Our Birth Story by Karen Mitchell, Expert Birth + Baby Educator

In 1986  I became pregnant. I had always had an interest in psychology and why people do things and where they are coming from but when I had my first baby I really dug into that. 

I was lucky enough to be very mindful and place a great deal of

importance on the actual process from the nuts and bolts of what you're eating in a day to  how how your life looks spiritually and your relationship

with nature. 

I dug into every aspect of having a baby. I ended up finding  two women that did prenatal classes together and back in those days they were very long, eight nine weeks and you'd go once a week and they delved into everything you could possibly think of. I wanted to have a good experience  and I also had a little bit of a natural distrust and cynicism for institutions. I was not a person who really liked hospitals and I wanted to have a joyful independent experience that was empowering. I really thought about this little human coming into the world and what that might look like for them so I was lucky to have these women who supported me in that.

My original Doctor (who was a woman doctor) ended up sort of getting rid of me because I was a bit of a pest and I asked too many questions. I would ask “do I really need that other test” and I would say “I was thinking about having a doula with me” and I remember her just getting annoyed with me and one day she said to me “you know I don't think you're gonna like having your baby here.” 

After searching, I found a group of male Physicians that really liked birth and were a little bit different than most. A story one told me was they had seen sitting on his mother's coffee table an article about Frédérick Leboyer who wrote the very famous book “Birth Without Violence” back in the 70s and he had then that this was meaningful and important and this was back at the when babies were first born they would hold them up by the feet and slap them and they whole thing took place under big bright lights and Frederick Leboyer basically wrote a book that showed a bunch of pictures of babies faces and the long and the short of it was he said maybe we should be nice to them and you know dim the lights and maybe we should even put them in a nice warm bath and it became known as the Leboyer bath because of him. So when I found these doctors it was really special. One of them even did Tai Chi and wore Birkenstocks!  

I felt like I connected and that I could get the type of experience I wanted and I had a good experience. I had a very good experience. It was the experience I did want and I became close friends with with the people in the the prenatal classes, we had formed a very tight-knit group and one of the ladies asked me if it was something I would like to do, to teach prenatal classes and I realized, I did.

I went through my childbirth educator certification program also did courses through the

International Childbirth Education Association and through that there was an expectation that you would attend births so I I became a certified Doula as well. 

I also became very enamored with the aspect of breastfeeding so I became a breastfeeding counselor, completing my breastfeeding counselor certification and volunteering with La Leche League Canada which means milk in Spanish and is an International organization. 

I spent a lot of time working with women through La Leche League and eventually became an accreditor of leader applicants and then a doula trainer.

Truth be told being a doula is very hard work it's very hard being on call it's very hard leaving your family for who knows how many days. I really always preferred the educational aspect and the breastfeeding consultation. I attended many many births

and I was very honored always to be invited at someone's birth but it was very hard and some people work much better being on call than others and I'm not one of those

People so  then when midwives became registered a bunch of my friends became midwives but I never had a desire to because I always really enjoyed the education aspect and meeting as many people as I could meet and helping as many people as I could rather than just one at a time. 

I gathered some like-minded partners and together we created The Birth Place. We opened two brick and mortar locations in Canada.  We sold retail products that we believed in and felt were very useful for families and we also had groups which taught prenatal classes for both mom and dad. We would have people come in such as music therapists and naturopaths, people who could come in and talk about things that were

timely and specific for people who were having babies and toddlers.

Throughout the years I always enjoyed doing prenatal classes and things things

changed throughout the years. We went from meeting people once a week for two

months and then meeting again after people had babies to have a little party, to having a prenatal in a day. Everyone wanted all the information right now. Peoples lives were getting very busy. Through the years many changes have happened in the industry but through it all I've never lost my love of teaching people in a way that I hope helps them have a more enjoyable experience.

I’m not sure why some of us have such an enjoyable experience, perhaps because we

make sure we do and some people I think they don't know that they can have a truly enjoyable experience so I like to be there to support people to find the best possible experience they can have for themselves and their families. I now have  four biological children of my own, I have  step children I have grandchildren I have been blessed enough to be invited to my grandchildren's births though I'm probably like the only

grandmother on the planet which dreads the phone call that there's another grandchild because it's I'm just so overprotective and feel so immediately “on duty” lol.

As much as I love doing it is a great deal of work and that's one of the things that I love about what Barbara Colorado, a great parenting educator says is that parenting is the least efficient job in the world and I like to I like to remind parents of that because we have this sometimes expectation that you'll tell your child to brush their teeth once and they'll know but no, you're probably going to have to tell them about a thousand times to brush their teeth and it's not a reflection on you as a parent that's just the way it is and I think it's important that people people know that so that they don't set themselves up with expectations that are just not realistic and then feel like they have failed in some way when they haven't actually failed at all. 

I truly enjoy supporting people to have the best experience they can have through their  pregnancy, through the birth and through those young years with children that can be so taxing and so exhausting with a constant wondering if you're doing things properly. I still enjoy it. I still get a great deal of pleasure out of  supporting people.