Episode 38: Let's Learn About Doulas, with Guests Intuitive Beginnings Doula Collective

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We're Erika Radis and Marie Lifschultz, a San Antonio area realtor and lender, but most importantly, we're working moms.

The goal of this podcast is to provide support and a sense of community to San Antonio area working moms like us. So join us in trying to find a balance between career, family, and everything in between. Welcome to this week's episode of the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast. I'm here with the Intuitive Beginnings Doula Collective. So this is the first time we've got multiple gals, specifically 4, here on the podcast with us, and we're excited to chat with all of them and learn quite a bit more about doula services. So I'm going to turn it over to these ladies and let them do their thing.

Hello.

Hey. Yeah. So I guess we can all introduce ourselves.

Yeah.

Just brief kind of what brought us into doula work, postpartum and birth. I'm Loreal. I'm a birth doula. I'm also a placenta encapsulation specialist and a hypnobirthing childbirth educator. I've been doing this work since 2020, I want to say, was like the beginning of the pandemic. And I think around that time, a lot of people were kind of questioning what to do with their life and the broader scope because we just didn't know what the future held with the pandemic and COVID and things like that. And so having my daughter— she's 4— kind of brought me into awareness of just motherhood, birth, and how beautiful it can all be. And so I was like, how do I get into that? And I just so happened to look up some doula trainings. And there was one the following month. And ever since then, I've just been in it and obsessed with it. And it's like a really great passion-driven kind of work where I never really imagined myself enjoying what I do. But here we are. I think at this point, I've helped support around like 90 moms bring life into this world. And so it's a really, really beautiful work that we get to do.

That's amazing. I love that.

Thank you.

I guess I can go next. Yes, I am, I'm Saran. I am a birth and postpartum doula. I also teach childbirth education and baby wearing classes, and for this collective, I will be our admin. I'm not currently taking births, but I'd still do postpartum work and admin work The Collective. I started my doula journey in 2020, so the same as L'Oreal, but I really started this work about 25 years ago. Someone reached out to me recently and I was like a mother's helper with her when I was a teenager. So I realized I have been doing this long before I called myself a doula, and I'm grateful that I get to do something that obviously was a calling for me. And now I get to do it with friends, and we are hoping to change the way doula work is done so we can have a sense of community. And I love that together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right, who's next?

Who wants to go next?

I'll go next.

Yay!

My name is Melanie. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Melanie. I'm a birth doula and postpartum doula. I'm also a childbirth educator. And my journey to birth work started with, with my first baby. You know, with the first baby, we really don't know what is going to happen. There's a lot of things that we hear and that we think that will happen to us. And so that sets in a little bit of fear. And now when I'm on, as I'm on the other side of things and I understand, I I realized that it wasn't a great experience. And then 3 months later, I found out I was pregnant and I was like, oh my God, what am I supposed to do? I just went through a traumatic experience, right? Which led into postpartum mood disorders. And I was sitting there with a positive pregnancy test and I was like, oh my God, how am I going to do this again? Like, I don't think I'll be able to survive that. So as usual, I went into denial. I didn't acknowledge I was pregnant until about 6 months into the pregnancy, I was like, okay, I have to figure out how I'm going to push this baby out or get this baby out. And so I ended up researching and I found out what a doula was, and I was like, oh, okay. And so I was actually living in Corpus at the time. I came all the way to San Antonio to give birth with, um, a group of midwives at the hospital. Um, for me, that was just the best choice because I still had a lot of medical anxiety. And so I had the most empowered birth experience when I had a doula. And so I remember giving birth and looking at my doula and being like, I need to do what you do. Like, the feeling that I felt having an empowered birth and knowing that I had— I was like, I did it. And that was just like a really good experience for me. And so that's what brought me to doula work. I did the doula training with my 6-month-old strapped onto me with a wrap, a baby wrap. And I'm 4 years in, and luckily this group of women have— we've kind of all met around the same time, and we've all gone through our own trials and tribulations on our personal side, but we've decided to, to create a community and to fill in the gaps where the care is really needed. And so that's what our collective is about.

Wonderful. Okay.

