10/20/2026
I had my first baby as a teenager. One who’d been married for over a year and living life as a full adult, but still a teenager. Going through pregnancy, birth and postpartum so young and so unsupported led me to becoming a doula.
I always joke that my first baby made me a doula and my second one made me a midwife.
In my first postpartum I felt betrayed by the medical system and my body. I felt lost and alone because I had no idea what was happening to me. I found the word doula on a late night nursing session as tears were streaming down my face from a latch that was never deep enough to adequately feed my baby. So I quit my history major and became a ‘hippie’ doula.
During my second pregnancy my anatomy scan came back with some questionable markers about my baby’s heart. We didn’t know what it meant and there was no education coming from my OB to provide comfort or medical conversations about what it might mean. Just me, dr. Google and the ultrasound tech I saw weekly for my appointments raw do***ng the second half of my pregnancy. One night in my pregnancy I randomly said out loud, “what if I just became a midwife” it was laughed off at the time, but 6 years later I’m halfway done with training as a traditional midwife and looking at many more years of midwifery and healthcare training.
Ultimately, the hard lessons I’ve only learned through experience are why I’m on this path today. So would I actually trade anything about my experience? Probably not. But, if i could ease someone else’s experience I’d do that at every opportunity.
What might you have changed or learned during your own pregnancies and births? Or would you keep the experience untouched?
