twins

Two babies holding hands while being held by their parents

Doula Support for Adoptive Families

Most parents probably don’t think about hiring a doula if they aren’t pregnant. They think of a birth doula only supporting a laboring mother, but that couldn’t be farther from reality. Birth doulas can support any parent. Postpartum doulas can support adoptive families by helping them to prepare for baby’s arrival and in-home after baby arrives. There are so many ways doulas can support families that are adopting!

At Gold Coast we are focused on educating parents. We offer several prenatal and postnatal classes to help new parents navigate this new territory. We offer a Newborn Survival class that goes over essentials of surviving those first few weeks and months home with your baby. Real life scenarios and raw topics are discussed to help parents feel confident in their roles.

We also offer a Prenatal Stress class. This is designed for any parent, pregnant or adopting, to understand the affects that stress has on a developing child’s brain, not just throughout pregnancy but through their growing years as well.

Infant Massage is a great way for adoptive parents to bond with a new baby. Our instructor offers classes as well as private in-home instruction. Another great way to bond is babywearing. We have a certified babywearing expert that does in-home instruction and can show you how to safely use your carrier(s).

For parents that might be bringing multiples home (twins or even triplets) we offer a Preparing for Multiples class, and we have a postpartum doula that is a mother of twins herself. Her in-home support, expertise, tips, and tricks are invaluable!

If grandparents will be primary care givers, we offer a class called The Modern Grandparent that updates them on the latest safety information as well as informs them about today’s parent and how parenting styles differ from generations past.

Our lactation consultant can help adoptive mothers induce lactation and can also offer advice about chest feeding.

At Gold Coast, our postpartum doulas are available day and night. Daytime support includes help with baby bonding, newborn care, help with older siblings, meal prep, and evidence based resources. Your postpartum doula is your trusted guide for anything baby related. Overnight support allows parents to get a full nights rest while the doula takes care of the baby through the night. The doula will feed the baby, burp, change diapers, etc allowing the parent(s) to get as much rest as possible knowing there is an experienced professional caring for their child. 

A postpartum doula is an amazing gift idea for baby showers! We can create a custom insert for your shower invitations and you can also register online for any of our services at EcoBuns Baby + Co online.

We also offer Gentle Sleep Consultations. Sleep is critical for adults and babies. Babies needs proper sleep for brain development and physiological growth. Parents need sleep to help manage the day to day obstacles of parenthood as well as for basic health and wellness.

We also have doulas specially trained in grief that can help you through loss.

Some of the trusted resources we suggest to families are:

Kelly Mom https://kellymom.com/category/parenting/ Athough there is alot of information about breastfeeding on this site, there are some relevant parenting and adoptive parenting tips as well.

This link features several apps our clients like. http://redtri.com/apps-every-new-parent-needs/slide/3

The Baby Connect Tracker App is also popular with our clients. https://www.baby-connect.com

At Gold Coast Doulas, we pride ourselves on being the premier doula agency in West Michigan. We offer judgment-free support to all families regardless of their parenting styles. We are here for your family, wherever you are in your journey.

 

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Tricia Buschert Doula

Podcast Episode #9: How to Handle a Six-Week NICU Stay

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Tricia talks about her experience with her twins staying in the NICU for six weeks.  You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa:            Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas.  I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula, and today we’re talking to Tricia.

Tricia:             Hi.

Alyssa:            She is a post-partum and birth doula with us and also our multiples expert that teaches the multiples class.  Tell us about your multiples.

Tricia:             They are two.  I have identical twin girls, Keira and Rosalind.  They also have a big brother named Gideon.  He just turned four.

Alyssa:            Okay, so for a while there, you had three under three?

Tricia:             I had three under two.

Alyssa:            Three under two!

Tricia:             They are 23 months apart, so yeah.

Alyssa:            Wow, you are wonder woman.  So when the girls were born, they had a significant NICU stay?

Tricia:             They did.

Alyssa:            And I know parents get really nervous about NICU, and Kristen had talked about how her daughter had a three-week stay.  How long were your daughters in the NICU?

Tricia:             They were in just over six weeks.  Keira was in for 41 days, and Rosalind was in for 45.

Alyssa:            Okay.  So tell us a little bit about the birth story and how they ended up in NICU and what you and your husband felt.

