Birth Team Dynamics

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

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.

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

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.

And why the “doulas vs. nurses” framing hurts families, and where the actual problem lives. May 2026 · Lorie Michaels, CD(DONA), LCCE, CLC, PMH-C The dream team is possible. It starts with showing up as one. Let me say this plainly: Doulas are not in competition with hospital staff. I have worked alongside L&D nurses for years. I have watched them love families through terrifying moments, advocate quietly in ways that never made it into the chart, and hold space for people