So tell me some things you did. What did you try? What didn’t you try?

Amber: Oh, my God. What didn’t I try? So we had gone to our friend’s cabin that weekend in Chicago. I spent a lot of time in the water. I did a lot of headstands, which was just absolutely hilarious, this huge pregnant woman doing a bunch of headstands in the water. People were like, what is she doing? So yeah, spent a lot of time in the water, did a lot of headstands. I did some inversions. I looked up a lot of stuff on spinning babies, so I did a lot of inversions. We did Moxa, a Moxa stick, burning it by my feet, which in Chinese medicine is supposed to help. I did acupuncture. I did chiropractic work. I did literally everything, and there were a couple times – I was so in tune with my body at that point because I was like, “I know I’m going to be able to feel him when he flips,” so everything that he did, I was like, “Oh, he just flipped. He just flipped.” I just kept talking myself into the fact that he was, and then I went in for a couple ultrasounds during those couple weeks, and he didn’t. So our last-ditch effort – I did an ECV in the hospital with Sara LaGrand and my OB, Carrie, and Ashley was there to support us. I went in and I was like, “This is it. He’s totally going to turn.” They had a really good success rate in doing that, and oh, my God, they tried, for a good 15 minutes, and he would kind of get sideways, and then he would just snap back up into position, and it just got to a point where Carrie was like, “I just don’t think that this is going to happen today.” And then there was just another huge letdown because it’s like, I really put all my eggs in one basket for that, and that’s just such a dangerous thing.

Alyssa: How far along were you when this happened?

Amber: I was 39 weeks.

Alyssa: So you knew you had exhausted all possibilities at this point.

Amber: Yeah, that was it. That was it. We waited so long because there’s a good chance that you can go into labor after that. Your placenta can detach. It’s a pretty aggressive form of trying to flip them, but it’s what I wanted. I was willing to do anything at that point because I just had such – in my mind, I had really gotten obsessed with the idea of laboring, and of laboring with my husband and just having that really intimate experience together, and I think that was a really hard thing to let go of because while I know that C-sections are completely routine, they happen all the time, it is not what I wanted. And how is this fair? So many people go into birth not doing any type of research about what kind of birth they want or any education and end up having successful births, and it’s just like, how did this – why?

Alyssa: You did all your homework.

Amber: Yeah, so once again, I kind of got into a little bit of a funk, and I was like, at this point, my C-section was scheduled for the next week on his due date at 40 weeks. And I just knew the chances of him turning at this point – he’s just not going to. You know, if he wasn’t going to turn with two grown women waling on him from the outside, it’s just not going to happen. And so I was sad, of course, and I allowed that. And I had this conversation with Kristin one night. I was just really emotional, and I very much wanted to bring my son into the world and be in a really good place with what was going to happen, and I just wasn’t. I really needed to do some work on myself emotionally to get in a good place to just accept what was going to be. And I think that the whole situation was a huge learning experience for me because birth is really out of your hands at the end of the day. You can do whatever you can do to try to set yourself up to have the birth that you want to have, but the reality of it is he’s going to come the way that he’s going to come, and there’s nothing that I can do to control that. And so I was really sad one night, and I called Kristin, and we just had a really real conversation about me and where I was at with it, and I just got such amazing advice from her and the fact that this is still your birth story. This is not a situation where you have lost all control. You still do have control over this. It’s still a birth; it’s still what you want it to be. And so she really empowered me to kind of take the reins back a little bit and think about what kind of experience we wanted to have in the OR. And I feel, honestly, so blessed about the team that I did have. Because of Gold Coast, actually, like really early on when we brought you guys on, I was having second guesses about the practice that I was with just because it was a really big practice, and I did want something so specific, and I just didn’t think that I was completely aligned with the OB that I originally had. She was absolutely wonderful, but I don’t think she really participated in a lot of natural births, and she didn’t work with doulas a lot, so that was just kind of something that I had a gut feeling about. And I was relatively far along at that point. I was like, I don’t really think I can switch, and because of conversations that I had with Kristin, I did end up switching to Advanced OB, and that was the best-case scenario. I just think about all these little pieces that kind of fell into place, and I had Breck and Sara as my midwives and absolutely loved them. Obviously, they could no longer really have me after I found out that I was breech, so I ended up being switched over to the – there’s only two OBs in that practice. It’s Carrie Roberts and John LeGrand, and I remember my first meeting with them. They knew I was super upset about it, and they didn’t do a lot of C-sections in that practice, either, and they were so open to just a lot of conversation around it. They heard my fears around it. I felt so supported already in the fact that this isn’t what I wanted, but they’re going to make it as good as they possibly can for me. So after that conversation with Kristin, I decided to write a birth plan that night. I was like, what do we want? So we created a playlist and had a playlist playing when he was born. He was born into the most amazing, beautiful song ever; I still cry every time we hear it. We did immediate skin to skin. They did delayed cord clamping. So many things that were on my original birth plan still happened. And I think another big thing that came out of that conversation with Kristin that night is I actually wrote a letter to Parker, and that was really cathartic for me because I just told him that I trust him, and I trust that he was in this position for a reason and that we were still going to work together as a team and have a successful amazing birth, and that was – I just felt like I got a little bit of power back, I guess.

Alyssa: I think that’s what people don’t understand. The support of a doula through a C-section, even if it’s a planned C-section, that it’s still a birth, it’s still your story, and you can still have a plan put together that makes it feel like your own and that you do have choices still.

Amber: Yeah, I mean, I had the two OBs in the office there during my C-section, and Sara LaGrand, my midwife, showed up too. She did not need to be there, and she took video of my entire birth. She took a lot of pictures. When I watch my birth video, even though it was a C-section, I feel so – I cry every time. I feel so emotional, and it really came full circle. I was sad; I had to digest that; I had to allow that. I had to feel in my heart that I did as much as I could to have turned him, and I did, and I was at peace with that, and then I was like, how do I want to show up in this? And I did. I did my emotional work; I did what I felt I needed to do to be in a good place with it, and I could not have had a better experience. And I thank the doulas for that. I thank Ashley and Kristin so much. Ashley ended up giving me scripts of hypnobirthing for C-sections, and so I still felt super supported in that, and then my midwives and Dr. LeGrand and Carrie Roberts were just the most amazing team. And I didn’t feel like it was a surgery. I didn’t feel like it was just a routine thing, like they were concerned about my experience and really wanted me to have as good of an experience as I could, and I did. And I’m so blessed to say that, and I just don’t think that it would have ended up like that if I was anywhere else.

Alyssa: Well, thank you for sharing. It’s a really beautiful story, and I know it’s emotional, but it’s lovely to hear stories like that, and I think you’re really going to help some other women. A lot of women don’t process it the way that you did, and I think it’s really healthy and really good that you were able to do that.

Amber: Thank you so much.

Alyssa: So if anyone has any thoughts about that, feel free to email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com. And you can find us on our website, www.goldcoastdoulas.com; Facebook, Instagram, and then obviously you can listen to our podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud. Thanks again, Amber.

Amber: Thank you.

Podcast Episode #23: Amber’s Cesarean Birth Story Read More »

Podcast Episode #22: How to get Dad on board with Hiring a Doula

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth, For Dads / partners / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, babycare class, birth doula, birth support, childbirth, childbirth classes, childbirth education, Hypnobirthing, pregnancy

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa talks with Amber and Ashton about getting your husband or partner on board with hiring a doula. You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas. I am Alyssa Veneklase, co-owner and postpartum doula, and today we are talking to Ashton and Amber, and little Parker is here as well, so we may hear him talking, too. Hi, you two. Thanks for joining us.

Ashton: Hello.

Amber: Hi.

Alyssa: We have you both here today because some clients do have a little pushback when Dad kind of says, why would we have a doula in this sacred space, this birth space? So can you two tell us how that story started for you and what it looked like, your journey into actually hiring a doula?

Amber: Yeah, definitely. I think for me, I have always been very attracted to the idea of having a natural birth, ever since I can remember, really. I’m a hair stylist, and I have a lot of clients who have had babies, and actually, a lot of them have had natural births, and it’s always such an emotional thing to listen to their story and the experience that they have. And I really do think it’s something that you very much need to prepare for and set yourself up for success with, not just something that you want to do, but something that you are fully comfortable with for the most part and having people in your court to cheer you along. So I always knew what a doula was and a little bit of what kind of role they played, and that was always the common denominator in all of the births that I heard about was that they did have a coach there, a doula there, and so for me, it was kind of a no-brainer. It was just something that once I found out I was pregnant, I was like, well, we need to start looking into doulas. And so I had brought that up to Ashton one day and was just telling him, you know, we’ve got to hire a doula. And I think it kind of caught him off-guard a little bit, and he wasn’t exactly sure what it was or why we would need one. It was something I knew that I wanted, but I wasn’t so prepared to explain to him what kind of role they actually did play in the delivery room.

Alyssa: How did that conversation look? How did you start that conversation with Ashton, and, Ashton, what were your initial thoughts when she said doula? You’re like, doula what?

Amber: Yeah, I think I just went in assuming that he was going to be on board with it, and yeah, of course we’re going to have a doula. So I was already kind of researching ones in the area and brought it up to him, and I just remember a little bit of a – well, why? And that took me off guard a little bit because – I don’t know, but why I assumed he knew what one was and that it would be really helpful to us. In that moment, I wasn’t sure, either, how to explain to him what one was, so I kind of remember there being a moment of, well, we’ll go back to the drawing board for a minute; I’ll do my research and kind of come up with some possibilities of ones to talk about. It just didn’t go as smoothly as I thought, and I guess I kind of felt bad, too, that I didn’t explain better what a doula was, and I think – and obviously you can talk more about this, but I feel as though he thought it just wasn’t necessary, and yeah, the why, like why would we need that?

