Category: Breastfeeding

Birth Coaching in the Age of Coronavirus

Keep Families Together

COVID-19 has changed the world around us; from shelter-in-place and physical distancing measures to one-support person policies in labor and delivery. One thing that has not changed is that I am still here for you and your family.

As we navigate through this uncertain time together, I now offer you and your partner virtual childbirth education and doula services via telehealth video chat platforms like Zoom and Skype.

I am diligently keeping current on public health recommendations and research to understand how to best protect your health, your family’s health, my health and the community’s health and look forward to when we have strategies to reduce or end these shelter-in-place and distance mandates altogether. In the meantime, let’s stay home, wash our hands, avoid touching the face and practice respiratory hygiene, including wearing masks and gloves.

Be safe: Masking on Bernal Hill

Virtual Doula Care includes:

  • 6 hours of prenatal coaching for you and your partner, offered in 3 or 4 sessions via video chat
  • Unlimited phone and/or email consultations to address any of your concerns or questions in pregnancy and birth
  • Help to develop your customized written birth and newborn care plan
  • Postpartum Audit Worksheet to identify community resources for yourself and your baby during the Fourth Trimester
  • Lending library of books and video resources, including delivery to your door
  • On-call service 24 hours a day beginning at your 37th week and up to 2 weeks past your due date or the birth of your baby, whichever comes first
  • Doula toolkit filled with inflatable solar lights, essential oils, massage tools and oil, honey sticks, fan, handouts and snacks
  • Virtual support during labor and birth whether at home and/or hospital or birth center
  • Back-up doula if necessary
  • Facilitating parent/baby skin-to-skin contact and support with breastfeeding initiation
  • Postpartum appointment upon your return home to check on you and baby and offer postnatal resources

Interested in working together? Connect with me here.  Meanwhile, I invite you to experience this Ecotherapeutic Meditation, courtesy of the New York Times. It features scenes and sounds from nature to help your body release the stress of constantly bracing for a disaster.

Morsels from National Breastfeeding Month

We Can Do ItAs National Breastfeeding Month (#NBM14) comes to a close, I’ve decided to serve up a taste of great information that appeared on social media during August.

Here’s a short clip from a forthcoming documentary, “Mother’s Milk, Mother’s Wisdom,” about the difficulty U.S. moms have asking for help in a country that values independence and self-sufficiency. More than 40 years ago, Sesame Street helped normalize breastfeeding in this segment in which Buffy nurses her child and talks with Big Bird about breastfeeding. I wonder if Sesame Street does current episodes that show babies breastfeeding? What about adult TV shows? Have you ever seen any? Let me know, and send the video links, if you can  find them. I would love to post them.

Journalist Kimberly Seals Allers penned a powerful, must-read piece on why Black Breastfeeding Week has everything to do with Ferguson.

MomsRising sponsored a Twitter chat about breastfeeding in the workplace, and I’m quite proud of the blog post on breastfeeding and microfinance I wrote five years ago when I was a KIVA Fellow in Nicaragua.

Finally, back home in San Francisco, mamas should know about these local, in-person resources:

  • La Leche League’s free 24-hour, 7-day a week helpline: 415.320.8116 and its monthly free meetings at Sport’s Basement and the Richmond District Library.
  • Nursing Mothers Counsel offers free classes and a help line.
  • DayOne Baby offers classes and support groups in the north side.
  • Natural Resources has classes and support groups in the Mission.

Yes, you can do it! Especially with lots of help and support! So be sure to ask for it!