Nurturing Births Doula Services

06/24/2026

Tearing is such a common fear many women have. Here are some ways to minimize the chances of tearing.

The two biggest fears I hear from women about pushing are tearing and p**ping.

We will address the p**p another day. Today, let's talk about tearing.

Because tearing is one of those things that sounds terrifying in theory and is almost always far more manageable in reality.

First, let's normalize it.

Some degree of tearing happens in many vaginal births. Your body is doing something remarkable - stretching to accommodate a whole human being emerging into the world. Minor tears are common. Significant tears are far less so, and there are things that can be done to lessen the risk of one.

Here's what actually makes a difference:

Upright positioning. When you birth upright, squatting, on hands and knees, or kneeling, you are working with gravity and allowing your pelvis to open fully. You are also distributing pressure more evenly around the perineum rather than concentrating it in one place the way lying on your back does.

Avoiding coached pushing. When someone counts to ten while you hold your breath and bear down with everything you have, you are forcing your baby out faster than your tissue can stretch to accommodate. Slower, physiologic pushing, following your body's urges rather than a countdown, gives your perineum time to stretch gradually.

Water birth. Warm water relaxes and softens perineal tissue, making it significantly more pliable. Many midwives and research studies have noted lower rates of severe tearing in water birth.

Warm compresses. Applying warm compresses to the perineum during pushing softens tissue, increases blood flow, and supports gentle stretching. This is something we do routinely at births.

Slowing down at crowning. When baby's head is crowning, slowing the push and allowing the head to ease out gently rather than explosively makes an enormous difference. This is that moment when your midwife says "breathe, don't push" and you want to throw something at her. Trust her. This is why.

And if a tear does happen?

At home, we assess every tear carefully. We are trained to identify what needs suturing and what does not. And here is something that surprises many people: minor tears often heal better on their own than with sutures.

Your body knows how to heal itself. Good nutrition, resting in bed and avoiding activity, and proper care can resolve small tears beautifully without intervention. We do not suture simply out of habit or because a tear exists. We recommend suturing when it’s genuinely the best option.

Tearing is not a failure.

It is not something that happens because you did something wrong. It is a normal part of birth for many women, and in most cases it heals completely and causes no long term issues.

What can sometimes make the difference is how you birth. The position you push in. The pace you push at. The support you have around you.

These things matter. And they are within your reach.

06/13/2026

One of the best things you can do for your postpartum health, and to get your baby off to a good start with breastfeeding, is to plan to rest after the birth and arrange for postpartum support. Infections, such as mastitis, should be added to this list. Mastitis shows up when the mother has been doing too much. It goes away when she exclusively focuses on rest and breastfeeding her baby.

06/02/2026

Infant survival = many caregivers. Grandmothers exist and humans have a long lifespan because it increases infant survival. Parenting was never meant to be done alone.

Why are human babies so helpless, and how did our ancestors keep them alive for 300,000 years? This video dives into the deep evolutionary history of parenti...

03/23/2026

Fathers, you can be as involved with your children as you want to be! The more they’re loved and held, the better. Babies can never be spoiled with too much holding, comforting and snuggles. That’s why they’re small, portable and irresistibly adorable 😉

Among the Aka people of the Central African rainforest, fathers hold or stay within arm's reach of their infants for nearly half of every 24-hour period—around 47% of the time, the highest level of direct paternal proximity ever recorded in any human society.

This is not a modern experiment in equal parenting. It is a centuries-old way of life, documented by anthropologist Barry Hewlett who lived among the Aka for years. Infants are rarely apart from human contact; they are held, carried, soothed, and surrounded by attentive caregivers all day long. Care is not rigidly divided into “mother’s work” and “father’s work.” When mothers are away hunting or gathering, fathers step in fully—holding, feeding, comforting. Roles shift fluidly. Care flows wherever it is needed.

In some cases, Hewlett observed fathers allowing infants to suckle on their ni***es for comfort when mothers were absent. The practice is not nutritional in the way breastfeeding is, but it provides soothing and connection—skin-to-skin reassurance that calms a fussy baby when the primary caregiver is unavailable.

Just pause and take that in.