Ashton: Yeah, I think the conversation when you brought up the idea of having a doula – I didn’t know what a doula was; had never really heard the term before. I think maybe we’d seen some episodes of The Mindy Project and that was kind of my first exposure to a doula. So yeah, at first, the idea – you know, at this point, we’re a few months along with the pregnancy, and obviously the shock has hit us. It’s still kind of surreal; we’re not sure what to expect. And the thought of – up to this point, it’s the two of us, you know, the team effort that’s going to get through the delivery, and I guess I kind of had that anticipation going into it that it would just be the two of us. I was thinking that yeah, we can do this; we’ll do our homework, and we’ll learn the techniques that will help you deal with the pain and everything and how I can help you cope with that. And the idea of bringing someone else in, as you described it, somebody to help you through the birthing process: at first, yeah, I felt a bit taken aback, almost that I wasn’t going to be good enough; like, what, am I not good enough? Am I not able to support you through the birthing process? So I felt a little shafted at first, and it probably wasn’t until I did some research and we picked up the book The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin, which is really an in-depth guide to what doulas are and a good resource for fathers and expecting mothers and probably other doulas and birth companions. So it wasn’t until I started reading that and learning about the doula’s role; you know, it’s not that they’re coming and just supporting you, but they’re really supporting me as well, and I didn’t really understand that initially. I didn’t think that I would need support through the process, but the fact is, we ran into all sort of obstacles and unknowns, and having this doula, somebody who’s been through dozens if not hundreds, even, of births with different people – having that kind of experience in our court really helped to ease a lot of concern. Overall, looking back on it, we would absolutely do it again, even though we ended up having not a natural birth but a Cesarean birth. It was maybe even more beneficial because it was such an emotional roller coaster. We were set up to have a natural birth but we ended up needed a Cesarean because he was breech, and that emotional deviation was – yeah, the doulas really helped us process that as well. So yeah, it was tough to process at first, but I definitely would recommend it.

Alyssa: How long did it take you to get there, from the day Amber said, “I want to a doula” and he was like, what the heck, so this now, of him saying, okay, sure, I’ll read this book?

Amber: You know, for Ashton, I think that he needs a lot of information around something before he’s on board, and I’m totally the opposite. Like, I put all my eggs in the basket, and I just go full-forward without – and I’m like, I’ll figure it all out later. Well, he’s very opposite, and so I had picked up The Birth Partner book for him because I do think that he just really needed to understand the whole picture and the role that a doula does play, and he didn’t know that. So how I am going to get him on board for something if I just say, well, they’re just a coach in the delivery room? It is so much more than that. And so I think that just having the information is so powerful with that because everybody has pushback to stuff that they don’t understand. That’s just kind of human nature, right? So I think, yeah, the more information that he received – and reading that book, too, I think that he felt so much more empowered about birth and being a good birth partner for me, the role that he would be in, and knowing that a doula is just making him stronger throughout it and making me stronger. It’s also just having somebody to always go to with questions, no matter what it is. For me, I feel like our doulas, Ashley and Kristin, showed up in such a different way than I had originally expected. You know, you bring them on to help you in the delivery room, and that unfortunately wasn’t the case for us, but the support that we received going up to that was just incredible. You know, texting them with random little things. I mean, it was my first pregnancy. I would have a question about something or I would have a sensation and be like, is this normal? And I always had somebody that I could go to with just the shooting of a text, no matter what time of day it was. And that was really, really awesome for us, but especially for me, just knowing that things were normal, and I didn’t have to worry about stuff. And we went through the hypnobirthing as well, so we just received so much by bringing Gold Coast on. We had interviewed a couple doulas, and you guys were one of them, and we just felt like it was such a good match. We did the hypnobirthing and just received so much information around labor. I had no idea what your body even does during labor, and I think that bringing a doula on and just getting so comfortable and confident around what labor is, how it goes down, the differences, the changes that your body goes through – I think understanding that alone made me feel so much more comfortable in my pregnant body and potentially going into a natural birth. That was what we had planned for, and it didn’t happen, but regardless, I felt like I had so many tools in my belt, and I just understood a lot more that I wouldn’t have received if I hadn’t hired a doula because then we probably wouldn’t have done the hypnobirthing or any of the other classes that we did, as well. So think that it’s just kind of a – you know, once you bring a doula on, there’s so much information that you can get from it that can potentially set you up for a successful birth.

Alyssa: So we’ll have you on again to talk about how planning for a natural delivery and ending up with a Cesarean. Ashton, I actually wanted to ask you one more question before we wrap up here. So for the guys, for the dads out there who don’t read – like, my husband would have never read a book, had I asked him to. If you had to tell them a couple things to say, okay, this is why you need to hire a doula; what would you say?

Ashton: You know, I think it’s a tough question to distill it down. Everybody’s going to have a different perspective on it. I could tell pretty early on when Amber approached me with the idea of bringing a doula on board that it’s something that would make her feel more confident in the delivery of our first child, and at the end of the day, I think that’s ultimately why I wanted to support it. I wanted to learn more about it because especially with the stress and the difficulty and the emotional roller coaster that goes on with having your first child, all the unknowns, all the fear – you know, at the end of the day, if having a doula is going to make you more comfortable, then that’s probably not something I want to oppose.

Alyssa: How did the doula support you? You had said that it wasn’t just for the laboring mother but for you as well.

Ashton: Yeah. Well, it was mostly educational, so we did participate in the hypnobirthing class, and I think learning so much about the birthing process through that also helped me understand the role of a doula, but also the role of myself in the delivery process.

Amber: You felt very empowered after the hypnobirthing, right?

Ashton: Yeah. It took a lot of the fear and the unknown and made it more accessible because I knew or I had at least some ideas of what we were getting into. But again, I think the emotions and the fears are probably some of the hardest parts around having our first child, at least for us, and having the doulas with us to answer both of our questions, being there at the delivery, helping us with our first latch once Parker was born – I think just having that reassurance and that additional resource and expertise just made us more confident going into it, which was certainly worth the cost.

Amber: Yeah, I feel like we really had an incredible relationship with Ashley and Kristin, and it happened quickly. And like I had already said, just always having somebody to reach out to. I had so many little questions along the road, and it’s not like you can call your midwife or OB every single time you have a question, and going to the internet when you’re pregnant is just –

Alyssa: Stay away from Google!

Amber: You stay away from it. So there was just always somebody that we could reach out to, and that alone was worth it. And just the relationship that we both created with them, I think especially through the hypnobirthing, we both felt very empowered. But they really empowered Ashton to be a good birth partner through labor, and doing the breathing techniques together, having him be my coach through that stuff. While our doula taught it, I think that she really put a lot into his court in a good way.

Ashton: Yeah, it was like a having a – Ashley in this case was a birthing coach for me and a birthing coach for Amber, but she definitely made me a more competent and confident partner going into the delivery room and through the last stages of pregnancy. So yeah, ultimately, it made us both more at ease and more relaxed in the pregnancy in general, and that’s a hard thing to put a price on.

Alyssa: Well, thank you for sharing. We’ll have you back again, and we will talk about how your actual last few weeks of pregnancy went and how your doula supported you in that role. Let us know what you thought about this episode. If you have any questions, you can always find us: info@goldcoastdoulas.com. You can email us there or find us at goldcoastdoulas.com, Facebook, and Instagram. Thanks.

Podcast Episode #22: How to get Dad on board with Hiring a Doula Read More »

Podcast Episode #21: Supporting a Cesarean Birth

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth support, breastfeeding, cesarean birth, childbirth, nursing, postpartum doulas

April is C-section Awareness Month! On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa and Ashley talk about how birth doulas provide support during a Cesarean section delivery. You can listen to the full podcast episode on iTunes or Soundcloud.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula, and we have Ashley Forton with us again today.

Ashley: Hi.

Alyssa: And today the question is, how does a birth doula support my Cesarean birth? And I think that’s a really good question because everyone thinks of a doula’s support during a normal – I don’t want to say normal, but the typical vaginal delivery. And what if someone has a planned C-section, or what if they want a vaginal delivery and end up with Cesarean birth? In their mind, they’re saying, “I had all these ideas about what you do; I paid this money, and now I’m having surgery.” How do you support that?

Ashley: Yeah! So, plans change; birth is unpredictable. Sometimes we do have clients that have a planned Cesarean and still see the value in our support. So we can talk about it two different ways. When you have a planned Cesarean, whenever you hire us during your pregnancy, we’re still there for emotional and informational support throughout the pregnancy, so that can be really valuable. We can also help you come up with a birth preferences or a birth plan for your Cesarean.

Alyssa: What does that look like?

