Now, for an introduction

Like I said, my name is Leda and I am a birth doula. I live in Brooklyn and I attend births wherever my clients take me.

To date, I have attended twelve births of thirteen babies (one woman had twins). One woman gave birth at home, one woman gave birth in an out-of hospital center, and one woman labored in an in-hospital birthing center and delivered on the hospital's traditional labor-and-delivery floor. All of these women, totaling three, gave birth with the assistance of one or more midwives. Nine women gave birth in hospitals, and of those nine, four gave birth with the assistance of obstetricians, four with midwives, and one with a family practice physician. Let's summarize the care provider breakdown: 12 women, seven midwives, four obstetricians, one family practice physician.

Ten women gave birth vaginally (and if that word makes you giggle, you might want to just stop now, because it's going to get worse for you. But I promise I"ll try to avoid talking too much like Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski), and two women gave birth via c-section. Six women labored with epidurals, six without. The longest birth I attended lasted about 36 hours and the shortest lasted about three hours.

Now, to explain why I might have a shred of clout, of relevance, of reason for others to read this blog, I guess some resume touting is in order? I guess? Ok, let's do it.

My first foray into actualizing my interest in women's healthcare (which was born long before I can remember) was an internship with NARAL Pro-Choice America during my last year of high school. Fast forward to college, when the birth light bulb went off, and I began writing as many papers as possible on birth and maternity care (from the first one on the transition of birth from the home to the hospital to the last one on breastmilk kinship in rural Islamic communities). I traveled to India for my semester abroad, and for my "independent study project", I studied the nature of maternity care in Varanasi through interviews with 25 mothers of different ages, castes, and religions. I came home and began conducting research for world renowned midwife Ina May Gaskin on maternal mortality in the US, to support her Safe Motherhood Quilt Project (like the AIDS quilt, a quilt for women who have died of childbirth-related causes). Then I continued that research for Amnesty International USA, supporting their project on maternal health as a human right. And the piece de resistance, my sociology major thesis! 102 pages of blood, sweat, and tears on midwifery, midwives' feminist ideology and how knowledge is produced. Or you might say, "Midwives and the Ideology of Empowerment: The Relationship Between Ideology, Practice, and Knowledge Construction". It's pretty sweet.

Now, I doula. For private clients, and clients I meet through organizations like Birth Focus and Birth Day Presence. I also doula for teen mothers residing at Inwood House, and soon, I hope to doula for women giving their babies up for adoption through The Doula Project. Also through The Doula Project, I abortion doula, meaning I help women during termination procedures, and I doula for women who face miscarriage, stillbirth, or fetal anomaly.

Now, I blog. About birth. Birth work. Birth health. Birth news. Birth rights.

Birth. Strong beautiful birth.