Valley Doula Collective

07/01/2021

Please donate and share!

The Kili'la Birth Keeper Collective is reaching out to our c… Kilila Birth Keeper Collective needs your support for Lytton Fire Emergency Funding for Fleeing Families

03/28/2020

Anyone have some to spare? 💛

Help needed! Do you have a baby heart rate monitor (fetal doptone) at home? Or a home blood pressure monitor? are looking for donations during the COVID-19 crisis to lend out to our midwifery clients. This will allow midwives to monitor patients at home with mild symptoms and provide at-home assessments for people who are self isolating. If you have a monitor please contact your local midwifery practice to coordinate a drop off: https://www.bcmidwives.com/find-a-midwife.html?map_search=

Thank you!

03/20/2020

💛 All our love to people birthing in this hard time, as well as midwives, OB’s, nurses, and birth workers. You are strong and capable. 💛

The current Covid-19 crisis does not discriminate, however some of us are more vulnerable than others. This is particularly true for pregnant women. As health care workers we need to ensure that we are able to continue to perform our vital roles and support and contribute to a safe birthing environment. Please help our Midwives and Doulas by keeping your family home and avoid interaction within the community. We are doing the same. Feel free to share this message.

03/03/2020

💕

01/31/2020

What a great illustration!

Engorgement! I love this test of feeling your cheek, nose and forehead and comparing it to how engorged your breasts are. I often use this test with my virtual clients, since I’m not there to physically assess their breasts.

🔆Breast engorgement by definition is when milk volume exceeds the alveoli’s (the sacs that hold the milk in your breast) capacity. Engorgement tells your body that it is making more milk than the alveoli sacs can hold, and that it needs to decrease production.

When your copious milk first comes in around 2-5 days postpartum, the body isn’t sure how much milk to make for the baby, so it’ll make an abundance of it. Then as you nurse your baby on demand, this engorgement goes away and your breasts calibrate as to how much your BABY needs.

I often see women doubting their milk supply because their breasts don’t “feel” full anymore... it feels like their cheeks.
THIS IS FALSE❗️Empty breasts, make milk! It’s NOT normal to be engorged all the time. Just because your breasts “feel” soft, doesn’t mean you don”t have milk. As long as baby continues to remove that milk efficiently or you’re pumping, then you’ll continue to make milk

If you skip a feeding or miss a pumping session, that milk wasn’t removed when the body thought it would be, so the alveoli sacs get too full and you feel engorged, which then tells your body to cut back production. If this happens frequently, your supply goes down.

I will have a second post coming up with my tips for managing engorgement

Did you experience engorgement?

11/08/2019

😂💛

09/27/2019

Great visual on some of the differences between Midwives, OB's, and Doula's!

09/21/2019

Loved this!!

08/26/2019

What a great visual on how the Haakaa works! Save for your newest mommy friends or yourself!

https://www.grassrootsbabystore.com/products/haakaa-silicone-breast-pump-with-suction-base-5-oz

08/10/2019

As I stood there at dusk last night watering and picking my blueberries from the dozen or so bushes... I though of how carefully nature grows fruit.

Can you see all the different “gestations” of berries? Some of these are bright purple. Some are green and some are a purple/green. Imagine if people assumed that all blueberries would be right on the very same day. Imagine picking the berries because it was “the berry due date” even if the berries were green? Imagine not picking the ones that are barely hanging onto the branches?

No one expects nature to know exactly when the fruit will be ripe, we just assume that the blueberry bushes are healthy, loved, cared for and will ripen when they are ready. Cause, you trust Mother Nature knows what to do!

Pregnancy term is anywhere from 37-42 weeks, your “guess date” is on the 40th week. I often share with my clients that they are either due at the beginning, middle or end of the month. Only a tiny percentage of babies are actually born in their due day (GUESS day!)

Trust your body.... and pick your berries when they are ready.