Welcome to Blooming Within Birth Services, offering the doula services of  Valerie Wetlaufer, educated through DONA and the Aviva Institute.

On this site, you can find out more about what a doula does, how to hire me, and read my blog posts about the experience of being a doula, from training, certification and beyond.

I believe that everyone deserves to experience birth as an empowering, affirming and joyous experience, whether you choose a homebirth or prefer the hospital. I would love to be at your side, supporting, relaxing, encouraging and helping you have the best birth experience.

The name “Blooming Within” comes from one of my favorite poems by Audre Lorde:

Now That I Am Forever with Child

How the days went
While you were blooming within me
I remember each upon each —
The swelling changed planes of my body —
And how you first fluttered, then jumped
And I thought it was my heart.

How the days wound down
And the turning of winter
I recall, with you growing heavy
Against the wind. I thought
Now her hands
Are formed, and her hair
Has started to curl
Now her teeth are done
Now she sneezes.
Then the seed opened.
I bore you one morning just before spring —
My head rang like a fiery piston
My legs were towers between which
A new world was passing.

From then
I can only distinguish
One thread within running hours
You. . . flowing through selves
Toward you.

Recently our community lost a wonderful person. Briana was the first midwife I met in Utah when I first became a doula. We were the same age I was so admiring of how much she had do in such a short amount of time. She died in a car accident recently.

Here is a wonderful video with her talking about being a woman and a midwife.

Briana’s Words, Briana’s Wisdom from Kate and Neil on Vimeo.

We miss you, Briana.

This beautiful birth story was written by one of my clients who kindly offered to let me post it. She hired me to attend her for the birth of her third child. With her first two pregnancies, she’d had epidurals in the hospital. I have added a few links for explanatory purposes, for readers who may not be familiar with certain aspects of Brenda’s story.

The day my daughter was born, two weeks before her guess date, I woke up feeling different. As far as I could tell, there weren’t any labor symptoms that morning, but everything felt heightened. I sent my husband off to work, and drove my oldest boy to school. I took the youngest one shopping with me and I felt as though I was sensitive to everything. All the nerve endings in my skin, the smell of the fruit in the produce aisle, my son’s dirty diaper (not all of this heightened awareness was pleasant!). By the time my oldest boy came home from school, I was having contractions. I called my husband at work to see if he could drop the boys off at his parents’ house, and then I called my doula. My first two pregnancies went very quick, and I was terrified of the pain. None of my sisters had natural deliveries, though one sister-in-law had delivered at home. When I heard from a friend about her wonderful doula and the amazing natural delivery she had in the hospital, I knew I wanted a story like that. With my sons, everything happened so fast and I felt like it was happening to me, not like I was participating in the process. I put my legs up in stirrups and pushed when they told me and out came a baby, and breastfeeding was fine and I loved my sons and I could’t belive I had given birth—I had really done it!—but I just wanted to try something different.

What started out as hiring a doula to help me have an unmedicated birth at the hospital evolved into hiring a midwife and planning a homebirth. My sisters thought (still think) I was crazy, my husband wasn’t really sure, but he was willing to let me have the baby however I wanted to, and the more time we spent with our doula and midwife, the more he got on board.

So I called the doula and the midwife at around 3:30. The midwife said to call her back after the doula arrived, so that the doula could tell her how things were going. My contractions were coming every 7 to 8 minutes and lasting 30-45 seconds, but they were irregular, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was starting to freak out, because this was starting to hurt. The doula had me get in the shower because I was freaking out and so I put on my birth bikini (a suit so immodest I wouldn’t dare wear it outside my own home, but perfect for labor!) and let the warm water rush over my belly. This definitely worked wonders, and I must’ve stayed in there for an hour, but the doula wanted me to keep moving since she said labor can stall out if you stay in the water too long in early labor. I was walking around the house, pausing every so often to moan through a contraction.

Honestly, it is easy now that it’s over to talk about everything, but in the moment, I was freaking out. I did not believe I could do this. I did not know how my pioneer ancestors had done this crossing the country with their hand carts in the middle of the wilderness. I was having a hard enough time at home! The problem was, I was still in early labor, able to talk through contractions and move about and all of that, and I was already losing emotional strength. And all I wanted was a greasy cheeseburger.

