Get to know Poppy advocate Jennifer
Birth doula, a placenta specialist, and a student midwife. She is also a licensed pediatric nurse (but is not currently practicing while completing her midwifery education at Midwives College of Utah). She is also apprenticing with a preceptor, which means that her days are filled with school work, prenatal and postpartum visits, all while on call for births.
Jennifer is a mom of six who is pregnant with baby number seven. Her children are 16, 14, 12, 10, 6, and 3 years old, and she homeschools them. Flexibility is very important, which makes Poppy a good fit for Jennifer. With Poppy since the beginning, Jennifer started out as part of a doula co-op in South Jersey along with six other doulas when the founder heard of Poppy Seed Health and reached out.
Having the experience of being part of a doula co-op—and part of the Poppy advocate network—allowed Jennifer to work alongside people doing a lot of different modalities, like childbirth educators, placenta encapsulation specialists, breathwork facilitators, and more. After moving from New Jersey to Delaware, she saw firsthand what it was like to be in a birth worker desert. Poppy has been an opportunity to connect with people across the country who might be in those same birth worker deserts, and who may have issues finding doulas or midwives, or simply finding adequate, quality care. Jennifer stresses how important this is especially for people of color: “That was my main thing. I wanted to be able to help people of color birthing, people of color who may be getting the wrong information from their care providers, or from their team. They may be getting the wrong information or maybe they don't know the things to ask, or maybe they don't know what to look out for. So that's part of why I came into Poppy— because I'm like, look, the more people that I can help, and maybe [I can] help them avoid these really dire situations, especially if they're in a birth worker desert.”
What is her favorite thing about being a Poppy advocate?
“I love that I am able to help more than one person at once.”
Jennifer shares that what stands out to her is how broad Poppy's reach is. She says: “What stands out, in particular, are experiences where we are reaching beyond pregnant and birthing people. I have had chats with support people, for example, [and] I was able to support somebody who [may not have experienced] a loss, but they were reaching out on behalf of their best friend, because they wanted to know how they could better support their friend who had just experienced a late-term stillbirth, what resources were available, and what could they do. I was just like, ‘wow,’ this extends farther than people who are experiencing it themselves. It just opened up and broadened the horizon of what Poppy really is, and what it can do.”
Jennifers #1 tips for…
New parents/ Fourth trimester
Accept the help that you are offered. A lot of times in the fourth trimester, family members and friends mean well—they come over and they want to hold the baby. They have their hands out for the baby and are asking: “What can I do? What do you need?” Accept that! Before you even have the baby, draw up a list of things that you would want to be done around the house, or foods that you would like to have. Put up a sign on your door when you have the baby saying: “Hey, we appreciate your love. We appreciate your support. But these are things that we need to be done. If you're coming over. Great! I'm not playing host, I need you to:
→ do a load of laundry
→ watch the older kids
→ bring a dish
Pregnancy
Research everything and know your options.
Do not be afraid to ask questions of your care provider, but if you are: find another care provider. They work for you, not the other way around.
What does Jennifer like to do in her downtime?
She is a HUGE self-proclaimed theater geek: “I love musical theater. I'm obsessed with it. 2021, even though the shitty year, was my year for musical theater with “tick, tick… BOOM!” and “In The Heights.” I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Lin Manuel Miranda is probably one of my favorite people ever.”
She also loves Grey's Anatomy and This Is Us. She loves music and has eclectic taste. As a birth worker, she has heard a lot of labor playlists. As for her own, it will be full of 80’s and 90’s hits—like the Backstreet Boys and Boyz II Men. She has this to say: “I'm very strange when it comes to labor. I don't like all the like Zen stuff. I can't move to that. So I need dance music. Give me N-Sync [and] I’ll be out there doing the entire routine. Give me lots of musical theater. Give me Patrick Hall. I'm obsessed with him. I love him so, so much.”
You can follow Jennifer’s midwifery journey on Instagram here: @motherhood_and_midwifery