Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Mills.
Hi Heidi, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
A little over six years ago I was standing in my yard, with my one-year-old on my hip, talking to my husband about my future career goals. I had just graduated with my business degree with a minor in nonprofit management at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and had no idea where to go from there. I had always planned on putting my daughter in daycare post-graduation and applying to every maternal health/family-focused nonprofit I could to get a full-time job in the administrative side of nonprofit work.
The pandemic had left me at a crossroads. That day, me and my husband talked about how we didn’t feel comfortable putting our child in daycare, with so much uncertainty around the health and wellness issues facing our community. Instead, he suggested I take the time while we wait for the pandemic to “blow over” to get my doula certification, something to add to my resume which would hopefully make my application more appealing to the maternal health organizations I craved working for.
As the pandemic dragged on much longer than we thought, I finished the book work of my certification and put myself out there to start getting the hands-on work hours I needed to complete my certification. My first birth I ever attended was a client with a medically complicated pregnancy, that got even more complicated when upon admittance to the hospital, she tested positive for Covid-19. I was able to provide her virtual support; helping her navigate the medical environment, ask questions to her doctor, and encourage her through an unmedicated induction.
My training course, and this experience, taught me so much about the expanse of doula work and all it could provide to our community. Previously, I always thought of doula work as something that happened in more holistic settings, like home birth. When I dove into my certification I learned about all the research-backed ways doulas improved maternal and fetal outcomes for all types of birth; including births utilizing epidurals for pain management, labor inductions, c-section deliveries, and endless other scenarios that happen inside the complexities of birth. While I love supporting low intervention, unmedicated birth as much as all other types of birth (about 40% of births I have supported have not used pain management), I found the role of a community doula goes far beyond that limited belief system.
Birth is complex and every family should choose the path to baby that best fits their goals, their vision, and their medical needs. This belief has greatly shaped my practice. What once was something that I thought could be a great addition to my resume for when I got a “real job”, flourished into a growing passion that became not only my real job, but a doula agency that has been able to welcome and support hundreds of families into our care the past six years.
Our agency tagline is “Judgement free Perinatal Support” as we are doulas for all births and all families. No matter how you want to bring your baby into this world, whether it’s a homebirth or scheduled cesarean delivery, I have been blessed to build a legacy in the community, and a team that supports, your unique birth.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I do not believe you could meet a doula of six years who has not experienced burnout. Most doulas leave the profession within two years of starting it. Not only do you have to build a business from the ground up and have the skills to maintain it, but the constant on call schedule and unpredictable hours can be grueling.
Imagine you have been up with kids doing the daily work of motherhood since six in the morning. At ten at night, you finally have the kids to bed, the house cleaned up, have spent a moment with your partner and are droopy eyed getting into your bed. As you start falling asleep your phone rings, a mom in labor. While you are excited your client is finally getting to meet her baby, you also haven’t slept in sixteen hours and are getting called in to a shift you have no idea when it will end, could be six hours or thirty-six hours.
This is a real-life scenario I have experienced many times as a birth doula. Top that with never being able to leave town weeks before or after a client’s due date without a communicated and agreed upon back-up (babies are unpredictable!), and the emotional exhaustion and second-hand trauma of the job, and the excitement of getting to see sweet babies enter this world can wear off fast!
I have had to mentally recommit to this work through many hard seasons, and after seeing many awful births, and continue to build systems into my business that support me doing this work to the standard the parents I serve deserve. Burnout is what originally led me to turning my solo-practice into a doula agency a few years ago, now having three other doulas on my team that can support each other and back each other up during long births.
I know much more about labor support and am a better doula then when I was only a year or two into my practice, and I think it’s so important to have more experienced doulas in the community, and we each need to find our own ways to do this work sustainably.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
One of the things I am so proud of about my doula practice that sets us apart from traditional expectations of doula work, is that I gladly support and market towards hospital birth and support mothers who want to utilize medical interventions for their birth.
I find it so unusual that the doula community as a whole, doesn’t see this huge market (over 70% of mothers receive epidurals in labor!), and don’t choose to learn how to support it. Doula work should be about educating families (we include an eight-part childbirth education course in our doula packages), helping them obtain informed choice from their medical providers on their individual needs, and then relinquishing that informed choice to the person giving birth. Even with all the information about the risks and benefits of medical interventions, many women will choose medical interventions for the benefits they provide. It is our job, as doulas, to find out how we can support them in receiving the care they need and/or want.
Because of this philosophy, I have devoted much of my continuing education to learning how to support all different types of birth. First, by taking a trauma-informed advocacy class that helps me communicate effectively with medical staff, ensuring my clients get the most from their medical care; and provide trauma-informed care to those who have trauma or other complexities that can impact their birth. Second, by taking courses in Spinning Babies and getting certified in The Body Ready Method, both fetal positioning courses, to help my clients move through labor, help baby descend through the pelvis, and reduce pain and medical intervention. This education helps me support my clients who are choosing for forego medical pain management have smoother labors and also helps my clients choosing to utilize epidurals keep labor flowing and avoid unnecessary medical intervention.
I have also built a team that has a similar birth philosophy to me and pursue their own trainings and continuing education to support mothers in the way the deem best.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
There is nothing that makes me happier as a doula then seeing a mother and her partner in a postpartum visit saying, “I feel so empowered by the birth.” I have learned over the years that an empowering birth can look so different than what we might think. A mother who feels empowered by her birth might not have had the smoothest experience, things might have gone so different then the plan, but the common denominator in an empowering birth experience is that the parents felt informed and supported along the way.
Birth is the gateway to parenthood and empowering births, no matter that they look like, make parents who are confident and ready to conquer the other challenges parenting will throw at them. Strong parents make strong communities, and I am so happy to be a small part of that change.
Pricing:
- Birth Doula Package (Heidi) – $1800
- Birth Doula Package (other doulas) – refer to website for pricing
- Childbirth Education Classes (8 classes, a la carte pricing) – $45/each
Contact Info:
- Website: https://blocbirths.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebirthbloc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MTkJUjdqN/?mibextid=wwXlfr
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-mills-092011152/
