Coming Home

More than a decade ago, I fell in love with birth work.

I loved learning how beautifully and intentionally God designed a woman's body for pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. I loved supporting women as they discovered just how strong they were. I loved the quiet sacredness of the birth room—the waiting, the working, the surrender, and finally, the moment when a mother reaches down and meets the little person she has been carrying beneath her heart.

Then came a season when God called me away from supporting other women as they grew their families so that I could grow my own.

And what a season it has been.

Over the years that followed, I experienced five pregnancies that brought five babies into my arms. I walked through pregnancy loss. I endured hyperemesis gravidarum with each of my pregnancies, learning firsthand that pregnancy can be both an incredible gift and incredibly hard at the very same time.

I experienced five unmedicated water births of my own.

I nursed babies through long nights and changing seasons. I experienced postpartum recovery, sleep deprivation, mastitis, weaning, hormonal shifts, and all of the beautiful and exhausting realities that come with caring for a newborn while the rest of life continues around you.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, our family also grew through adoption.

Today, I am the mother of six children.

For years, I would have said that I had "taken a break" from doula work

Now, I'm not sure that's how I see it at all.

My Classroom Changed

I stepped away from attending births professionally, but I never really stepped away from birth work.

Instead, my classroom changed.

I learned about labor from inside my own body.

I learned what it feels like to reach the point in labor when your rational mind says, I cannot do this anymore, while your body continues doing exactly what it was created to do.

I learned how powerful water can be during labor.

I learned the importance of feeling safe enough to surrender.

I learned what it means to trust the people surrounding you during one of the most vulnerable experiences of your life.

And I learned that even when you understand birth physiology, know your options, and have prepared extensively, birth still requires surrender.

That lesson has stayed with me.

Because birth isn't something we can perfectly control.

We can prepare. We can educate ourselves. We can make thoughtful decisions and surround ourselves with people we trust.

And then we have to walk through the experience that unfolds.

Motherhood Changed the Way I See Women

Motherhood has humbled me in ways no doula training ever could.

It has taught me that two things can be true at once.

You can be incredibly grateful for a pregnancy and miserable while experiencing it.

You can love breastfeeding and still find it exhausting.

You can have the birth you prayed for and still need time to process it.

You can desperately love your children and desperately need rest.

You can be strong and still need someone to take care of you.

And perhaps most importantly, I've learned that there is no prize for doing motherhood the hardest way possible.

That understanding has profoundly shaped the doula I am today.

My role isn't to convince a mother to have the kind of birth I would choose.

My experiences belong to me.

Her birth belongs to her.

My job is to help her understand her options, listen to her priorities, support her decisions, and help create an environment where she feels safe, informed, respected, and cared for.

Sometimes that means reminding her that her body knows what to do.

Sometimes it means counterpressure through contraction after contraction.

Sometimes it means helping her partner find ways to support her.

Sometimes it means helping her slow things down long enough to ask questions before making a decision.

Sometimes it means reminding her that changing the plan isn't failing.

And sometimes it means sitting quietly beside her and making sure she knows she doesn't have to do this alone.

I Understand the Other Side of Birth Now, Too

Before becoming a mother, I thought a great deal about labor and birth.

After becoming one, I understand just how much comes afterward.

The birth of the baby may be the finish line everyone in the room is watching, but for the mother, it is the beginning of something entirely new.

There is healing.

There are hormones.

There are feeding decisions.

There are sleepless nights and sore bodies and tears that sometimes don't have an obvious explanation.

There is learning about this tiny new person while simultaneously becoming a new version of yourself.

There is a household that still needs to function.

There may be older children who still need their mother.

And there is often enormous pressure to recover quickly and make it all look effortless.

I don't see postpartum as an afterthought anymore.

I see it as a sacred extension of birth.

A mother deserves to be nurtured while she learns to nurture her baby.

Birth Has Become Even More Sacred to Me

My faith has always shaped the way I see birth, but motherhood has deepened that perspective.

I've now experienced several times over the awe of realizing that my body was growing another human being—someone whose face I had never seen and whose personality I didn't yet know, but whom God already knew completely.

I've felt those first movements.

I've waited through those final weeks.

I've experienced the intensity of labor and the moment everything changes.

And I've held a slippery, brand-new baby against my chest and wondered how something so ordinary—something women have done since the beginning of humanity—can simultaneously feel so miraculous.

Birth is physiological.

It is emotional.

It is sometimes unpredictable.

And I believe it is deeply sacred.

When a family invites me into that space, I understand what an enormous privilege they are giving me.

I don't take that invitation lightly.

I'm Not Starting Over

There is something interesting about returning to work you once knew well after years away.

At first, it can feel like starting over.

There are things to refresh. New research to read. Hospital practices change. Recommendations evolve. There is always more to learn.

And I want to remain a student of birth for as long as I am doing this work.

But I also recognize that I'm not returning empty-handed.

I'm bringing years of lived experience with me.

I'm bringing five pregnancies and five births.

I'm bringing years of breastfeeding and postpartum experiences.

I'm bringing pregnancy loss.

I'm bringing the perspective of raising six very different children.

I'm bringing years of advocating, caregiving, problem-solving, researching, adjusting plans, and learning again and again that motherhood rarely follows a neat little script.

Most of all, I'm bringing a much deeper humility about the privilege of entering another woman's story.

Coming Home

I once thought stepping away from doula work meant putting that part of myself on hold.

Looking back, I think God was simply preparing me for the next chapter of it.

The young doula I was years ago loved birth.

The woman returning to it now understands motherhood.

Not perfectly. Not completely. I don't think any of us ever do.

But deeply.

I've lived enough motherhood now to know that women are incredibly strong—and that strong women still deserve support.

I've learned that informed consent matters.

That compassion matters.

That the way we speak to women during vulnerable moments matters.

That birth preferences matter, even when circumstances require those preferences to change.

That partners need support, too.

That postpartum mothers need to be mothered.

And that sometimes one of the greatest gifts we can give another woman is simply our steady presence.

So I'm returning to birth work after a long season spent growing, birthing, nursing, and raising my own babies.

I'm returning with more experience, more humility, more compassion, and a deeper appreciation for God's design for birth and motherhood than I had when I began.

It doesn't feel like starting over.

It feels like coming home.

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Serving Families Throughout the Triad & Triangle of North Carolina

At Holistic Heritage Birth Services, we believe every family deserves compassionate, knowledgeable support throughout their birth experience. Our doulas serve families throughout Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and the surrounding areas of North Carolina.

Whether you are planning a hospital birth, birth center birth, or home birth, our team is here to walk alongside you and your support person—providing encouragement, education, comfort, and experienced birth support every step of the way.

Because you don’t have to choose between having your partner fully present and having a doula by your side. You can have both—and together, you make an incredible birth team.

If you’re expecting and wondering how doula support could fit into your birth plans, we would love to connect with you and learn more about your hopes for your birth.