It rained today, and the rain turned into snow. It reminded me so strongly of my doula training in Logan, Utah. My fantastic doula trainer, Dolores Michael, hosted us in her home, and as we learned various labor positions for pain management, we could look out her window at the spring snowstorm. As I drove home, a flock of sheep ran as one along a mountain, and everything felt so magical and alive. I love living in Utah so much. It is so beautiful here, and I meet so many wonderful people.

I truly feel honored that so many families have invited me into their lives to help celebrate and empower them as they welcome a new soul into their lives.

I look forward to many more years of birth work!

One post discusses the role doulas play at hospital births—medicated or not. Sarah Day, doula and Offbeat Tribe moderator had this to say:

The skills and mindset your average doula brings to a birth are going to be useful regardless of where you end up delivering. A doula can provide emotional support, be an extra pair of hands, or just be a listening ear during the rigors of labor. I understand your concerns about hiring a professional from a fairly crunchy field for your medicalized birth, and here's the thing:

Many doulas, myself included, have opinions about the benefits and risks of medical and non-medical birth. Some of them may have opinions about your choice to deliver in a hospital. And you know what? It's really not their place to judge how you choose to experience your birth, because it's your birth.

You don't need to defend your choices to anyone. A good doula will want to empower you to make healthy, well-educated decisions with which you're comfortable, period. Her entire job is to support you through your birth experience. It shouldn't matter where that experience takes place or what interventions are involved.

So many people are under the impression that a doula is just for hippies having a homebirth (and I do love working with self-identified hippies and homebirths) BUT it's not true that our only clients are those birthing at home. While I would choose a homebirth for myself, the vast majority of my clients have been in hospitals and some have even had epidurals. There are so many ways I can help you if that's the route you go.

Another post on Offbeat Mama was a question from a reader from a pregnant mama whose husband is resistant to the idea of a doula. In the 84 comments, readers chimed in with a rousing chorus advocating for doulas and asserting the fact that

Doulas are there for the pregnant person AND their partner!

This is such an important thing to remember, and if you want more opinions on how doulas can help dads/partners, just read those comments! So many wonderful stories of the ways doulas have helped moms and dads/partners connect deeply during a birth.

Thanks, Offbeat Mama, for being such a friend to doulas!

You Begin
By Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only 
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.