Some of my earliest memories include peering into our living room where my mom was teaching a childbirth education class and seeing big-bellied ladies squatting down doing what my mom called a duck walk across our living room floor. I also loved looking through my mom’s “birth atlas,” a tool she used to teach her classes. I was intrigued with the pictures of a baby growing inside the uterus. I heard my mom talk many times about the importance of preparing for childbirth and thanks to her ever positive attitude, I looked forward to when I would have a baby.

Eventually that time came and although there were no childbirth classes near enough for me to attend, I read everything I could get my hands on and with mom’s help, my husband and I prepared for the birth of our first little one. I realized, as the end of my pregnancy approached, that I was holding very tightly to my ideal plan and God and I had a heart to heart which helped me to loosen my grip and trust Him with the many things I couldn’t control.

I’ll share that birth story another time. For now, let me just say that my love of childbirth only grew with time and I continued to learn all I could. We had two more babies over the next six years. Periodically through the years since then I’ve had opportunity to share some of my knowledge to help friends prepare for their births. At some point I met a lady who was a doula. We became friends and I learned so much from her – even shadowed her for several births and then served as doula by myself for some friends from church.

When my family moved to Kenya in 2015, I thought I would leave behind my childbirth “hobby.” However, I couldn’t be quiet when I was talking with a new friend (who happened to be our pastor’s wife) and saw that she needed help preparing for their upcoming birth. We ended up meeting several times before the birth to help them prepare and then I also attended that birth as their doula. After that, whenever anyone was expecting a baby in our church, pastor told them to talk to me. So, to consolidate my time, I started offering childbirth education classes about twice a year. I was only able to doula a couple more times because of personal time constraints but I loved doing the classes and my students seemed to love them, too.

Now I’m a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator and look forward to helping many more people prepare for childbirth & parenthood.