Why Choose Us?
The Benefits of the Team Approach
All three of us have worked as solo doulas in the past, and we now all resolve one thing: Never again.
Being in a team of three allows us to have balance in our lives as our children grow, but it also benefits our clients substantially. Despite capping our clients to five total each month and working hard not to over-book ourselves, it is inevitable that sometimes there will be overlap (most overlaps are not similar due dates, but often due many weeks apart!). With three of us on the team it means that not only do we have absolutely solid 24/7 call coverage, but we also have a designated second-call. This means that if we have more than one client birthing at the same time, or one of us is ill or has an emergency, or requires rest from a previous or long birth, another one of us is available to seamlessly step in at all times. Our clients can rest assured that not only will they have highly experienced support during their birth, but it will be one of their hired doulas that they have spent time with and are comfortable with.
Additionally, working in a team ensures that even with births on the go, one of us is still available to support for postpartum needs, offer help with infant feeding, or chat with you during an anxious moment. Being on a team necessitates that we are highly organized and communicative with each other and this helps ensure that all of our clients are responded to and assisted in a timely manner.
Experience
Jill, Judy, and Dori have collectively supported over 1000 families through birth and postpartum over the years, and have around 50 collective years of experience between us. Whether your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience is straightforward or complex, we have likely seen and supported a similar circumstance before. We have extensive experience offering skilled support for high risk pregnancy, planned c-sections, pre-term birth and NICU stays, twins, complex social scenarios, anxiety and fear, as well as a whole ton of home and water birth. Jill was the importer for both the Babycare TENS machines and La Bassine and Aquaborn birth pools for all of Canada for many years, and has educated doulas and midwives around the country on the topic of water birth since 2009. Jill has also been mentoring new doulas to help them get their practices off the ground since 2016. Between Jill, Judy, and Dori, we have personally had a mixture home births, water births, and hospital births at multiple hospitals for our own children.
Community Gatherings
It’s important to us that our clients get to see us as often as they wish, are well-informed as they go through their pregnancy, and we also hope our clients build a support community for themselves. We created our twice-monthly Community Gatherings with all of these objectives in mind. Jill, Judy, and Dori rotate through leading each gathering, so you will have plenty of opportunities to become familiar and comfortable with all three of us in addition to our 3 one-on-one prenatal visits that we offer in our doula package. Each gathering has a featured topic, and there is also time for our clients to ask general questions and get to know one another. Participation at these gatherings is for our clients only and they are optional (but encouraged!).
A Strong Educational Foundation
A quick scan of our bios reveal that not only have we been at this for a while, but we continuously update our skills and education. Staying current and broadening our educational horizons is an important value that we all hold. Additionally we all spend our off-call days supporting our communities in different but related ways. Jill teaches infant and child CPR and first aid to parents, doulas, perinatal nurses, and midwives throughout the Lower Mainland. Judy is a certified pre and postnatal instructor and is Support and Educational Programmer and Facilitator for an organization called Burnaby Family Life. She does pregnancy outreach work and helps new immigrants with babies adjust to parenthood. Dori is currently working on her Masters degree in spiritual care and chaplaincy – holding space for life’s big transitions. She is also a certified pre and postnatal instructor and facilitates Birthing From Within style prenatal classes through Dancing Star Birth (which Judy previously owned for many years!).
Parenting and Infant Feeding Wisdom
Between the three of us, we have 7 children ranging in age between 9 and 16. We have breastfed, we have formula fed, we have struggled, we have adjusted, and we have seen what works also. In addition to staying up to date on safety and best practices with infant care, we also have the empathy, experience, and hard-earned wisdom that comes along with being parents ourselves. We will often support our clients through navigating sleep, feeding, and survival in the early days, and then hear from them again when they want to start solid foods, wean their babies off breastfeeding, or even transition to daycare. We don’t put an end point on sharing our knowledge with our clients. They can reach out for as long as they please and we love to hear from them as their babies grow.
Deep Rooted Relationships with the Vancouver Birth and Wellness Community
Over the past 15+ years we have watched our Vancouver birth and wellness community grow and change in many ways. Throughout, we have always endeavoured to build strong relationships with midwives, nurses, doctors, and wellness practitioners in order to get our clients the best care they can have. We have also built strong relationships with our doula colleagues and make an effort to know everyone’s strengths and specialties. In doing so, we are able to provide our clients with referrals and recommendations that they can trust.