Ashley: When most people think of a birth plan, they think of a labor and vaginal birth, but it still applies to a Cesarean. You still have choices, and you can still kind of customize your experience. So we always talk about a birth plan being a starting point for a conversation with your provider, but you can certainly talk to your provider about, is a pass-through drape an option? Or even a see-through drape? Is there a clear drape so that I can see my baby emerging, if that’s something that you’re interested in? Letting them know if you want to have skin-to-skin contact with your baby right away; is that possible? Have that conversation. Talking about, hey, can I pick the music that’s playing in the room? I’ve got this song in my head that I really wanted to play when my baby is born. Hey, I want to read this poem to my baby as soon as my baby’s born. You can still do a lot of these personal things. Talk to the provider about who you’d like to have in the room. As doulas, sometimes we’re allowed in the OR; sometimes we’re not. But letting your preferences be known and saying, he, I have a birth doula, and I’d really like them to be in the OR with me. Have that conversation with your provider. As a birth doulas, I have been in the OR, but I haven’t been in every single time. So it’s always worth asking and having that conversation. So you can talk about who is in that OR with you; you can talk about what happens immediately afterwards. Hey, I’d like my birth doula in the recovery room with me. You can talk about all these different preferences when you have it planned ahead of time. It’s kind of nice to come up with a game plan before going in, whereas when you’re having a physiological birth, you’re going in for a vaginal birth, and then plans change. Something happens with you; something happens with baby, or you change your mind, and you go in for Cesarean. Sometimes you don’t have that time to plan ahead and say, hey, this is how I wanted my Cesarean to go. So sometimes, it’s nice to have that birth plan already written up just in case. And the way that we support – so let’s say we’re having a planned Cesarean and the birth doula is not allowed in the OR.

Alyssa: Who is that up to, normally?

Ashley: That’s up to the anesthesiologist at the hospital, so they make the final call. So it’s usually a good idea to ask your OB, let them know if that’s something that you want, and then when you see the anesthesiologist, make sure you talk to them about it because they get the final say at most hospitals.

Alyssa: And I think it’s huge to at least ask because I say the same thing to clients who wonder if their insurance covers this. The more we ask, the more they keep hearing this word doula, it will maybe someday be covered by insurance, and it will maybe someday be a norm to have a doula in the OR. So ask! Keep mentioning it!

Ashley: Absolutely. Because you are the consumer; you’re a customer. You are a paying customer, and we know that customer’s voices are important. Hospitals pay attention to those surveys. We know that. So make sure that you make your desires known, and if it’s not an option, let them know in the survey. “Hey, this is something I wanted; it wasn’t an option for me.”

Alyssa: So if you’re not allowed in, what happens?

Ashley: So what happens if we’re not allowed in is we go to the hospital with you the morning of. I’ve had some really fun times hanging out with clients ahead of their Cesarean, you know, just having fun, telling jokes, making sure they’re comfortable and feeling good about what’s happening; making sure they feel safe and secure and being there for any emotional needs that they may have during that time, and then when they go back for their Cesarean, I’m in the waiting room. So I’m there the whole time, and whenever possible, I go back into the recovery room as soon as they’re out of surgery. So what that looks like just depends on the hospital and what their policy is, but if I can go back into recovery, then Dad is there to support the mom, as well, and I’m there to help with breastfeeding, if they want to breastfeed; to see how they’re doing physically and emotionally; how do you feel right now, after that? And spend some time with them there. If I’m not allowed in recovery, then I meet them up in their room. As soon as they’re settled in their room, we still have that few hours of time together to process things emotionally and talk about how you’re feeling physically. Is there anything that I can get for you right now? Can I go get you some extra water? Something simple like that, but most of the time it’s more emotional; helping them process what’s going on; asking questions about breastfeeding. As birth doulas, we are trained to support breastfeeding, so we want to make sure that you get a good comfortable latch the first time. If there’s something tricky going on, we’ll help you get set up with a lactation consultant and make sure that you make that connection. We’ll get you the resources that you need. If all of a sudden there’s a medical concern for you or baby, we’ll make sure that you’ve got the information that you want or need. If it’s out of our scope, if it’s clinical or medical, we’re going to make sure that you know who to talk to. Hey, talk to your OB; talk to your pediatrician. Let’s ask your nurse. We’ll make sure that you’ve got the connections that you need, and if all of a sudden, you’re thinking, shoot, I really feel like I’m going to need some help at home, we can talk to you about how postpartum doulas are an option; let’s talk about that. Is that something that might be helpful? So whatever your emotional and physical needs are, we try to address those, and then we still come do a postpartum visit when you’re home and address all those same things again; spend some time together and see how you’re doing because in a week or ten days, a lot changes when you’re home, especially after a Cesarean; you’ve got a lot of healing to do, and we want to make sure that that’s all going smoothly and that you have what you need.

Alyssa: Thank you for that. If anyone has further questions about how a birth doula can support either a vaginal delivery or your Cesarean, email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com. Remember, these moments are golden. Thanks, Ashley.

Ashley: You’re welcome!

Podcast Episode #21: Supporting a Cesarean Birth Read More »

Podcast Episode #20: Lisa’s Story about Postpartum Anxiety

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Doulas, Postpartum / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth support, newborn care, postpartum depression, postpartum doulas, stress and pregnancy

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Lisa shares about her postpartum experience of dealing with anxiety and how doula support helped her through that challenging time. You can listen to the complete podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud. Please also visit our postpartum depression and anxiety resource list.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome back to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula. And we’re talking to a client of mine, Lisa, again. We’ve talked to her so far about her fertility struggles, dealing with a five-week early C-section, having a baby in NICU for eight days, bringing him home, and then moving from Seattle to Grand Rapids when he was four months old. Today we’re going to talk about how all that plays into your overall mental well-being as a first-time mom. All this happens; you have a baby; you’re already – you have so many fears anyway.

Lisa: And questions.

Alyssa: Yeah, fears and questions.

Lisa: And there’s a spectrum of answers to any one question that you have, and so then you have to muddle through.

Alyssa: The answer is which one is right for you. That’s what I tell my clients. There are so many answers, but which one makes most sense to you and your family and your baby? So you moved to Grand Rapids; your baby’s four months old; you find me; you have a doula. When you first moved here, what kind of mindset were you in?

Lisa: That’s a good question. Well, I was still really postpartum. You know, I was still basically in the fourth trimester, so I was very hormonal still, and I think that the month prior was so focused on, okay, what do we need to do to get ready to move? Once I got here, it was kind of a little bit of an exhale or maybe a collapse. You know, like you’re collapsing into this new environment. And then two things I think came up for me during this time. So right when we moved, our son was – for the week or two prior, and for the first five days that we got here, he was actually sleeping through the night, which was the only time in his life that he’s done that. And then, I think, five days after we moved here, he started waking up every hour throughout the night, and he was also not a good sleeper during the day, and so I was just really not getting any sleep. And then I think for whatever reason, maybe I was out of that fourth trimester or whatever, but I think all of the trauma of the fertility, the pregnancy, the emergency C-section, and then actually having a preemie baby, that started unraveling for me.

Alyssa: You actually had the time and space to think about it?

Lisa: Yeah, it kind of started – I think the whole time I was just like, what’s the next step I need to take? You’re basically just focused on moving forward, vs. really processing anything that’s happening to you during that period because if you stop to actually absorb what’s happening, it’s just emotionally overwhelming because there’s just so much wrapped up into it, for me, at least, into what was happening. And I think I just got – I was very anxious about the fact that I don’t know anybody. I don’t know anybody here. I don’t know who to trust. I have found a postpartum doula, but I’ve never met you. I literally have never met you in my life, and I also don’t have any friends. And I’m 39, and so I feel like, oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize I kind of need to date for friends again in my life.

Alyssa: That reminds me of one of our phone calls when you were still in Seattle before you moved here. You had said, “I’m a 39-year-old mom. I know West Michigan is a lot of young parents. Am I going to be the only 39-year-old mom at the playground?!” And I was like, no!

Lisa: Because in Seattle, all of my friends were older moms. They’re career women; they’re established. Children did not come first in their chronological life events, and so I thought, oh, no. I am going to be the oldie. I am going to be the old, wrinkled mom.

Alyssa: And I think I remember telling you that yes, there are a lot of young, young families, but there are also a growing number of families who are waiting, myself being one of them, and my business partner as well, so I think – hopefully I eased your mind.

Lisa: And I for sure found that to be true.

Alyssa: You find your village, you know. You find the people you’re looking for, and the ones you’re not seeking out, they don’t even really cross your radar, I feel like. So I also remember at one point when we were working together, you telling me – when you finally got to that point where you’re like, okay, I actually have time to process this whole journey. And you had even talked about how through your pregnancy, not feeling like you were able to enjoy it because there was all this stuff going on.

Lisa: No, it was like every day – it was like this might sound too graphic, but I was like, how do I keep the baby in? What do I need to do today to keep the baby inside me and growing? And that was the focus.

Alyssa: Yeah. So you didn’t ever have this time to just love being pregnant and enjoy.

Lisa: No, I was on pelvic rest. It was just different. It was very different.

Alyssa: I remember you almost mourning that, mourning the fact that you felt like you didn’t – you missed out on something.

Lisa: Yeah, I’m so glad that you brought that up. I did, you know. It’s the idea of just being able to make love with your husband and then you’re pregnant. That’s what, literally, I thought. That’s what I expected, and then that whole process was so different. I just wanted to have a homebirth in a tub. That’s the route that I wanted to go, and then being in antepartum in a hospital for five weeks, and then going through an emergency C-section where I didn’t even get to experience what it is like to have a contraction – you know, I felt like that was robbed from me. And then I had this kind of indescribable feeling where once my son was born, then it was like – I can describe it best by saying that I was trying to grab a baby through sand, and the sand was just coming through my fingers. It was like my body felt like it had “lost the baby.” And I think that’s because – there’s probably some internal knowledge that a woman’s body has that it knows that it should carry a child for X amount of time, and mine was cut short. And the only thing that made me feel okay is I would just put Ethan, my son, in a carrier, and just have him close to me. Literally, body to body. And then I didn’t have that sense of loss. I did not expect that. Nobody mentioned that. That wasn’t in any books. I just didn’t expect that. So I was dealing with that; I think that was one of the first emotions that kind of started coming out after I moved here.

