Birth Support
& Advocacy
GENDER INCLUSIVE
LGBTQIA2s+
TRAUMA-INFORMED
BIRTH JUSTICE
Hi, I’m Isabel
(She/Her) I’m from Hendersonville, NC, and serve the Henderson County, Greenville (SC) County, and Buncombe County communities. As a birth-doula, I offer prenatal, birth, and immediate postpartum care and support. I’ve worked with growing families, adolescent parents, and children for over 10 years in various capacities including childcare, social work, parent education, and doula work.
I feel passionately that every pregnant/birthing person deserves comprehensive healthcare
- encompassing but not limited to birth justice, informed consent, evidence-based research, and education, empowering birthing people and their chosen families, inclusive and trauma-informed birthwork, along with being in tune with our bodies and nervous systems.
WHAT SUPPORT LOOKS LIKE:
A Birth Doula assists pregnant/birthing people and their families through physical, emotional, informational, and preservational support without bias or judgment.
Physical
Support can look like: providing and teaching comfort measures, relaxation techniques, massage techniques, education on laboring positions/pose practice, breathing techniques, and prenatal exercise.
Partner
Support can look like: educating and encouraging your birthing partner (whether they be a romantic partner, spouse, co-parent, grandparent, friend, etc.) to play an active role as an ally throughout pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. This looks different depending on your individual support unit.
Emotional
Support can look like: helping to process the realities of pregnancy, mental preparation for birth, facilitating the creation of birth preferences and mantras, as well as encouragement and validation during appointments, birth, and through virtual communication.
Support Empowerment
A Doula can empower your support unit to advocate for the birthing person and baby’s needs, teach them massage and breathing techniques, provide them with evidence-based informational resources such as books, classes, support groups, etc.
Informational
Support can look like: empowering and mediating self-advocacy and partner-advocacy in medical settings, providing prenatal and/or postpartum worksheets, birth preference examples, as well as evidence-based information, articles, books, and websites.
Preservational
Support can look like: documenting written notes and time stamps throughout the progression of labor, photographing the labor and the immediate moments after birth, and also contributing an outside perspective of the birth story during postpartum reflection in order to encourage healthy emotional processing.
A doula is not:
A medical care provider (such as a midwife, doctor, nurse, technician, etc.).
Able to diagnose, prescribe, or conduct medical interventions such as fetal monitoring, cervix examinations, or delivering a baby.
Responsible for speaking on behalf of the birthing person or their partner. Rather, they are a mediator and facilitator of those conversations between the care providers and clients.
Liable for medical emergencies or hazards that may occur during pregnancy, labor, delivery, or postpartum.