When I was pregnant with my first baby, I didn’t know much about birth. I pictured myself swaying my way through labor, I’d read Emily Oster, I even hired a doula, but I was missing a lot. I didn’t fully understand what happens in birth and what makes birth happen. I didn’t have a plan for coping with contractions, and I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of our hospital-based maternity care system and how to navigate it. Worst of all, I didn’t know myself well: what was important to me and why, how I could cultivate resilience and trust in myself, how to make decisions that were best for me personally. I went into the hospital nervous but excited and came out railroaded and traumatized. Birth had happened to me.

The next time, I wanted to do things differently. I picked my providers purposefully and learned more about birth. But when I got thrown a curve ball at the last minute, I struggled to mentally readjust from the very specific birth experience I’d imagined. And from there, things only got wilder. It was incredibly challenging for me, but after a lot of processing and deep work, I ended up rewriting my story. I had faced my biggest fear: the unknown! I had been strong enough, brave enough, badass enough.

I want to help you prepare for an amazing birth — no matter what it looks like. That’s why I teach the skills birthers and partners need to navigate the unknowns of birth. I believe birth has a way of asking us to face our greatest challenges, and often these are not what we expect. As Britta Bushnell says in my all-time favorite birth prep book, Transformed by Birth:

It is no accident that the watery initiation of childbirth most often requires a dropping down into the depths of darkness, into chaos, where order and control have no power. It is there where birthing people are tested through an unknowable initiation that includes a metamorphosis of the self.

It is this “depth” that I call “the wonder” — this weird and wondrous space that has the unique potential to reveal the coolest, most badass versions of ourselves. I would love to prepare you to journey into the wonder, of birth, but really, of yourself!