Alyssa: How long do you think you felt that feeling of, I have to have him close to me or I feel panic?

Lisa: Oh, I would say at least for the first six months. It was not a short period of time.

Alyssa: So do you remember when I told you that the first probably three or four times I saw you, I didn’t even try to take him from you? I could sense that feeling of panic in you.

Lisa: You recently told me that again, and for the life of me, I cannot remember that. That doesn’t even register. I don’t remember that. And that kind of gives you a clue as to mentally where I was at that time.

Alyssa: Well, like you explained it, it’s like trudging through molasses every day. Even throughout pregnancy, you were in the mindset of, what do I have to do today to keep this baby growing inside of me? And then once you have this baby, it was okay, how do I get through this day, that I can breastfeed my baby and try to get an hour of sleep here and there? And it doesn’t work. An hour of sleep at a time just doesn’t work, so you were kind of in this fog, and then also mentally, finally, able to process everything your body’s been through the past year and really kind of mourn all these things. And yeah, I could sense the panic in you with Ethan. But if you look at from where you started when I first met you to when I left –

Lisa: Yeah, I was like, wait, what day is Alyssa coming back?

Alyssa: You would; you would text and say are you coming today or tomorrow? It is 12 or 2? You know, you were just in a place –

Lisa: I could not remember details like that, either. And you’re like, well, no. Three days from now. I’m like, oh, no! I’m in trouble this week! I do remember – I think the first thing I went and did by myself in Grand Rapids once I got here is I remember you taking Ethan and saying no, you actually have to get outside of the house. And I think I went to Gaslight, which is less than a mile away from my house, and I think I got a pedicure or coffee, I don’t know. Something like that, that took half an hour or something, and then I was back. But I felt like, oh, gosh. That was a breath of fresh air. I didn’t have a crying baby in the back, because he didn’t particularly like the car seat. Yeah, and I guess I just – I’m so thankful for you because I feel like you not only were looking out for my son, who was my number one priority, but you were also looking out for me, which I wasn’t really able to. You know, and I’m home alone, all by myself all day, in a new place. I was a stranger in a strange land, and I just needed help. Moms need help in places that they don’t even necessarily know that they need help.

Alyssa: Well, and that’s the thing, I think, with postpartum support. We are there to help you care for the newborn, and it’s not that we won’t, but we’re there to really care for you because it’s just that we don’t think we need help or we maybe don’t know we need as much help as we really do.

Lisa: I was just trying really hard to do it all and kind of get it right, whatever that meant.

Alyssa: Right. Do we ever get it right all the time? No.

Lisa: No. On a brain that hasn’t seen more than an hour of sleep in weeks, you know, it just doesn’t work, or wasn’t working for me very well. I was trying really hard, but it wasn’t working.

Alyssa: Well, I think your family is lovely, and you’re doing a great job. You always did a great job, even on lack of sleep. You did the best you could, and Ethan is wonderful. Is there anything else you want to tell people about dealing with anxiety and about postpartum support?

Lisa: Yeah, there was this great documentary event a couple months back. It was held – I think Gold Coast Doulas was one of the sponsors.

Alyssa: When the Bough Breaks?

Lisa: Yeah, and it’s a documentary about women with postpartum depression, and it wasn’t until I actually watched that movie that I understood what postpartum depression actually is and that it is a spectrum of an emotional state that can be anywhere from low anxiety to psychosis. And I literally thought – because I think what you hear in the news about postpartum depression is more the psychosis stories, and I thought, well, I’m not having hallucinations, or I don’t want to harm my child or anything like that, so I’m “fine.” But once I watched the documentary, I realized I was definitely on the spectrum of high anxiety with a newborn and even infant. I would say for sure for the first eleven months. And I would just say again, find somebody who knows that they’re talking about, who’s thought of as kind of best in their field. A postpartum doulas would be a great example. Talk to somebody and get support. Don’t sit there in your living room and panic and worry.

Alyssa: Don’t just try to deal with it yourself.

Lisa: Yeah, don’t just try to deal with it yourself because I think I did, and if I would have reached out more, like if I would have been more forthcoming with you earlier about it, I think it would have helped me a lot.

Alyssa: Maybe wouldn’t have lasted eleven months.

Lisa: Yeah, because I think I waited until maybe month nine to really talk to you about it. I was like, “Alyssa, I just – I’m kind of feeling these things. Do you think I have postpartum depression?” And that’s a long time.

Alyssa: Talking about it is hard, though. And even with your partner or spouse, it’s sometimes hard.

Lisa: Well, and it’s sometimes fleeting, too. It’s not like every day you feel bad, but it’s sometimes in the morning you feel bad; sometimes in the afternoon you feel bad, or you feel particularly overwhelmed by this new developmental stage that your baby is going through. You know, just get – just talk to other good women. Get support.

Alyssa: Talking about it is the first step.

Lisa: For sure.

Alyssa: I’ll list some resources for postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis on our website, and we have some on our Facebook page, as well. Thank you so much for talking to us.

Lisa: Thank you.

Podcast Episode #20: Lisa’s Story about Postpartum Anxiety Read More »

Podcast Episode #19: Lisa’s Postpartum Journey

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth doula, birth support, breastfeeding, childbirth, doulas, newborn care, postpartum doulas, sleep deprivation

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa talks with Lisa about her postpartum doula and how having a doula helped with her recovery. You can listen to the complete podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa Veneklase. I am co-owner and postpartum doula. Today we are talking to a client, Lisa, again. Hello, Lisa.

Lisa: Hello.

Alyssa: Last time we talked about her and her husband’s struggle with fertility and how that looked for her. Just to kind of recap, it took them about two and a half years, and then she ended up with an emergency C-section five weeks early. So we’re going to talk about what her life looked like once she got home. So Ethan spent five days in NICU, and you said you were ready. You were ready after that; five days was enough. Is that because it was scary having a baby in the NICU, or you just wanted to go home?

Lisa: Everything is very medical and monitored, and it feels – there’s definitely a separation between the natural kind of mother-and-child bonding, I think, that happens in those early hours, those early days. So for example, when I had the C-section, they wouldn’t actually let me go visit him until I was able to get up out of bed by myself and go to the bathroom. So I ended up not being able to see him for the first 17 hours.

Alyssa: You were like, “I will get up and pee by myself!”

Lisa: If this is the last thing that I do, I am going to get out of this bed and go pee! Yeah, so, that made me anxious because I was literally sitting in this hospital bed by myself in a room by myself because my husband was with the baby doing skin-to-skin, and I was counting the minutes. When do I get to go meet him?

Alyssa: So five days later, you get to bring him home.

Lisa: Actually, eight days later. Yeah, we bring him home, and it was so funny because as much as I wanted to leave the NICU, the minute we got home, he wasn’t hooked up to a monitor so you don’t know his oxygen saturation levels; you don’t know his temperature; you don’t know all these things that the machines are telling you. And I literally was fearful that he was going to die in the middle of the night. I’m like, “Well, he’s just going to stop breathing, and I’m not going to know because the beeper isn’t going to go off.” And so then I had this anxiety about not having all of the faculties that you have in the hospital. But luckily, we knew right from the beginning that – we had a birth doula who played a very different role than what I expected her to play in the beginning.

Alyssa: Yeah, absolutely. How did your birth doula end up supporting you with an emergency C-section?

Lisa: She didn’t make it to the hospital in time because it was – it happened basically in 45 minutes, and so just with the distance, she couldn’t get there, but she sat with me in the room after I recovered for several hours, when I was coming down off the gas and stuff that you get. Not gas; it’s an injection, but anyway, you know, when you’re really coming out of the stuff that they give you, and that was really helpful. I’m glad that I wasn’t alone then. But we knew that we also wanted a postpartum doula. Neither of us had been around babies very much in our adult life, and we wanted somebody who was an expert with infants that knew the research and the range of – what are the options, when I have a question? You know, about sleeping or whatever; that would be a great one because we did struggle a lot with sleeping. What are the different approaches and why, and what are the pros and cons to each? I talked a lot to my postpartum doula about sleeping and how to encourage sleeping, creating the right environment and all of that. But otherwise, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was also recovering from an abdominal surgery, and I just plain needed help, you know? I was struggling with getting up and down stairs because it was still quite painful. And so we had a postpartum doula come in every morning from six to nine through the work week and then on the weekends, my husband and I were together, so then we were able to kind of tag-team, and that was obviously different. And then we also did have several overnight stays. But even simple things the postpartum doula helped me with was, how do you get up with a new, new baby, at least get yourself in the shower, and eating breakfast, before you’re kind of down on the couch nursing them for the first time or for the first nap during the day? And I think that would have taken me weeks to figure out.

Alyssa: To figure out, like if I get up a half an hour early and try to get in the shower…

Lisa: Yes! And just a shower and eating before you’re starting the whole rigmarole of the day, especially when you’re breastfeeding, because I was really hungry – that makes a huge difference.

Alyssa: Well, and most women, especially in the beginning when you feel like you’re nursing all the time –

Lisa: All the time!

Alyssa: And you’re so hungry and so thirsty, and then they tell me, well, I don’t have time. You need to make time. If you’re not drinking, you’re not eating, your milk supply is just going to start to slowly diminish.

Lisa: Yeah. And then I couldn’t do things like go to the grocery store; that was a big challenge, or do any type of meal planning. So then our postpartum doula – we said, this is the food that we like, and so she basically created some meals, went to the grocery store, brought them back, did some or all of the food prep for the different meals, and that was just life-saving as well. But mostly I think for me it was a trusted partner. Like, who can I just ask anything to and it be just fine? And maybe it’s lack of knowledge for me or just that I don’t know who else to ask this question to.