My husband and I had just decided to try being vegetarians—we are really all or nothing kinds of folks, and even “eating meat sparingly” was too much of a temptation for us. Let me tell you right now: pregnancy is both the best and worst time to make a major change to your diet. Best because it cuts out those unhealthy temptations, like cheeseburgers from In-n-Out Burger, but worst because never are cravings stronger than pregnancy. The doula agreed I should eat and drink as much as I wanted right now to keep my strength up later. I was lying on the couch crying, still in my birth bikini, with the doula crouched in front of me listening to my fears and rubbing my feet. Thankfully my husband arrived home then. He conferred with the doula and offered me a priesthood blessing. I cannot recommend this highly enough. I won’t pretend it took my pain away, but it was an emotional epidural for me, and it was a wonderful way for my husband to become involved in my labor. I was so calm and focused after the beautiful blessing, and while he was blessing me, the doula was whipping up one of her famous green smoothies (kale, spinach, banana, protein powder, lots of fruit, water, coconut water, chia seeds and milk). I must have drank forty ounces of the stuff, and now, spiritually and physically fortified, I was ready for the hard labor ahead!

I tried, successfully, to sleep for a few hours, as did my husband and the doula, but I whoke up around eight pm with stronger contractions. I rocked on the birth ball singing hymns with my husband (and the doula joined in when she knew them). She remembers me singing “Abide with Me,” “Families Can Be Together Forever,” and “How Great Thou Art.” At this point, things really started picking up, and the doula called the midwife to come check on me. I was not very dilated yet, only about 5 cm, so the midwife, after sticking around for about half an hour, went to check on another birth. The doula suggested we go for a walk around the neighborhood. I put my husbands old BYU sweats over my birth bikini and we headed out. I tried talking long strides and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was 2 in the morning. We would walk around and then stop and I would lean on my doula or my husband and and make this deep animal sound and I knew some of my neighbors were peeking out thinking What the heck is she up to now? We walked in circles around the block for a long time. When I started wanting to be on my hands and knees during contractions, the doula said it was probably time to go home.

I called my Mom and my oldest sister who has six kids and had long conversations with each of them punctuated by my labor moans. We ate dinner. Or the doula and my husband ate dinner, and I picked at some bread and honey and peanut butter. The midwife’s assistant came over to check on me, and I was an 8. The midwife was finishing up at another birth and headed back over to my house. Things were really moving along now! I was crawling around the living room in just my bikini top, the bottoms and sweats having gotten much too uncomfortable for me. I was on my knees, leaning against the birth ball, and I just kept crawling forward. My doula would guide me, sort of shifting the ball and keeping it from running into the walls, like I do with my sons’ remote control cars. I swear what I remember from the birth is the white and green polka dotted birth ball cover on the doula’s birth ball, since my face was pressed into it for what seemed like hours.

At one point I had rolled myself into a corner and I was just squatting down on my knees and the doula says now that I just started grunting. I was vaguely aware of a flurry of activity as the midwife and her assistant and my husband started shifting me slightly, putting a shower curtain and towels underneath and around me. I didn’t even realize it, but I had started pushing! I felt like my body had been taken over by this primal part of me that instinctually knew what to do and she was doing it! I remember praying out loud and I remember my husband saying, “We can see the head!” (We didn’t know if it was a boy or girl yet). I asked if I needed to move and was assured I could stay where I was. My husband was crouched to one side of me and I could feel the doula’s hand on my back and the midwife putting pressure on my perineum, to help me avoid tearing. I pushed like that, squatting on the floor for about half an hour and then, with a gush of blood and fluid, there she was! The midwife caught her and the doula helped me stay balanced as the midwife passed the baby between my legs so her cord didn’t have to wrap around me.

I wasn’t really aware of anything then but crying and staring into my daughter’s grey eyes. She seemed so calm once she started crying and I held her to my chest and rocked, my husband’s arms wrapped around us both. The placenta was delivered about thirty minutes later and we let the cord stop pulsing before we clamped it. All modesty now gone from me, I untied the bikini top as the midwife was doing some newborn checks on my daughter and she started to nurse. The doula and midwife’s assistant got our bedroom ready and us situated in bed and my husband brought us something to eat. She was 8lbs 4oz and 20 inches long. I remember saying at one point, right after she came out, “I need to text my sisters!” This made everyone laugh.

I am so glad I was able to have my third child at home. My wonderful midwife and, most of all, my incredible doula made it possible. She was with me throughout the whole thing, and seemed to know just want to do to help me calm down and manage my pain. I wanted this birth to be intimate and family-oriented, and most of the time it felt like it was just my husband and I and this angel, rubbing my back and my feet, bringing me food and water and green smoothies. She listented to me and trusted me to trust my body, helping support me in whatever position felt right and helping me find a more comfortable position at a time when very few things seem comfortable. I would never have another child without my doula there! I couldn’t have done it without her!

