I would hear this a lot, pre-pregnancy, during my pregnancies and in my postpartum! Eventually, it started to stick.

“You should become a doula.”

“You should become a doula.”

For two years before my first pregnancy, we had been trying to have a baby. I became an instant birth nerd, I researched, I listened to birth podcasts, I followed all of the Instagram birth gurus, and I sought out women’s birth stories. I read Ina May Gaskin, I watched the documentary, “The Business of Being Born”; all just in case, this month was the month I finally fell pregnant.

Just in case, I learned about interventions, hospital policies, induction, cesareans, breastfeeding, postpartum recovery, and all the things I thought I would need to know when the time finally came.

I didn’t realize it would take two years. You can imagine the disbelief and happy tears I cried when I finally conceived.

All of the content I was devouring, led me to seek out a homebirth midwife. I had this innate feeling that the safest place for me to birth and allow my body to work as nature intended was to do it all in the comfort of my own home.

Let’s just say for now, that all the planning and preparation I had done, did not save me from the scenario that occurred during my first birth, I will go into more depth on this birth story in a separate publication as it deserves its own special place. But I will say that my first birth ultimately ended in a transfer to the hospital and a cesarean.

The experience was deeply life-changing, traumatic in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time, and afterwards, I found myself questioning a lot of things. I went through the stages of grief which might sound silly if you’ve never experienced a traumatic event but It was truly like that. I was wounded deeply in my soul, it felt like my whole world had been flipped upside down and my saving grace was the perfect little Angel who had risen out of my abdomen. I thank God for her every day!

My sister in law would later ask “are you still thinking about becoming a doula?”

But HOW?! how could I doula others when my birth had derailed like it did? Who was I to help another woman navigate something I hadn’t been able to do myself?

But… maybe that’s the point…

Maybe being a doula isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and having amazing easy births.

Maybe a doula is someone who has braved the fire of birth, been struck down and was able to rise again.

Maybe a doula is someone who can guide their clients through not just the easy births but the births who literally send you to your knees and make you go places you never thought you would or could.

After all, I was a doula before I was a doula.

I was the friend people called when they were pregnant. I was the person sending research, answering questions, talking through options, helping a friend prepare for an appointment, or sitting with a woman who simply needed someone to ask, “What is your gut telling you?”

Eventually, while I was on maternity leave, I took a doula course. Little by little, I started turning something I had been doing informally into something I could offer to other women.

Alas, for myself, there was still a piece of my own story that I hadn’t made peace with.

It was a faster process the second time around, “trying” for a baby that is. I fell pregnant in a matter of months. Deep in my gut. I felt a little fear, afraid of the unknown, I knew too much, and I knew how birth can go sideways, but I also knew without a doubt that I wanted to try for a home birth again.

I set my sights on having a homebirth after cesarean (HBAC). No easy feat by the way! Not every midwifery practice in my region would be accommodating but I am so lucky to have the midwives I do. It might have helped that I told them I would do it with or without them!

I had a wonderful and powerful HBAC. I like to say that it was the hardest but very best thing I have ever done in my life. The adrenaline, the oxytocin, the absolute HIGH after birthing my baby was intoxicating.

My hbac wasn’t about proving anything necessarily. It wasn’t about erasing what happened before, and it certainly wasn’t about having the “perfect” birth. I had complex feelings about what happen the first time around that left me questioning whether my cesarean was necessary, so, for me, I needed to completely surrender to labour, trust in myself and my body, and for me, it was healing.

I stopped thinking of my first birth as evidence that I wasn’t qualified to support other women. Instead, I began to understand that perhaps it was part of what brought me here.

I don’t believe there is one right way to become a mother. I don’t believe a vaginal birth makes someone stronger, or that a cesarean makes someone less of a mother. I don’t believe a birth plan is a measure of success. I believe women deserve information. They deserve choices. They deserve someone in their corner. And they deserve to feel supported, not just while they are giving birth, but as they cross that enormous threshold from maiden to mother.

I’m here…

For the woman who had a difficult or traumatic birth and isn’t sure how to approach the next one.

For the woman who doesn’t have a specific birth plan at all, she just wants to have someone walk alongside her.

And for the new mother who needs someone to help guide her through it all.

Becoming a mother is more than giving birth. It’s a transition. A transformation. The birth of a baby and the rebirth of a mother, whether its a first baby, a second or third. You meet your most powerful self in birth, and I think that’s where the name Maiden 2 Mother comes from.

Maybe all those people who told me, “You should become a doula,” were onto something. It just took me a little while to believe them.

I’m still here. Still learning. Still listening. Still becoming.

Helping women feel listened to, held and fulfilled in their birth and postpartum.

Welcome to Maiden 2 Mother.
XOXO Angela