Salve Regina Birthing Services

05/31/2025

My sweet client and her husband gifted me these flowers and they wrote me a sweet card which petitioned the Blessed Mother for her assistance in helping me continue my ministry. This work, birth work, it’s precious. It is a ministry, truly. Praying for all the future families I may work with.

05/25/2025

Don’t be afraid to reach out to me. I can be a safe place and I have good resources to share. As a mama myself, I have suffered from Postpartum Mood disorders with every one of my 7 little blessings. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!

Reach out to the pregnant women and postpartum women in your life. They need you more than you know.

05/20/2025

Waking up and driving these empty roads at 2 am. Welcomed a sweet little one in the early morning hours. So proud of this mama and in utter awe of the bodies God gave us women. Tears were shed by all as this mama welcomed baby. Watching babies being born brings me to my knees every time. Happy Feast Day to Saint Bernardine of Siena and Happy birthday to a new little baby!

03/01/2025

This little one had a fun day meeting clients with Mama. So blessed to be back to birth work after a long break!!

04/10/2024

“Birth is sacred because Mary threw open the portals of her flesh to the ‘first-born of all creation.’” - Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

04/07/2024

Sometimes birth looks like hanging out in the back of a truck, going to the park to walk, taking a field trip to Trader Joe’s and snagging some goodies, then finishing at Walgreens to grab combs.

Birth is beautiful and each birth has a unique story in how it came about. When I say each birth is a gift to behold, I don’t say that with false feeling. I tear up at every birth, because I know in that moment the life this Mama has carried for 9 months is being brought into the world living and breathing. This life that God ordained be brought into this world is brought to fruition.

So happy for this Mama!! This birth had some unknowns towards the end and she continued on with faith in God plan. She and her husband worked as a team so beautifully. He kissed and reassured her of her strength. She peacefully birthed her baby down and I watched in awe at her amazing composure. Then it was time to meet her baby.

The last photo is an after birth snack this family shared. Yummy homemade deer sausage. Loved it!!

03/15/2024

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The system is not your God (unless you allow it to be). You don’t owe it allegiance, obedience, unquestioning loyalty, or blind faith.

Surrendering in birth means honoring and receiving how God and His design is working within you and being open to the plan He has for its timing, its intensity, its challenges, its length, its beauty, its rawness, the direction God leads. That is NOT the same as surrendering to a manmade system.

Placing the rules of a system or the opinions of people within it above what is right and good for you and your baby could even be a form of idolatry. It is virtue to question a flawed and corrupt system. It is virtue to prudently discern these big decisions in truth and wisdom. It is virtue to advocate that God’s design and human dignity be honored.

The system has proven it does not fear God or His design for fertility, conception, pregnancy, marriage, family, birth, and postpartum and its outcomes reflect that. It often actively works *against* that design.

Religious women can fall into the trap of conflating surrendering to the system with surrendering to the Savior. Sometimes it’s a way to hide a lack of faith or a fear of taking responsibility. Perhaps they never have even considered there are other options. Perhaps they’ve been led to a false martyrdom that God actually never asked of them.

Can God sometimes be directing us to work within that system and benefit from its tools? Absolutely. But we know that in the majority of cases, women need no intervention to birth as God designed. We know inserting medical interventions without need harms more than it helps. We know the root of many of them is control and efficiency not the fruits or gifts of the Spirit.

Perhaps women in our time are being called to heroic virtue by calling out a system that has been desecrating what is holy and by demanding better. Perhaps God is inviting us to step out in courage and be the generation that gives birth back to God and back to women.

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02/27/2024

Be patient mama! And don't let anyone rush your body!!

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Those last weeks of pregnancy can be so. hard. The waiting sometimes feels excruciating and each day feels like a week. But our babies need not only the early rains but those late rains, too. How much more precious are our babies than any fruit, right?

We’ve been led to believe that the last weeks of pregnancy are superfluous. In a spirit of arrogance, women are told by the medical system that those weeks don’t matter or worse, even told they’re dangerous! Women are treated as a ticking time bomb ready to explode. But that is a lie. God knew what He was doing.