I am Nick and I started postpartum doula work in 2015. In 2010 is when I learned what a doula was with my last birth. So it took me 5 years at that point then to become a doula and to start my own doula career. I never really felt fully supported postpartum. After having my kids. And I think a lot of moms have that same feeling and we just don't really talk about it. And how can we say— I feel like it's very not okay for us to say, I'm having a hard time, I don't feel supported, and all of those things. And we lack such a village. And so I really wanted to be other moms' villages at that point in time. And so postpartum work is truly my heart and my passion. I didn't want other moms to feel how I felt having, having kids. It doesn't matter how much money you have, how much money you don't have, you can be unsupported in any situation. And so that is what brought me to postpartum work, having children and just not feeling like I really had people around me to help me during that time period. And it's something that I truly love. And I think every mom really needs to have that support.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, like you said, I feel like that's something that probably all of us have felt. But even if you don't know how to really express it, I just feel like during that time we're all supposed to be really jazzed because like everybody's jazzed that there's like a new baby around. And it's like sometimes you are having a hard time. And so it's a little bit hard to admit that because you almost feel like people don't want to hear it.

Yes, yes, it's very true.

Yeah.

So, but so, and I know for me personally, I didn't, I wasn't aware, I didn't have any doulas. And now if I could go back and have my 3 kids, I would have 3 doulas or 10. But, you know, for those of us that are listening that don't know what a doula is, does one of you gals want to cover and kind of explain what a doula is?

I could go ahead and explain what a postpartum doula is, and then one of the other girls could talk about what a labor doula is, since there's different types of doulas as well. So a postpartum doula comes in and helps you after you have come home from having your baby. And they can be there anywhere from, you know, a couple of weeks to help you. Typically, I see clients from anywhere from 6 weeks to 12 weeks, and they are there to— I call it whole family wellness. And so they are there to help you, to help care for you, to help care for baby. They can help with sibling adjustments as well, and to help show dad how to do things, to help show your partner how to do things if they're having a difficult time. You know, we're brought— we bring this baby home and we're just supposed to know how to do everything right, but there's really no instruction manual truly. So a doula is there to hold your hand and to help you along the journey to help you become the, the parent that you, you know, you're envisioning in your head. But it's kind of hard when you're lacking sleep, when you're up all night feeding. Those things are really difficult. So a postpartum doula is going to help you get better sleep. They are going to help you get baby on a schedule. They are going to make sure that your mental health is going okay, you know, that we're doing well. We're going to talk to you about your birth. We're going to talk to you about your day-to-day. I call it your built-in bestie. And I really just say, you know, the talks at 2:00 AM, they're really raw. And maybe your partner is driving you insane that day. And that's okay, because you can tell me and I am not going to tell anyone. I am not going to judge you. And I think a postpartum doula is just really helpful to help get out the feelings, to help you feel rested. A postpartum doula also really is helpful for moms not to have postpartum depression because they are supported, because they are rested. And I think that is such a huge, huge thing to be able to be seen and heard after you have a baby. So those are just— it's a quick thing of what a postpartum doula does. There's honestly so many things. So that's it.

That sounds amazing. I just wonder if 6 years postpartum is too late to hire a postpartum doula.

I was thinking with working moms, that's such an important thing because you have so much things going on and it's hard to even express that. I remember going through with my 2 boys and I didn't realize how stressed I was. I was thinking about going back to work, how am I going to take care of the baby, how am I going to do this? And the lack of sleep, you just, you don't have enough, um, a mental capacity to understand anything. So it would have been awesome to have someone. Yeah, it would have been awesome to have someone like, you're doing great, you don't need to worry about work, that's 6 weeks away, you're good. You know, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, and you bring up a good point, like that stressor of giving birth and how unsupported we are here in the United States, where they expect us to completely break raw into our core and our vulnerable core and give birth to a baby and learn how to breastfeed and do all of the, the things that they're asking for us to do, and then just act like nothing happened and go back to work 6 weeks later. You know, it's So that's actually one of the disparities that it is women that are in their reproductive age and— or people who are in their reproductive age and they want to have children. That's where we want to encourage people to really take time and educate yourself on what it is like to have a child, to go through the birth process and to plan for postpartum. And there's actually new evidence that shows that postpartum is actually up to 7 years postpartum.