Tricia:             My girls shared a placenta, so we had issues for a little while.  They were monitoring really closely.  One of their placentas was velamentous cord insertion, so it was palm-shaped, and it was attached to both the placenta and my cervix.  Keira started detaching off of the placenta.

Alyssa:            So there were two placentas?

Tricia:             No.  One together; they shared.  One had two cords.  So they had separate sacks.  There are three different types of twins.  We were the second-safest, I guess is the best way.  MoMo, they share a sack and they share everything.

Alyssa:            Okay.  One sack, one placenta?

Tricia:             Yeah, which runs risks because umbilical cords can twist around each other.  We had the safe kind of identical – well, safer.  Two sacks, but they shared one placenta.  So yes, they started to do a twin-to-twin blood transfusion back and forth, and so the placenta just kind of died, or was starting to.  So Keira came out pale and not breathing at 32 weeks, and sister came out 30 seconds later.  We had an emergency C-section because Keira was originally breech, so she was going to be a C-section regardless.  She was Baby A.  But it became more emergent when they realized that she was having issues with her placenta cord or her umbilical cord.  So they both were intubated within seconds.  Their scores were super low.  I want to say Keira’s was a one and Rosalind’s might have been a two or a three.  So super low at birth.  I think the scariest part was we had our son first, so we knew that they come out crying and happy.  And the doctors, when we came into our C-section, were talking about vacations, and by the end of it, the entire room of 30 people was, like, silent.  So yeah, my husband really had a hard time with that.  We both started crying.  Both girls were fine.  Keira was pretty much whisked straight down to NICU.  Rosalind was a little bit more stable, so they were able to have her lay next to me.  I have a photo of her little finger in my finger as they stitched me up, and her just kind of sitting there.  But then she was sent back down with sister.  Thankfully, I had a postpartum doula sitting there.  My husband left for about an hour.  It was very traumatic for him to have both of his girls and me and the whole – so he went and had his time.  I really still to this day, two years later, have no idea what he did.  I know he went through a drive through, and I know he sat in his car and cried, but I had my support for me, so we both were able to be where we needed, and my support was amazing.  Having that doula there was – I honestly could not imagine being in a room with no babies; no husband, because he needed his time, and yeah.  She was phenomenal.  And we had a NICU nurse come upstairs a couple hours; it was a good couple hours and brought pictures and had weights.  And both girls at that point were stable.  Both were intubated, great.  The NICU doctor was a little concerned.  Keira’s hemoglobin was at an 8, and Rosalind’s was at an 18.  They think it happened within the first, like those last couple hours when the umbilical cord started being funky and the placenta, because it can go so quickly.  And they really don’t think it had to have been a couple hours because I was having contractions for a good 48 hours before the girls were born.  They just weren’t consistent.  But we had steroid shots prior.  They weren’t going to start labor, because at that point they didn’t think that it was – when it was going to happen, it was going to happen.  But she felt that Keira would do a lot better if she had a blood transfusion because her hemoglobin was so low for even an adult, let alone a baby.  But blood transfusions for babies are really little.  You think “blood transfusion;” you think these huge – it’s like a little syringe amount of blood.  It’s super little because they were so little.

Alyssa:            So did they explain that to you?  Because I think if somebody told me, hey, your newborn baby needs a blood transfusion, I would just break down.  So they said this is literally what it looks like?  So they just pump new blood into their vein?

Tricia:             Yeah, they did it through her head because the head veins are so nice and with babies, they still move.  They’re little babies.  She might be three pounds, but they’re tough little things at three pounds.  And so they go through the head because it’s a really good opening; they don’t have to worry about trying to do it more than once.  And so it’s a really little amount; it’s a little syringe.  Thankfully, yeah, they did explain some of that.  By that time I was pumping.  I was able to thankfully talk to a NICU nurse prior to going into NICU, so I knew that without the girls, if I wanted my milk supply to go in, I needed to have a pump within three hours.  I had to kind of fight for my pump a little bit, but I was able to get a pump in those first three hours because I was determined to have that.  I was able to see the girls for the first time a little after midnight, and they were born at 6:52 and 6:53.  So it took about four hours for me to get down there.  I couldn’t hold them or anything like that.  They were little things.  But at that point, Keira had her blood transfusion and all of that.  They were, yes, very fragile little things.

Alyssa:            What goes through your mind?

