We're featuring the whole team this week, and first up is our OG; our organized, spreadsheet master, and friend...
Demi - Postpartum Doula, Birth Doula, Postpartum Manager.
We asked the team so share some thoughts on the work they do, and here are Demi's reflections...
In past generations, motherhood was portrayed by exhaustion. A competition of martyrs - who had it all together while silently suffering. Because of this, when I became a mother myself, I suffered. I did not ask for help, I isolated myself and took on way too much. A lot of my postpartum time is a blur too me. Too little sleep, and always carrying way too big of a mental load. Fearing that asking for help would make me weak or show that I could not do it. The added pressure of being so young when I became a mother, just added fuel to those fears. When I enter a home in the postpartum period, I strive to do better than this. My drive and passion for the postpartum period, comes from a place of wanting to do better than I did for myself. I have learnt to read a room very well, and can make myself useful even when I am not given direction. Simply because I know how hard it can be to ask for help when you are overwhelmed and feeling those same feelings that I did.
A client once referred to me as a fairy godmother, and I hold that very close to my heart in every home that I enter. I try to leave every house tidier, calmer, and more rested than when I arrived. If this means organizing closets to cross something off your household list, I am on it. Cutting fruit so you have breastfeeding snacks, I am also on that. I have been asked numerous times what the scope of a postpartum doula is, and I often turn the question back by asking “what would you like done” because I have yet to say no to a request if it means that I am helping.
There is a movement happening, slowly but surely, around the postpartum period. Telling mothers it is ok to ask for help, encouraging mothers to share and go through all the difficult phases together. I am so here for this movement, and will always advocate for togetherness in motherhood. Pregnancy, birth, being a mother, raising children - it is all hard, and we weren’t meant to do it alone. Let’s teach the next generation that it takes a village to raise our young, and that is exactly the way it is supposed to be.