Qualification & Experience

Labor Maiden Birthing Services is happy to provide this information to ensure the birthers that Kate (the owner, operator, educator, doula, and CNA) has the credentials you're looking for! In addition to certifications, this page offers the curious an opportunity to learn about her life and values.

Please allow yourself to “pre-screen” this way and then schedule an in person meet-up to confirm you feel safe, respected, and honored.

You deserve to feel that way by the people who get the privilege of baring witness to your birthing journey!

Certified Childbirth DOula

I am certified and experienced as a doula who compassionately serves birthers through their sacred passage as needed for their unique context. For a detailed explanation of what doula care may look like for you, I have created a breakdown of what kind of care is common on my Professional Birth Support. However, your labor and birth-care is as individual as you are!  There are no cookie-cutter plans when it comes to making you feel safe and comfortable.  What your specific care will look like will be co-created through conversation and informed by real-time events that cater to your values and needs.

Though I am honored by my credentials, my true qualifications are found in my innate conviction that all birthers have spiritual needs, and the right to be educated, supported, loved and cared for with tender compassion! Therefore, I believe am qualified most by my genuine love and call to birth work more than any of my formal paperwork. I have experience loving on birthers (and their families) for the following types of births: 

• Survivors of sexual violence

• Survivors of severe religious trauma

• Birth-center births

• Hospital births

• Stillbirths

• Medically managed births

• Epidural births

• Unmedicated births

• Water births

• Military service members

• VBAC births

• Birthers who have physical and neurodiverse disabilities

• Teen birthers

• Unpartnered parents

• Premature births

• Cesarean births

In addition to my years of experience and general doula training, I also have advanced training in:

• Chestfeeding/Nursing

• TENS unit use for labor (I own one for my client's use)

• Prenatal visit care

• Innfant loss

•  Placenta encapsulation

• Rebozo use

With my Master of Divinity degree and years as a Reverend offering spiritual support for a variety of faith traditions. The needs, like all care, is specified to the person but I am especially, personally passionate to offer empathetic consultation and workshop support for a variety of topics such as:

• Processing fears and concerns about birth, sex, and role as a survivor of trauma.

• Relationship to one's body and rewriting any harmful narratives attached to it.

• Relationship to one's identity as you and your household shift into new roles

• One's understanding and beliefs about sex as it relates to the body, relationship, and sacred text.

• Preparation for parenthood

• Reintroducing yourself as a parent and sexual being.

Certified Childbirth Educator

The motto for the organization ICEA which certified me is, "Freedom of choice based on knowledge of alternatives." I fully value the emphasis put on education and personal preference and recognize that neither is more important than the other! I love attending additional training and studying birth, methods of education, and childbirth culture academically but also (more often) as a recreational activity.  I would do this whether I was a professional or not out of sheer fascination.

I absolutely LOVE sharing my knowledge and transferring skills to families!

For you, I imagine learning all there is to know about the body of our beloved birther is an overwhelming task! Especially with so many potential sources out there and limited ways to filter that information. That's why I am here! Feeling secure in navigating what is important for you, based on trusted knowledge and curated education doesn't have to be overwhelming.  It can be inspiring and even fun!  It can free you to know your whole self in ways that will serve you beyond the birthing.

That is why I teach classes. You are already the best expert on yourself. support you with information, questions, and possible structures will allow you to thrive in your agency and become more of who you already are.

I love to teach about childbirth!  In private classes, I customize each class, transforming myself into your personal guide, navigating you through whatever path best suits your goals.  I share, with enthusiasm, audio-visual aids, simple language, and with your ongoing participation, what to expect and maximize your once-in-a-lifetime birthing experience.

I teach both in-home private classes and FREE community classes. The private classes that are fully tailored to your birthing value and goals in the comfort of your own home. This is about a two-hour class and often works as a doula interview as we get to know each other.  

The community class is generalized for the collective and is a FREE opportunity for ANYONE to come and have a source of quality information amidst the massive enigma of the internet or a bottomless pile of library books! Check out the details here. 

Body-Faith

As the founder, I am absolutely compelled to curate spaces to help create body faith. Why? Because most of my life, my personal ideology was the exact opposite: body anti-faith. Because of this, my faith formation taught me to believe about God and my body. I felt that my body was something corrupt and bad. that the very skin that allowed my spirit and soul to play and move in the world was fundamentally corrupt. Well intended spiritual leaders train me to hate my body and treat it as my constant adversary. Those well intended spiritual leaders, without proper theological training, deeply impacted my subconscious mind, until I most sincerely believed that my body was something that I should spend my entire life trying to escape it, taught me that my body's sense of knowing or intuition, or desire or capacities we’re all just tools and strategies to distract me from what is actually good for my soul.