Tricia:             At that point, I think I was just so happy to see them okay that I really – I don’t think that there was much else because I had experienced her coming out not breathing and her being whisked away and knowing that I almost didn’t go in that day.  They were going to send me home.  When I went into the hospital, I came in with contractions every eight minutes apart.  I was a centimeter and a half dilated.  They thought they’d give me some fluids and send me back home at 1:00.  I went to the hospital alone; drove a friend’s car; was in my nephew’s preschool class that morning.  Like, nobody had a clue that these girlies were coming, and then 3:30, doctor comes in and, “You’re dilated to a three.  We can’t send you home.  You’re an automatic C-section.  I can’t send you home.  Contractions haven’t stopped.  You probably should call your husband.”  Husband’s going, “Do I have time to go get my oil changed?”  I’m like, “No, honey, I don’t think you do.  They’re acting like we don’t have time for this.”

Alyssa:            Maybe that’s what he did for those two hours.  “I got a burger and my oil changed and cried.”

Tricia:             Right!  So the first few days, yeah, were really just – I overdid it a little bit because the anesthesia made me feel – it takes 24 hours for anesthesia from a spinal to fully leave your system, so I could walk, I could pee, I could do all that.  I felt invincible, but you’re not invincible.  It’s the pain meds talking to you that you’re invincible.  So the first three days I pretty much – we did not really have any visitors at the hospital when I was in there, which is way different than with my son.

Alyssa:            And was that by choice?  You didn’t want anybody to come?

Tricia:             Yeah, I really didn’t.  They can’t go into NICU, and I wanted to be down with the babies.  I was up in my room to get meds, to eat, and to sleep.  And everything else I did next to the girls.  Rosalind was in – she had bilirubin lights for a couple days.  They had bradys throughout the six weeks, which is when they periodically stop breathing.  It’s a really common preemie problem is the best way I know how to put it.  It’s just that in the uterus, if they don’t breathe a second, it’s fine.  They’ve got all the stuff, so it’s them learning how to breathe.  They still have to learn how to breathe.  Rosalind had a little bit more issues with her lungs, so they were given surfactant to coat their lungs to try to help them breathe at delivery and to help their lungs grow and mature.  Keira’s lungs took it; Rosalind’s did not.  It all still, 24 hours later, it was pretty much right on the surface of her lungs kind of a concept, so she had a lot more issues breathing.  She was off and on different various c-pap and nose canula and breathing.  They both had caffeine at some point, and I remember a NICU nurse telling me to drink more caffeine because it was better that they got it through my milk vs. the little –

Alyssa:            So what is the caffeine for?

Tricia:             It’s to help with them remembering that breathing on their own, to help them be a little bit more alert.  That was my understanding, anyway.  It’s a lot of trying to get them to remember to breathe on their own because if they sleep and they forget to breathe, there’s a lot of monitors.

Alyssa:            Interesting.  I would have never thought caffeine.

Tricia:             And once again, it’s a really tiny amount.

Alyssa:            Oh, of course.  “Let’s give them a cup of coffee in a syringe.”

Tricia:             Basically!  The medical aspect of – I never thought I would know all this medical stuff, and then you have twins who spend six weeks.  Food’s in milliliters, and everything’s ounces, and those ounces matter.  Like, you don’t think about it when you’ve got a full-term baby and they come home seven pounds and four ounces.  But then you have a 3.4 and a 3.7 and they go down to the three pounds, and it’s like, you gained an ounce today!  That ounce is huge!  I exclusively pumped.  We attempted latching, but they never really got the hang of it.  Even with bottles, they were still like – part of the reason we were in NICU so long is because it took them a while to understand that oh, I have to suck, swallow, breathe.  I have to eat.  After about two weeks in for the most part they were feeder/growers.  The first couple weeks were a little bit of one step forward, two steps back.  Because Keira was under 3.5, she had to do a routine eye exam, which is because there’s a disease that they can get in their eyes if they’re on oxygen for too long.  Their birth weight’s low because most of these babies who are that little are on oxygen for a while.  And they also have to do a head ultrasound because there’s risks of breathing.  And with her routine head ultrasound, they found a pseudocyst in the left ventricle of her brain, which looked more like a blood clot.  It didn’t seem to affect function; didn’t seem to be anything too different.  They ended up doing a head ultrasound of Rosalind because they’re identical, so they were curious if it was a thing.  Both of their left ventricles are bigger than normal, I guess.  I don’t really know what that means.  Everybody’s brains look funny.  The doctor made it out like, “They’re bigger than what the normal brain is, but if we were to do a head ultrasound on you, your brain would look funny too.”  Like, there’s a very vague, “this is how your brain is supposed to look” concept.  And so they both had bigger left ventricles, but sister did not have the pseudocyst.  So they think the pseudocyst was part of delivery.  Either that blood transfusion aspect where sister was getting her blood and she was giving it, or just with the placenta and delivery being a little bit more traumatic on her little body.

