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Meet Kathleen

I am an ALACE/To Labor and BAI trained doula. I spent most of my life exploring. I went to college and worked lots of different kinds of jobs. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. It took me a long time to find out who I was and what made me happy. When I haphazardly stumbled into the world of doulas after the birth of my second daughter, I knew I had found who I was. I KNEW what I wanted to be, WHO I wanted to be. I received confirmation when my best friend and husband said, ‘This is who you are! Go do it!’. And, like a flash, I was a doula. Thrown into the deep end after a weekend of training with The Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators (ALACE). I waded into deep waters and have never looked back. I continue to train every single year. I have taken Optimal fetal positioning, aromatherapy, acupressure, massage, advanced hospital bed positioning for women with epidurals, rebozo training, hypnobirthing, lamaze, bradley, the list goes on. I’ve been a doula since 2003 at thousands of births, and I still don’t want to quit. My passion just keeps growing and my desire to learn and get better grows with it. After really struggling to be good, to get the training, to study and learn – I wanted to help other doulas find their fire and I started an apprenticeship program for new doulas. I want every family to have access to quality doula care and I want every doula to be the most amazing doula they can be. Now – I find myself on a new journey to recreate childbirth education. To completely inform and prepare families for every possible event. To provide them with not only the coping skills, but also the power to have the kind of birth experience THEY want, not the experience they are expected to endure because of societal pressures. REBEL BIRTH was born from this vision. Acceptance without judgment. Education without fear. Love without condition.

I grew up in and around Houston for the most part. I met my husband when I was 21 and married him when I was 25. We have birthed four children together and have three surviving children living at home with us now. My first daughter was born in 2001 during tropical storm Allison in the medical center and was with us for twelve short weeks. We loved her as hard as we could while she was here and she has forever changed the landscape of our lives. We are grateful for every moment we had and she taught us to love deeply and with abandon. We were lucky enough to welcome our second daughter in 2003 at the same hospital. With this birth I was able to focus and really work toward achieving the birth experience I knew I wanted. Our son was born five years later at a freestanding birth center – my first water birth with a doula. And our happy girl came along a few years later in 2011 – born in our home under the supervision of a loving home birth midwife and four amazing doulas – four. I love to spend time with my family traveling, but mostly we stay home, play at the park, cook, go bowling, watch movies and read. I love to read. I have two fur babies that are pretty sure they are my real babies and those humans are usurping their position. I am one of the luckiest people in the world.