Every single day matters to your baby. Every single day is written in His plan. We know their lungs and digestive systems are continuing to develop every single one of those days. How many things have we *yet* to learn about the critical development happening in utero during those last days and weeks. How prideful to assume we know better or that taking a baby out early won’t have consequences. How many mothers and babies have been hurt by forcing them out before their time? Our induction rates continue to increase and yet we have seen that it has NOT improved outcomes for mothers or babies. They’ve actually gotten worse.

It’s so important to allow the flower to bloom only when ready, the fruit to drop in its own time, not ours. A farmer knows not to meddle with the seed in the ground lest he damage it. A florist knows not to force the bud open lest she crush it.

Can we apply that same principle to our precious babies, trusting that God knew what He was doing?

Can we trust that the Creator designed our bodies and theirs to work in a beautiful symbiotic relationship, opening at the time they both know is best, initiating the birth process when both are truly ready?

Can we learn to intervene in that delicate process as rarely as possible only when clearly necessary and only with an abundance of caution and gentleness?

Be patient, sisters, until the coming of your baby. Your birth is at hand and the precious fruit will be sweeter and healthier for the wait.

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02/23/2024

As I am interviewed by more mamas, I have an overwhelming since of gratitude. Gratitude at being invited into the space of these families. Being invited to hold the Mamas. Too often in our culture we are FORGETTING TO HOLD THE MAMAS!! Next time you visit a friend or family member who recently had a baby, ask how you can "hold" the mama.

02/08/2024

I will never stop shouting from the rooftops, that EDUCATION IS EMPOWERMENT!

In every aspect of our lives, we owe it to ourselves to keep learning. Once you know a thing, it's powerful, so powerful that literally no one can take it away from you.

In a birth setting, depending on your provider, that provider may become intimidated by your amount of knowledge or your line of questioning and the need to know more. Many providers are used to clients who don't ask questions or challenge them much less. It's okay, be THAT WOMAN!

As a doula, my main goal is not only to support you physically and emotionally, but to also encourage you to seek out the answer. I often refer my clients to evidence based birth. Their database provides an amazing frame work of information that isn't biased, but based on educational research.

Maybe you don't feel like you need to "know" the ends and outs about the information surrounding birth and newborn care. But, would it hurt? It can only serve to EMPOWER YOU! As a parent we will have to make so many endless decisions. What pediatrician will I use? Vaccines, school choice, diet, environmental toxins, baby led weaning, etc!! It's an exhaustive list!! We can't hide from having to make choices in parenthood or life in general. It can be a lot at first and it can seem overwhelming. Make one choice at a time. Make a first step. Start now.

How can I help you?

02/07/2024

Sometimes client meetings look like a mini girls night! Dinner and great conversation!! Tonight this sweet mama and I talked over her birth plan, life, and faith.

02/06/2024

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Just going ahead and birthing a “big” baby is safer than going to a provider who fears them and freaks out about them.

Evidence continues to show that a provider just THINKING you might have a big baby is actually MORE dangerous than having one. Out of their fear these providers often cause the issues (or other ones) that they say they are trying to prevent.

Did you know that?

So many women are told their baby is “getting too big”, often with no specifics on what that actually means, and then pressured into interventions and fear because of it.

The interventions and procedures that happen due to a suspected “big” baby (extra ultrasound, induction, continuous monitoring, Pitocin, timelines, cesarean, etc.) contain MORE risk than a mother actually just simply going ahead without them and giving birth vaginally to that said “big” baby.

Even according to ACOG itself, induction *does not* improve outcomes for suspected “big” babies and cesarean is not even supposed to be offered to healthy moms unless a baby is suspected to be over 11 lbs. Even THEN they admit it’s not based on research evidence. And even THEN we know ultrasound is not at all a reliable way to estimate size.

REMINDER:
👏🏽Your body is intricately and intentionally designed for your baby. God designed our bodies to birth babies of all sizes.👏🏽

(How much you want to bet we’re going to someday find out the same exact thing when it comes to birthing a “small” or misdiagnosed IUGR baby?)

My biggest baby of my seven: 9 lbs. 1 oz. and he was out of my 5’ 2” petite body in two pushes.

Share your empowering “big” baby stories and offer some encouragement to some of the pregnant mamas out there!

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