Alyssa:            So is that something that goes away?  You just watch it, or did you have to –

Tricia:             It did.  It did.  They weren’t 100% sure.  It’s not something that we studied much here.  The doctor had to get a study from Sweden because they have more availabilities to that.  If it did not go away, the doctor had said that it really wasn’t going to affect any function.  It doesn’t affect anything.  Hers did dissipate.  That might be the wrong word, but it did disappear about eight, nine months in.  She had an MRI.  She’s had a couple of them, and so we are officially – neuro is done.  She’s clear.  She had a little bit of – she had to do some PT for a little bit for her right side because of just making sure everything crossed, but otherwise you would not know that she had that at all.

Alyssa:            So you said after a couple of weeks, they became feeders/growers.  Is that like a common term for NICU parents?  Like, they’re feeding well and growing, and that’s their main goal is just to keep them feeding and growing?

Tricia:             It is.  In the NICU, you start in the back.  The littler you are, you start in the back.  That tends to be –

Alyssa:            So you kind of graduate towards the front?

Tricia:             You graduate towards the door.  So when we got there, we were in this little corner, and it was both girls’ beds, and you’re in the back.  And you can tell that you take a little bit more.  A little bit more nurses, a little bit more machines.  You’re back there.  Like I said, we were 32-weekers, so we were kind of surrounded.  There was some 26-weekers.  There were some 24-weekers.  So when you’re toward the back, it’s generally – in this NICU, you’re a little bit more of a – “We need to monitor you.  You’re not as stable.”

Alyssa:            A little higher risk.

Tricia:             You’re a little bit higher risk, yeah, which it’s not that you’re not stable.  It’s just that nurses need to be checking in a little bit more and a lot of times you’re in the kangaroo pods, which are the big isolettes, and you need the darker lights and you need to be a little bit more quiet.  So you get put back there so that you can really sleep and grow, and it’s more womb-like towards the back, as womb-like as you can be in a room filled with monitors.  They give these blankets.  Each baby gets to go home with this big, oversized blanket that they put over top of the isolettes so that it can stay dark.  My girls still sleep with them at night; they’re their little NICU blankies.  Then as they get a little bit bigger, because newer babies come in that are the younger and need the quiet and the more monitoring, you get moved to the front.  And so my girls had about two and a half, three weeks and then got moved to right next to a window and right across the nurse’s station.  So yeah, then they get put into little basinets because they start being able to control their body temperature, and they are starting to breathe better, and they don’t need the c-pap.  They just have the nose canula which is a huge – the nose canula looks really scary.  It’s actually a lot better than to be intubated, but it looks a lot scarier.  So it’s got all these bigger monitors and whereas with the nose canula it’s just these little things of oxygen and it can hide behind the bed.  So yes, as they get bigger, yes, they get closer to the door.

Alyssa:            Okay.  So for a good three, four weeks they were feeders/growers?

Tricia:             They were.

Alyssa:            When do they graduate?  At what point do they say, okay, they’re good to go?

Tricia:             They have to be breathing on their own.  They need to not have bradys within – I want to say it’s 48 or 72 hours.  It’s a decent amount of time.  It might be 72 because that’s part of the reason that Rosalind ended up staying longer than Keira did is that she had a couple episodes and they can’t send – they have to make sure that she can go home not breathing.  Now, there are babies that are sent home with breathing machines and with monitors and whatnot depending on where you are and what your baby needs.  Every morning, the doctors come and they give you updates on how they fed that day and what they’re thinking about food-wise; what they’re going to add; what they’re going to change; positives that baby did.  And then they also, if you’ve got questions, doctors will sit and answer your questions.  They go through rounds.  It’s the way that they can do the nurses from the morning to the night, keep everybody up to date per baby.  So they also have to pass a car seat test.  Mom and Dad have to sit and watch three different videos.  There’s a car seat safety test.  There’s a CPR class.  There’s another one.  I cannot remember off the top of my head.

