~ Sylvia Lauris - Birth Doula based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington ~
I have always held a deep interest and reverence for birth, since I was a child. A few years ago I started thinking more seriously about pursuing a career in the birth world. I wasn't sure what this would look like. I applied and was accepted into a midwifery programme but I wasn't entirely sold. The more I looked into the medicalised birth world the less certain I felt about spending tens of thousands of dollars and years of my life dedicated to it. I spent months mulling it over looking at alternative paths into birthwork, courses, online and in person, talking to people and trying to understand what it is I have to offer hapū māmā. I believe that in this day and age many women are giving birth and expected to bounce back, rejoin the working world, and be acheiving a million things while they're healing from an incredible physical event, getting to know their baby, and adjusting to life as a mother. I am here to support māmā in this busy, irreplacable period.
Prior to this line of work my experience has been in Natural Farming. This is a technique I follow in my gardening and farming but also more broadly in my life. Natural Farming, as written about by Masanobu Fukuoka, endeavours to reduce the complexity and heavy workload of farming (and all parts of life) by recognising that when we try to solve problems we often create more work for ourselves, and more often that not complex natural systems are beyond our full understanding and we should let them operate to their full effect by intervening as little as possible. This is definitely the case within industrial farming but it applies to an endless array of things.
I believe it applies to birth. Something that women have been doing since before we were humans has become a medicalised event that has strict timeframes, cascades of interventions, "right" and "wrong" ways of doing it. It's become incredibly complex. I don't think it needs to be.
The packages are designed around my other passions and skills. I am a highly experienced veggie gardener with an expertise in designing and setting up natural, ecological, nutrient dense growing spaces that require little to no maintenance, perfect for pregnancy and you post-partum period. I am a very good, creative cook, focussing on dishes that taste amazing and are built around highly nutritious whole-foods and ingredients, providing you with everything you need while growing, birhting, and feeding pepi.
While I am still in the early stages of this work I will be charging a reduced rate and offering an additional free post-partum session as an opportunity for you to provide any feedback to me, among whatever other support you may need. Please get in touch to find out more !
Experience :
- Rachel Reed's Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage course.
- Student of The Doula School Aotearoa.
- Extensive self directed study into :
-- Nutrition generally and specifically during pregnancy and post-partum
-- Herbalism and the mixing of herbal teas
-- A Taoist approach to pregnancy and childbirth
-- Traditional Chinese medicine
-- The current state of the birth industry in Aotearoa