My deep desire for you, my readers, is that you shutter at this thought, and wonder how it could’ve ever become so embedded into my being because it feels so obviously untrue in your experience of your body and your experience of the divine. But for me, and so many others, living my life while actively attempting to disenfranchise myself with the very skin I live in led to many painful, self sabotaging, and difficult internal wars with myself.

Anything my body did, I treated it as suspicious and assumed it to be inherently evil, just like I was taught.

• That includes sex.

• And that includes naturally occurring sexual desire.

• That includes life-giving, menstruation of blood.

• That includes shame with bowel movements.

• That includes being pregnant.

• And that includes birthing.

•  That includes prioritizing my body’s health with things like organic food or exercise.

•  That includes any pleasurable sensation I might feel, including natural dopamine or serotonin.

My own journey of learning how to love my body, and all the miraculous things that it can do was a turbulent and deeply satisfying part of my story that has impacted every other piece of my identity.

It took incredible courage for me to separate myself from the people and places that reinforced my internalized oppression was a panic inducing, daily struggle of self-doubt and intense fear. There was so much unknown on the path to my own liberation. How deeply I desired to have a trustworthy, reverent fellow-journey, who could validate, I am my deconstruction, and the beauty of my becoming.

This is why offering gentle and steadfast, support, and love to my clients as they reimagine and rebuild the narrative say have been taught until they find their own liberation of body Dash faith – love courses through my veins and seeps out of my entire being with parallel empathy and protective conviction.

I bear witness to your own, becoming, to your bodies, liberation, not just as a human who can relate to that journey from my own life experience but also as a professional. Utilizing my unique blend of skills, we can nourish your soul as your body navigate practical transitions, drawing from my academic knowledge, as a master of divinity, as a certified nursing assistant, as an internationally licensed childbirth educator, as a certified childbirth and labor delivery Doula, as a liberation minister.

Certified Nursing Assistant

I admire the skill of your medical team and was excited to learn more about the medical community.  Becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant expanded my understanding of how to better care for my dear clients and communicate with those honored experts.   This comes in most helpful when serving clients who choose a hospital setting. The staff knowing I am also a CNA creates a unifying element and assures them that I understand my role in that place.

Providing medical care is outside of my scope of practice while serving you in the role of a doula. However, I am available for hire to provide postpartum care as a certified caregiver on an as-needed basis. Also, as CNA, in some births, the medical care team has allowed me to shift my role to assist if needed if all parties agreed.

*Also, during the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am grateful that is some cases, this additional license allowed me to stay with my clients when personal support was so restricted.

EXPERIENCE & Getting to know Kate

A lifelong commitment to families

I had a rough childhood. If you are familiar with the Adverse Childhood Experiences assessment (learn more here) I am rank as a 9 out of 10. Whoa! That is a lot of early trauma. Some of us have known dysfunction as our most consistent companion. I began to yearn for a calmer and more secure life, free of the skills that helped me to survive and free to thrive and that meant I had a lot of intimidating learning to do. It has taken a lot of personal and intentional work to escape my behavior patterns that were appropriate for those settings, and renew my relationship with my own story and self to transform my identity into a woman who fully loves herself and is willing to keep learning what that looks life.

I remember attending 10 different schools before sixth grade, living in a home with only two books (one edition of the Berenstain Bears and the other, stacks of TV Guide). My own mother, exhausted from a lifetime of trauma, made regular drug use and a home full of strangers normalized. All that created a child who became a caretaker as a child. Obviously, this is not healthy. For the sake of helping others know they are not alone, these things are true in my story:

• Survivor of multiple attacks of sexual violence

• Food instability

• Repeated time in foster care, primarily for neglect

• Being unsheltered

• Survivor of domestic abuse

• Early exposure to substance misuse

• Poverty

• Mental illness in my caregivers

• I am neurodivergent

• I have been diagnosed with Complex Religious Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

• I am a high school dropout

Now, I am a woman passionately fueled to bring restoration to hearts that feel forgotten and minds that have simply never known anything other than what their environment showed them. I have first-hand experience with the value of re-learning one's own story, learning to love ourselves, investing in children, and supporting and equipping parents to prevent our unhealed wounds from being transmitted to the next generation.

Along with my personal healing, my public roles have also undergone a transformation as well. I have held many roles from Sunday School teacher to youth leader, to camp counselor, to stay-at-home mom, to homeschool parent, to tutor, to foster parent, to nanny, to the Director of Family Ministries, to Pastor, to innovator, to substance prevention specialist, and to public education teacher -- and all those opportunities have enhanced my calling in birth work.

 Serving families my entire adult life has been rewarding.

This has provided me with a personal opportunity to process, heal, and re-create my own narrative.

I have found my birthwork to be pivotal in that profess and profoundly satisfying. 

It is more than a job. It is a mutually healing calling.

