What does a postpartum doula do?

Postpartum doula care looks different overnight versus during the day. For daytime care, I have five priorities: Encouraging your bonding with your baby, enabling parental rest and recovery, offering emotional support, helping you develop your nursing/feeding relationship, and supporting your self-development as a parent through building your knowledge, skills, and confidence.

Encouraging bonding with your baby:
Doula education on normal newborn behaviors and cues helps parents understand their babies and feel closer with them. I can also encourage skin to skin and help you learn how to use your baby carrier if you are planning to baby-wear. I can take baby-related household tasks - such as cleaning bottles and pump parts, working on baby laundry, or restocking changing table supplies - off your plate, to help you spend more time with your baby.

Enabling rest and recovery:
Some parents just need the emotional support of being told they are are not only allowed to rest but need the rest, whereas others rely on the baby-related tasks I can do around the house. I can also do light meal prep or heat some food up for you. And sometimes you might just really need a nap, and I can take care of baby while you sleep. I can also help with education on baby sleep - although baby sleep specialists agree that sleep training a newborn is not appropriate, I can teach you ways to encourage newborn sleep that apply to both daytime routines and nighttime routines. To help in recovery from pregnancy and birth, I can assist with mobility needs after a cesarean, prep a sitz bath or peri bottle, bring you the meds prescribed or recommended by your physician, and encourage you to eat and hydrate well.

Helping you nurse or bottle feed:
I help you get comfortable, bring you your baby, and help you position your baby for nursing. I help adjust technique to help you get a better latch, educate you on strategies that optimize milk production and transfer, and look for signs of issues that may warrant referral to a lactation consultant. While baby is nursing, I can let you enjoy the time one on one with your baby or I can keep you company. I restock your nursing station with breast pads, snacks, and water, so you have everything you need within reach. This looks much the same with bottle feeding, except I am not assisting with latch but teaching and demonstrating best bottle feeding practices. If you are pumping, I help care for your baby while you are pumping and offer education on pumping strategies. If you are working with a lactation consultant, I help you follow the plans you have made with them and am happy to speak with them if you would like.

Offering emotional support and supporting your self-development as a parent:
These overlap because so much of the emotional challenge of these early days comes from the uncertainty new parents feel! Checking in with me about “Is this normal?” is a simple but frequent and extremely valuable part of our time together. We chat together about your day, your concerns, and all your questions. I offer a warm, caring ear for you to share your experience of parenting this new being, and provide informational support within the doula’s scope of practice and resources for additional support if a desire or need for them arises. We can also talk about your birth experience if you would like to share.

What does this look like in the early evening hours?

This includes everything daytime doula care includes, but is often a bit more intense due to it being parents’ most tired time of day, and frequently the time that a newborn is cluster feeding or having the “witching hour.” This is often the time parents feel the most need for reassurance about how they are handling their baby’s needs, so some parents prefer to have me in the house during this time. Also, if you would like to eat dinner with two hands or need a break from an inconsolable baby, I can offer baby care while you take this in-home break. However, there can also be downsides to making this the time of day for doula care, such as challenges talking with each other if your baby is inconsolable.

What do your services not include?

Some examples of excluded tasks in any of my service choices include deep cleaning, cooking meals (beyond reheating a dish or assembling a sandwich or salad), giving medications, clipping baby’s nails, or taking baby’s temperature rectally. I also do not babysit (that is, at least one household adult remains home when I am working), and under most circumstances, I serve families whose infants are under twelve weeks (adjusted, if born premature). It is also important to understand that my scope of practice does not include diagnosing or providing medical advice, though I may refer you to a provider if I see something I believe is outside the range of normal. Two common examples of this:
1. If I become concerned about your mental health, I can not evaluate you to see if you have a postpartum mood disorder or provide therapy. I will provide you with appropriate referrals and can help you navigate finding care covered by your insurance.
2. If you ask me to look at your cesarean stitches to see if they are healing properly, I will refer you to your OBGYN. If you wish, I can support you in making a phone call or writing a message in your online portal to make sure you are getting your questions answered to your satisfaction.