Alyssa: Well, it’s overwhelming your first time. You literally know nothing. I mean, very little.

Lisa: I didn’t even know how to swaddle. I mean, swaddling was a big learning curve for me. I never really got it tight enough. In the beginning; I eventually did, but –

Alyssa: He’d just kind of ninja his way out?

Lisa: Yes, he did! Yeah. This person, this woman, this angel of mine, her name was Kate, and she was wonderful.

Alyssa: Now, we should mention – we didn’t mention that you lived in Seattle at this point.

Lisa: Right.

Alyssa: So you were not in Grand Rapids. When did you find out you were moving?

Lisa: When our son was three months old. He had just turned three months.

Alyssa: Yeah, because you had just gotten here when he was about four months, right? So you had a month to prepare. How was that?

Lisa: I think I was in a little bit of denial about how much needed to be done. We decided to spend more money to push the easy button, so we hired movers to actually pack us for the first time as well as do the cross-country move, and that was worth every dime that we spent, even though that is not cheap. It was really worth it. And I just focused on my recovery and my baby and the bonding and just let all that other stuff go.

Alyssa: So then you got here, and you had Judd’s family here. You have no family here, and your doula in Seattle found me.

Lisa: Right, so then I was talking to her, and I said, “You know, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know anybody there. How am I going to unpack into a new house, meet anybody?” And she’s like, “Oh, well, let me just do some research. I’ll do some looking for you today,” and she came back the next day, and she was like, “I found somebody.” And it was Alyssa. And I was like, “Perfect! Perfect! At least I have a doula that I can totally lean on!” And that was you, and…

Alyssa: We met, and the rest is history, right?

Lisa: The rest is history. And my husband’s family helped us move into the house, and that was unbelievably healthy. Healthy? Helpful! I still have mom-brain.

Alyssa: It never goes away.

Lisa: I transpose these words and then it doesn’t make sense.

Alyssa: It doesn’t go away. It’s not pregnancy-brain; it’s mom-brain, for sure.

Lisa: So at the end of the day, I’m really glad that we moved. I think it was a really, really hard time. I think moving may be – if you can wait until your baby is closer to one or something, that might be easier, an easier transition for the mom just because you’re so exhausted in the beginning. But Grand Rapids is really family-friendly, and I’m just so appreciative of that, and I feel like it’s a good place to raise kids.

Alyssa: We’re glad you’re here.

Lisa: I’m glad that we’re here. And I’m glad to have met you! Thank goodness for you!

Alyssa: Yeah, we worked eight months, maybe, seven months? Off and on; it was a lot in the beginning.

Lisa: Yeah, until he was about a year, yeah. At a year, I kind of felt like, oh, the weight of all of being a new mom kind of lifted a little bit for me, and I just felt more confident, I guess.

Alyssa: Well, and he was gaining so much more independence that it was almost – I remember one day you saying “It’s so great. He’s sitting up and he’s doing all these things, but he’s not my little baby anymore.” It was like this – I’m so glad he’s doing this because now he can play by himself for a little bit on the floor and I can actually go sit down and eat or do dishes or something, but you struggled with this. He’s my baby, but he’s not my little baby anymore, and he’s doing all these other things. And I think we all struggle with that. Me, I only have one child, so every phase, every developmental stage, I just – good and bad, I love it.

Lisa: Because that’s the only one you get.

Alyssa: Yeah. So I guess that’s a piece of advice I give, especially if you’re only having one –and you may end up trying for more; who knows, but you just – it helps you get through the hard times. Even the sleepless nights; it’s all temporary because soon he’s going to be eight, right? He’s not going to want to sleep with you, and he’s not going to want to wake up. You’re going to have to wake him up!

Lisa: That’s right. I can’t even imagine that! He’s still waking up probably three times, religiously, every night. But it’s a lot better than what he was.

Alyssa: You’re getting sleep.

Lisa: Yeah, I’m getting enough sleep now. I’m not crazy like I was; sleepless-crazy. You know, an hour or 45 minutes of continuous sleep, all during the day, if that’s all you get, that is not enough for a person to have their wits about them. It’s just not.

Alyssa: No. I think we’ll talk next time with Lisa about the effects of sleep deprivation and how – you know, a pregnancy journey that doesn’t go as planned along with sleep deprivation and an emergency C-section; all these things; how does that play in your brain. So stay tuned; we’ll talk next to Lisa about that. Thank you for sharing today!

Lisa: Thanks.

Podcast Episode #19: Lisa’s Postpartum Journey Read More »

World Doula Week 2018

Birth / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth support, childbirth, doulas, newborn care, postpartum doulas

Today’s blog is written by Kristin Revere, Certified Birth and Postpartum Doula and Certified Sacred Postpartum Mother Roaster.

As the end of World Doula Week nears, I feel I must speak my truth.

Before having kids my purpose was to support women in politics. I wanted more voices in office and wanted to run for office myself. I still do. I wanted women to feel confident raising money. I still do. When I was pregnant and busy working on a Governor’s race, I felt a loss of control. I was used to planning everything in life. Birth was something I couldn’t predict; even my pregnancy had twists and turns when I developed pre-eclampsia. I didn’t know what a doula was eight years ago, and I wish I had. The second time around, I did and we hired doulas before anyone even knew I was pregnant.

Why doula? I am a doula because I have the honor of truly seeing women when they are strong and when they are vulnerable. I have the honor of seeing their partners supporting them tenderly. I stand with women who struggle with loss and infertility. I stand with women who make hard choices. I support them, without judgment in their decisions, to prepare for unmedicated births, epidural births, cesarean births. I walk with them when they choose to breastfeed, exclusively pump or bottle feed. I acknowledge them when they choose to stay home, work from home or go back to work. I remind them to surrender and to breathe. I remind them to slow down. I remind my clients that this is only temporary and that they are strong. I still cry after every birth… mostly while sitting in my car. Mostly tears of joy and sometimes the tears are painful. You know those cries when your full body shakes? I have experienced my share of those, as well.

It was five years ago today that I took my family to Virginia for a four-day Sacred Pregnancy Instructor retreat.

That experience changed everything for me. I began to understand how to support women fully. I started teaching classes two weeks after my training. Soon after that, I took a Sacred Postpartum training in Georgia and then a four-day Sacred Doula training in Florida as I was asked to support my students at their births.

I sat in circles with my Sacred Pregnancy students for eight weeks and we were raw and real with each other. We stripped down our layers and expressed our fears and our dreams to each other. I believe that women need to connect with each other in that way. Women desire to feel understood and supported and to be fully seen and accepted.

I wasn’t sure birth doula was my calling at first. At my Sacred Doula training, I was seen as least likely to make it due to my fear of blood. I got over that fear quickly, by the way. Very few of the women in my training are still doulas. The average doula does this work for three years before burnout. A lot of this is because of the low pay, on-call lifestyle, the inability to predict how long you will be away from your family, the physical and emotional stress of birth work, and more.

I proudly hold two birth doula certifications and am a certified Postpartum and infant care doula. My next step is to become a certified childbirth educator.

I started Gold Coast Doulas with my business partner to better support families. Our birth doulas work in teams and therefore will stay in the field longer because of a better work – life balance; doulas who can give more because they aren’t always on call. They can plan for a vacation, a birthday party, or a camping trip and still take clients.

Our clients get the experience, support, and perspectives from two doulas throughout pregnancy, and if labor is long they will have a second refreshed doula at their side as needed. This model better supports our doulas as well. They have mentorship, support, and a place to grow. We take care of each other and honor the choices of those who step away from the work after having another child or for family reasons. They know they also can come back if circumstances change.

Gold Coast Doulas is made up of 15 birth and postpartum doulas, an infant massage instructor, a board certified lactation consultant (IBCLC), and a placenta encapsulator. We keep growing and adapting to the needs of our clients.

With the way birth support so strongly called to me, I never thought I would like postpartum doula work the way I do. Birth work is important, and I know now postpartum care is even more important.

There is a pressure in America to get back into skinny jeans, to get back to work, to be supermom. The focus after birth is always on the baby. Who is there to check on how the mother is coping? Everyone wants to hold the baby and bring gifts for the baby.

We need to acknowledge the mother.

We make sure she is nourished, rested, her house is picked up, we allow her time to shower or sip on tea on her porch. We acknowledge her fears and support their choices. We also help when the partner or mother is traveling. We help them manage the work, care for a baby, play with a toddler.

Doulas allow the client to breathe, and let them know that they are strong and that this is only temporary. We acknowledge them. We all want to be seen and we all want to be fully heard. That is why I do this work. We must support each other. We shouldn’t have to go at this alone.

This work is my true purpose. I see you, I stand with you, I walk with you. I am a doula.

World Doula Week 2018 Read More »

Podcast Episode #17: How to Find a Babysitter You Trust

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, baby sleeping advice, baby sleeping tips, birth support, grandparents, how to get a newborn to sleep, how to make a baby sleep, night nanny, night nurse, sleeping and babies, sleeping and newborns

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa and Cindy talk about how to find a babysitter that you trust to watch your kids. You can listen to this entire podcast epidode on iTunes and Soundclound.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas. I am Alyssa, and I’m here with Cindy from Cindy’s Suds.

Cindy: Hi.

Alyssa: I’m kind of throwing this topic at her because we had a question asked: how do you find babysitters? So we have these moms who are having babies, and then let’s say they don’t have friends and family around.

