On World Doula Week

Photo taken on January 31, 2019 on the last day of birth doula training.

Raise your hand if you’ve napped on a yoga mat with your coat as a makeshift pillow. High five if you’ve jumped in the shower fully clothed to assist in hydrotherapy. Give a shout if your entire sensory system goes soft like a noodle from the smell of a newborn baby you are caring for while the exhausted parent showers and sleeps. If you are a doula, you’ve experienced all of these magical things and so much more.

But the truth is that most people don’t even know what a doula is. To be honest, there was a time when I had no idea. And like a tree falling in the forest, it can feel like the work is somehow less valuable if there’s no one around to acknowledge its power. 

Back in 2016, I stumbled upon an online doula board after suffering my own pregnancy loss. I was simply looking to feel better. At the time, I felt alone. Isolated. I had so many friends and a close-knit family, and yet, most people don’t talk openly about miscarriages. I was looking for emotional support and through a group of doulas I finally found the connection and comfort I needed.

It was at that moment that I decided to become a birth doula and I’ve never looked back. 

Since then, I’ve launched Poppy Seed Health to make doula support more accessible and approachable than ever before. Because the moment of birth is life affirming and needs to be seen as valuable by a society in all the same ways that we hope that mothers are valued. Only when the birthing process is honored, will we finally see doulas - and the birthing people they work with - as critical to the very foundation of our country (and our world). 

We can no longer afford for doulas to be dismissed. Doulas are one of the oldest professions and we have been toiling in the metaphorical forest for too long. 

As we celebrate World Doula Week, we are shining a light on doulas everywhere, offering them thanks for doing the most important job in the world – saving lives. 

As doulas it is our calling to create the change we want to see. And at Poppy Seed Health we’re creating change by uplifting doulas, spotlighting their hard work - shepherding life, safely, from a birthing person’s first contraction to a baby’s first breath and beyond.  

With Love,

Simmone Taitt

Founder & CEO, Poppy Seed Health