Wow.

And you could even have mental mood, any mood, perinatal mood disorders up to those 7 years. So it's a big problem in society. So I think that that's one of my goals as well, is just shifting what it looks like as far as mothers. And obviously your group, it's like, it's called Working Moms of San Antonio. You know, we are all, we are all mothers. Some aren't mothers and that's okay. But we are working women, you know, and to have that responsibility and carry it on our shoulders is a lot. Um, there we have a— our friend Rachel, she's a social media analyst. She said the other day on a text that she had a lot of spinning plates at the same time. And I had never— I had never really, like, how do you say, I had never really empathized with someone at that level. I mean, obviously in birth, but like, I really understood what she was saying.

I was like, oh my God, that's so—

that's true. And It's something that we're trying to provide, just that support and all of that good stuff.

Yeah, no, definitely. Well, Nick had mentioned that there were a few different types of doulas, and so I'm curious, what are the other types and what does that look like?

Yeah, so we have— I always consider a doula as a person who helps in transitions, right? So you're transitioning from the when you're in a relationship, if you're deciding to have a child, you're transitioning into learning about fertility and your cycle, and you're doing all of that. And then you transition into the pregnancy and all of that. And then throughout the pregnancy, you have 3 trimesters, so you're transitioning there. And then you have the late pregnancy part where our body is preparing for labor, and then we have birth. Labour and birth, and we have postpartum. And then there are also death doulas, there are also stillborn doulas, there are also doulas who are able to support abortions. So there's all kinds of different doulas in the reproductive stages. So it just depends on what they're talking about when they're saying they're— that they're a doula. Every doula is different, but For instance, like, I'm a birth doula, postpartum doula, but I call myself a full spectrum doula. And a full spectrum doula covers all of the doula services. So that's the difference between the doulas.

That's so interesting. Some of those I hadn't even thought of, really. You know, you don't consider that, but all of those different phases, it's important to have support.

Absolutely. Especially if we're in a— like, right now we're in a state where there are a lot of things that change in healthcare, but it's so important, especially for people who are going through those disparities and those different levels of, or different layers of disparities. Like, you have your socioeconomic status, it's depending on that. So birth work, I feel like, is a whole spectrum, and birth workers fill in the gaps as they're needed.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

The root word of doula is the Greek word that means a mother's or a woman's servant. And so a lot of it is us being in service to our clients in whatever way that may look. I always say some people need more cheerleading. Some people want you to be very quiet but want a lot of physical support. And this can be in postpartum and in birth. You know, some people want to talk a lot at postpartum visits. Some people want to sleep and let you clean up and hold the baby. So, you know, we have to kind of adapt to what everyone needs, and that looks different in every home with every person. But we're trying to support them through the transition, like Melanie said.

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. I love the idea of that much support. You know, just talking about it feels nice. So like I mentioned, I never had a doula. And so what does it look like for you gals when someone does want to go to a hospital and have their baby there and all of that. How do you work with those providers maybe even before the birth? How does that all work?

Yeah.

So as a birth doula, when a woman or a birthing person reaches out to you and they are looking for support in a hospital or a birth center or a home birth, because all of those different environments, people need emotional or mental, physical support, spiritual support, or A lot of people need education. They need to learn how to advocate for themselves, especially when they are looking to give birth in a hospital. I think times are shifting, and so a lot of people are starting to recognize that they don't want to be coerced into doing things that they don't want to happen to them. They want to be able to have more honest and transparent conversations with their providers about what their options are. And so hiring a doula a birth doula isn't just us showing up at the birth and supporting, but that work really does start in the pregnancy and in our prenatals. And so for me, every doula is a little different, but for me, it's really about really getting to know my family. I really like for my families to feel like we have a really great transparent relationship where we have trust and honesty and just comfort between each other so that we can have those tougher conversations. We can have candid conversations and not like surface level kind of topics right, but understanding and even kind of going into understanding yourself a little bit more maybe than you would have given yourself permission outside of pregnancy. Because becoming a mother for the first time is a— it's a journey, you know, it's a transformation. And so if you are open and willing, then having a doula is a really great way to help guide you into that new aspect of yourself that's going to be born when you have a baby. So yeah, it looks like we often are encouraging our clients to have more candid conversations with their providers, asking more questions, asking what they can do. So not just, hey, will you support me in this, but will you allow me to give birth in different positions? Will you allow me to eat and drink? Will you allow me to be mobile? Things that if we look back to the '50s and '60s and '70s, a lot of these things just weren't really given. And a lot of people just didn't have autonomy over their body. So it's really about a big application for autonomy and just mutual respect, which I think has been lacking a lot. And people are starting to recognize that they can ask for that and they can demand that. So, yeah.