“If you can find one in your area, doulas are sympathetic and knowledgeable labor companions who typically provide some form of prenatal preparation and stay at your side once labor begins until your baby is born.  The doula’s job is to make you as comfortable as possible and to reassure your partner as well.

The evidence in favor of doulas comes from more than eleven carefully designed studies: Quite simply, hiring one cuts in half the odds of your having an unnecessary cesarean.  It also halves the odds of your having a forceps or vacuum-extractor delivery.  That’s not all!  Having a doula also shortens labor by greatly reducing stress, pain, and anxiety.  In the typical U.S. birthing unit, the doula you bring with you may be the only person whose sole responsibility it is to make you more comfortable and to help you labor as effectively as possible.

If your baby’s father plans to be with you throughout the labor, you may wonder if it makes sense for you to hire a doula.  The answer is yes.  Fathers often have significant fears and anxieties surrounding birth-giving.  The calming influence the doula can have on expectant fathers is often as significant as her effect on the laboring woman.”

—Ina May Gaskin, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth

“When a child is born, the entire Universe has to shift and make room. Another entity capable of free will, and therefore capable of becoming God, has been born. In that way, every child’s birth is exactly like the birth of a world teacher. Every child born is a living Buddha. Some of them only get to be a living Buddha for a moment, because nobody believes it. Nobody knows it, and they get treated like they’re dumb. Babies are not dumb. Just because they don’t speak English doesn’t mean they are dumb. A newborn infant is just as intelligent as you are. When you’re relating with her, you should consider that you are relating with a very intelligent being who just doesn’t speak your language yet. And you shouldn’t do anything gross to her before she learns to speak to you.”

—Ina May Gaskin, Spiritual Midwifery

When I was in my senior year of high school, I had already taken all the advanced classes, so I started taking college classes. One class I took still stays with me. It was called Women in the Bible. I was raised Baptist, and studied the Bible quite a lot over the years, but there was so much I realized I didn’t know once I took this class. I am reminded of that class when reading Heatherlady’s post on her blog about The Importance of Birth. Coming from an LDS point of view, she writes:

One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve studied the scriptures is that birth is an over arching theme in the stories of the women in the scriptures. A good portion of the stories about women in the scriptures center around women’s ability to bear, or inability to bear, children.

Personally, the births of my children have been incredible spiritual experiences for me and have completely changed my outlook on life and eternity. I’ve gained great spiritual strength through the birth process and a closer relationships with my Heavenly Father and Mother. As I’ve reflected on my own experiences and as I read about the important role birth plays in the lives of the women of the scriptures I am prompted to believe the ability to give life is a central part of what it means to be an eternal woman and that the birth process is incredibly important to God.

A friend pointed out that in the Proclamation to the Family it says, “We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed.” The means by which mortal life is created is through the processes of conception, pregnancy and birth. It stands to reason that if God designed the way children are conceived to be deeply and powerfully symbolic of a man and a woman becoming “one flesh” (Genesis 2 :24) then He has also designed the way children are born into this world to be deeply and powerfully symbolic.

In order to understand the symbolism and meaning behind labor and birth, and to understand why so many of the stories of women in the scriptures center around birth, we have to go back to Eve and the Garden.

Head over to her richly detailed and referenced post to read the rest. She makes such beautiful points, and I think it is a very interesting read whether you are LDS or not (but especially if you are!) It is such a lovely take on the importance of our birth choices. This is definitely a must-read!

Shortly after I posted about midwifery being my “calling,” an LDS friend emailed me the following story about the history of LDS midwives. I am not LDS myself, but I am Christian, and growing up in Iowa, where so many LDS pioneers settled after fleeing Nauvoo, the majority of my friends from childhood are LDS. Now, living in Utah, the LDS culture is all around me and I find it fascinating. I love learning about the pioneers’ trek to Deseret and their hard lives settling in Utah.

Did you know that midwifery used to be an official Church calling?

The need for midwives in the newly established Zion was so great that in each Ward, the Relief Society would nominate two women to be trained and set apart as midwives for the women of the ward.