What’s the process like of working together?

First, you’ll want to chat with me to make sure we’re a good fit. We can arrange for a free 30 minute zoom or phone call starting with reaching me by any of the methods on the contact page. If you decide to book my services after this meeting, we’ll create a contract for the hours you want. After the paperwork is signed and the retainer fee is paid, we will have a prenatal meeting (or an initial meeting, if your baby is already born) where we will design your personalized postpartum plan. Then, we follow the plan, with room for adjustments as your needs may differ from what you anticipated.

Do you support nursing parents besides the birth mom?

I love supporting all nursing relationships! Breastfeeding and chest-feeding are wonderful for parents and babies, regardless of whether the parent gave birth. If you did not give birth or did not develop breasts, and you want to nurse with milk in a supplemental nursing system, you’ll see a board certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) to get set up with this equipment. If you are a non-birthing parent who has mammary anatomy and you want to induce lactation, you will want multiple visits with an IBCLC that are even better when begun before the birth. In either instance, I’m happy to provide referrals and to support you in implementing the IBCLC’s guidance.

How does virtual support work?

One hour per week, we will meet on a video call to talk about anything we’d be chatting about in person. Frequent topics of conversation include:

Managing parents’ rest
How to know when baby is hungry and whether baby is getting enough
Lactation: establishing and maintaining supply, helping with nipple soreness, improving latch, and lots more
Evidence-based bottle feeding for the breastfed or formula fed baby
My baby is doing ___________. Is that normal???
Choices and methods for diapering, swaddling, using pacifiers, and other baby items
Baby’s sleep: what’s normal? When will it change? What can I do to help?
How to interact with your baby to help develop their brain and well-being
And, perhaps most importantly, parents benefit from having someone to listen and validate how their day has been, how they are feeling, what’s hard, what’s amazing, and everything else they are experiencing in this vulnerable and wondrous phase of life.

If I notice anything outside my scope, I can direct you to bring it up to your existing care providers if it is in their scope, or offer referrals to appropriate specialists, most commonly IBCLCs, mental health providers, or pelvic floor physical therapists.

This option is open to all new parents, and is highly recommended for the first 6-12 weeks, with the option to continue up to the first birthday. You also have the option to double up this package, meeting twice per week, for the first 6 or 12 weeks. In-person postpartum doula clients may choose this service to extend our time together, and will receive a discount on virtual support.

How does planned cesarean support work?

The idea to offer cesarean-specific support took root when both my lactation education and my clients’ experiences taught me about the challenges a surgical birth often pose to the early days of establishing lactation. I began increasing the amount of preparation I offered my clients who were expecting a cesarean, and quickly started seeing benefits. I believe everyone deserves this knowledge and should not need to hire me for extended postpartum support in order to get a great start to their nursing relationship after a cesarean. The details of a cesarean-specific support package widely vary based on your wishes. Some clients might choose only a 2 hour private prenatal education session, others may combine this with a few early postpartum support visits, and others still may hire me to come to the hospital during their surgery so I can support them in recovery as soon as I am allowed. If you have one of the insurances I can take, all of this can be of no cost to you.

Can I use my insurance or fertility benefits?

I accept Medi-Cal, Kaiser, and many other insurance companies, and have experience working with other employee benefits. Many of my clients have paid nothing out of pocket! Some others have gotten started with their insurance/benefits and then chosen to privately pay for more hours than were covered. Please contact me, and we can confirm what schedule your benefits could offer you at no cost.

Do you have any scheduling requirements?

I work from birth up to 3 months postpartum (or 3 months adjusted age, if baby was born prematurely). I am generally available between 7am and 10pm up to 5 days per week.

Do you only work in the cities listed below in your website footer?

I work throughout the entire Bay Area; however, cities beyond those listed will incur a travel fee per shift based on distance. Support is also available virtually.