Yeah, that's so true. I mean, I guess that's not something that I don't know when sometimes— and this is not like dogging on doctors or anything like that, but sometimes when you go into these like medical situations, it's almost just— and I guess we've been sort of trained to believe this, but you go in there and you say how you feel and they sort of say, well, no, this is how it is. And you're just sort of like, oh, okay, well, I guess that's— I guess that's what we're doing, you know? And so— and we are— we are all sort of just trained to just be like, well, that's totally fine. And you're right, like, you should be able to have autonomy and you should be able to say these things. And so I think the more women work with women like you ladies, the more that kind of thing is going to become like normalized. And it should be. Yeah, I think that's super important. And so— oh, go ahead.

Sorry.

No, you're good.

Shift in the hospital system. I also, like L'Oreal, during the pandemic, I, I was actually going to hospitals to do a birth. I was considered an essential worker, and the, the way that women and birthing people were being treated in the hospital during COVID was not ideal and it was something really hard that everyone had to go to go through. But as we, we've weaned from like the pandemic status and they've learned more about COVID and they've learned more about other things, you've seen a big transition in hospitals, especially because of like how Loreal mentioned, people are really wanting to advocate for themselves. And I feel like the medical system, they can't really help it. They, they I mean, we are a capitalist country. We— they're educated all in uniform. So when you have something so linear versus like rigidity, you're going to have a lot of that, a lot of that back or pushback, sorry, a lot of that pushback in the hospital. But we've seen a big shift. Even I know University Hospital has turned and they're a UNICEF hospital and they have been like also very natural-minded Methodist here in San Antonio and the medical center. Is my favorite here in San Antonio because they are very doula-friendly. I had a client that decided that she didn't want to push on the bed and she pushed on the floor, you know, and that's the way that she was going to do. And her doctor was like, can you go on the bed? And she was like, no, I'm going to push right here. And I was like, all right, let's do it. Because at the end of the day, we're the ones that are going through that experience, nobody else. And everybody else in the room, their job should be to help us keep comfortable and guiding and, and holding space and doing all of those things. And it's really important that we keep doing things the way that we're doing as doulas because it's shifting the paradigm. It's asking people to— I mean, asking providers to listen and, and doing that, all that stuff.

Yeah, no, that's so true. That's interesting about the pushing on the floor and that. I can't imagine what my doctor would have said If I was like, this is now what we're going to do, he would have been like, no, nice try though.

That's the thing about having a doula, right? You learn that you can do it however you want. This is your birth and your baby and your body. And we hope to empower everyone so that they feel that they can demand, no, actually, I want to stay on the floor. I want to get in the bed, or I have an epidural, or not have an epidural. It's, it's up to you and what you decide after you learn the information and, and thought about it and use your intuition. Then you go and you have your baby the way you want to do it.

Yeah, as you should.