Alyssa:            But they want to make sure you’re going home prepared?  As prepared as you can be.

Tricia:             Yep, yep.  They come home, and they’re really – the nurses are all trained.  They’re trained for feeding; they’re trained for various different – there was one that was a lactation consultant, so she sat and worked a lot on trying to get the girls to latch and have to figure out some of that.  They’re really knowledgeable.  They have also social workers upstairs that come down weekly and are like, “What can we do to help?”  My husband and I had a 45-minute drive.  Our NICU gave us gas cards weekly to help pay for driving there and back and there and back.  Because there is a house that’s like right next to it, but you have to be within an hour.  So we were just close enough that really – and we had a toddler at home, so we wouldn’t have been able to really use that much anyway, but it was nice that they were like, “What can we do to help your family make this less—”

Alyssa:            A little less stressful.

Tricia:             A little less stressful; a little less, yeah.  And then usually they do a room-in, so they send you upstairs, and you’re on your own with baby.  They’ll come in and do vitals every three hours.  It’s basically like you leaving the hospital –

Alyssa:            If you would have had a full-term baby?  So you get that night, maybe, day –

Tricia:             Yep, you get that night.

Alyssa:            It’s like, okay, I can do this alone before we go home.

Tricia:             Mm-hmm.  You go home; babies are off all the monitors.  It gets a little bit of normalcy to this.  They’ll wheel you down in the wheelchair, and the whole, like, this is what you do.  Like, I did not leave from the maternity floor when I was sent home because I could not leave from that floor empty-handed.  I was like, I’m leaving from the NICU floor.  You can put everything back down to the NICU floor, I’m just leaving the hospital and then coming back.  If I leave this floor, it’s –

Alyssa:            Something in your brain just won’t let you –

Tricia:             Something in my brain.  I was leaving my girls.  I was leaving my girls together.  It was that – I’m not leaving as a postpartum mom.  I’m leaving as a mom.  And I think that for whatever reason, that made a big difference.

Alyssa:            So last question I have is you finally get to take them home.  Well, one, and then the other, but you finally have both babies home.  How do you deal with the nerves of what if they stop breathing?  I mean, every parent has this fear of what if they stop breathing in the night.  There’s all these what-ifs, and you have like a hundred more.  How do you handle that?

Tricia:             I know some parents buy the little Owlet monitor thing.  There’s a bunch of different sleeping monitors.  My girls came home on a schedule, so we kind of kept their schedule.  I will be honest; I was over their crib just kind of watching them breathe for a while.  Because you don’t, and you can’t.  There’s really not – there was an oversized chair.  I pumped in their room a lot, so I could watch them breathe while I pumped.  You kind of just eventually get a little bit less – I don’t know if it ever really goes away.

Alyssa:            Does it ever go away?  I mean, I still check my almost-five-year-old daughter’s breathing at night before I go to bed, so that never really goes away, but you get to a point where you’re like, okay, these girls are healthy; they’re going to be able to sleep through the night, and now I can sleep through the night.

Tricia:             Yeah.  I mean, I had a post-partum doula that I talked to for a while because I did have a lot of anxiety.

Alyssa:            The same one that was with you in the hospital?

Tricia:             Yes.  Due to just – yeah, I had a lot of anxiety from NICU; a lot of fears.  So talking through a lot of it helped too.  I think being able to talk it out and being, you know, they’re okay.  They’re here now.  My big thing is they’re here; they’re healthy.  They’re happy.  They’re fierce little things.  But they’ve had a really long day.  They’ve had a long rough road.  Writing it out helped too.  They have a book they both will get that is their full NICU journey.

Alyssa:            So you would write every day?

Tricia:             Pretty close.  Regularly.  I wouldn’t say every day, but pretty close.  It has their updates; it has their weights.  It talks about when Keira came home.  Actually, that was probably the hardest day of NICU was taking just one of them home because it felt so foreign to me.  I needed – I was supposed to have two.  There’s two of you.  And they’d never been apart.  At least when I left, they were still together.  It was really weird to take just her home.  It was a very bittersweet day.  Our family’s all like, “But you get to get ready for one.”  I’m like, yeah, for two days, and now I get to take this infant in and out of the hospital.  It’s not as great as you think it is.”  I mean, it had to happen.  It was fine; it was great; it was four days, and they left her bed and they made it as comfortable as they could.  So their book talks about that a little bit.  And I was a little bit more open with them in their book than I was with, like, Facebook-updating my family.

