Latest reads from my blog
Drum healing, bullshit?
I want to tell my story into drum healing because I hope that it may encourage others to explore this modality too. Before I moved from science into doulaing I had a friend called Peter Voshol who is a scientist and a shaman and made drums and did drum healing. I remember thinking :drum healing?…
The Phoenix process
If you follow my blog you might have felt surprised that I haven’t posted anything since last July, when I typically wrote a monthly or twice monthly post before. This is because, early in the summer, I experienced a personal and professional crisis of devastating proportions. A midwife made a complaint against me, a handful…
A simple treatment for skeeter syndrome (an extreme form of allergy to mosquito bites)
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always reacted very strongly to mosquito bites, with blisters and such likes, even as a child. There is a known genetic element to this syndrome and my daughter appears to be reacting like me. In my late 20s I started reacting in much stronger ways, which led…
Nurturing postpartum recipes-Chicken and red date soup
Yesterday I cooked and delivered a traditional Chinese postpartum dish called chicken and red date soup to a new mother. It is a tradition I started a few years ago when I supported my first Chinese client as a birth doula. She found me by asking if there was a Chinese doula in the local…
Why I want to change the nature of postnatal support
Earlier this week I wrote a blog that’s been playing on my mind for many years. It’s called “why I wish I had hired a postnatal doula” In this blog I explain how challenging I found new motherhood, how lonely and upset I felt through those early weeks and how I longed for some support…
Why I wish I had hired a postnatal doula
When I was pregnant with my first child, I hired a birth doula. This was the best thing I have ever done and it has had positive effects beyond anything I could have expected, because it didn’t just impact how positive my pregnancy and birth were, it led to a complete transformation of who I…
The “untried penis”
Women sometimes get told that they cannot give birth at home with their first baby because they have an “untried pelvis”. What if we told men they couldn’t have sex at home the first time because they have an “untried penis” Just imagine a young couple going to see a health professional, to discuss their…
How a doula can support you if you are having a planned cesarean birth
It’s a commonly held belief that there is no point having a doula if you are having a planned cesarean, and I want to debunk this myth. I too, once believed that I couldn’t justify charging to support a woman who was having a planned caesarean. There would be no on call period, no phone…
Taking the red pill: why I became a doula course leader
The Developing Doulas course, and its founder, Maddie McMahon, have a special history for me. Back in 2005, when I was pregnant with my son, I hired Maddie as my doula. The experience was so incredibly empowering and life transforming that it started me on the path of a complete career conversion, and I went…