For the first five years, my doula business finances were a mess! I was getting plenty of births, but I had no idea if I was making a profit, how much, and when it came to the end of the year, figuring out my expenses for tax time was just awful!

And then I stumbled on a product that has solved all most of my accounting problems. It’s called the “File-it!” calendar, and I’ve used it for the last five years with great success.

Many people talk about NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming, however very few people actually know what it is. That’s largely due to the fact that’s it’s a collection of techniques rather than one specific thing.

While looking for resources for childbirth educators this morning, I came across a website called “Transition to Parenthood”. Janelle Durham shares her many handouts, childbirth class outlines, activities and more on this site.

Tracy from Best Doulas sells a wonderful teaching aid called a cervical dilation chart. It is simply 10 pieces of foam with circles cut out for each centimeter of dilation, and they are stored on a ring. It is such a useful tool for childbirth classes and for use with birth doula clients.

Penny Simkin offers a variety of presentations and articles to help expand a birth professional’s education.

While looking for this book to buy online, I found that it is available FREE as a PDF file. Why a book that retails for $80 is free online, I’m not sure, but I’ll gladly take it!

Here is a great new place to get your doula business listed: DoulaMatch.net. DoulaMatch is a referral source for women searching for birth or postpartum doulas in their area.

Birth professionals know that the optimal position for babies to be in at birth is Occiput Anterior (OA), or better yet, Left Occiput Anterior (LOA). Often times, however, babies get comfortable in the Occiput Posterior position, which typically causes more pain in a woman’s back during labor.

If you don’t already know about Spinning Babies, visit this website today and offer it as a resource to your clients.

New subscribers to my newsletter receive an email from me asking if they have any burning questions about starting or growing their birth business. This morning, I received a letter from Rebecca. She is thinking about becoming a doula, and she wanted to find out some ways to keep herself informed with up-to-date information. Here are some resources I offered to her.