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.

You Begin
By Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.