This is a critical time in history, calling for us to rethink the way we are living and serving. There’s been weekly, if not daily, changes parents-to-be are being asked to navigate. 

Even if you are not being let into the birth room, as doulas, how are you emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually getting your clients ready for labor, birth, and postpartum in this new paradigm? 

You are reading this because you know this is your calling. You are being asked to serve. Even pre-covid, there has been a shortage of workers for those who work in healthcare for women. According to the CDC, If you put the U.S. next to other countries, we are 55th behind Russia and just ahead of Ukraine. And if you compare us next to 10 countries similar in wealth, we would be ranked last. (ouch) you can check out the report here.

According to a landmark 2019 study published in the journal Reproductive Health, one in six women experiences mistreatment by healthcare providers during birth. For birthing people of color, the rates of mistreatment are even higher.

Your calling led you here, to be an advocate for change. 

But this also means the oxygen masks first need to be available for YOU. 

Perhaps this has happened to you…

• You feel frustrated and exhausted that your clients are disempowered by their care provider and you don’t know what the choices are so you can make space for them to find their voice.
• You don’t know how to have the challenging conversations about past traumas that might get in the way of this birth
• You are witnessing long, exhausting labors for both you and the parents and wish you had an understanding of the anatomy and rhythm of what is going on to support an efficient birth. 
• You never knew how much you had to be on call, having the phone by you, waiting for the call, while juggling last-minute childcare for yourself, being up all night, coming home feeling wiped out, not being able to take any time for yourself.
• You understand the need for rest and integration is crucial, but it just hasn’t happened. You feel pulled by family obligations, and it feels scary to say no to the next job when you work for yourself.
• You never knew you had to be the one to be 100% holding space for everyone in the room, through the trauma, the buried feelings, old hurts, even darkness surrounding unknown territory called childbirth that can be powerful, demanding, and emotionally exhausting. 

Here’s the deal. Trainings are general. You are an individual, and your client is an individual. 

Becoming a successful doula is getting to know who you are, doing your own healing work, and getting to learn  skills from the inside out to provide support, which is why you got into this in the first place. 

After running a birth center and witnessing the patterns for an unmedicated birth, there is a rhythm of an unspoken language, and it’s taking what you see and how to interpret it, learning the signals, and help people being empowered. 

Elizabeth Bachner, the owner of GraceFull Birthing, has over 20 years of hands-on experience supporting doulas through the journey of childbirth.

Elizabeth combines her medical board licenses with her training from Ray Castellino’s Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Anna Chitty’s Trauma-Informed Somatic Training to support you in answering all your questions.

Here are just a few reasons why doulas consult with Elizabeth: a walking encyclopedia of childbirth knowledge

• Get to know your “Why” (you got into this business to begin with)
• Get to know your strength and weaknesses (this is going to be your unique selling tool)
• Get to know your own trauma and triggers to be healed, so they are not in the way
• Get your voice heard in the room and communicate effectively to your clients and care providers
• Learn how to create healthy boundaries and how to communicate them with kindness to yourself and others
• Learn how to have challenging conversations about past traumas in support of an easier birth
• Learn how to help parents create a birth plan
• Learn how to hold space without triggers
• Learn how to debrief after a specific birth
• Learn how to read the room
• Learn to make space for parents to advocate and educate themselves
• Begin to, understand the baby’s head in relationship to the pelvis’s position
• How to receive constructive feedback from your families and offer heart-felt apologies while you learn
• How being connected and in relationship with your families can be healing no matter the outcome
• Why you want to say “no” to a family that is not the right fit
• How not to take anything said at the birth personally
• Get your agenda out of the birthroom so you can support the choice
• Figure out your brand, based on your strength and weakness, what parents-to-be are you wanting to serve?
• How to get your message out to your ideal client

Some things you will come away with after a doula coaching session:

• Ability to help your clients create a birth plan
• Clarity around your skill level and how to communicate that
• Getting to know your value and your worth
• Pricing model and packages that reflects your value
• Confidently charge a fair price
• Space holding techniques
• Literal skills for helping your client in the birth room, integrating the nervous system, getting to know your client as an individual 
• Hands-on techniques to help peel your client off the ceiling (especially this one! )
• How to work with client’s past traumas
• How to recognize when the baby is in a position that creates an inefficient birth and what you can do

About Elizabeth Bachner

For more than a decade, Elizabeth has been expertly combining her medical board license as a midwife and experience as a doula with her diverse body of skills in pre- and perinatal psychology and somatic coaching to passionately educate and inspire people to understand the interweavings of the biological female body with the brain and social nervous system to both prepare for and integrate their birth experiences. With a degree in child psychology from Tufts University, Elizabeth is uniquely in tune with the full spectrum of family needs around birth and baby planning so the individual can be both seen and heard.

She has been featured as a leading expert on TV shows including The Doctors, VH1’s Love and Hip Hop Hollywood and Little Women LA and is a contributor at MindBodyGreen.com. She is also celebrated for her dedication to normalizing all childbirth choices and humanizing birth by People, ET, In-Side Edition, MTV, XXL, HOLA and CBS News

You can listen to her podcast: Big Birth Junkie” and hear the stories of how families navigate the journey from conception through childbirth and the postpartum period.