Alyssa:            Oh, I’m sure.  It will be a beautiful thing for them to read when they get older, I’m sure.

Tricia:             Mm-hmm, for them to see how far they’ve come.

Alyssa:            Yeah, and for you to remember because I feel like, you know, even a year ago, you forget little stories, and I’m a huge proponent of writing things down especially during the newborn stage because you are in this fog, and if you don’t write it down, you probably will never remember.  And kids love to hear those stories about themselves, so I think that’s a beautiful way to track that.

Tricia:             Yes.

Alyssa:            Well, thank you so much.  I feel like we have a million different multiples topics we could talk about, like your pumping alone.  I think that could be – we will definitely talk about that again.

Tricia:             Yes, I could talk for days for that, and all the places I’ve pumped.

Alyssa:            We will talk about that for sure.  Well, thanks.  If you have any questions for Tricia, contact us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.  And you can find us on our website, goldcoastdoulas.com.  Thanks for listening in today.  We will talk to you soon.

Podcast Episode #9: How to Handle a Six-Week NICU Stay Read More »

Tricia Buschert Doula

Meet our new doula, Tricia!

Meet Tricia Buschert, our newest birth and postpartum doula. She is also our new multiples expert! Let’s learn a little more about her.

1) What did you do before you became a doula?

I’ve been a stay at home mom for the last four and a half years.

2) What inspired you to become a doula?

My kids were my biggest inspiration to become a doula. After I had my son, I knew I wanted work with families, but it wasn’t until after our twin daughters were born at 32 weeks, spent 6 weeks in NICU, exclusively pumped for 10 months and struggled for over a year with postpartum anxiety did I figure out exactly what I wanted to do: become a birth and postpartum doula.

3) Tell us about your family.

I’m married to my high school sweetheart, Zach. He is an accountant and is currently working on his Masters Degree in accounting. We’ve been married 6 and a half years and have three kids. Our oldest, Gideon, will be four in a couple weeks. When he was 15 months old we were surprised to find out we were expecting identical twins. Kira and Rosalind just turned two, and being a twin mama has been one of my favorite roles ever. We also have two cats named Shanele and Layla.

As a family we love to be outside, go bowling, and go to the zoo. Gideon also loves to play Super Smash Bros with Daddy.

4) What is your favorite vacation spot and why?

My favorite spot that my husband and I have traveled to is Myrtle Beach. The beaches were gorgeous, and we had so much fun exploring the city together. One day we would love to go to Europe and travel to Scotland, Britain, and Germany.

5) Name your top five bands/musicians and tell us what you love about them.

I grew up on country music and I still love it. It’s primarily what I listen to, but I also listen to some pop and rock. I love country because there is songs for all feelings- when I’m sad, when I need some encouragement, and when I just want to dance around. I listen to pop when I need to dance around the kitchen with kids and get my heart racing during a workout.
Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Tim Mcgraw, and The Chainsmokers are some of thel bands/artists I listen to often.

6) What is the best advice you have given to new families?

A nurse in the NICU told me to find something positive in each day and I’ve shared it ever since. Even if it is “my meal was warm today” or “the baby didn’t puke on me” or “I got to snuggle the baby”. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just to find one good thing in the day that made you happy. In the beginning, with three children under two, finding something positive made the 25+ diapers, the 6-7 hours attached to a pump, and the 2 hours of broken sleep a little easier.

I also tell new parents to ask for help. Raising children takes a village, especially when you have multiples, and asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. You have to take care of you to take care of them.

7) What do you consider your doula superpower to be?

The ability to encourage others.

8) What is your favorite food?

Currently its chicken ceaser salads. I’ve been really loving them lately!
I also love sausage and egg souflee, apples with peanut butter, and Mocha lattes with coconut milk.

9) What is your favorite place in West Michigan’s Gold Coast? 

I love the Rockford Dam. There are local shops nearby, food, and our favorite ice cream place. The trail is close by for our family walks, there are often activities, and it is a fun place to bring our kids. My husband also proposed to me there and so it holds a special place in my heart.

