Introduction to Sarah

You’ll already have been introduced to me on a basic level if you’ve read my about me page. But here’s an introduction to me as a doula.

This was just a social media post to start with, but then I thought it deserved a place here as well.

I trained in 2009 after my first two children went to school and I had a miscarriage. I decided it was time to follow my heart and share the love and knowledge I had from my own pregnancy, birth and postnatal experiences. I trained with Nurturing Birth, including the challenge of my first-ever weekend away from my children. I started out thinking I would love postnatal doulaing the most, but once I had supported a couple of births, I knew that was where I really belonged. I still love being a postnatal doula, too, though.

It’s a question every doula has to ask themself as they start out working will I go by my name, or will I have a business name? Turns out I was more connected with the name (Joy) we had given the baby we lost just before I did my doula training than with my own name.

It also works out well that Joyful -which to me means the kind of underlying contentedness that’s accessible whether or not you’re feeling happy, sad, angry, overwhelmed, excited or any number of other emotions that come with bringing new life into the world – fits with my ethos as a doula as well as in my own life.

It can take so much energy getting through the system to find the best support for your pregnancy and trying to be a good parent and do the best by your children. It’s easy to get overwhelmed but there are so many moments of joy ready for you too. You don’t have to put yourself under pressure to be happy all the time, you can also give yourself a break.

The absolute joy of doulaing for me is being part of people realising their power. We often see people saying they want to empower people but, that doesn’t quite sit right for me. That implies that one person has power they give to the other. But I don’t have any power that you don’t already have for yourself. I just have the confidence to believe in you and your ability to be who you want to be and make the choices you want to make and the gentle encouragement to help you feel that confidence, too.

One of the things about me is that I’m open-minded and nonjudgmental. I want you to have the birth or postnatal experience that you want, and I genuinely don’t think any choice is better than another. The only thing that matters to me is that you have the opportunity to ask your questions and access evidence-based information, and the support to make your own unique right decision based on that information.

As doulas, we like to keep learning, so there will always be things that any one doula will know more about, be more experienced with or have extra training in. For me, that includes my training with TBR College of Perinatal Emotional Health and with the holistic sleep coaching program. Both of these provide me with tools to share to help you find what works for you and build your confidence both for birth and parenting.

You’ve already taken the first of these ideas and I hope this blog post and the others you read will make you want to know more. Please get in contact by email joyfulfamiliesuk@gmail.com or Instagram message @joyfulfamilydoula, or book a free discovery call and ask me all your questions about working with me.