Int'l Doula Month - Giveaway #13

Julia is the owner of Mother Hen Doula Designs, an etsy shop featuring some fun stuff! She is a knitter, a mama, a post partum doula, and a CLE. She has opted to donate a knitted uterus for our giveaway!
The knitted uterus is an excellent learning tool for Childbirth Educators and doulas! Features a 'C Section Incision' which can be omitted upon request, also a drawstring opening on top to easily insert a 'baby.' Measures 8" from top to bottom, stretches to accommodate a 'head' of 4.5"in diameter. Knitted from 100% acrylic yarn. Entirely washable. Can be made in custom colors. Handmade to order, time from order to delivery will be two weeks.

Please take a moment to get to know Julia, who, like so many of the wonderful mompreneurs featured this month, juggles a great many talents and glows despite it all!

I am 40 yr. old mother of two (12 &15) and currently expecting my third (due in August).

I became a PPD 5 years ago and recently became a Certified Lactation Educator. I got involved in natural childbirth unwittingly when I had my first child at the “Long Island Birthing Ctr.” I had been given a copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and was dutifully reading it when there appeared a question about how a mother had broken her tailbone during delivery – the books’ response was ‘well, it can happen, that’s why they call it labor!’ which I thought was ridiculous. If that mother had delivered her baby standing, squatting, or hanging from a trapeze, her tailbone would have been just fine. I felt for a hospital to send a new mother home with a new baby, an episiotomy, AND a broken tailbone was unnecessary and abusive.

I actually looked in my phone book…it was 1995 – that was all there was to look in, and found ‘the Long Island Birthing Center” in Melville, NY. After one tour I was sold. I labored in a gigantic pool of warm water, I tried about 10 different positions when I started pushing, finding one that worked for me, not my midwife, and had a long exhausting and wonderful birth.

3 years later I was pregnant again and the birth center had closed down, displacing many midwives to a local hospital – after touring it I realized hospitals had no interest in the comfort of its customers and seemingly, had not put one iota of common sense towards setting up a room in which to have a baby in. So I opted to have my son at home. I labored for 12 hours, and again, it was wonderful birth.
My family, while initially terrified at my choices, learned more about natural childbirth and eventually my younger sister decided to become a home birth midwife. Her becoming a midwife revealed many new jobs that I had not previously heard of, including labor doula and postpartum doula.

In 2005 I met up with women who would become the founding members of ‘the Long Island Doula Association’ , of which I am a council member. We are a group of doulas, CBE’s, midwives, acupuncturists, chiropractors, and more. A friend I met through LIDA once asked me if I could knit a breast…I hadn’t thought of it before, but it seemed easy enough. She was looking for a prop of sorts so she could explain breastfeeding holds to new Mom’s more easily. By the next meeting I had made two for her …one ‘black ‘ and one ‘white.’

I started knitting in 2000 – I was about 30 and needed something to keep my hands busy while I quit smoking. I quickly loved it and brought my knitting with me everywhere. When I inadvertently stumbled upon a pattern for a knitted uterus, I put it together immediately! I even included pipe cleaners to hold up the ‘fallopian tubes’ - very slowly it dawned on me how to adjust the pattern to make it into something more ‘user friendly’ for my friends who worked as labor doulas or childbirth educators.

I decided to start selling on Etsy about a year ago and initially the site was going in 20 different directions. I was selling doula products, baby products, all unrelated and the site felt disjointed. I saw that my best markets for these products were other doulas – I even got a special request for a placenta which immediately became a standard on my site. I have aspirations to start another site with some baby items listed on it along with possibly some nursing wear – since that has suddenly become very relevant to me again!

I am hoping to have a website finished by the end of this month, but for now, the best places to find me are at etsy and lidoulas (check out the “Fundraising Boutique”)

Thank you, so much, Julia!

RULES FOR ENTERING:

Remember, EACH OF THESE count as one entry. You have to complete the first entry to be able to be able to have the other entries counted. To have them counted as one entry each, they must each be fulfilled with their own, separate, comment. Be sure that your comment contains your email either in the body of the message, or through your profile.

• For your initial entry, you must visit her etsy store, then come back and let me know which item is your favorite.
• For an additional entry, post a link to this giveaway on your FB OR create your own blog post regarding this giveaway, with a link to this post, then comment with a link back to your blog post/FB post.
• For an additional entry, post on your FB or on your own blog about the benefits of pregnancy and birth education, to commemorate Int'l Doula Month, with link back to my blog, then comment here with the link to your posting.
  
• If you took advantage of the Early Bird Entries, you can add any/all of your Early Bird entries to this giveaway by commenting with the words "EB Entry".

Entries will be closed on May 29th, at midnight, and the drawing will occur on May 31st, at noon.

Happy entering!!!