Meet My Backup Team.
Community is Everything.
While it is my Full intention to be your primary Birth support, life happens. Meet the folks who I count on to hold space, in the event that I cannot.
Heather is the mother of two young boys and a Bay Area native. She has been a doula since 2015 and has supported over 150 families. She has practiced holistic health and nutrition since before her children were born. After a very unexpected birth with her first son, Heather began studying ways to process her own experience and to improve the birth stories and experiences of other birthing people. She attended Cornerstone Doula training and continued on to an advanced training from the Brooklyn based Carriage House Birth and continues to further her education. Heather is naturally nurturing with a kind and friendly demeanor. She makes connections with people, finding common ground regarding healthy lifestyle choices, nutrition and healing. She is intuitive and empathetic, allowing her to enter a situation and quickly understand how she can be of service. Using her natural talents and practiced skills, Heather will play a vital, nurturing and supportive role in the birth stories of many mothers-to-be.
Heather Hughes, Certified Full Spectrum Doula ,Certified Postpartum Doula, Certified Massage Therapist, Childbirth Educator.
Nicky has been a birth and postpartum companion since 2014, however supporting others through major life thresholds has been something she has felt called to do throughout her life. She trained with Natural Resources and Cornerstone on her path to becoming a full spectrum doula, and actively pursues continuing education in areas of interest including lactation education, childbirth education, trauma informed care, and reproductive justice and equity. She engages in her work with warmth, humour, enthusiasm, and a wealth of knowledge gained from more than 18 years of experience supporting families. Her background in social anthropology informs her work, specifically her approach to learning your baby with you, offering gentle guidance and support, all while maintaining appreciation, respect, and curiosity about what makes sense for your individual family in relation to your values, traditions, habits, and instincts. She centers you as the expert in your own experience and strives to act as a mirror, reflecting back to you your own wisdom, strengths, and power. Born and raised in Canada by a family steeped in strong traditions of shared homemade meals and models of community based care, she believes deeply that we are better together. This belief fuels her drive to support and resource the clients she works with to imagine and grow their relationships and support beyond the widespread American norm of the isolated nuclear family. Outside of the birth and postpartum space, Nicky can be found hiking in redwoods, learning to dance salsa, and taking every opportunity to be in water, whether at her family’s lake house in the Muskoka region of Ontario, the brisk ocean water of the Bay Area on a sunny day, or her own bathtub. She is aunt to two littles, and looks forward to growing her family with her partner one day in the future.
Nicky Pariser, Full Spectrum Doula