Meet the Cesarean Doula
Every day, I continue my own healing and deepen my knowledge, working to demystify cesarean recovery, decrease unnecessary cesareans, and reduce birthing-related harm.
MY EDUCATION & INFLUENCES
Prior to entering this work, I was a teacher, a professor, and then a technology entrepreneur, working primarily in the fields of education and wellness.
I hold a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Literature. I did my Postpartum Doula training with Cornerstone, an incredible birth education organization committed to trauma informed, inclusive birth work and reproductive justice.
I have also learned from and been influenced by Kimberly Ann Johnson (The Fourth Trimester), Debby Gould (How to Heal a Bad Birth), and Pam England, author of numerous birth-related books and modalities, including Birth Story Listening, and one of the most prolific birth wisdom-keepers of our generation.
My closest mentors are not the authors of famous books but trauma-focused healers, midwives, and somatic practitioners who have been serving and teaching women for decades. I am so honored to learn from and be held by them. (You can find more about them on my Resources page).
I am lucky to call all of these wise and powerful women and mothers my teachers and mentors.
I have done cesarean-specific training with some of the Physical Therapists who are leading cesarean birth recovery in North America. I continue to learn about trauma, birth trauma, somatics, the nervous system, embodiment, and perinatal healing. I lean on these areas of influence deeply in my work with clients.
My work is all currently done online from my home base in the mountains of northern California, where I was born and my family and I call home.
In addition to being a teacher and lover of wisdom, modern and ancient, I am a yogi, runner, painter, singer, and harmonium player.
But being a mother is my life’s greatest passion, gift, and teacher.
MY STORY
After longing to be a mother for most of my 30s, I was thrilled to become pregnant at age 40. I planned an unmedicated home birth with a midwife, but after several hours of labor, I was transferred to the hospital and had a cesarean birth that I neither wanted nor planned.
My daughter’s birth was the most amazing moment of my life. But that moment existed alongside the most profound disempowerment and disillusionment I have ever experienced. While I was profoundly grateful for an uncomplicated surgery, my own health, and the wellbeing of my daughter, my birth experience was painful, shocking, and destabilizing.
I had tremendous grief about the way my birth happened and serious doubts about the necessity of the medical interventions taken. The physical impact of the surgery complicated my ability to care for and breastfeed my baby, and undermined my confidence as a new mother. After my birth, I was unable to find adequate emotional or practical support in my recovery from my care team or my friends, family, and community.
I spent my first six months postpartum frantically reading and researching: there had to be people out there who were trained to help cesarean mothers, specifically. And there had to be answers about how to heal that went beyond scar massage and c-section shelf reduction. The more I learned, the more shocked and saddened I became by how little information was available.
How can cesarean be the most common surgery in the U.S. and Canada and have so few resources dedicated to emotional and physical aftercare and rehab?
In the course of my outreach, I learned that many cesarean moms shared my feelings. Many of us felt abandoned by our care teams, misled about the impact of cesarean surgery, and confused about our recovery process. We felt misunderstood and isolated from friends and family who didn’t understand how we could be grieving when we were so blessed to have a baby in our arms.
Most women I met had an unshakable feeling that something was missing or incomplete in their birth experience. And most of us were angry and really sad (even traumatized) by the way we birthed or by our immediate postpartum experience - even months or years later.
As my learning and healing progressed, I became clear that I was on a recovery journey not just to help myself, but also to help others. After joining and holding a number of peer support groups, I became inspired to create a unique offering that centers and supports cesarean mothers and our particular range of needs.
In creating the Cesarean Doula, I bring together the world’s best practices in recovery from cesarean and birth trauma.
As the Cesarean Doula, I use the term “doula” in its broader meaning: a person who offers support during a major life transition - that of cesarean birth.
In the course of this service, I draw on my background as a researcher and educator, as well as studies and personal experience in birth and doula work, trauma healing, pelvic floor health, somatics, embodiment, physical therapy, yoga, and women’s circling.