Navigating the Price Range for Doulas in Kansas City
In Kansas City, the wide range of prices for doula support can often be perplexing for expecting parents. As a doula deeply rooted in the Kansas City birthing community, I'd like to shed light on the factors contributing to this price disparity and help families make informed decisions.
Tips for a Smooth C-Section Recovery: Insights from a Kansas City Doula
At Mahina Birth Support, our Doulas understand the physical and emotional aspects of your healing process and provide comprehensive support to help you recover with comfort and confidence. While a C-section is a major surgical procedure, it is essential to remember that it's just one part of the beautiful journey of becoming a mother. We have supported numerous parents through their C-section recoveries, and in this blog post, we will share valuable tips to help you have a smooth and empowered recovery.
Preparing for a Positive Postpartum Experience: A Kansas City Doula's Guide
Preparing for a positive postpartum experience in Kansas City involves building a support network, choosing a doula who resonates with you, creating a postpartum plan, prioritizing self-care, understanding the emotional challenges, and embracing flexibility. By taking these steps, you'll be better equipped to face the joys and hurdles of early parenthood with confidence.
The Benefits of Hiring a Doula: Supporting You Through Every Step of Your Journey
Hiring a Kansas City Doula can have numerous benefits for individuals and families as they navigate the journey into parenthood. From continuous support and advocacy to emotional and physical assistance, doulas play a vital role in enhancing the birthing experience.
Social Media and the idea of an Ideal Birth
Social media places an enormous amount of pressure on parents during pregnancy and it never lets up. It is relentless and pervasive and is forever telling us that we are not good enough, we do not do enough, and we will never be enough, and it is consuming us all. When I hear women say “I am so disappointed in myself for needing an epidural” or “I feel like I have failed because I needed a c-section” it absolutely breaks my heart. To look into the tear-filled eyes of a person who has been brave and vulnerable, and so very strong, and know that they feel inadequate because of this pressure, is not ok.
Ingredients for a “Good Birth”
In recent years there has been a lot of pressure placed on people giving birth to have a very specific type of birth experience. Natural births or unmedicated births seem to be the only births praised in mom groups and on birth blogs. I do support an enormous amount of deliveries that are unmedicated and have minimal interventions, but those births are not the only ones worthy of the title of “good births”.
Babyshower Gift Idea
What to get someone for their baby shower can be challenging. I know there are gift registries these days but as a mother of four myself, I know that half the items on most registries never get used. How can you get them something unique and creative that they will absolutely use? Because seriously how many blankets can one baby need?
What it’s like to run a doula business: A guide for new doulas
What is it really like to be a doula and run your own business? I am often asked this question by new doulas. I see this as a two-part question. There is the part that makes you a successful business owner, and the part that makes you a good doula. So I have decided to share what my experience has been. First of all, it's hard. Super hard. It takes an incredible amount of work, sacrifice, and emotional maturity to be successful in this business.
Childbirth Education for Doula Clients
When planning for your birth many people seem to think it is an “either/or” approach to choosing doula support and childbirth education. However, if the goal is to have an empowered and informed birth experience, then adding as much value to your birth as possible is the way to go. Being prepared for your birth is essential. When you are in labor it is not the time to figure out how to have a baby.
Ways to Add Safety to your Birth
Giving birth during a pandemic is a part of no one's plan. Zero. We're creeping into September, and for those people who have been home now for months, there was some faint hope that hospital policies would maybe be back to normal by this point, or maybe soonish. Some hospitals are welcoming doulas back in, but not all Kansas City hospitals are, and with numbers still rising there is no guarantee that things will look “normal” anytime soon. So here we are. Now it's time to look at how you can begin to feel safe and supported at a hospital birth during COVID-19.
Delivering in a Global Pandemic
People having babies right now could never have imagined they would become parents during a global pandemic. It is an extreme circumstance that has tested our nerves, support systems, and survival instincts.
Choosing a Homebirth
Across the country, pregnant people are entertaining an idea they might never have considered before COVID-19: the possibility of giving birth at home. This post is not for those who have always dreamed of having a home birth (as you have likely already considered all of these things), but more for those who are just recently considering home birth as an option.
Postpartum and Covid-19
Planning for your postpartum period during normal times can be a bit scary and confusing. You have never done this before. It is difficult to know how much support you will really need. Often new families hire a postpartum doula. Many families plan to have a family member come and stay with them whenever that is an option. Your friends or churches set up a meal train to help with meals once you are home from the hospital as well. But what do you do when that is not an option due to the current shelter-in-place restriction?
Pregnancy: Expectations and Changes for Each Trimester
If you're already pregnant and curious about your immediate future, or if you are planning a pregnancy and want to set some realistic expectations, knowing what is happening each trimester of pregnancy can help you feel connected and less afraid.
Where to eat in Kansas City after your Hospital Birth
As a busy birth doula in Kansas City, I can assure you that I know two things (besides birth) very well. First, I can tell you where there is a good coffee shop within any five-mile radius in the city, and second I know where to eat near all of the KC hospitals that I serve. The way to my heart has always been through my stomach, so when it comes to food (and birth support 😉) you can trust me!
The Role of Grief in Birth
From afar, birth is joyous, miraculous, and full of hope. It is the renewal of life- the start of an entirely new person who will have unique experiences. It can feel that way for those experiencing it too, but it is more. Birth taps into a deep well of emotions not typically accessible in the day-to-day. The vulnerability needed to trust a team of professionals to help you at a cornerstone moment in your life leaves a family feeling raw and exposed. It does not mend quickly. The tenderness is a gift of sorts. This a reminder to go slow. An awareness of a new kind of healing.
Postpartum Professionals in Kansas City
Compared to the number of prenatal appointments pregnant people attend, the number of visits planned for a postpartum person is laughable. In case you aren't aware - there is usually only one appointment. Sometimes there are two if a baby is born surgically.
Racism and Discrimination in Maternal Health: What Can You Do?
The American Academy of Pediatrics made a bold statement last fall about racism in the United States, and has admitted that it should be treated as a "socially transmitted disease." The disease is showing itself by way of chronic stress and is connected to many health problems. Research from 10 years ago linked racism and discrimination to low birth weight in African American populations. More and more connections are being made to widespread institutionalized racism during pregnancy and childbirth, and well-known women of color, like Serena Williams and Beyonce, are giving the problem a recognizable face. Racism is not new news, but it is starting to be taken seriously in the birth world.
Preparing for Birth with PTSD
We have long recognized that through discomfort and adversity we are given the opportunity to transform and grow. Birth is classified as a normative crisis in a female's life and requires giving up their identity and assimilating another. Add to that the hard fact that there is "little professional or public literature which agrees on the psychological symptoms women experience" during childbirth. I would say all birth has some level of trauma. Whether that trauma is transformed into stress or growth has a lot to do with how supported you felt as a birthing individual.
The Benefits of Baby-wearing
If you wound back the clock 15 years, you would have been hard-pressed to find a Tula or Moby anywhere other than the internet. But now, on the eve of 2020, babywearing is no longer seen as an "alternative" method of transport and caretaking. Babywearing has become mainstream, to the point that Target, the second-largest retailer in the US, has several kinds of babywearing devices on hand.