In 2020, I’ll be launching a series of herbal classes on pregnancy topics, called Birthkeeper Herbalism. Interested folks will be able to sign up for the whole series, or one-off topics. More information will be posted on the website.
I am also becoming a certified childbirth educator through BACE (Boston Association for Childbirth Education). Upcoming herbal-informed and queer-centered childbirth classes will be planned in 2020.
I will still be attending births, but will take fewer families on in a given month. Repeat clients, hit me up! 😉
Doulas and Birth Resources
Doulas and Birth Support
Jacqui Morton is a doula, writer and founder of Holding Our Space, a participatory project centered around healing from reproductive loss. She also backs me up for births.
Maria of That Darn Doula is one of my backups in the area. She currently apprentices with a local home birth midwifery practice, and has experience at all local hospitals as well. She also backs me up for placenta encapsulation!
Tuly Duprat is an experienced birth doula who I connected with at Mama and Me. She is based in Malden, and has excellent rebozo skills. Tuly also speaks Portuguese.
Teresa Vittorioso-Fortin is a birth doula who offers childbirth classes through her practice, Entera Doula. She frequents Mount Auburn Hospital and is also fluent in Spanish.
Sierra at All Bodies Birth is a local birth and postpartum doula who especially loves to support LGBTQ+ families.
Jen at Douladventure brings her public health background to her work as a birth and postpartum doula in Boston.
Birth Sanctuary Boston is a group working to create an out-of-hospital birth option for families in Dorchester and beyond. It’s not easy work, but stay tuned for updates from them.
Beantown Babies is the combined project of doulas Emily and Lindsay. This amazing community space in Roslindale offers many things to new and growing families. From meditation workshops with Sophie, to childbirth ed classes with Teresa and acupressure for labor workshops with Ece, Beantown Babies has offerings that can enrich and support the pregnancy and birthing journeys of many local families.
Spinning Babies is a resource for fetal positioning and how it can affect labor. Tips for daily exercises/movements for getting baby engaged in the pelvis, as well as supportive labor positions can be found online.
The Miles Circuit is another series of simple movements to gently move baby into optimal positions for labor and delivery.
Mama and Me in Jamaica Plain offers a wide range of prenatal, postpartum, and child development classes for families in the Boston area. They host a bimonthly “Meet the Doulas” event that I frequently attend.
Doula Match is a search engine for folks looking for birth or postpartum doula support. You can compare profiles, availability, skillsets and experience all on one site.
On Being a Queer Doula and Using Gender Neutral Language
As a toLabor trained birth doula, I only recently started listening to the toRaise Doula Podcast, produced by the executive director of the organization, Thérèse Hak-Kuhn, and Richmond Virginia doula, Melanie Headley. Thérèse was actually the woman who facilitated my training in 2010, and hearing her voice brings me right back to my first intensive exposure to birth work! In listening to the recent episodes of the podcast, I realized Thérèse often uses gender neutral language when speaking broadly about pregnancy. She has extensive experiences in working with families, mothers and women in labor, but I wanted to send her a note of appreciation for not excluding everybody else in her choice of language.
Much to my surprise, she wrote back immediately to let me know she was planning on a podcast focused on supporting the LGBTQ community, and admitted she was actively working to be a better ally. She invited me to be on the show to talk about my experience being a queer doula, and to talk about how doulas can best support queer families.
Check out my interview on the August 3rd episode of the toRaise questions doula podcast, #83 How To Support the LGBTQ Client, on Stitcher, libsyn or iTunes! Also take a look at the toLabor website, where they’ve posted a list of resources that we talked about in this episode.
In mentioning the “list of midwives and birth workers who are against using gender neutral language,” I wanted to add a few more details. When Midwives of North America (MANA) announced last year that they were adding gender-neutral language to their core competencies documents, a list of birth workers identified as “Woman-Centered Midwifery” (including Ina May Gaskin herself!) wrote an “Open Letter To MANA,” opposing the use of language to include anybody who is not a cisgender woman. I’d link to their letter or website, but it seems to have since gone absent from the internet! Luckily, Birth for Every Body, a community of queer-friendly birth workers quickly organized to write a response to their letter. Snopes has a little article about how this went down, and how the experiences and opinions of the trans community have been completely misunderstood by much of the midwifery community.
There is a great list of gender and queer parenthood related resources on the Birth for Every Body website.