PRENATAL
During antenatal meetings, we will discuss any pregnancy and birth-related issues, birth preferences, your hopes and worries about your labour.
As your Doula I will give you lots of information to help you make informed choices about your maternity care.
These meetings will help us get to know each other better so that during your labour I can help to create a calm and safe atmosphere that will encourage the natural, physiological birth process to unfold.
Every woman deserves to have a positive birth experience. It is such a momentous occasion in a woman’s life, particularly for a first time mum-she is giving birth and becoming a mother which is a huge change, an adventure and a joy.
Women remember each birth forever, not every detail but the essence of it and the physical and emotional effort involved. If you begin your journey of becoming a parent with an empowering experience it will be easier to have confidence in your ability to look after your newborn baby. I believe that the vast majority of women can give birth naturally without medical intervention that can, unfortunately, lead to more interventions and sometimes sadly to the traumatic birth experiences that we often hear about.
Women need to believe in their ability to give birth, to reclaim confidence in their bodies and trust their instincts which is not always an easy thing to do in today’s society.
The prenatal/antenatal visits are for you and your partner/birth partner so we can all get to know one another and I can work out how best to support you both through your labour and birth.
During this meeting, we will discuss your birth preferences including place of birth, use of a birth pool, breathing for labour and birth, active birth, medication and general hospital practices.
We can discuss and practice positions and movements for an active birth, although birth is instinctual I think it’s useful to have some ideas that you are familiar with, breathing and visualisations.
We can have more antenatal or postnatal sessions depending on what you would prefer. It all depends on each individual case if you are first-time parents or already have a family and may need more care after birth.
I'm happy to offer an extra meeting for first-time parents to discuss breastfeeding and looking after/coping with a newborn baby as sometimes the focus is so much on the labour and birth that people don't think so much about looking after the baby and becoming parents!
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