And that's the thing, it's like we're so deprived from that. We're so deprived from ourselves, from our intuition, from from community, from human connection. Like, even like, not to, to talk down on a podcast or anything, but yesterday I went to a networking event and they were saying like, meeting in person creates a whole dynamic. And I saw y'all's event yesterday too. Like, you have such a good energy in the room, the thoughts are flowing, it's authentic, it's very, very genuine. And that's where growth happens because we're all learning from each other. And that's it. We're so deprived from it. And so that's what we also do as doulas. We're helping people find their voice. I always encourage all of my clients to seek therapy, especially if they're having any fears or anything like that. There's a lot of perimenopausal— perinatal mood— mental health therapists, sorry, that they, they help with these things because there are perinatal mood disorders that happen in pregnancy and in postpartum. And it's those hormone fluctuations, nutrients, minerals, all of those things that is taken from our body to create the baby. And so it's not something that we can help. Like, we can't choose to have these mood disorders. It's not a choice. It's something that happens to us, and it should be treated like if somebody was to get injured or have a disease or an immune disorder, you know. And, and that's the importance that we need to give it.

Yes. Yeah, we had a gal, she's in our membership, she is a perinatal mental health therapist, and I— we had her on the podcast. Her name is Teresa Urbina. She's wonderful. I didn't even know that was a thing. I'll tell you what, if I had known that that was a thing, I mean, because we talked about it on that episode, but we can talk about it with you guys as well. I remember feeling like after I had my kids, like, I felt sad, but I wasn't like really sad. But you're constantly waiting for it to get really bad because they scare you into saying like, hey, this is going to get really bad. So you're waiting. It's like, how sad is too sad? When do I say something to somebody? And like, having a therapist that specializes in that kind of thing I imagine would have been helpful in that support.

I think I said on that episode, Erika, was I remember telling my doctor because I think I had an experience like you, Melanie. I had my first son and then 6 months later I was pregnant. I'm like, oh no. Like, it wasn't joy. I was scared. I was like, oh my God, what happened? Like, I did everything right. What happened? And I was so— I'm so sad about it now because I'm so glad I had him. But I went and told my doctor that I was really scared and he goes, oh, that's normal. 'You're good. You'll be fine. You've done this before.' Like, no, this is really new for me and I don't know what I'm going to do with 2 kids. Like, I, I'm still not healed from the first one. Like, I, you know, I had— I ended up having an emergency C-section, which I did not want to do. And I fought it and fought it. I did not want an epidural and they kept telling me I had to have one. And I think honestly, now I think back about it, that could have been changed. But I didn't know I had someone out there that could be an advocate on my behalf because I wasn't in the right mindset because I was, I was scared, you know, and when you're having your first kid or even the second time, you still don't know what's going on. So knowing and just having information out there that, hey, you have someone that can, that you, that will be speaking on your behalf when you're not, you might not be in your right mindset, you know?

Yeah, for sure. And Nicole can probably expand on postpartum, but that's where we bridge the gap. A lot of the in-hospital providers, they— you have your baby and they're like, all right, we'll see you in 6 weeks. And then it's like, in 6 weeks, in 24 hours, a lot can happen, especially when you're up every 2, 3 hours with the baby. You're transitioning. You're probably not eating enough food because you're taking care of your baby. And we always are taught to put ourselves last. And so having a postpartum doula can really help. And I'll let Nicole expand on how they can identify different things and how they're trained.

Sorry, I had myself on mute. So I just really, when I'm with my clients, I personally just keep an eye out on them, really. There's a lot of things to look for, and I don't think that I can necessarily say the exact things right now. I have a hard time. I feel like it changes with each parent, quite honestly. I really do. I know each family so well that I can tell when something is now becoming not normal anymore. I think that's one of the reasons that it is important to have someone who is in-house with you because they do get to see the more raw version of you to say, okay, hey, I think this has gone beyond the baby blues stage. I think it's time where we might need to go talk to a doctor. We, we need to get your mental health looked at because it's so important. We see so many stories of moms who are, who are just not being taken care of, are not taken seriously, quite honestly, pushed under the rug. And then tragedy happens. And that's not for a lack of moms trying, to be 100% honest, because we know oftentimes that moms do, and they go and they go and they go time and time and time again, and they seek help, but they're just told, "You're tired. You just need to get some sleep." Please tell a new mom how to get some sleep with a newborn who is waking up every hour and a half to nurse or feed on a bottle, who might have reflux, who— she might also have another child that she is caring for. Please tell me where that magical rest is coming in. And so it's so nice to have someone in-house to be looking after you, to be taking care of you, to be mothering the mother. That is what a doula does. They are mothering the mother. How often do we need that? How often do we need to be taken care of, you know? Um, and so that is what a doula comes in and they do. They come in and they mother you. We don't have that close-knit community as much anymore. And, you know, honestly, sometimes it's easier just to have someone else come in and to love on us than it is to have our own family come in anyway. Um, but with that being said, it's really nice, um, to have a postpartum doula come in because they know kind of where your baseline is at, and then they can see as the changes are progressing if you might need to get some help. And before anything becomes so out of control that we can't come back in and really help with everything, along with just being able to talk everything out, which is such a huge, huge help. And so we make sure that we have mental health resources and, and all of those things as well.