Cindy: We were fortunate in that my mom lives in the area, and my sister lived in the area when we had our kids, when they were younger. So we were fortunate that we had family babysitters at the ready, but my parents started traveling a few years after we had kids, and so then I needed to get a babysitter, somebody that I had on standby instead of my dear mom and my sister. So it was interesting because it’s very challenging trying to find a sitter who you trust with your most precious possession, which is your child or your children. I think in an earlier episode, you and I had talked about interviewing preschools and schools.

Alyssa: Yeah, pediatricians and stuff.

Cindy: It’s no different with babysitters, and so that’s the thing that I started doing when we needed to find a babysitter is I started interviewing, and I started asking friends for babysitter referrals. If I had a babysitter that I liked, that I would use periodically, I would ask them if they had friends that also were sitters. But I did my due diligence, just like we talked about for pediatricians or for schools. I interviewed them, and I had them with me and my kids for a while so I could see them interact with my children, and that was a huge tell-tale for how they would interact with kids. It’s surprising how some babysitters are naturally so great with kids, and others that claim to be babysitters would sit on the ground and have no idea how to interact with kids. So it’s kind of interesting just the whole gamut of what kind of person you’re going to get when you really start looking for a sitter, and I would just really make sure that if you’re in that boat, you do some interviewing, just like you would do for pediatricians or schools or whatever.

Alyssa: Yeah, I think having – I see a lot of clients who don’t even want a babysitter because they’re so scared to leave them. So I tell them a good middle ground; like, ease your way into it; have them come over while you’re home. It’s almost like a mother’s helper role. You pay them a little bit less just to say, hey, come over for two hours. Will you watch my son or daughter while I cook or nap – not nap, probably, because you want to watch them, but maybe cook or clean or just get some errands done around the house. Really start to feel comfortable with that person before you leave the house.

Cindy: I agree 100%, and that’s what I did, too, for our sitters when we were looking for them. You want them in your home with you there so that you can have that mom-ear to hear and to listen for interaction. And also if they have questions; they can ask you while you’re there, and you can kind of guide them through what your son or daughter may like, not like, you know, different things like that. Even changing diapers – this is a funny story. My sister was in her 20s when she first started babysitting for us, and I guess I assumed that she would remember how to change diapers from when she had babysat 10 years prior, and the first time that we had left her with our daughter who was little, maybe four or five months at the time, when we came home from whatever event that my husband and I had to go to, her diapers was on backwards! Which cracked me up because she’s like, 22, 23, and this must have been something that she couldn’t quite remember.

Alyssa: The Velcro goes in back!

Cindy: Right, right.

Alyssa: At least you realized it before bedtime and woke up to a huge mess in the middle of the night.

Cindy: Right. And we actually were cloth diapering, but we left some disposables thinking that it would be easier than a cloth diaper, and even that must have thrown her. So very funny because she’s my sister that has quadruplets, so she actually has really had to get it.

Alyssa: Now she knows how to change a diaper!

Cindy: Now she knows how to change diapers! But yeah, I think it’s great if you’re able to be there with the babysitter, a couple of hours at a time here, a couple of hours at a time there. You’ll really get an idea of how they interact with your children, and that is by far the best way to really weed out who you want to watch your children.

Alyssa: So our first-time moms do that, and then by the time you have kid number two or three, they’re like, we don’t even care. Just give me somebody.

Cindy: And references from friends, like if you have friends that have said, hey, so-and-so is great. I think that’s a super valuable resource, too, because now you’ve got this person who’s kind of been vetted by a friend of yours already, so that’s a good option.

Alyssa: Neighbors, too. You know, we have a couple girls in our neighborhood who can literally walk here, and that’s really convenient, especially if they’re not 16 yet, you know, if you trust a 14- or 15-year-old with your kid and they can just walk here.

Cindy: And I think the nice thing about a 14- or 15-year-old, when you have an older child, that’s a great age compliment.

Alyssa: Yeah. It’s almost like they’re not embarrassed to be silly; does that make sense?

Cindy: Right, exactly.

Alyssa: But if you get an 18-year-old, and they’re like, hmm.

Cindy: Exactly; that is so true. And so if you just need somebody for the day, you know, if you’re running errands during the day, if you’ve got a daytime meeting, I think that age bracket is actually a more fun age bracket. If your kids are between the ages of three, four to maybe eight or so, that’s a super fun age for that younger teen to babysit because they can be silly and they can be fun, and if they’re in your neighborhood, they can walk over, and how great is that? So that’s super convenient, too.

Alyssa: Yeah, I think it gets easier as your kids get older. When you have an infant, I’d say up until one, right, you really want somebody experienced. I had one babysitter I trusted, and she was CPR-certified, and I knew her family. So it’s different if you’re not hiring a nanny or a postpartum doula or you don’t have your mom, but even if you’re having a caregiver, like your grandparents as caregivers or baby’s grandparents, I got nervous about that when my parents watched her because they were 35 years out of the game, and they didn’t know all these things that have changed in 34 years. Unplanned segue; we have The Modern Grandparent class that we teach. So it just updates grandparents on all these things and how to be great babysitters. Let’s talk about SIDS and crib safety, Back to Sleep, how to bottle-feed, how to support the mom if she’s a breastfeeding mom.

Cindy: That’s a perfect thing to think about as well, because they haven’t been sitting; they haven’t watched kids in many, many years, and things have changed.

Alyssa: I mean, if your sister after 10 years forgot how to put a diaper on correctly, what do the grandparents forget in 35 years, sometimes 40? We’ve got moms who are 40, so when you have grandparents as caregivers, it’s also a source of anxiety. Babysitters in general, just especially for new parents; it’s stressful.

Cindy: It’s so nerve-wracking. The first time I left my daughter, I cried and cried and cried. I had a miserable night out, and it’s because you feel as a mom like you’re the only person that can take care of your child. And while you may feel that, that’s probably not true. But you’ve got to really feel good about the sitter so that you can enjoy yourself because the whole purpose of having a babysitter is maybe to either reconnect with your husband, have a date night, go to meetings. It’s so that you can really establish who you are again, whether that’s the work force or different groups or events that you were a part of before you had a baby. You need to feel comfortable with that sitter so that you can get back to remembering who you are as a person before you were a mom, which I think is super easy for us as moms to forget about the person who we were before we became a mom. I think we can kind of separate and draw a line: “Now I’m a mom; now I can’t do the things that I did beforehand.” So finding that sitter, whether it’s a grandparent who has gone through the grandparenting class that you guys offer, or if it’s a sitter that actually has done some CPR certification training or is super involved with other kid groups or that’s she’s been around children a lot, so she is comfortable. You just need to make sure that you’re finding a babysitter who you can completely trust so that you can enjoy whatever activity you’re doing to need the sitter in the first place.

Alyssa: Yeah, if it’s supposed to be an enjoyable night out, you want to enjoy it, and if you’re supposed to be at work, you need to be productive. Crying at your desk all day is not productive.

Cindy: Right, exactly.

Alyssa: Well, hopefully we gave everyone some good tips. Babysitters can be tricky, but when you find a good one, don’t let them go.

Cindy: Exactly, yeah. They’re worth their weight in gold; they really are, so make sure that you find that one or two, and if you can have a couple, that’s nicer just because if you are – we had one that we loved when our kids were little, and when she wasn’t free, we didn’t go out. And that’s also not really productive, either. You really want to have a couple, a little group of sitters who you feel comfortable with and who your kids feel comfortable with.

Alyssa: We have several because some are high school students. Some are college students. Their schedules are all different, and I know that my high school girls are going to be graduating, and their schedules get different, and then the 14-year-olds are much more available than the 17- or 18-year-olds because now they’re getting into boyfriends and dating and all these events and maybe they have other jobs. So I have to have a wide array because otherwise, yeah, if you have one sitter, you’re probably out of luck most of the time. Because you’re not their only job; I bet they have other babysitting jobs.

Cindy: Very true.

Alyssa: Well, thanks for sharing. As always, you can find us at goldcoastdoulas.com. Email us with ideas at info@goldcoastdoulas.com. And then, Cindy, where can people find you?

Cindy: You can find us on our website. It’s www.cindyssuds.com, and you can also email me directly at cindy@cindyssuds.com. We’re carried locally in the Harvest Health stores, Kingma’s, Hopscotch, and several other local retailers.

Podcast Episode #17: How to Find a Babysitter You Trust Read More »

Make Your Hospital Room Feel Like Home

Birth, Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth doula, birth support, childbirth, doulas, home birth, hospital birth, Hypnobirthing, pregnancy

Today’s blog comes from one of our past birth doulas, Courtney Garvelink. Her experience with birth clients, as well as being a licensed massage therapist and previous HypnoBirthing instructor, makes her an expert on comfort measures in the delivery room. See what she has to say about making your hospital birth feel more like home.

If you are preparing for a birth, you are getting your body and your mind ready for what may be the most important and wonderful experience of your life to this point. There are so many options and decisions to make leading up to the birth itself, one of which is where you will deliver; home, birth center, or hospital? Maybe, for you, it’s not a choice. Your finances or insurance may limit you to one option, usually a hospital. And some families just feel more at ease in a hospital. If you are among the many who will be welcoming your new babe in a hospital setting, there are still ways create a warm and comfortable atmosphere that reminds you of home during your stay.

I believe the environment you are birthing in can greatly impact your laboring time. Before we look at what you can do to make your hospital stay feel homier, let’s understand why that would matter. Your surroundings and birth environment can have a real impact on how you cope and progress during labor. The way we feel and our perception of comfort during labor directly effects our hormones during birth. We are not much different than animals, in that when they give birth they find a dark, secluded space where they feel safe. This allows the hormones needed for birth to kick in and flow well, shutting down the fight or flight response that happens when we feel unsafe or uncomfortable. During labor, we want our body to produce all the oxytocin it can, keeping adrenaline at bay. Hospital rooms are often bright and cold, with visible equipment you may or may not need. They can lack the welcoming feeling you get when you arrive home, ready to relax. Here are several ways you can make your hospital labor room feel more home-like.