…

Several of the accounts [of Utah pioneer midwives] also spoke of midwives as “presiding” at a birth. Typically when I think of “presiding,” I think of a priesthood holder presiding over a church meeting. The man presiding isn’t always the one who is in charge of conducting the meeting; commonly he doesn’t say anything, but he is there representing the priesthood authority of Heavenly Father. I like the image of a midwife not “delivering” or “catching a baby,” but “presiding over the birth.” Her job isn’t to do the work—that is in the hand of God, mother and baby—rather, she is there to oversee the process and to represent the power of the Heavenly Mother.

Doesn’t that sound like just the perfect description of a midwife’s role? Go read the rest of the post over at The Gift of Giving Life.

This is why I truly love working with LDS clients, and why I feel blessed to practice as a birthworker in Utah. Family here is sacred and birth is respected and honored as spiritual.

Even for non-religious clients, I believe there is a sense of the sacredness of the moment, even to those for whom it is a secular sacredness.

I love this video of a woman singing to help her manage contractions. There are so many ways to tune in to your body as it works to birth your baby. I have heard of many women singing hymns during labor. You can just sense the peace in the room!

Being a doula is difficult, rewarding work. It is different than any other labor I’ve done, yet I am able to make connections. In the past, my jobs have always involved teaching, whether I was assisting in a fifth grade classroom in Tucson, or teaching in a bilingual kindergarten in Paris, teaching high school English in Vermont, or college freshmen in Florida and Utah. I love teaching, and though doulaing is quite different work, I know I am a better doula for the pedagogical skills I can bring to my practice. My teaching background is part of the reason why I love Childbirth Education and helping my clients learn what they need to know to make sure they have the healthiest pregnancy and the safest labor and delivery. I’m a wealth of knowledge, and I love to share what I know! One thing I love about my job is that when people find out what I do, they usually voluntarily launch into the telling of their own birth stories. Storytelling is woven into birthwork and this aligns perfectly with my other job as a poet.

I’ve always told stories, even before I knew how to write. I would dictate my imaginative fancies to my mother who would dutifully record them and post them on the fridge. My love of storytelling grew into its expression as poetry. I love telling stories through my poems, even if the story isn’t immediately apparent. Here is a poem I wrote after attending my first birth:

Birth Recollected in a Dream

You were born on the first cold day of autumn.

I walked slowly to the hospital.

Dogs ran for me, a woman in labor, each time I howled.

There is a smell to birth; not bad, just feral.

I held you in my hands, all seven pounds of you.

I watched you emerge, watched your body give way

to oxygen, milk, your mother’s smile.

There is a rhythm, a ritual to birth. I felt the ache

in my hips, the tightening of the fundus

how easily the placenta slipped away from me.

I awoke, a mixture of blood and breast milk

in the air, womb to cradle remaining.

Poetry was my first calling. I have always done it and loved it and knew I needed to make a place for it in my life. My love for poetry and teaching poetry has kept me in school and grad school for ten years now, as I work on completing my PhD. But the more births I attend, the more I realize I need to answer another calling: I have decided to pursue midwifery. I want to be able to help pregnant people and their families even more than I do now, to provide well woman exams and homebirth services. I want more power than I have as a doula so that I can turn around and hand the power right back to the birthin woman, to help her tune in to her own body and birth the way she instinctively knows how to do. For me, birth is spiritual and sacred. Being allowed in to that space when people become parents, when a new soul comes earthside, is the most incredible experience life can offer. I feel so honored to be able to devote my life to helping families achieve their best birth. I’m answering the call. I start midwifery school in May, and will serve as a doula and midwife’s assistant as soon as I find an apprenticeship.

This is a beautiful video of a baby who was born vaginally at home, presenting as frank breech. Don’t let your doctor tell you it’s impossible to deliver a breech baby naturally! Most OBs aren’t even trained in delivering breech babies, but midwives maintain their knowledge of the wise woman traditions of common sense natural childbirth. Get a midwife, instead.

The Breech Homebirth of Annaka Faith from Electra Hutchison on Vimeo.

In my other life as a poet, I discovered the book Home/Birth: A Poemic by Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg. I am a fan of Zucker’s work, and I knew she was also a doula, as she writes frequently about pregnancy, birth and working as a doula in her book Museum of Accidents. I cannot stress how incredible this book is! It functions as part poetry, part memoir, part conversation between two friends, part commonplace book of birthy thoughts, and it is beautiful!

So often birth is described as gross or painful or “over the top” or just plain scary, and sure, it might be all of those things at times, but too rarely is it described in terms of its magic. I am fortunate to live in a state where, more ofthen than not, the sacred moment of birth is venerated and valued. Utahns love birth and I love working in Utah.

If you are interested in birth, I recommend this book!