But I also think that's important, Nicole, because like I remember, I remember thinking, why wasn't my mom there? My mom was taking care of my, my dad who had surgery around the same time I had my first child. But also it's been a long time since sometimes your family member might have had a birth and they don't remember and things are different. I was 28, almost 30 when my second son was born and it had been a long time since my mom had had a child. So for her to say, hey, this is the way you should do it, things have changed. There's other resources available and they might not know that information.

Right? Yeah.

So having someone who's in the field of what you're going through that can say, hey, did you know you can do these things? I had a really hard time with nursing. I felt like I was horrible, and then I felt guilty about it, and I didn't have anyone to talk to. Your spouse is there, and he was wonderful, but he's not going through the emotional change that I'm going through, and he's scared watching me struggle with things because he doesn't know how to help. So I think he would assume this is an easy process, and it's not.

It is not. No. And our partners, they want to help us and sometimes they're just fixers and it's like, you can't freaking fix this. I just need you to shut up and listen. Like, quite honestly, just be quiet and listen to me. And, you know, and sometimes the help that we're needing is not the help that we're getting as well. And that can be just as frustrating.

Yeah, I can speak from firsthand experience where sometimes having your whole family there is not what you want to do. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, with my first daughter, we had everybody and their mom in there, and it was so crazy. And so with the next two, I told my husband, like, me and you, this is it. And then when it's done, everybody can come in and do what they want to do or whatever. And those second two were so much less traumatic for me. Than the first one was. And so sometimes you have to learn that that way. But sometimes you don't need your mom in there or different folks. Sometimes it's too much.

Yeah.

And with regard to postpartum, a lot of times friends and family come over and they focus on the baby and they come and they want to hold the baby and they kind of forget that you've gone through something huge too, and you need to be held and listened to and fed and supported. And so that's kind of what we love to do is I come in, I've never asked to hold a baby. I come in and say, how are you?

Yeah.

What do you need and what can I do? And I think it's really important for all of us to realize that we should be paying attention to the moms.

Oh, for sure.

The babies are getting all the love and cuddles already. Yeah. Yeah.

They've got what they need, right?

Yeah, that's true.

Well, so, and maybe this is more of an admin question. But, and I know our, our listeners will wonder, how does it— like, how do you charge for this? Like, how, how do the fees work, and are there different levels, and how does that all work?

Yes, so the, the way it works is you would reach out to us, let us know your due date, if you know where you're delivering, any kind of information like that. And then I, as the admin, will take the information given. If you know something about the type of doula you're looking for, what qualities you would like for her to have, I can go through, match you with a few, suggest them to you, and then you interview with all of them at your leisure, um, and see who is a good fit for you and then decide if you want to move forward. As far as pricing, we have different packages. The smallest one is $1,600 and then they go up from there, which you can add on additional things like classes or massage or placenta encapsulation. Absolutely. So it starts off at that rate, which would include 2 prenatal birth attendants and then a postpartum visit with your doula. And then our postpartum rates are different. Nicole, if you want to talk about those, you can. Or I can do it.

She's like, yes, you're fine.

Sorry, I was muted, but yeah, you go ahead. I honestly can't.

So the, the postpartum will be an hourly rate, but the way you get matched with your doula will be the same. So you can interview with a couple and obviously all of these will be with who's available at that time and who's been booked up and things like that. And then once you match, you can decide how many hours. We will have a minimum for nighttime and 4 hours for daytime shifts. And then we will schedule it out like that. It'll be $40 per hour. Okay.

