My name is Laurie. I am married to Mark, and we have been together since 1982. We have eleven children and two grandchildren. Yes, you have guessed it; I love motherhood, children, babies, and birth.
Our family has been knitted together by God through birth and adoption. I relished my own pregnancy days of boasting and loving my very large belly; and I am delightfully thankful for the brave and exceptional women who carried my babies to term for me to love for a lifetime.
Since I was a young child I have been fascinated with pregnancy, birth, and babies. I was mesmerized and enchanted with large families, dreaming of having one myself some day.
As a teenager, I inwardly longed to help pregnant teens with untimely pregnancies. Consequently, another dream actually came true. I am an avid pro-life advocate and have served in many different capacities for two different pregnancy centers.
As I became a mother, and gave birth to my two eldest children, I realized how lost and uneducated I was at both births. Why? Even though I took childbirth education classes, read a ton of books, and followed all the advice from my doctors, I was still very unprepared and scared during labor. Although my husband was a great coach, I longed for the busy OB nurse to stay with me. I felt secure and nurtured from the few minutes she could be with me each hour. However, I was never told I could leave my bed, or get up from the lithotomy position during labor. When they gave me pitocin, and a cervical block, that didn't work, I had no idea what was going on. As I look back on my experience, I realize I was an inactive, passive participant. I would have loved an advocate who explained what was happening to me, and stayed with me for continuous labor support. Woman serving and supporting women in labor is essential. A doula never, ever, takes the place of partner and family support. I would have loved a doula. My story is not unusual or odd. I have heard from hundreds of women throughout the years the same type of birthing stories. This is what inspired me to become a doula.
How blessed we are to have doulas available today, as we did many years ago, when women helped women birth. What a pleasure and honor it would be to become your "woman's servant" doula.