Mothers Circle -Birth Doula

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Mothers Circle -Birth Doula

Mother. Birth Doula (20yrs). Childbirth Educator. Writer. Circle-Keeper. Walking beside women through pregnancy, birth, and all thresholds of becoming.

I create spaces for truth, grief, rest and expression. Based in Aotearoa, working worldwide.

08/03/2026

Yesterday I took my six-month-pregnant doula client on a picnic.

I picked her up in my little Mini and drove her to a quiet, idyllic spot tucked in nature.

“I haven’t heard uninterrupted sounds of nature for so long,” she said.
A mother of two lively boys.

I made her a cushioned nest to lie in and we dropped into a slow restorative meditation.

Then a long, unhurried massage.
Tea poured cake shared. (I’m getting good at baking)

Mostly… spaciousness.

Pregnancy calls for spaciousness.
Time to soften.
Time to listen inward without interruption.

So much of modern pregnancy care happens in appointments, measurements, check lists and brief conversations.

But care CAN look like this-

A mother lying on the earth.
Someone tending to her body with slow hands.
Tea, quiet, birdsong.

Restorative.
Nourishing.
Beautiful.

What sort of pregnancy support do you long for?

28/02/2026

I drive the dark roads home at 3am.
I crumble weetbix in a bowl and use the last of the milk.
I light candles and think of her.

I think of her patience and her rage, of her cry and her quiet.

I think of how her mouth met the water when she was at the end of the end, but there was still so far to go.

I think of her smile as she crowned.

I think of washing the blood off her legs in the shower.

I think of her and all of the Mothers, while I eat weetbix by candlelight at 3am.

Post birth poem

24/02/2026

Do you know what I love the most about this photo?

The fact that no one is interfering with this sacred moment.

Mama is holding her baby close. No one is disrupting them. No one is checking if the cord is still pulsing, measuring babies head, weighing baby, putting a tag on baby, asking questions, giving baby a vitamin k injection, removing baby to a warming table... they are simply just left to enjoy the moment!

And that is my favourite thing ❤️

Photos Credit- Teresa Palacios

10/02/2026

I live in a house of women.
This week we bleed.
We carry our hot water bottles around, couch to bed to floor.
We drink iced ginger tea and nibble the sweet treats that have been waiting in the freezer for this time.

We crumble into heaps, tears fall, we get wild, we get sharp.
We spill a month of stories in the kitchen. We hold onto cupboard doors as we bend our bodies and howl the laughter from our bones.
We let everything fall apart. I’m so much better at crumbling these days.

My flatmates son follows her around chatting.
Motherhood doesn’t stop even for blood.
“Its only up from here” I say twirling her long hair in my fingers.
“It’s so much better together” she says.

03/02/2026

I’m surprised at 42.
At how wonderful it is.
At life’s embrace.
At the way happiness works.

You have to be emptied before you can be filled.
Hold your tears too tightly
and they find other ways to leak.

I’m surprised the path to joy is crying.

Lately I’ve been walking the beach,
feeling the joy of my sadness.
It’s a strange phrase, I know.
But grief, when it’s allowed, doesn’t flatten us.
It strengthens us.
Flexing the heart muscle makes life richer.

Tending to our grief keeps us vital.
It keeps us warm.
It is also intended to be shared.

In March, I’m offering a pop-up Writing Circle on Grief.
Thursday evenings, 7:30pm online.
10 women gathering with inquiry and curiosity.
$195.

If this speaks to you, you’re welcome.

Photo credit

28/01/2026

Pregnancy Soup is on the boil.
We begin next week, February 4th.

This is nourishing support for pregnant women who want more than information.
A space of ritual, communion, and sisterhood.
A place to arrive, to be met, to be held.

Pregnancy Soup is a four-month container that walks alongside you as your body changes, your inner world shifts, and you prepare for the profound rite of passage that is birth.

I come to this work as a birth doula of nearly 20 years, and what I know for certain is this:
your whole world is changing.
Not just your body.
Not just your plans.
Everything.

This space exists to honour that change, gently and intentionally, before the baby arrives.

There are two more seats at the table.
If you feel the pull, join us.

27/01/2026

Last week I wrote a post about violating s*xual energy-
in the bedroom
and in the birth room.

Respecting s*xual energy means NOT FORCING.
NOT MANAGING.
NOT RUSHING.

Surrender is not something that can be commanded.
It naturally arrives in its own time when the body feels safe.
This is true in intimacy, and it is true in birth.

Gathering information in the mind during pregnancy is one thing, but embodying relaxation as a skill is another.

Pregnancy Soup is a space to tend to the nervous system, to soften with awareness, to practice deep relaxation, to listen to the subtle language of the body. Join me for a 4 month online container. We begin next week. There are 2 spaces available. Send me a message for more information.

