Los Angeles Based Birth and Postpartum Doula Support
Where Preparation meets Surrender
With over 25-years of experience, I blend evidence-based information with trauma-informed guidance as a birth and postpartum doula and childbirth educator. I tailor each service to your unique journey so you feel heard, respected, and prepared for the labyrinth of labor and new parenthood.
What does a Birth Doula DO
My work begins with a question: What does this person need to feel prepared, supported, and heard during their birth and postpartum experience? Together, we explore your hopes, questions and options, shaping care around the things that matter the most to you and your family.
Before birth, I offer private Childbirth Education in your home where we explore coping techniques, effective partner support, body balancing and optimal fetal positioning. We role play decision-making strategies alongside the common trauma responses that can make advocacy challenging in the moment. we also prepare for infant feeding, newborn care, and postpartum healing. We come up with a postpartum care plan that prioritizes the mental and emotional wellbeing of new parents alongside the needs of their baby, and, for those who are partnered, we discuss ways to strengthen your relationship during the more challenging postpartum weeks.
During labor, I provide steady emotional and hands-on support whether you’re birthing in a hospital, birth center or planning to give birth at home. My care centers your autonomy and emotional and physiological needs.
After birth, I help you find your footing with feeding, navigating newborn cues and your own healing. I offer a range of postpartum support options, from belly binding to placenta encapsulation.
One Birth A Month. Deeply Personal Care
I reserve space for only one birth each month, allowing ample space for attentive support, a close connection and wholehearted commitment to your family
You deserve to feel held, too.
You may be wondering how you’ll cope and struggling with wanting to control your experience. It’s normal to feel intimidated by the concept of surrendering to the unknown. My role is to help you hone what works for you. What settles you when you’re anxious? What does care feel like to you? We prepare together so that you can meet your birth experience feeling grounded and supported, informed and prepared.
However your birth unfolds, you deserve tenderness, respect, and steady care tailored to your unique needs.
There are really only a few things in birth that are universal:
The importance of current, evidence-based information alongside your own intuition in order to make fully informed decisions.
Everyone deserves to feel fully autonomous over their decisions and supported by their entire birth team in choosing what feels right for them. You remain the legal authority over your body.
Birth is not just a physical event but an emotional and psychological transformation.
My Training:
With doula and midwife sister-in-law as my first mentor, I assisted my first home birth in 2001. I took the DONA International Birth Doula and Postpartum Doula certifications and learned Assistant Midwifery skills under the renowned midwives Ina May Gaskin and Pamela Hunt at The Farm in Tennessee, and with Orgasmic Birth author Elizabeth Davis in California. I am certified in Childbirth Education through DTI and completed the Hypnobabies Teacher Training as well as their Hypno-doula training. I have been using Spinning Babies Fetal Positioning techniques since 2009, and taken a doula training in optimal fetal positioning by Ann Gilligan of Gilligan’s Guide. I am certified as a Functional Breathing Instructor through Patrick Mckeown’s The Oxygen Advantage. I draw from an Echo Parenting Trauma Informed parenting workshop extensively in my postpartum education work. I am a Certified Lactation Education Specialists through Breastfeeding LA. I have benefitted enormously from an apprenticeship with Transformed by Birth author Britta Bushnell, and have incorporated so much of her wisdom into my work in childbirth education. I’m certified by the American Red Cross in CPR. I am trained as an Infant Sleep Coach through The Sleep Sanctuary at The Parenthood Project and certified in circle fascilitation with the Wild Woman Project Circle Leader Training. The most intensive training I’ve undertaken began with the home birth of my own daughter in 2013 and mothering her. I’m still learning every day.
Your Questions Answered
What if I know I want an epidural?
The assumption that birth doulas are anti epidural is understandable, but most experienced doulas have enough experience with birth to know that sometimes an epidural is the one tool that allows a birth to proceed. In fact, every intervention offered by your OB is a tool that has the potential to work in your favor. I support every family I work with in whatever decisions feel right for them. We all have different goals and different visions. My goal is your autonomy.
Do you attend births in hospitals, birth centers, or at home?
Yes, I support you in all birthing environments and have extensive experience in each.
Does a doula replace the birth partner?
I am there to support both you and your partner as you navigate the emotional and physically challenging aspects of labor and the postpartum journey. Prenatally this looks like teaching partners hands-on counter-pressure techniques, fetal positioning and body-balancing stretches and coaching skills to help them provide the impactful support they want to give you. In labor, it is the partner who usually has the biggest impact on the endorphins and hormones that help in labor. Many partners say they benefited from doula support as much as the birthing parent did.
Do I really need a doula?
Doulas dramatically lower the risk of unnecessary cesarean delivery, it’s true. By almost 40%, actually. But labor support changes how you experience the transition into parenthood, and feeling deeply held and supported lowers the risk of postpartum depression and the kind of complicated grief often experienced when we found ourselves reverting to old trauma responses during important decision-making instead of asking more questions and responding from a grounded place. Many of my clients went into working with a doula very skeptical and came out convinced that doula support was worth every penny and more.