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Episode 200: Doula Career Transitions with Eva
Two hundred episodes! Eva is back at the table and we’re catching up on everything that’s changed since season 7, including some big doula career transitions for both of us. As doulas, we sit in the mess with our clients all the time. Plans fall apart, bodies do their own thing, and we help families find their footing anyway. It turns out we have to do the same thing in our own lives and businesses, and it’s a whole lot harder when the mess is yours. Eva shares what’s new in her job. Angela left her curriculum role with a national certification organization and pivoted hard. Now she’s building her…
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Episode 199: Postpartum Loneliness and the Doula’s Role
Postpartum loneliness is common. It’s also easy to miss. A client can have a clean house, a full fridge, and family around and still feel alone. In this episode, we take a look at the reasons postpartum can feel so lonely. We explore questions that get past “good, tired,” when we ask how a client is doing. We also discuss the clients and partners who seem to have it all handled and under control. We wrap up with talking aabout what happens when the doula relationship ends. Research shows some families feel a real loss when our support stops. Join us as we explore how postpartum doulas can help clients…
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Episode 198: SEO for Doulas How Families Find You Online
SEO for doulas sounds technical, expensive, and easy to put on the back burner. Meanwhile a family in your town is searching for a doula right now. Your name may not be anywhere on the first page. Throwing up a website and hoping people find it is keeping a lot of good doulas invisible. This is Part 3 of the Doula Business Blueprint Series. In this episode we take a look at what SEO is in easy to understand terms and the four places it belongs. We also explore paid ads and paid followers, including what they will and won’t do for your business. This one is for the doula…
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Episode 197: Pitocin Disconuation – A Doula’s Guide
Once Pitocin is started, the approach has often been to keep it running through delivery. That protocol, has been built into standard induction and augmentation approaches over time. New research on Pitocin discontinuation once active labor is achieved complicates that approach. There are three major studies we can now look to on this topic. Depending on interpretation, they neither fully support nor fully refute it. This episode breaks down what an effective labor pattern actually looks like by research standards. Provides information on when and how to raise the possibility of Pitocin discontinuation once active labor is achieved with a client before labor starts. It also covers what to…
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Episode 196: Red Flags in Doula Business Relationships
You can do everything right in a doula business relationship and still miss the doula business red flags that may show up along the way. These patterns rarely look dramatic at first. They look like warmth. Or like being told you’re valued, essential, part of the inner circle. By the time it starts to look and feel different, you’ve already committed. This episode breaks down the specific behaviors that show up when a business relationship isn’t built on equal footing, whether it’s a certifying body, an agency, a mentor, a business partner, or a doula partnership. Approval that has to be repeatedly earned. Generosity that gets punished either way. No…
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Episode 195: Defining Your Doula Client Market
Most doulas will tell you their ideal client is anyone who is pregnant or postpartum. Without a well defined doula client market every marketing decision, pricing decision, and visibility strategy is aimed at no one in particular. Having an undefined market is much like shouting into a crowd and hoping the right person happens to be listening. And this approach is keeping most doulas from building a sustainable business. This is is Part 2 of the Doula Business Blueprint Series. In this episode we dive into who your ideal client actually is, how to build their profile whether or not you have a long track record of clients to draw…
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Episode 194: Neurodivergent Doulas
Doula trainings don’t often teach a neurodivergent doula how to adapt. Especially when it comes to running a business or client interactions. They don’t teach a system that already fits how your brain will run your business and interact with your clients and community. You either force yourself into someone else’s, or you build your own from the ground up. Most doulas don’t know what building their own adaptive system could even look like. The impact of masking through a client visit to the point your cheeks are sore from smiling. Back to back visits that left no time for rest and recovery. Navigating the emails, phone calls, consultations, client…
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Episode 193: Navigating Birth Trauma
Birth trauma is more common than most doulas realize. Most doula trainings are not preparing doulas to spot it. In this episode, I sit down with Jamie Bodily, MS, LPC, to talk about what the research actually says about how often birth trauma happens, and why the numbers are higher than most people assume. Our conversation covers what birth trauma can look like from a client’s perspective. Some signs are obvious. Some show up weeks later and get missed because nobody was looking for them. Jamie breaks down the other mental health factors that may show up alongside it, and why doulas need to know the difference between what’s within…
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Episode 192: Oxytocin, Contractions & Trust
Most doulas were taught that oxytocin is the love hormone. It’s also the hormone that initiates and sustains the labor and birth process. That’s true. And it’s only part of the story. Oxytocin bonds us to our people. It also makes us wary of others. The same hormone flooding a laboring person’s body is running a continuous background check on every person in that space. In-group. Out-group. Safe. Not safe. This process has real time influence on how labor unfolds. And most doulas have never been taught that. This episode takes an up close look into what oxytocin is actually doing during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum. It challenges the bias…
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Episode 191: Fetal Positioning and Pelvic Anatomy
For doulas, fetal positioning and pelvic anatomy are topics most training programs introduce but don’t fully explore. You were likely taught the four pelvic types. Did you know that classification system is almost a hundred years old and modern research tells us pelvic shape doesn’t work that way. The pelvis has three distinct planes. The baby navigates all three through seven specific movements. And pelvic shape is the single most influential factor in how that happens. Pelvic anatomy also influences posterior positioning in ways most doulas have never considered. The gap between what you were taught and what you can still learn will change how you support laboring clients. Join…