Sophia 🌱

*xualenergy

21/01/2026

I see the same violations in the birth room that I see in our s*xual culture. A culture shaped by violent po*******hy, casualised intimacy and epidemic levels of s*xual abuse.
A culture where power is taken, consent blurred and where speed and performance matter more than presence.

That same pattern walks straight into the birth room-
Misplaced authority.
Manipulation dressed up as “care”.
Gaslighting intuition.
Women spoken over, rushed, managed, overridden.
Rooms that serve systems and schedules rather than the woman labouring at the centre of them.

Birth, like s*x, requires safety.
Privacy.
Trust.
Sovereignty.

You cannot coerce life through force without consequence.
If we want different births, we must tend to s*xual energy differently.
In the bedroom.
In our culture.
In ourselves.
Supporting the sacred process starts long before labour begins.

*x *xualenergy

08/01/2026

“Pregnancy Soup”, born from the knowing that life is richer together.

A small devoted circle of women, walking pregnancy together- sharing stories, challenges, nourishment and rest. Space to drop in and be present with the phenomenal changes pregnancy brings.

Held online on Wednesday evenings 7.30pm- your mid-week rejuvenation. We begin January the 28th 2026. Send me an email for more information info@motherscircle.co.nz

What does Sisterhood mean to you?

02/01/2026

I spent most of 2025 working as a “live-in doula” —
living with families until their baby arrived. Often for weeks.

Joining their home space.
Sharing meals.
Being part of the real-time unfolding.

It was another level of connection — deeper, closer, a form of companioning that happens through presence rather than preparation.

This way of being alongside women during the profound transition of becoming a Mother is what inspired “Pregnancy Soup” — my new online pregnancy offering.

It’s a little bit of everything- breathing, writing, learning, sharing.

A rich, nourishing weekly circle, supporting you gently and steadily through pregnancy.

A small group of 10 pregnant mamas, meeting weekly for a 4-month deepening.
There are 6 spaces available.

We begin January 25th. 🤍
For more info, send me a message 🤰

30/12/2025

2025 -I thought I knew things,
but that was before.

2025 took my identity —
the one I liked.
It took all my stories
and said, these don’t count.
It said let go more
and took my hands ransom.

Death visited the young.
It took a baby,
and it took a woman younger than I.
It took my trust,
though maybe I hadn’t started with any.
I couldn’t find the floor
until at least October.

I prayed more sincerely.
I prayed with orange peels
and brass bowls of water.
I prayed with children in veils
and freshly opened mothers.
I prayed in the dirt with spiders
and in crowded airports.
I prayed with hamburger patties
and sweet walnut slice.
I prayed in desperation,
in disgust,
and in delight.

My hands grew back
to rearrange all the pieces.
And maybe it’s only now —
settled into a house with blue walls,
my daughter having found her sisters —
that it all makes sense.

That there’s space for the new,
like the orange tomatoes
in my mother’s garden.

I welcome you to write with me for 2026.
I have 2 online containers- Sunday evenings for The Undoing, and Matriarch Mondays for those who have written with me before. Send me a message for more info x

23/12/2025

As the Writing Circle comes into its 4th year, I have accumulated over 30 journals.
Full of stories, full of mistakes, full of human truth & human denial.
Pages of shame, pages of cringe.
Id like to say there might be a good piece or two in each book.
And when I say “good”, I mean, one I’d be happy to share.

But its the “not good stuff” that is the best.
The revealing of the covered, the unspoken, the “don’t say that” stuff.
Its the words I had to drag up from murky waters like a kingfisher on a line.
The words that got me sweaty.

I’m a believer in the glorious mess of life.
I don’t trust clean curation, or well put together anything. Cosmetic dreams of youth bore me.
Its all missing the messy point.
What’s true still lays dormant beneath- undiscovered.
Its in the disarray, the dirty and the dry skin on your heels.
Its in the drought that killed your flowers, the ones you planted from seed.
Its in the tears you still haven’t cried from the sweetest corners of innocence.
Its in the mascara you left on overnight because life wore you out and sleep didnt even rest you.
Its all there.
In the pages.

Join me next year-
“The Undoing” begins Sunday 25th Jan.
“Matriarch Mondays” begins Monday 19th Jan.
Bring your worst.

Address

Papamoa
3110

Website

http://www.motherscircle.co.nz/

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Kia Ora!

I am Sophia, mama of two joyous beings, Childbirth Educator, Doula, Bath Connoisseur, Truth Seeker & Speaker!

For over a decade my work has been focused around empowering women to take ownership of their pregnancy, birth and Mothering journey, guiding them to discover, explore and trust their own inner knowing and innate capacities.

I am passionate about celebrating and valuing the rites of passage as women and fostering support and understanding instead of cheapening the experience with outside influences or competition.

These are sacred times for transformation!