In much of the modern world, nurturing is often treated as secondary, feminine, or optional for men. Fathers are praised for “helping” rather than expected to be primary. Many babies spend significant time alone in cribs, playpens, or daycare, learning—sometimes through tears—that comfort is not always immediate. The Aka remind us of something older and perhaps wiser: human beings did not evolve in isolated nuclear households with one exhausted parent carrying the full emotional weight. We evolved in webs of touch, responsiveness, and shared responsibility.

The Aka are hunter-gatherers. Their lives are mobile and resource-limited. They have no accumulated wealth to hoard, no rigid hierarchies to defend. Kinship—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents—is their most essential resource. Food is not stored; everyone contributes. Women and men both hunt with nets, both gather, both care for children. This egalitarianism extends to infancy. Fathers are not “babysitting.” They are parenting. When the camp is quiet, fathers hold infants for long stretches. When families are on the move, fathers carry them alongside mothers. Infants are almost never laid down unattended; they are passed from caregiver to caregiver, held skin-to-skin, soothed quickly when they cry.

The Aka are not performing a progressive social experiment. They are living a pattern many small-scale societies share: children thrive when care is abundant, flexible, and communal. Babies are not expected to cry alone and learn that no one is coming. They are answered. They are held. They are kept close.

Modern societies have drifted far from this. In many places, parents—especially mothers—are expected to meet ancient human needs inside systems never designed for them. Daycare ratios stretch caregivers thin. Work schedules pull parents away for hours. Cultural messages often frame close, responsive care as optional or even indulgent. Yet research consistently shows that infants flourish with physical contact, quick responses to distress, and multiple attentive adults. The Aka have known this for generations. They have not forgotten that the first year of life is not a time to teach independence through separation—it is a time to build security through presence.

The Aka fathers’ involvement is not perfect or universal across all forager groups, but it stands out as an extreme on a spectrum. Cross-cultural studies show hunter-gatherer fathers generally provide more direct care than fathers in farming or industrial societies. The Aka are the outlier at the high end, with fathers holding infants for hours each day in camp settings and remaining nearby even during economic activities. Their infants are held by someone—father, mother, sibling, grandparent, aunt, uncle—nearly all waking hours.

This is not romanticizing a “primitive” life. The Aka face hardship: disease, hunger, conflict. But their childcare reflects a deep cultural logic: a baby’s survival and well-being depend on being surrounded by responsive adults. That logic once shaped most human societies. It still shapes the Aka.

And perhaps most striking of all, they remind us that for the vast majority of human history, babies were not expected to cry alone and learn self-soothing. They were held. They were answered. They were kept close.

Maybe the question is not whether Aka fatherhood is extraordinary.
Maybe the question is why so much of the modern world drifted so far from what once was ordinary.

10/21/2025

For new, accurate information about your baby receiving vitamin K at birth.

05/21/2025

Amen!

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They may be “nice” strangers (or maybe far from it 😬) but we need to be unafraid to question this very modern practice of laboring and birthing in the presence of complete strangers.

Birth is intimate. It is raw. It is vulnerable. It is naked. It is sacred. It is intrinsically linked to the marital act and meant to be the culmination of it. It is designed to be just as honored and respected as that act.

And we’ve normalized surrounding it with people who have often never met the woman at all, or maybe for just a few ten minute appointments.

That in itself makes birth less safe. We know statistically and just through common sense an ongoing relationship with a midwife/provider/doula makes birth safer and leads to far better outcomes.

But we can also say that - outcomes aside - it is WEIRD that this has become normal in our modern world. If you value tradition and human dignity, birth with strangers as the norm is the opposite. Whether that’s the receptionist, the several L&D nurses, the assistant, the resident, the OB on call, the nursery nurse...chances are very very high that the mother - who should be the center of care and esteem in the room - has never met many people in the room who are now watching her and assessing her as she goes through this intimate rite of passage. Imagine if the same was happening on our wedding night 😳

Maybe it’s sometimes necessary but it’s still okay and right to call out that it is far far far from ideal. As far as we are able in our own stories and in the culture, let’s make this the exception annd not the rule again. Let’s see what can happen and how the world can change when women give birth and babies are welcomed into the world in an environment of genuine love, intimacy, relationship, and with the mother-baby unit at the center.

🤍

06/14/2024

You cannot spoil your baby with physical contact. They need love to grow.

06/03/2024

How breastfeeding affects language.

And why most babies still say "dada" first.