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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

Labor pain is not like other pain. And comfort measures are not just hand-holding. Here's the physiology behind why they work, and why the evidence shows they matter more than most people think.

A typical day on Labor & Delivery. One spontaneous labor. Thirteen 39-week inductions. This is what "routine" looks like now. If you've been following our blog, you've already seen our deep dive into the ARRIVE trial and what it means for elective induction at 39 weeks. (If you haven't read that yet, start there, then come back. It'll give you important context for what follows.) Now there's a new piece of research worth your attention. A 2024 retrospective cohort study out o

Billing BCBSRI as a doula doesn't have to be a mystery. In Part 1 of this series, we covered taxonomy codes, procedure codes, modifiers, and diagnosis codes for doula billing across payers. Now we're going to get specific: if you're a doula in Rhode Island billing Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI), here is exactly how to do it. BCBSRI was one of the first commercial insurers in the country to formally cover and credential doulas. That's genuinely good news.

I've been doing healing work since 1991, long before doula was a word most people recognized. So when I talk about community, lineage, and honoring the work of others, I'm speaking from over three decades of showing up. This post is about what that time taught me: why gatekeeping diminishes the work, why the rising tide only works if it lifts everyone, and why the people I train lift me right back.

"We'd like to talk about induction." Six words that send most pregnant people straight to Google at 11pm. And what they find there is usually a jumble of horror stories, outdated information, and forum posts that leave them more confused than when they started. Induction of labor — the process of starting labor artificially before it begins on its own — is one of the most common obstetric interventions in the United States. More than 30% of births now involve some form of ind

I n 2018, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine quietly shifted the landscape of obstetric care in the United States. The study was called the ARRIVE trial — A Randomized Trial of Induction Versus Expectant Management — and its headline finding was striking: elective induction of labor at 39 weeks in low-risk, first-time pregnant people resulted in a lower cesarean rate than waiting for labor to begin on its own. That finding landed in a health system that