10) What are you reading now?

Sensory Yoga for Kids: Therapeutic Movement for Children of all Abilities by Britt Collins

11) Who are your role models?

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Baby Shower Gifts

[un]common sense: Buy them what they asked for

[un]common sense is a blog about navigating through everyday life, using some common sense tips to make it just a bit easier, and sometimes a little more fun. Alyssa is a wife, mother, and postpartum doula who has some tricks up her sleeve and wants to share them with the world. Well now, don’t you feel lucky?

I recently attended a friend’s baby shower; the first I’ve been to in years. I was surprised to see that not much had changed since I had my own (over five years ago). The mother was showered with gifts alright, most of which she did not register for.

There’s nothing more annoying than opening boxes and gift bags filled with presents that your Aunt thinks “Is just the most adorable outfit ever” or your Grandmother says,”I just couldn’t pass up when I saw it!”

They have the best of intentions, but when it comes to having a baby, or babies, you don’t need extra stuff just because it’s adorable. You need practical, useful items that will make your life easier, not just make the baby or nursery look cute.

I remember after my baby showers having a pile of baby blankets, toys, and stuffed animals. What the heck was I going to do with all of it? I didn’t register for any of them, most of them were hideous, newborns don’t play with toys, and most importantly you can’t put any of that stuff in a crib, so why in the world would anyone think a baby needed all this stuff?

I returned what I could (blankets, onesies with silly phrases, gigantic toys, fancy pacifiers, stuffed animals) and donated whatever came without receipts and the stores wouldn’t take. I wonder how many hundreds of dollars were spent on those gifts, wasted. Wasted because it was not what I asked for! People took it upon themselves to decide what I needed for my baby instead of buying what I requested. It made all the time I spent researching what I needed, then registering for it, seem pointless.

So, I watched in agony as my friend opened up gift after gift that she did not register for. I watched as the mound of “Oh my god, it’s sooo soft!” blankets grew, the pile of “So stinkin’ cute!” stuffed animals overflowed, and the boxes of expensive newborn outfits began to stack up.

I wonder when people will get it? Baby showers are about the Mom and baby, not about them.

In-home support from a postpartum doula is the most wonderful gift you could give to new parents. If I could have taken the hundreds of dollars wasted on fuzzy leopard print blankets and extra large stuffed animals and put it toward a doula, you better believe I would have! My friend ended up getting a very generous amount gifted toward postpartum help because she requested it in her baby shower invites along with her registry.

If you are pregnant and planning to have baby showers, contact Gold Coast Doulas about a customized invitation stuffer. It’s an easy way to ask your friends and family for postpartum support.

The most common question I get asked as a Postpartum Doula is “What do you do for families?” It’s hard to answer because I consider my work to be fluid. It will change from family to family, and even day to day with the same family. One day a mother might need a nap, so I make sure the baby is cared for while she lies down, and maybe pick up the house a little or do some meal prep while she sleeps. The next day the same mother (because she got a nap) may be full of energy so we take our first outing together, be it to the grocery store or a walk around the block. If the mother has older children, she may feel like they’ve been neglected and want to spend some quality time with them; so again I will care for the newborn so she can focus on the older siblings.

Our services allow a mother to a nap or shower, drink a cup of tea, or finish her thank-you cards. We offer local resource suggestions for health care providers, chiropractors, mother’s groups, kid-friendly restaurants, or maybe the best place to buy a bottle of wine. We are also there for emotional support. We let her talk, cry, whatever she needs to do. And we make sure she is heard. A Postpartum Doula is an expert voice of reason that will not offer opinions or judgment.

Oftentimes new parents just need someone to guide them through the first few weeks or months with a newborn. Breastfeeding is often harder than expected. Parents finally understand what sleep deprivation means. They may be scared to give the first bath or clip baby’s nails the first time. A Postpartum Doula’s role is so very important. We are your village. We are here to support you and your family, judgment-free with no hidden agendas.

Contact Gold Coast if you have interest in any of the services we offer.

Bedrest Doulas, Birth Doulas, Daytime and Overnight Postpartum Doulas, Customized Baby Shower Stuffers, Lactation Consultations, or any of our classes including HypnoBirthing, Newborn Survival, Breastfeeding, Preparing for Multiples.

 

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