On Saturday, Richard and I had our second meeting with our Doula, Christin, from In Harmony Doula. This was a late-addition to our pre-natal team and was by complete chance. Christin had a flyer up at Greenhouse Birth Center advertising her services for free for moms due in October and November. I had recently met Christin at another community event and since the service was free (she has to get hours in as she completes her Doula certification), I thought, why not?! Little did we know at the time how valuable she would become to us.

Christin had her second two children at Greenhouse Birth Center – where we also had Parker and Max and originally planned to have baby #3. Without revealing too much additional personal information here, we’ll just say that she spent seven days with one of her children at Sparrow’s NICU.

We met with Christin shortly after finding out that the baby was still breech. Knowing that if breech we would need to go to a hospital to deliver, we wanted to make sure we still had a support team with the same fundamental birthing philosophies we have. A doula’s purpose is to support the mom in any way possible during the birth process – from emotional support to physical to medical. Knowing we would be in a hospital experiencing birth in a whole new way, it gave us some comfort to know it wouldn’t be all new doctors and nurses, there would be at least one familiar supportive face.

When we found out Colten has Spina Bifida, having Christin in our corner jumped up to a whole new level. At our meeting on Saturday we mostly talked all about what to expect in the NICU. Her having experienced this first-hand shed a light on things we never would’ve thought about and I’m sure aren’t standard pieces of information provided by the hospital staff (we have our NICU consultation Wednesday of this week).

We are extremely grateful for her support, companionship and experiences at this time! Thank you Christin!