There are independent childbirth educators who choose to develop their own childbirth classes, as well as doulas who wish to offer their clients childbirth education as part of their services. A common challenge for these birth professionals is the desire to develop a comprehensive curriculum that meets the needs of a broad audience, is current, [...]

Anyone who has worked with me knows the importance I place on self-care.The reason for the emphasis is that I know first-hand what stress can do – I’ve got the malfunctioning adrenal glands to prove it. Although stress happens to just about everyone, the way we nurture ourselves on multiple levels – physically, mentally, emotionally, [...]

About six weeks ago, Micky Jones’ book, “Keep the Fires Burning – Conquering stress and burnout as a Mother-Baby Professional”, made its way into my hands, and quickly, her words made their way into my heart.

Stress is an interesting creature. It can burn you up slowly, over years and years, or it can get you in an instant.

In my case, stress has burned through me at a slow pace for a number of years. I’m a huge advocate and practitioner of self-care, and I have a number of practices in my toolkit. However, physical exercise was not a tool I actively used.

One subtitle in “Keep the Fires Burning” changed everything for me – “Move Your Body – Sweat is Your Body Crying Happy Tears!”

Have you taken the time to consider what your hourly rate would be for the time you’re dedicating to your birth doula clients? In a recent Facebook Group post for students of Birth Arts International, founder Demetria Clark offered the following example:

If you charge $400 per birth, this is a simple breakdown to consider:

Time with parents – 5 hours (prenatals and phone calls)
Time at birth – 10 hours (sometimes much longer, sometimes much shorter, but 10 is a midline average).

Over the past couple of months, the tools I’ve been using have really helped me have a more frequent online presence while at the same time allowing me to have more time to do other things in my life. Once again, here is a list of the tools I shared:

Tools to Connect:

*Topify
*SocialOomph
*Rapportive

About a month or two ago, I discovered there’s a buzzword that describes people like me. I’m a “curator” – someone who finds informative and useful online content and shares it with friends and followers. I’ve been the resource gal for as long as I can remember! Being a curator is very time consuming (fellow curators, please nod along with me). Luckily there are apps people just like us!

There’s no going back – many of us lead busy social lives… online. Social media needs to be an essential ingredient in a birth pro’s marketing and networking strategies. It’s where a large number of expectant mamas hang out, and it’s where we can get their attention. It’s where we can be influential, and where we can change the state of maternal health in our society. The issue many face is that aside from the learning curve newbies face when starting out, to get the most out of social media, time must be invested in it. Anyone who is a heavy user of Facebook and Twitter (and now Google+) knows all too well the time suck that can result.

I’ve been hearing from birth professionals who are struggling with finding clients and getting hired. These women are very actively marketing themselves. They’re putting themselves out there, making contacts, getting interviews, following up, but they’re just not closing the sale, or they’re not attracting the kind of clients they want – namely, paying clients.

In almost all of these stories lies a similar, underlying message – I’m not good enough.

New subscribers to the Inspired Birth Pro updates receive an email requesting their burning business questions. I’ve compiled the list of questions over the years, and I’ve started posting them on Facebook, because honestly, I don’t have all the answers! I also learn from other birth pros, so I really appreciate it when fans take the time to share their wisdom.

If you have not liked the IBP Facebook page yet (and you should!), I’m going to start compiling the questions and responses into a blog post, along with the link to the question, in case you want to add to the conversation.

Last week I decided to revisit my values. The last time I did a values exercise, I was at a very different place in my life. I’ve grown a lot since then and was curious to see what has changed. Here are the steps I took:

1. I really like the comprehensive list of almost 400 adjectives that Steve Pavlina put together for such a task, so I copied and pasted the words into an excel spreadsheet and printed the list out.