Birth Philosophy of Blessed Mama Birth Care
As a Certified Labor Doula working in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area since 2020, I offer personalized birthing, lactation, and postpartum support as well as childbirth & postpartum education. My goal is to give you and your family the attention and knowledge you need to make informed decisions about pregnancy, delivery, feeding, and parenting.
I am inspired by women's strength and the miracle of birth. This inspiration is why I became a Certified Labor Doula through Maternity Wise and am proud to serve women and families throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania. I first became interested in becoming a doula in 2017 when I became inspired by a supportive doula I hired for my second and third pregnancies. I was later encouraged to become a doula by a close friend, who then was the first mother I could serve as an educator and doula.
I have three little boys of my own, and have had a hospital OBGYN, midwife center, and homebirth experience. I know what it is like to give birth and navigate both within and outside the industrial birth complex. I have personal experience with low-risk and high-risk pregnancies and what it is like to be concerned about the unknowns on the other side of delivery. In addition, I have experienced the benefits and relief of having a doula present to guide me through the portal of birth into the role of motherhood.
Every woman deserves to have someone there to guide and assist them in making educated choices about their pregnancy, delivery, and parenting. It is good to have someone to remind them that they can persevere during this time of newness. I'm here to provide evidence-based education, and emotional, physical, and personalized support, along with advocacy for your rights.
Mothers and couples who work with me will find I highly value their maintained autonomy, including mother-led labor and delivery. I recognize birth as a non-medical event that occasionally needs medical attention. High-risk pregnancies need significantly more care than healthy pregnancies- but that high-risk model of care should not be used to care for all expectant mothers.
In this vein, I acknowledge that women do not need to be empowered to give birth well or ecstatically. Instead, their autonomy, human rights, and dignity must be protected and remain intact. Under these aforementioned parameters, birth will naturally lead toward positive and non-traumatic perspectives of its' outcome.
Biblical Principles
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I am confident there is much truth to be ascertained in the metaphor of birth used throughout the Bible.
Childbirth (new physical life) is evidence of God’s mercy.
God would have been perfectly just to not allow Adam and Eve to live after they sinned against him in Eden. Ever since, we have all been born into sin and deserve death for our sin (Ps. 51:5). Life, then, is a precious gift from our holy God. Our response to life is heartfelt gratitude and humility.
God commissioned Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28), but in judgment said he would “greatly multiply pain” in being fruitful (Gen. 3:16).
In this regard (contra some philosophies of childbirth), a woman’s labor pain is unlike that of amoral animals.
Birth pains are a specific part of God’s judgment on Eve for her sin (Gen. 3:16), pointing to our need for a Savior.
But painful and mortally dangerous pregnancies are not God’s final word, for he has promised a Rescuer (Gen. 3:15)! The pain we experience in childbearing is a call to repentance and faith, like a flashing neon sign pointing us to the cross, where Jesus suffered in our place to deliver us from the wrath of God (Rom. 5:9).
All women and babies delivered though the pains of labor are recipients of God’s undeserved, common grace.
We should all rejoice in God's triumph of life over death in childbirth, even if we live in a time/place where safe pregnancies and births are more common than not. Further, we understand that all people everywhere who are delivered through the Redeemer who was “born of a woman” (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 7:14; Gal. 4:4; 1 Tim. 2:15) are recipients of God’s undeserved, saving grace. What wondrous love!
Jesus is our Redeemer.
Shockingly, our Redeemer came into this world as we all did—through the judgment of birth pain. Because of his sacrifice on the cross, we now have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace (Eph. 1:7). We do not have redemption or forgiveness through our fertility.
We do not “trust birth” or our bodies; we place our trust in the living God in whose hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind (Job 12:10).
The Lord himself is our refuge (Ps. 18:1–2), not any training, experience, person, book, facility, method, or plan.
God is the Creator of everything, including childbirth.
From eternity past, God ordained Jesus’s nighttime words to Nicodemus: “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). We could infer that one reason God created childbirth was so we could have a picture to help us understand what it means to be converted: called out of darkness into his marvelous light. “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” Peter declares, “born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:3, 23).
Both “natural childbirth” and “medical childbirth” are no more human accomplishments than is the act of receiving mercy from God.
We all make our boast in Christ alone; he deserves all the praise at all times in all circumstances.
The flexible metaphor of birth pain appears throughout Scripture.
In one place, the apostle Paul uses it to explain how our suffering produces future glory. Christians expect final deliverance from sin and death; however, in this present time we groan [as in birth pain] inwardly, as we suffer with Christ, “that we may also be glorified with him.” Because of this hope, our sufferings “are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:17–25; cf. 2 Cor. 4:16–18). In other words, the joy of resurrection life outweighs the pain it takes to produce it. This is yet another way the process of childbirth points us to Christ.
Jesus was crucified in our place for our sin, according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.
God then raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by death (Acts 2:22–24). Whenever a woman or child is overcome by death in the process of childbirth, we grieve deeply. Pain and death are not benign “facts of life.” But we don’t grieve as those who have no hope, for the Day is coming when the one who overcame the pangs of death will bring to life again those who have fallen asleep (1 Thess. 4:13–14). All our groanings will end when we finally see what we’ve been hoping for, as the consummation of God’s promised restoration bursts forth in full (Rom. 8:23–25).
God is in the business of transforming us, and motherhood is an expedient way to raze and rebuild us.
God will use our history, our past education, and our pre-motherhood achievements for a purpose we may not immediately like: to show us who we are when they are taken from us- their worth only transfers if they bear fruit in disciplining our character toward greater godliness, greater Christlikeness.
Motherhood has eternal significance.
When we look at Christ’s work for us, we see that he held nothing back. If what Paul says in Colossians is true—that Christ made all things, that he is before all things, that he holds all things together, and that all things are being reconciled to God through Christ—then I think it’s safe to say that all things a Christian mother does have eternal significance
We give our all because that is what Jesus did, and we can do so by His power and strength.
There was nothing half-hearted about Jesus’s dying on the cross. As the old hymn reminds us, “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.”