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In the first hours after birth, babies in the US are offered a few routine treatments, including the hepatitis B vaccine, eye ointment, and a small shot of vitamin K. Vitamin K has been part of that list since 1961. Lately, more families are asking about it, and some are choosing to skip it. Good questions deserve good answers. Here's what the research shows, in plain language, so families can make the call that's right for them. What vitamin K does Vitamin K is a vitamin. Th

Billing NHP as a doula happens in a free online claims tool called Inovalon Link1500. Once your account is set up, every claim lives on one screen. In our BCBSRI billing guide, we walked through submitting claims directly in Blue Cross's own provider portal. Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island (NHP) works a little differently. Claims go through Inovalon, a separate claims service NHP sponsors for its providers at no cost to you. There's a setup period up front, and a few

Most of us spend our birth work hours in labor rooms, living rooms, and postpartum kitchens. The NICU has been the place our clients went after we said goodbye at the door. That's starting to shift. Slowly, more families are asking their birth worker to stay close when baby needs extra care. Some hospitals are opening the door a little wider. And even when we can't be in the unit, our clients are texting us from it, trying to make sense of what they just heard on rounds. The

This morning I posted a little note in our BirthPro WhatsApp group. I'm rebuilding the website, and I'm adding testimonials from mentees who left Google reviews. Each quote links back to that person's own business. I asked for an okay before using anyone's words. What came back was so much more than an okay. Within minutes people were saying yes, sending hearts, and asking for each other's Google review links so they could leave reviews too. One mentee said she'd never had th

I research every provider my clients choose. So I turned the same honest look on myself, then built a self-assessment every birth worker can use.

Is it too late to switch providers at 36 weeks? Almost never. Here’s what makes a late switch harder, what to do when there’s no one to switch to, and how birth workers can support the decision without steering it.

Click to find the current reimbursement rates for your state. Money comes up in almost every conversation about starting birth work, and it's usually two questions tangled into one. What does training cost? And once you're certified, can this pay you back? BirthPro's CFSD certification runs $850 flat, with a six-month payment plan at $150 a payment if you'd rather spread it out, and no additional fees once you're certified. That's the first number. It's also the smaller one.

People hear "on-call" and picture chaos, a phone that could ring at any hour and upend an entire week. That's part of birth work, the birth side specifically. It's not the whole picture, and it's not the only way to start. BirthPro trains for both birth support and postpartum support, and they run on two different clocks. Birth work is on-call: once labor starts, you go, sometimes with only a few hours' notice. Postpartum work is scheduled: visits booked in advance, days and

A body that just gave birth has usually lost half a liter of blood or more, spent months rebuilding tissue, and if it's making milk, needs a few hundred extra calories a day just to keep doing it. Walk out of most US hospitals and the nutrition guidance that comes with you fits on an index card, if it comes at all. When ACOG rewrote its postpartum care guidance in 2018, it said something birth workers had been saying for years: recovery isn't one appointment at six weeks, it'

Four birth workers called me this week about clients already being induced. When I asked how and why, not one client knew. Induction isn't one event, it's a process, and it deserves more than a nod.

Two outcomes, same shape. The longer a Black family's history in the US, the higher the risk, for the mother and for the baby.

Hypertensive disorders now show up in a growing share of pregnancies, and the risk isn't shared equally. A look at the numbers behind gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, HELLP syndrome, and eclampsia, plus what's driving the rise.

Twenty questions about doula insurance, answered. Watch the overview and Q&A videos and see what liability coverage actually protects, and what it doesn't.

Social media is rented space. A website is yours, and it's how the right families actually find you. Start with one page, here's how.

Not every family will be your fit, and that's the point. A guide for birth workers on staying grounded, honest, and fully yourself in client interviews.

Newborn sleep rarely matches what new parents expect, and that gap is often where postpartum struggle starts. Here's what's actually typical for newborn sleep, why protecting even one consolidated stretch matters for mental health, and how lactation support and whole-family planning fit into the picture.

What the postpartum doula job actually looks like, how it differs from a nanny or babysitter, what families need, and how birth workers build a sustainable practice through boundaries and community.

A primer for birth workers and the clients you support If you're new to birth work, you've probably already spent time thinking about the perineum, that word that comes up in every birth story, every tearing conversation, every discussion about what recovery looks like. Even if you haven't attended a birth yet, you likely know it matters. But how often do you think about the pelvic floor itself, not just the perineum, but the whole living system underneath, and what it's been

The hour after birth may be the most physiologically significant hour of a person's life. It's also one of the most routinely interrupted. Here's what birth workers need to know before walking into that room.

There is a misconception that doulas are for uncomplicated, low-intervention births. That they belong in birth centers and water birth stories, not in MFM offices or hospital rooms with monitors and IV poles. That misconception costs families. The truth is this: when a pregnancy becomes medically complex, the need for a consistent, knowledgeable, emotionally grounded support person does not go away. It increases. The medical team does not shrink when a pregnancy gets complica