That's— Would you know if those services would be something that an HSA account would be able to use?

We're not currently set up to take HSA, but it's definitely something—

But like a reimbursement.

So like if I, if I pay for those services, I just put the card number in.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you can reimburse it. Like, if I paid and then I can utilize that, it's— I mean, it's a medical service. You could, you know, if someone's thinking about it, that's something ahead of time.

Like, hey, you can—

if you're planning to have a child, you start putting money in your HSA account. I'm sorry, I'm on the finance end of the world, so I focused on a lot of that. Um, but it's a way to save money. And if you— if you're planning, it'd be something, hey, I would like to have this service while going through this. I, you know, you can— yes, it, it doesn't have to where it hurts your pocketbook. It's something that is right, very, very doable.

Yeah.

Yes. And people have been getting really creative with planning on how to fund their doula. They've been crowdfunding and asking for a shower donations and things like that with their family instead of diapers, instead of clothes, which we all get too many thing clothing-wise, to be honest. We know, yeah, you know, say, hey, I really want to doula and I'm not sure, so donate $100, donate a night of postpartum doula, that would be so helpful to me. Um, the same way that we have people making meal trains. So there's a lot of different ways, um, that you can facilitate it.

That's a great idea.

Well, yeah, we, we really want to change how people, um, are looking at their birth and looking at their postpartum journey as well, because we are planning our weddings, we are planning all of these things, right? We set money aside and we have these budgets for, for these things, but we are not setting aside and we are not planning for our labor and for our postpartum recovery. But we should be because it is important, you know. It is extremely important. It's, it's— if we're planning for our weddings, I feel like we should be doing the same thing, and we should be planning for our postpartum recovery. We should be planning for our labor and putting just as much effort and thought into that and asking our families for those things. We don't always need the big fancy, um, things for our babies. Oftentimes those are going to be left in, in the corner and typically not used anyway, you know, um, and So I oftentimes tell people, you know, ask your family instead of buying these million-dollar contraptions that we typically don't really need, ask them to put some money towards an account for, for your services instead that you would like to have, whether it be labor, postpartum, both. And I think that that has been really helpful for a lot of families. Yeah.

And Marie, you said you're in the financial world and you know the term financial literacy. I'm gonna have L'Oreal explain, but we, we love the idea of birth literacy, you know, of like what entails birth and postpartum literacy, you know. It's like, what, what do I need to do in order to make sure that I come out of this, or I'm going through this and I'm not drowning the entire time, you know? Because I feel like that's what it feels like. It's like we're, we're just, we're trying to get ahead, and then right when we're about to get ahead, boom, another thing Yeah. So L'Oreal, if you want to expand on birth literacy.

Yeah.

So birth literacy is just kind of something that we came up with while we were basically discussing how we want to be able to bring more awareness into how everybody can start to think more about what is available to them in terms of resources when it comes to birth and postpartum. Because a lot of times, you know, we're not preparing for these you know, big events. Even though we, a lot of us do want kids, we want families, and we think of like having the house and having the children, you know, running around, but we don't think about what the birth experience will be, will look like. We don't think about what our pregnancy would look like and what type of experience we want to have. And so, you know, even like lower income families, we want to really be able to bring awareness that you know, chiropractic care is available to you. Doulas are available to you. Midwives are available to you. Home births are available to you. You don't have to make X amount of money to be deserving of those things. They are a birthright and everybody should have access to them. So making that known so that everybody knows that I can have the same type of care as the next woman who might be in a higher tax bracket., you know, or even when we're talking about like Black and brown women, we deserve postpartum care. We deserve to be loved on. We deserve to be taken care of and showered and supported. And so we really just want to bring awareness to just how being in support, being in community, having a village, understanding what our body does physiologically, whether you're having a medical birth or an unmedicated birth, all these things should just be given. They should just be given to you.

Yeah, have it accessible for everybody.

