I grew up in the Iowa city area, and then attended college at Central College in Pella, IA. I met my husband Aric there, and together we went to Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. After graduation we served a church together in New York on Long Island. While we were in New York we had our daughter.

Even though I had a pretty easy pregnancy, I was surprised by how hard it was and how alone I felt throughout the process. Everybody would check on the baby growing inside me, but nobody talked to me about how I could be caring for myself too. Sure there was a birth class, but it seemd to have different assumptions than I did about what I wanted my birth to look like. I didn’t want an epidural. I didn’t want pitocin. I didn’t want my birth to feel medicalized and rushed and scary. But the more I looked into things the more I realized that although birth is natural, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Unfortunately, if we don’t prepare well then there are all sorts of things that just happen that maybe could have been avoided. I wanted to be able to listen to my body, and I wanted to help prepare myself mentally and physically and spiritually to be able to have our baby. And this actually took a fair amount of work! Before getting pregnant I had no idea how much junk and fear I had internalized about birthing a baby. I was scared! And guess what, when we are fearful-that actually gets in the way of our body doing what it would naturally do. So I started learning.

Due to concern about our girlies heart during a checkup, we decided to choose induction at 41 weeks. I was heartbroken. I thought that this meant that my hopes for what labor and birth would look like were gone. I had wanted to labor at home, I had wanted to avoid the hospital as long as possible in order to have as natural of a birth as I could. And yet, although I had to be induced all of that work still paid off! I was able to labor in the hospital and avoid pain medicine and a lot of other medical augmentations that I was hoping to avoid. It was hard work! But at the end of it we had our wonderful little girl. It didn’t look exactly as I had hoped or planned, but it was still good and beautiful and hard and worth it. But in the days/weeks afterwards I kept thinking-what if. What if I hadn’t gone in knowing all of the things that I knew? What if I hadn’t had time to really think about our birth plan? What if my labor team hadn’t actually taken the time to look at what I wanted and just rushed me through things? What if I hadn’t done the work to prepare myself? Everything could have easily looked so so differently.

The more that I thought about it the sadder and more angry I became. Why don’t we prepare people better? When something can be so amazing why are there so many women who are having traumatic births? Why don’t we educate people on breastfeeding so that if they want to do it, they can do it successfully? Why, when there are so many people who have gone through it, do people who are pregnant or have young babies feel so alone?

As we were figuring out what our lives would look like as we moved back to Iowa, I knew what I wanted to do. I researched and ended up choosing to be trained by DONA International so that I could be equipped to help pregnant and birthing people in the Des Moines area.

I’d love to be a part of helping encourage, support, and equip other women to have the births they are longing for. I wnat you to know that through all of it, the good, and the bad, the easy and one of the hardest things you might ever do-that you are not alone. Everything still may not go as you had planned (welcome to parenthood!) but you should ALWAYS feel like you are a part of the process and like your experience matters. Whether you are planning on a home birth, or a hospital birth you can do this! I’d love to be a part of helping you to have the birthing experience you are hoping for.

I am especially passionate about helping women to labor naturally, regardless of the location, if this isn’t you-that’s okay too! but if it is, you might need a little extra preparation and support and I’d love to be able to help you with that. The same is true if you are hoping to breastfeed. It is natural, but it is not always easy. I want to make sure you have as many tools in your tool belt as you can so that you can so that your breastfeeding journey can look like what you want it to.

When you are pregnant there are so many things that feel like they are happening TO you, without your input. After all, there is a little person in there who doesn’t think you ask you if you want to sleep, or eat, or be comfortable-theyr’e too busy growing! But labor and birth shouldn’t feel like something that happen to you. You are a part of this. Your whole self is a part of this. I want to help you to work with your body and your baby to have a positive birthing experience.