Dim the Lights
Giving birth is about as primal as you can get, so take a note from our animal friends. Hospital room lighting is adjustable, and it’s your room, so adjust away. You can ask the nurses to keep the lights dimmed down, they usually have no issue with it. If they need to brighten the room so they can see what they are doing, they will usually turn them back down for you when they leave.

Room Temp
There will almost always be a thermostat in each room. When you get there, adjust the temperature to what you would normally have it set to at home or maybe just a touch cooler. It’s normal for women to run a little warmer during labor. You are probably working harder than you ever will during your birthing time.

Turn on Some Candles
LED candles are great for setting up a relaxing atmosphere. Please don’t bring wax candles to burn, this is a fire hazard. If you like to burn candles at home for the aroma, my next tip can help with that.

Essential Oils
There are several essential oils that are safe during pregnancy and labor that can be beneficial for boosting your energy, easing discomfort and muscle fatigue, and creating a calm aroma in the room. You can mix some water with your favorite essential oil and mist the room or linens you’ll be using. Check before using a diffuser in the room, as some staff may have sensitivity to certain aromas or the hospital may not allow them. You can also dilute the oil and apply to the skin directly. Be sure to get good quality oils or find an aromatherapist who can help you decide which oils are best.

Bring Your Own Pillow/Favorite Throw Blanket
When you are ready for relaxation or sleep at home and you lay your head on your pillow, you are conditioned to relax and sleep. This will be comforting at the hospital when you’re laboring. Use your pillow as a cue to relax as you move through different positions.

Play Some Tunes
Create a playlist of your favorite music, whether it’s calm or upbeat. Music can help reduce stress and the perception of pain during labor. Start working on that playlist while you are in birth preparations by finding what genres or artists are soothing/relaxing to you. Listen to those tracks or stations throughout your pregnancy; it’ll be familiar during labor and help promote relaxation.

Bring Your Own Gown
Lets be real, no one likes wearing the standard hospital gown. They are dull and unflattering. They remind you every time you look down that you are in a hospital. Bring your own button-down gown or an oversized button-down shirt. The buttons will help give easier access for breastfeeding and skin-to-skin. You can also find cute birthing gowns online.

Pictures From Home
Do you have a favorite picture from home that makes you happy or brings with it a feeling of calm? Bring it to the hospital! Maybe not your large canvas print, but something you can pack in your hospital bag. Having a piece of home can be comforting and calming during your stay in the hospital room.

The Best of Both Worlds
Did you know Spectrum Health now has two natural birthing suites at Butterworth (pictured above)? If you are low-risk, it’s a wonderful option. The rooms have a queen sized bed, lamps for softer lighting, birthing balls, and a Jacuzzi tub. And they didn’t forget about Dad; the rooms also have a recliner, flat-screen television, free Wi-Fi, and a pullout sofa. You cannot bring oil diffusers or wax candles, but overall they feel much more home-like than most hospital rooms.

Hire a Doula
Okay this sounds great, but how will you remember all this when the time actually comes? A birth doula can be your best resource. Let them meet you at the hospital and get the room ready for you. Let your birth doula take care of creating a home-like environment as well as pain management techniques and encouragement along the way.

To learn more about Courtney and ask her questions about birth doula support, you can fill out a contact form on our website or join her at an upcoming “What is a Doula?” event at EcoBuns in Holland.

Make Your Hospital Room Feel Like Home Read More »

Postpartum Depression & Anxiety Resource List

Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / anxiety, babies, birth support, depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, postpartum doulas, postpartum psychosis

After our recent event at the Wealthy Street Theatre where we screened ‘When the Bough Breaks – A Documentary about Postpartum Depression’ we realized that there are many great resources available to our community, but people may not know how to find them.

We at Gold Coast, with the help of Cristina Stauffer, have compiled a comprehensive list of resources for Postpartum Depression, Anxiety, and Psychosis.

These were some of the experts on our panel that you may contact directly:
Kerrie Vanweelden with Pine Rest
Allison Kunde, LMSW with Family Outreach Center
Cristina Stauffer, Private Practice Therapist cstaufferlmsw@gmail.com
Dr. Nicole Cain, ND, MA with Health for Life Grand Rapids
Micah McLaughlin with Continuum Healing

Here are some additional resources:

Pine Rest Mother Baby Program
Pine Rest HopeLine 844.MOM.HOPE (844.666.4673)
network180
Arbor Circle Strong Beginnings
Postpartum Support International 1-800-944-4773
Michigan Statewide PMD Coalition
Spectrum Health Postpartum Support Services 616-391-1771
www.postpartumdepression.org

The Recovery Village

Local Support Groups:

(Please call for meeting schedule, location and/or registration) – These typically have no cost to attend.

Grand Rapids
Spectrum Health Healthier Communities
Nancy Roberts, Kathy Buchanan, and Sue Bailey
616-391-1771

Caledonia
Thrive Chiropractic Center
Ginger Hollemans
616-554-5070

Zeeland
Pine Rest
Melissa VanOrman
616-741-3790

Grand Haven / Spring Lake
North Ottawa Community Health System
Lauran Bronold
616-874-5154

Pine Rest

Muskegon
Hackley Community Care
Nancy Weller
231-773-6624

Lansing
Kirsten Kimmerly
517-712-7687

Online at www.postpartum.net

Gold Coast Doulas LLC is available for daytime and overnight postpartum support. Some other local friends and resources for postpartum care include MomsBloom, Inc., GR Doulas, LLC and The Village Doula GR, LLC.

Postpartum Depression & Anxiety Resource List Read More »

The Modern Grandparent

Classes, Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, babycare class, birth support, bottle feeding, breastfeeding, breastmilk, grandparents, newborn care

Understanding the Modern Parent

First of all congratulations on becoming a Grandparent! Whether this is your 1st or 5th, it is a very excited time for the whole family.

Gold Coast Doulas offers in-home private classes for The Modern Grandparent. We are not currently offering group classes.

This 2 ½ hour class will break down the generation gap, giving soon-to-be grandparents the most up-to-date information while dispelling myths in a non-threatening, engaging way. Health and safety recommendations are always evolving and many things have changed since most grandparents had their own children.

Topics include:

Caring for the family after baby arrives
Handwashing, bathing baby, diapering, etc.
Car seat safety
Baby technology and gadgets
SIDS
Formula feeding and breastmilk
Babyproofing
AND MORE!

A particularly interesting topic that we cover in the class is, Understanding the Modern Parent. Here’s a brief snippet of what we talk about for this portion of the class.

Understanding your adult children and their choices can be a challenge at times, even during the best of times. One of the keys to understanding the choices your adult children make is understanding the differences between the generations and how they view the world. In 2002 Landcaster and Stillman published “When Generations Collide”. This paper took a look at inter-generational differences in the workplace.

Many of the grandparents who take this class will be the parents of those who are considered late Generation X or Millennials. These generations tend to have differing views than previous generations when it comes to Communication, Money and Authority. Being aware of the attitudes and approaches of the differing generations will help you to understand the choices your adult children may make and where they are coming from.

Sometimes it’s as simple as understanding these differences that avoid many family conflicts as families grow. Grandparents have to realize that their children deserve the respect and have the right to raise a family (their grandchildren) however they choose.

Today’s parents face different challenges than their parents faced, and even more different ones than their grandparents faced. The balance of work and family life can be very stressful. Thankfully there are grandparents like you willing to help relieve some of these stresses by simply not judging them. Your compassionate support allows your children to raise your grandchildren properly and also maintain a healthy relationship with their spouse.

Many parents today appreciate the help from their parents and welcome the non-judgemental support. While you are visiting ask, “What can I do to help you today?” There might not be anything needed other than holding the baby while mom showers or playing with a sibling while mom is breastfeeding; but by just asking, you are showing you are supportive and that will go a long way with your children. Asking what they need instead of offering what you think they need is critical.

Interested in becoming a Modern Grandparent? Contact Gold Coast Doulas about a private in-home class today!

The Modern Grandparent Read More »

Mom Guilt: How to Survive it and Grow from it

Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / birth support, mom guilt, self care

Today’s guest blogger is a past birth client of ours, Nicole Vega, LMSW, CHC. Nicole is a fully licensed clinician and certified health coach. Nicole received her Master’s in Clinical Social Work in 2012 from Western Michigan University and became certified as a health coach in 2016. Her work is founded on the principle that individuals are the experts of their own lives, and therefore their own best healers. Nicole believes it is her role to establish a safe therapeutic space where she can assist her clients in focusing on their strengths and uncovering the tools needed to address what is causing them discomfort and stress in their lives; which may be manifesting as anxiety, depression, weight gain or other obstacles.

Today’s blog is going to focus on the guilt that many mother’s feel. Although both parents can experience feelings of guilt, it seems to be more prominent in mothers, but these tips are beneficial to all parents.

If you are a mother, or an expectant mother, it is likely that you’ve experienced at least some degree of “mom guilt”. In an article from BabyCenter.com, Top 7 mommy guilt trips – and how to handle them, the author describes mom guilt as something a whopping 94% of moms admit to having experienced. Mom guilt does not pick and choose who it affects and it does not simply affect stay-at-home moms, or working moms, or those who juggle life somewhere in between. It affects nearly every mom!

