Parenthood is hard! It’s amazing, and wonderful, and awesome, and blissful, and challenging , and… well, very very hard.

Your whole life changes, your family dynamic is suddenly completely different, your life perception has been skewed to an entirely different understanding, and add to that sleep deprivation, hormone changes, huge expectations from a tiny jelly-like human, and high expectations of ourselves.

We have long since abandoned the tribal way of life, where we have whole communities of families raising the young together, women supporting women, and no one being left high and dry to discover childbirth or parenthood alone. There’s a stigma attached to the idea of asking for help, as though it means we are less of a person, or somehow incapable of normal human instincts, or worse still: weak!

Well, I’m here to tell you, just as there’s a service you can pay for to have someone mow the lawn when you can’t (or don’t want to) get to it, and a person you can hire to fix your car when you don’t know how to fix it, or don’t have time to get to it, there’s a doula for your journey into this new chapter.

Birth doulas help you discover your own path through your birth, the inner strength to get through every contraction, and the voice inside to be loud enough for the birth team to stand up and take note, the support of the partner, who is also going through these same life changes, and so very scared for their loved one being swept away in this vortex of contractions and hormones and noises coming from her never heard before, with no idea where to stand, where to touch her that’s comforting, and feeling lost because they can’t “fix it.”

Postpartum doulas are there after birth to lend a hand to moms as their bodies are recovering from childbirth, to make Mom a sandwich and a cold glass of water while she focuses on feeding Baby, throw in a load of laundry, load the dishwasher, maybe assist with latching a fussy baby, give you that time to focus on your new roles as parents, and overcome the stigmas and expectations we (and our society at large) place upon ourselves as new (or new again) parents, find that new normal, and discover who this new human is.

You don’t have to go it alone. You don’t have to be Super Parent. Just as you’d hire a contractor to build an addition to your house, you can hire a doula to welcome this new addition to your home.