Meet Our Doulas

Growing up, I never anticipated having children. I was unsure of my own mothering instinct. Life had other plans though, and I found myself married at 19 with our first born due just after my 20th birthday. Over the next 10 years, I had 6 children, two who were born not alive. 

Pregnancy and birth is such a vulnerable and transcending time for women and their partners. It is my belief that hearing and supporting families through this transition enables them flourish.

Each woman has an individual story to write during the childbearing year and I feel doulas help cultivate the inner power of that story. To encourage her to trust her body and provide her with information as she meanders all avenues of birth.

It is very important to help partners connect with this process as they are an integral part in the story. I am passionate about ensuring they also feel comfortable, supported, and heard.

I went to massage school when I was only 20 years old and quickly realized my favorite clients were pregnant or new moms. The idea of a doula was introduced to me, but I wanted to focus on massage only, having not been a mother myself yet.

When my first child was born in 2015 I had the support of a doula and she was invaluable! I had a very satisfying, albeit long, birth and it was a dream. I knew then the value of this work and I wanted to be a part of it but the time wasn’t right. I had my second, very different but equally lovely, birth in 2020 and a year later finally decided to make the move to do my training in early 2022. It’s been one of the best decisions of my life!

Growing up I was always fascinated with pregnancy and babies. In fact in school when asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I always said a mom! I was 9 when my younger brother was born and I remember watching my mothers belly swell and the excitement I felt when she went into labor. That feeling has always stuck with me.

Eventually, my husband and I, welcomed our own daughter in April 2005. Never had I felt as powerful and capable as I did in that moment. I delivered a posterior baby who weighed over 9lbs naturally and I felt on top of the world! Then in 2007 I was able to attend a friends birth as a support person. It was the most beautiful, amazing and unforgettable experience I had ever had! I knew I wanted to attend more births and help women in the journey of motherhood.

I am a Dutch gal in the USA, with a husband, 4 kids, 3 cats, 4 chickens, and two parakeets. I was inspired to become a birth professional after my own powerful birth experiences. The birth of my first child was incredibly intense and I discovered an inner strength that I did not know I had. I learned from this birth that our bodies are amazing and unpredictable and that giving birth was simultaneously beautiful and very raw. I am still blown away by the fact that we can conceive and grow a baby, and then give birth and feed a baby at our own breasts!

Between 1998 and 2006, I gave birth to five more children, two of whom are angel babies. Each of these experiences made me into the woman, wife, mother, doula, and educator I am today: Trusting our bodies and our innate knowledge, as well as accepting of the process wherever it may lead us. I remain intensely grateful to the women who surrounded me during those births, in person and in prayer: my midwives, my mother, and my grandmother. They held space for me, trusted me, encouraged me, and loved me.

These deeply transformative experiences led me to my passion to support, nurture, and hold space for others. I became a professional Doula in 2009 through Birthingway College of Midwifery in Portland, OR. A few years later, in 2016, I joined Baby Nest Birth Services, a wonderful sisterhood of doulas, where I still am today. I am a certified birth doula through Birth Arts International, a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator, and hope to be an official StillBirthDay Birth & Bereavement doula soon. 

Giving birth is deeply transformative. This process is different for each person, and with every child. When giving birth, we tap into the deepest parts of our being and are challenged beyond what we think is possible. Prospective clients often ask me about my birth philosophy, and it is simple: My birth philosophy is irrelevant to your birth. I am interested in YOUR vision, your priorities, worries, strengths, desires, and hopes. This is what guides me in serving you and caring for you.

It is your empowerment and experience I wish to honor, not mine I need to impose on you. I believe in your right to exercise full autonomy in making decisions, and I respect your inner guidance in making those decisions. It is a great honor to become woven into the tapestry of someone's life in such an amazing event as the birth of a child.

We are made to do this work and it's not easy... I would say that pain is part of the glory, or the tremendous mystery of life. And that if anything, it's a kind of privilege to stand so close to such an incredible miracle.

Pregnancy is a powerful and beautiful transformative journey to be on.  I encourage mothers to use all their senses to help guide them through. My goal is to help mothers feel empowered with knowledge and help them navigate their way through the birthing process with more ease and comfort.

I feel one of the best ways for me to support a mother is to ensure she feels safe, cared for, heard and understood.