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In 2006, after a decade of practicing as a labor doula and while training as a transformational life coach, I realized that transformative prenatal coaching must be the foundation of successful labor doula support. I understood that the coaching principles and strategies can be a game-changer when integrated into birth support practice. This understanding, which I almost missed due to lack of training, became the cornerstone of my career. Since then, I’ve developed an innovative framework for prenatal and postpartum coaching that has helped many students and me achieve impact, satisfaction, and increased income. Dedicated to doulas’ success, I want to shout and invite all doulas and childbirth educators to join me and learn how to practice transformational prenatal and postpartum coaching. However, since doulas and childbirth educators are traditionally called “Labor coaches,” I am continuously called to clarify the following: What’s the difference between a labor coach and a transformational birth support coach?
Matrescence (pronounced ma tres ens) is a term referring to a transformative period of identity-shifting experienced by a woman during her transition into motherhood. “The psychological birth of a mother, similar to adolescence, involves hormonal and identity shifting.
Transformation is a change from which there is no going back. When transforming, our everyday strategies and behavior patterns must be revisited and adjusted to to facilitate a smooth and empowering transformation. This simple observation is the origin of the Transformational Birth Support Coaching framework.
There’s no turning back from parenthood. It’s a transformation from being someone’s child to being someone’s parent, a change that shapes the rest of your life. It is becoming the designated adult accountable for someone else’s life. For first-time birth givers, this means transforming from someone who has been given life to someone who is giving life, which involves a physical transformation of the body, mind, and social status. This profound transformation is well described by the term “Matrescence.”
Birth Support professionals are committed to providing essential care and support to pregnant individuals and new parents, helping them navigate the challenges of bringing new life into the world. Pregnancy and postpartum are times of heightened emotions and vulnerability. Amid the current political unrest, the transparent fabric of hope and optimism that subconsciously led our clients to conceive has been interrupted. Staying hopeful and optimistic is less intuitive and demands intentional practice and awareness. At this time, birth support pros must help their clients to repair it. We must expand our skills to facilitate something beyond proper maternal care; we need to coach to evoke hopefulness and optimism. Transformational Birth Support Coaching Strategies are the path to this type of support.
Have you considered leading a prenatal or postpartum support process through questioning instead of providing information? Are you ready to consider making a difference in your clients’ lives by facilitating a transformation rather than delivering information? The post-pandemic era gave way to a profound transformation, reshaping every feature of our lives and society. Shouldn’t new practices for birth support be ushered in? Let me show you five key differences between informative and Transformative birth support.
Every January, I experience a dramatic increase in aspiring doulas’ inquiries, requesting a 20-minute discovery session with me, and …registrations. As a result, every January, I feel called to inspire doulas to fulfill not only their passion but their professional success by claiming their thriving practice. As a doula trainer and coach, I’m committed to helping doulas elevate their status as a professional community and their individual financial and professional success.
These are my three points of inspiration for doulas as we welcome 2023:
Lead your clients to achieve the results they hired you for
Use strategies that empower both you and your clients
Establish a viable and successful practice by focusing primarily on verbal coaching prenatally and in the postpartum period.
As a doula trainer and leader of doulas’ communities on social media, I am convinced that the three most significant challenges to having your thriving doula practice are client enrollment, client engagement, and client empowerment. And if you’re open to adopting a new framework for birth support, I know I can help you achieve these three Es with ease. You can learn new strategies for Enrollment, Engagement, and Empowerment in my upcoming Three Keys to YOUR Thriving Birth Support Practice 2-day workshop.
Finding and enrolling clients so I can have a stable monthly income” was voted the #1 source of exhaustion. In a poll I recently posted in The Aspiring and Thriving Doula FB group, 80% of the voters indicated client enrollment as their professional struggle. I could have guessed that since It has been my struggle in every capacity I have served, including a director of two birth resource centers. Birth support has evolved as a field that consists of various short-term services provided by many different hands-on providers: Childbirth educators, birth doulas, postpartum doulas, breastfeeding consultants, and many others. From the point in which each of these professionals recruits a client, we serve them for a very short time – from 2 meetings to 3-4 months.
The current situation has two main disadvantages:
Client disadvantage: The abundance of short-term practitioners interferes with the continuity of care – one of the marks of high-quality care.
Professional disadvantage: Having to constantly enroll clients, birth support pros are exposed to professional fatigue and face a potential income gap.
Since long-term client relationships are the most crucial factor to growing any business, including your solo birth support practice, I’d like to suggest a business model to help cultivate them.
Do you know your birth clients? Does your philosophy of care resonate with them? Do you employ the best strategies to support them? Rather than the optimal pathway to maternal care, Transformational Birth Coaching puts the birth client at the center of the support process. In doing so, we find that there is a generational gap that might be interrupting us in supporting millennials throughout pregnancy and birth. Halt! Take a deep breath…I’m not calling out on millennials. I raised two millennials myself and I love and admire them. I’m simply drawing attention to the generational gap between those who established the field of birth support – their attitudes, philosophy, lifestyle, and collective concepts of pregnancy and birth, and current birth givers. Can this generational gap mean that the philosophy, desired outcomes, and birth support strategies we practice do not resonate with current birth givers, or might not be a good fit? It might be the time to pivot.
Ever wondered why you’re super stressed when you commit to a birth client?
When I ask the community of Birth Coach Method’s doula students to elaborate on their stress level and its source, they usually begin talking about being on-call. I wholeheartedly agree that being on-call 24/7 when you are a career doula is super stressful. It’s been alsoreported by midwives that the unpredictability of childbirth – when will it begin and how will the process unfold, is one of the biggest hardships of the role. It keeps us on our toes – always having to arrange support for our families, always ready to cancel plans or miss family events. It’s messing up our vacations, and more.
Another source of stress that often emerges in our community meetings, or personal mentorship sessions, is our accountability for clients’ birth experiences. While medical caregivers are held accountable for the outcomes, we are held accountable for the quality of the birth process.
Just like prenatal coaching, transformational postpartum coaching shifts the focus from helping or informing to elevating new-parents’ performance level, self-confidence, and well-being.
Most of my writing has been dedicated to pregnancy and childbirth support. During the pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenges of new parents or parents who have expanded their family recently. I want to share how transformational coaching during the parents’ postpartum period can enhance their experience.