Commitment to Inclussion

I am passionate about all people belonging. I am grateful to serve at a local, liberal, progressive church where all dogmas, life styles, and choices are respected with equal value.  This shift in spiritual culture is long overdue in my life.  I didn't even know there were churches that advocated so well for inclusion.  This, of course, flows in direct harmony with my Labor Maiden Birthing Services values because all families deserve the rights of honor, love, and support.  Families are for everyone. 

I have no exceptions nor preferences on the religious view points of those I serve.  I recognize all people as spiritual beings no matter how/if they choose to explore that part of themselves. I deeply believe we all have more to unite us as one people than to divide us.

As a queer woman myself, earning my Master of Divinity degree was a way for me to heal from my own religious trauma and reclaim my own spiritual identity.

Random Kate Facts

• I am mesmerized by magic with the same wonder and enchantment of an ignorant 6 year old.

• I wish I could say I am a gardener-- But I think that requires things growing on purpose. So it is more accurate to say I like to play in the dirt.

• Despite my angry allergies, I LOVE being outside: hiking, camping, walking, sunbathing, reading, ect. Outside is my happy place.

• Vitamin D is a saturating, instantly sleep-inducing source for me... I must have been a spoiled house cat in another life.

• I appreciate quick wit and any excuse to laugh (unless it causes harm, of course.) I am shamelessly impressed with a well placed pun.

• I am a total sci-fi nerd. Mostly Star Trek, Next Generation.

• I enjoy historical novels, and dystopian themed recreational reading.

• I'm a wanna-be vegan.... But cheese is sooooooo amazing...

Kate is a mother

Mini version of my birth stories:

The birth of my firstborn was in 2005 in Washington State. I was thrilled to be a parent but terrified about the birthing process! I had to own my anxiety and actively search to discover peace in my mind and prepare myself for what to expect. I began to research birth. I wanted to learn to appreciate birth the way it occurs if not interrupted. My journey led me to a Bradley Method coach who further challenged me to not just release my fear but also to embrace my birthing experience. 

It was a wonderful time of personal growth for me.  I went from wanting a planned, non-medically necessary cesarean section (trying desperately to control the situation) to birthing all naturally in a freestanding birthing center.  I was surrounded by family and friends with singing, prayers, and a host of love. It was an exhausting and wonderful water birth. There way no way I could've actually been fully ready and yet it was a deeply spiritual experience for me that I never thought was possible!

I began labor with my next two children for about 20 months before delivery- Now, don’t be alarmed... They joined my family by adoption.  :)  The labor (waiting, legalities, prayer, and paperwork) was truly exhausting and quite emotional.  It was by far the most challenging of all my children's entry into our family but also the easiest actual birth!  In a 7-minute court hearing, they became my babies!  I offer gratitude to the birth families who brought them into my delighted world.

My most recent birth was an unmediated, hospital birth in 2007 in Indiana state.  This was a difficult situation for me.  My desire was for a home birth but I felt personally conflicted with the ethics of being attended by a midwife at home because at that time the state's legislation forbid a midwife from serving in homes.  I ended up birthing at the hospital, which triggered a lot of anxiety for me. 

Hospital births offer no less value, of course. However, after tending to my ailing mother, in and out of hospitals my whole life, the hospital was a challenging place for me to relax and surrender to.   At that time, I assisted the hospital environment with sadness, uncertainty, and fear. This is a personal testimony of why I am so passionate about a woman having the option to birth wherever she feels most safe, loved, and supported. I did have the best birth the atmosphere would allow me and had wonderful support. (Thanks you, Erin, my doula!)

Through this journey of my own life, I recognized the immense value of this sacred season (pregnancy, birthing, and parenthood) of life.  I am convinced that quality education and support can take what may be considered a hardship and transform it into a life-defining, sacred memory of your own becoming!

I began labor with my next two children for about 20 months before delivery- Now, don’t be alarmed... It was an adoption.  :)  The labor (waiting, prayer, legalities, and paperwork) was truly exhausting and quite emotional.  It was by far the most challenging of all my children's entry into our family but also the easiest actual birth!  In a 7-minute court hearing they became ours!  How we celebrated!

My most recent birth was an unmediated, hospital birth in 2007 in Indiana state.  This was a difficult situation for me.  My desire was for a home birth but I felt personally conflicting with the ethics of being attending by a midwife at home because at that time the state's legislation forbid a midwife from serving in homes.  I ended up birthing at the hospital. 

Hospital births offer no less value, of course. However, after tending to my ailing mother, in and out of hospitals my whole life, the hospital was a challenging place for me to relax and surrender to.   The environment of the hospital itself I associated with sadness, uncertainty and fear.  This led to a great deal of unnecessary anxiety for me. This is a personal testimony of why I am so passionate about a woman having the option to birth wherever she feels most safe, loved and supported. I did have the best birth the atmosphere would allow me with wonderful support.

Through this journey of my own life I recognized the immense value of this sacred season of life.  I am convinced that quality education and support can take what may be considered a hardship and transform it into a life defining, sacred memory.