To the parents reading this today who are currently experiencing guilt, or who have in the past, please know this; you are doing enough; odds are you are doing more than enough.

So what is mom guilt exactly? Mom guilt often presents as that sinking feeling we as moms have when we think we are not doing enough for our children. That “I wish I could afford all organic everything, cook every meal from scratch, and not miss a moment of my children’s life” type of thoughts. That feeling of not being “enough” for your children. In some circumstances, mom guilt can even turn into anxiety or depression. The good news for all you moms/parents reading this today is there are ways to decrease these feelings of not being enough. As a mother of two myself, I can completely relate to mom guilt in its many forms. Though I do not believe you can eliminate all feelings of guilt related to parenting, I do believe you can find great ways to cope and to make the moments in which you experience this type of guilt less daunting.

So here is my go-to list of ways to combat mom guilt; but remember, for these tips to work you have to actually use them and implement them as much as possible on the days, weeks, and months when mom guilt has you struggling the most.

Tip #1: FIND YOUR TRIBE: Find a group of people to support you during these long days but fast flying years. Think of the expression you’ve probably heard a million times, “It takes a village”. Well, it does take a village. This group will look different for everyone. It maybe a group you create at church, with mothers from your children’s school, work friends, or maybe even people within your family. The amazing thing here is that you get to design this group and determine who will be a part of your tribe. It really is a beautiful thing, and is vital to getting through the trappings of mommy guilt.

Tip #2: DEVELOP YOUR OWN SELF-CARE TOOLKIT: There are about a million different articles and posts on what self-care is, or what people believe it “should be”. I, however, have come to understand that self-care is different for everyone. I have seen this in my own life and as a clinician and certified health coach working directly with other women. I think often we see self-care as having to be elaborate, when in reality, that just simply is not an option for the majority of moms. So finding simple things you can do that truly work for you is key. Your tool kit may include having consistent date nights with your spouse/partner, developing a yoga practice, taking a relaxing epsom salt bath, or maybe something as simple as having 10 minutes a day to read a book you love. This toolkit will require some trial and error, and in many cases require you to ask for help from others, but hey since you’re going to find a nice tribe to become a part of, you’ve now got a ton of built in babysitters just a call away!

Tip #3: FIND A FORM OF MOVEMENT THAT YOU LOVE: Similar to your self-care toolkit, finding movement that you love will require some trial and error, but once you find what works, it’s a game changer! Healthy-healing movement can be a number of things: dance, martial arts, yoga, kickboxing, running, walking, barre, or cycling. All these are just a few great options to choose from. An amazing thing about being a parent today, is we have access to so many great options of movement, many of which you can do from the comfort of your own home (some of which are completely free). When I’m working with clients as a coach (who have been cleared for adding movement into their routine) I begin by asking them what types of movement they enjoyed before it became about “weight loss” or “having to workout”. I do this because participating in movement that you actually enjoy creates a mindset shift, which in turn creates a shift in your body. It has taken me many years to find what “my movement” is, and I am still surprised to say that for me it’s yoga. I am surprised because when I was much younger I used to despise yoga and found it boring. I now have learned that yoga may not always be exciting for me, but it is always healing.

Now I could offer a few more tips in this article, but I find that once you give more than three, people become overwhelmed and have difficulty even choosing one to incorporate into their lifestyle, at least initially. As a certified health coach and therapist who works primarily with women (many of which being mothers) one-on-one I am able to help women learn to implement the tools I mentioned here, as well as, assisting them in developing more. My goal is to help my clients move forward feeling empowered in their role as a mother and less overwhelmed by it.

If you are feeling like you are experiencing more than just infrequent episodes of mom guilt and are feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or in a state of anxiety over the many hats you wear as a parent, I’d love to help! As a health coach and therapist, I create my sessions and programs to meet your needs, so you can achieve your goals. I am driven by a person-centered focus when working with clients, rather than a specific model of care. I can see clients both locally in my office or via tele-health services.

If you are in a stage in life where you would like to investigate therapy or coaching, you can contact me directly at http://healthforlifegr.com/experts/nicole-vega/ .

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Meet our new birth doula, Angel!

Doulas / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, birth support, doulas, gold coast doulas, pregnancy

1) What did you do before you became a doula?
I have been a stay at home mom for the past (almost) four years. Before that I worked as a medical assistant in a few different areas, end of life care and a neurosurgeons office.

2) What inspired you to become a doula?
I was so inspired to become a doula by the amazing support I had with my two births. I was so greatly moved and spent the last four years saying I wish I could do that. And one day it hit me -Why not? Timing and opportunity aligned and I feel so fortunate to see my wildest dream coming to fruition.

3) Tell us about your family?
My husband Erik and I have been married almost five years. We moved to Rockford from Fort Myers, Florida two years ago. We have really been loving West Michigan, especially the weather! Our son Benjamin will be four in September and our daughter Hazel just turned one in February.

4) What is your favorite vacation spot and why?
What’s a vacation? Ha! Kidding of course! We usually spend our vacation time in Fort Myers. We have lots of family there to visit and it’s always good to escape during the long stretch of winter!

5) Name your top five bands/musicians and tell us what you love about them.
I am a lover of so many different kinds of music from old to new. I love Bob Dylan and Neil Young and the Backstreet Boys (please don’t judge my inner fan girl) and John Mayer! And don’t even get me started on Bob Seger.

6) What is the best advice you have given to new families?
My favorite thing to tell a new mom, which was also told to me when I had my first is you’re the mom and you know best. Listen to your instincts, trust yourself and your judgement. You know your baby better than anyone else.

7) What do you consider your doula superpower to be?
My doula superpower would be my passion. I want every woman to have the birth she desires. My wish is to support women in every angle of birth. Physically, mentally, emotionally… I want to give well-rounded support and will dedicate myself entirely in order to achieve this with my clients.

8) What is your favorite food?
I love food with big flavors – Mexican, Indian, and Thai, but I’m going to be really honest here and tell you, I love a turkey sandwich. If you and I were at a restaurant together 9 times out of 10, I’m getting the turkey sandwich!

9) What is your favorite place in West Michigan’s Gold Coast?
How amazing is Lake Michigan? Salt free, shark free, jelly fish free! I grew up going to the beaches in South Haven, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for the pier there and sitting on the black river having a bite to eat. Since we’ve moved back to Michigan we ventured out to Kirk Park in West Olive and I was blown away. Such a beautiful park and the water was so clear! Looking forward to more visits along the coast!

10) What are you reading now?
Right now I am reading Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth And Modern Maternity Care by Jennifer Block. It’s pretty eye opening. Just questioning whether we are over-using medical technology to manage births at the expense of mothers and new babies.

11) Who are your role models?
My role models are the two women who were vital in helping me achieve the births I wanted so desperately for my own kiddos. My doula Jaci Seiben (out of Fort Myers) was amazing. Her energy was so calming and reassuring. She was exactly the person I’d prayed to have at my side during the birth of my son. For the birth of my daughter, my midwife Shannon Pawson blew me away. She was the definition of care. She was so knowledgeable, and empowered me to make informed decisions. We spoke about everything pertaining to birth before I was even in labor, so all she had to do was come, be a quiet presence and support me and my plan for birth. Both of these women have touched my heart and they are truly who I wish to model myself after.

Meet our new birth doula, Angel! Read More »

What does non-judgmental support mean?

Birth, Parenting, Self-Care / Alyssa Veneklase / birth support, bottle feeding, breastfeeding, postpartum, postpartum depression, postpartum doulas

Author: Alyssa Veneklase, CD

I was recently asked if, since I’m a doula, I tell clients not to vaccinate and make them feel guilty if they don’t breastfeed.

What??!

If you had a doula that made you feel this way, I apologize on behalf of them. That is the opposite of what a doula is meant to be.

Since there’s obviously still a lot of confusion about the role of a doula, I will try to clear up most of the common misconceptions briefly and simply.

A birth doula is not a midwife. We do not deliver babies; we are there for the physical and emotional support of the mother and even the father.

You do not need to have an all-natural home birth to use a doula. We support women no matter how and where they deliver.

We realize that breastfeeding doesn’t work for every mother and every circumstance. We are there for guidance and support of breastfeeding, pumping, and bottlefeeding (breast milk and formula).

When clients ask us for guidance regarding topics such as vaccines and circumcision, we offer resources, but never tell a client what they should do. We want our clients to make informed and educated decisions, but the decisions are all their own.

Bottom line, a doula is a non-judgmental support person. And by non-judgmental I mean we never judge a mother, father, or family based on the decisions they make.

Ever.

Telling a client not to vaccinate their child would be judging those who do vaccinate.

Telling someone we won’t work with them because they have a scheduled c-section would be outright, in-your-face judgment.

Telling a client that she’s a bad mother because she can’t, or chooses not to, breastfeed is yes, full of judgment.

As a postpartum doula, I am passionate about supporting families, wherever they’re at in their journeys. I serve families who co-sleep for months and those who use a crib from day one. I serve families who breastfeed and those that bottlefeed formula.

I serve mothers who had all-natural deliveries, mothers who delivered early and their baby was in the NICU, and mothers who had scheduled c-sections. I serve families whether they vaccinated or not, circumcised or not.

I serve families where the mother goes back to work full-time after a few weeks, and families where the mother never goes back to work. I serve mothers with postpartum depression and I serve mothers who are the happiest they’ve ever been.

In every single scenario, the client knows I am there for them. I have no agenda of my own. It doesn’t matter what I did with my child or what “most people” do. I want each of my clients to feel confident that they’re making their own informed decisions. And I’m there for them, no matter what the decision is.

What does non-judgmental support mean? Read More »