I think had I known about doula services, my husband might have gotten that football team he wanted. I think about it because I seriously, I did. I wanted more children and we talked about it at length and we wanted more. And I was like, I don't think I can do it again. I didn't want to go through another C-section. And I was— I was— I had an infection and I was tired all the time and it took me, I felt, a couple of years to get past that, to feel myself again. And I love my boy. I love, I love kids. I love being pregnant. It was the part after that I'm like, oh, I don't do this again. It was hard. It was really, really hard, you know? And maybe that's why you might see that our birth rates are down, because it's, it's hard. And you're expecting women to work, you know, give birth, have a family, run a household, run a business. And not having that support that our body needs, you know. So you hear a lot of young, young, young women right now like, oh, I'm not having kids. And I'm like, oh, it's such a shame. But I'm like, you know, I kind of get it.

You know, my 5-year-old daughter, she this morning was like, I'm not going to have any kids. That's too difficult. And I'm like, oh, okay.

My kids say the same thing. It's wild. I'm like, you might change your mind, you know, you never know.

But Yeah, fear is rampant when it comes to how we think about birth, how we think about parenting. And I think that's the really beautiful thing about what our generation is doing. We're very consciously trying to change how homes look, how parenting looks, how birth looks so that it doesn't look like this traumatic, scary thing that you never want to indulge in. You know, in my younger years, people never expected for me to have a child. I never talked about it because I was just like, well, one, what if I can never get pregnant? And two, you know, I'm scared of the experience. But it's something that we— not all of us, but many of us secretly desire. And birth, pregnancy is kind of like this taboo subject that we just typically don't really talk about. It's not an open conversation unless you're actively pregnant. Or actively already have kids. And so I feel like the more that we can talk about it, the less taboo it'll be, and the more that we can have less shame and fear around these kinds of conversations, because it's life. It's how we're all here. We were all created, you know, blank in the same way.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And that's another thing, like sexual education, like the education revolving that and like safe sex and different types of options and, and getting rid of the shame on that aspect as well, because it has a lot to do with a reproductive, um, journey, you know. And so that's also our goal, is to not shame us as women and sex as well, you know, shifting the paradigm in that aspect, right?

Yeah. Well, This has been so interesting and I love all of this. Is there anything else that you ladies want to share with our listeners about the Intuitive Beginnings Doula Collective?

We are going to have a Meet the Doulas event. Yes, tell us about that. It's May 23rd at 5 PM at The COVID which is a local sustainably organic restaurant, and they have a playground for kids and There'll be live music, I believe, and we will all be out there so everyone can come and meet us and ask us more questions and get some free merch. So we would love to have everyone. Yeah.

Yeah. And it won't be just us. It'll be all of our doulas as well. So if you are expecting and you want to kind of know what type of doulas are out there, we have a very beautiful, well-represented group of doulas that you can meet with and see if you vibe with anybody. If you already have kids, or any of you guys have had us as a doula and you just want to come and hang out, that's totally cool. And so it's just going to be a cool hangout session. We're also inviting other birth workers too. So anybody that's just in the community that just wants to come and have a good time, we are totally happy for that.

Yes. Yes.

And previous clients too, please come talk so good about us.

There you go.

Well, I love that. Well, we'll put the information about that in our show notes so that way people can have all the information about where to see you and, and the time and the date and all that good stuff. And then would you ladies mind sharing with our listeners how they can get a hold of you for your services otherwise?

Oh, okay, it's me again.

All right.

Our email is intuitivebeginningsdoula@gmail.com, and our Instagram is Intuitive Beginnings Doula Co at— well, not at anything, that's just Instagram.

You're good.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, that's perfect.

And we will put all of that into the show notes as well so people can click around and find you gals and, and, you know, hopefully use you for your amazing and much-needed services.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yes, I just want to thank you ladies for being here, and then I will also thank our listeners for tuning in to this week's episode of the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast, and we will catch you guys next week.

See you guys next week. Thank you. Bye.

Thanks so much for tuning in to the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast. Be sure to follow us on social media at our respective Instagram accounts or join our Working Moms of San Antonio Facebook group. Those links can be found in our episode description. If you have an episode topic suggestion or question, please email us at office@radisagent.com. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review. See you next week.