To help alleviate the danger in which this places home birth mothers and newborns in need of emergency transports, together with this bill, the CFIM is also introducing the Home Birth Integration Act, HB1665. This is a new approach designed to save lives in the event of a hospital transport. This bill would help eliminate the fear of repercussions for transporting to the hospital from a planned home birth with an unlicensed midwife. It is already being compared to infant Safe Haven laws which allow parents in crisis to anonymously bring newborn infants to hospitals, police or fire stations and be shielded from any subsequent arrest or prosecution. The bill has been assigned to a committee and needs to pass through this step before it can be voted on by the full House of Representatives.

Please call or email your reps to voice your support and ask them to sponsor HB1665. Roxann MtJoy at Change.org wrote this article about the bill and the site has also begun a petition you can sign today to ask your Illinois state representative for support.

Fabulous Chicago doula, Kristen Ethier, is collecting birth stories from lesbian/queer/gender non-conforming/FTM transgender parents. Send her your stories or re-post this if you know someone who would!

Rachel wants everyone to know how extremely grateful she is for the outpouring of support she and her family have received from loved ones and strangers alike. She said:

“Please just let everyone know I am just so grateful, so overwhelmed by all of the love and support we’ve received. My family and I feel like, for people who have had their house burn down, we are some of the luckiest people ever.”

She says she is still in survival mode, but already realizing how thinking like a doula and midwife student helped get her through. And when she is able, she knows she will have some stories to tell! In the meantime, she appreciates you holding her and her family in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you.

I always thought I should make more of it. I even took a website design class. I created a draft version of a very pretty website. And it sat there on my computer for years. I had no idea how to get it published. Two years ago I finally figured out that I needed to purchase a domain name. So I did. But that sat there too. When Facebook came along, I figured it out to some degree, though I only have personal pages – no business page.

Then along came Amy, a new doula on the block, with some really neat ideas. She hoped to develop a website and call it ChicagoDoula.net. I agreed to this because after all, though I’d been using the name for years, I did not yet have a website and thought I would never get around to it. Amy began building the site and after a time we realized it was something we could work on together. We began to think of ChicagoDoula as a concept rather than a specific person and several months later, here we are.

Who is ChicagoDoula? She is a little bit of everything, just like the city she serves. She is an activist, a doula, a mother, a midwife (of babies or ideas or communities), a mentor and a student. She is experienced and wise, yet she is fresh and enthusiastic and full of new ideas. She is knowledgeable about a variety of childbirth preparation techniques and is comfortable working with them. She believes that life is precious and she also believes in a woman’s right to make a full range of decisions about her reproductive health care – whether that means choosing to terminate a pregnancy, choosing an epidural for labor, or choosing a homebirth with an underground midwife. She strives to help women understand the full implications of their choices and help them find their innate power, so their choices are not driven by fear. She understands that there is no single right answer for any given situation. She is willing to support women in whatever choice is right for them.

ChicagoDoula loves her city and the people in it. She joyfully serves families from all walks of life. She is ever-hopeful with a strong vein of cynical, anti-racist, queer-friendly, working on recognizing her privileges as well as her own internalized oppression, challenging others and herself to see and understand things differently. When faced with obstacles, she looks for creative solutions rather than struggling to achieve particular outcomes.

She envisions a world where all women get the support they need across the spectrum of pregnancy, labor, birth and parenting – a world where every woman in every community has access to the information and support she wants and needs so that she can be affirmed in her choices.

She envisions a world where women are respected, safe, honored and empowered.

In short, ChicagoDoula is many things. We invite you to get to know her, us, as we continue posting here and continue building our websites.

But instead!… Instead, I got to spend it doing something I love! Something that is truly an honor. And I was rewarded by witnessing the birth of a completely posterior (and asynclitic!) baby. For those of you who don’t speak “Obstetric”, that can be a very tough birth and frequently results in a cesarean rather than vaginal delivery. Anyway – it was simply a miracle. I do love my job.

And now I am enjoying one of my favorite meals after a long day (and night) of doula work: Thai food (Panang noodles that were waiting for me in the fridge) and a dirty gin martini.

But the especially cool thing is that along with it, I got to read through so many birthday wishes from such a fantastic group of people. I got a little weepy (either the sleep deprivation or the gin or both) and thought I’d write a bit just to say: “Thank You!!” I am so glad I get to stay connected with each and every one of you.

I feel very blessed this January 23rd.

…And in case you want to know more about preventing posterior positioning – or ways to try turning a baby who’s already there. Check out spinningbabies.com!