Formal Statement About My Career

I am researcher, instructor, trainer, and educator focusing on intimate relationships.  In my current professional life, I started out as a birth doula in 1988 and became a birth doula trainer in 1997.  I still find providing doula care to be a small but satisfying part of my life.  I have been approved as a birth doula trainer by DONA International since 1999 and have taught over thirty beginning doula training workshops with my colleagues, Karen Kohls, PT, and Ruth Ancheta, M.S.P.S. 

My main areas of research are on effective labor support by doulas and the psychological needs of mothers and fathers during their labor and birth experience.  This was the topic of my master's thesis work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I am continuing development of my theory for my PhD dissertation.  So far I have completed interviews with 37 doulas, 26 mothers, 12 fathers, and 6 nurses from all over North America.  Two articles are currently in the submission process in different research journals. 

Besides teaching doula trainings, I also teach Parent and Infant Attachment workshops for professionals who work with postpartum families.  I developed these workshops for the Family Living program division of the University of Wisconsin-Extension system.  There are two one-day programs that present current knowledge in social science research and break it down and make it accessible for the social work professional.  Each concept is illustrated with practical strategies that family visitors can use with their clients in the days following the workshop.  To me, it is not enough to share what we know about families and effective attachment relationships between parents and children, it is also important to share how to foster those relationships in a concrete manner with at-risk parents. 

In the last few years, I have also done research on women's sexual experiences.  I teach the Human Sexuality course as a university transfer credit class at Madison Area Technical College.  I am also an AASECT certified Sexuality Educator. 
Curriculum Vitae

Background Information

My young life and college: 
I was raised in San Jose and in the Napa Valley of California.  I was lucky that my home was in a rural area and I was allowed to roam outside for hours by myself.  Nature is still my anchor and my solace.  My grandparents lived in Napa for over fifty years and I am a frequent visitor to the area.  I have also spent a great deal of time in San Francisco and can get around without a map! I have very loving memories of my family even though my upbringing wasn't exactly peaceful.  My father nurtured my analytical leanings and taught me to be fascinated with what life had to offer.  My mother taught me about the importance of feelings and creativity to living.  My grandmother and my sister taught me how to cook–I vacillate between enjoying it immensely and feeling like it is an incredible chore.
 
I attended an all girl's school and an all girl's camp during my adolescence, which has influenced me greatly.  At the time I didn't expect to be steered into a career that involved women's lives so intensely. But those early experiences of being plunged into the society and cultures that women create left a very strong mark.  I still find myself drawn into experiences that primarily involve women rather than mixed groups. 

For college, I attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where I earned a degree in Communications.  My degree has a double emphasis:  both interpersonal communication and mass media studies.  I thought I was going to be a journalist.  Then I spent a semester shadowing a stringer reporter for Eyewitness News out of Sacramento.  Dan taught me to find news stories out of the local paper, introduced me to city council meetings, and taught me how to work a video camera and light a scene.  I was his only assistant for 2-3 days a week for five months and we covered most of the county.  I saw my first dead bodies (an ultra light plane crash and a fire), a few sordid episodes, and several court proceedings waiting for something to happen.  But mostly I learned that I didn't want to be a journalist.
My advisor suggested graduate school and I came east to attend the University of Wisconsin department of Communication Arts.  It was here that I spent two years teaching Public Speaking. I ended up marrying a local boy and fell in love with Madison and Wisconsin. 

Why Birth? 

During my senior year in high school, my much older sister had a home birth.  Because of our age difference, we weren't very close and she lived far away.  But I was really curious about her choice–why would someone DO that? 

A few years later, my best friend from kindergarten went into labor quite suddenly.  I was stopping by her house on my way back to college during spring break.  Her waters broke and she needed a ride to the hospital.  We wondered together if labor contractions felt like menstrual cramps and what it would actually feel like when the baby came out.  I went with her to the labor and delivery unit and one of the nurses turned out to be a friend from a high school geometry class.  (We never did find her husband until several hours later.)  I spent the entire labor with her and held her while Joel was born.  It left me with a lot of questions like:

"If she was having trouble breathing, why not have her sit up than lay flat on her back?" 
"If he was coming out so quickly (labor was one hour, 42 minutes), why did they cut her vagina open and then sew her back up again?"
"If baby Joel was crying so hard, why did they say his lungs weren't mature and take him away to the nursery (where we heard him bawling for the next 15 minutes)?" 

Upon returning to school, I wrote and researched about alternative birth practices and birth centers for my classes.  When I became pregnant less than three years later, I knew that I needed to know more.  Candace Weber, our childbirth educator, still deserves my thanks for all the extra hours she spent talking with me before and after class.  I ended up with a very nice birth in a hospital based birth center with a certified nurse midwife in attendance. 

My next step was to become a childbirth educator myself.  The women at Informed Homebirth/Informed Birth and Parenting convinced me to attend their Introductory Midwife Training so that I could be qualified to attend my student's births in the hospital–just in case they needed help.  My midwife instructor, Karen Parker, taught me to believe in myself and what I uniquely had to give to mothers and to families.  A few months later, I attended my first birth as a professional birth assistant, which we now call a doula. 

Through birth, I see the opportunity for personal growth and empowerment for my clients.  They will need strength and to know themselves in order to make the important decisions that parenting demands of them.  The world is in flux and there are many opportunities to have one's values tested.  Understanding what matters to you as a person and as a parent and being able to honor those feelings and values while still respecting others who disagree is important work.  I feel that I teach and model that when I work with families.  It isn't important that they agree with me, but that they know themselves and make choices based on knowledge and understanding their alternatives. 

I love this work because it feeds my soul.  I couldn't not do it.  Babies are fully formed, conscious, small people who are dependent on big people to meet their needs and to form their consciousness.  When we understand that truth and how to nurture and guide our children by our own behavior towards them, we change the world.  My part in it is to help families by spreading this knowledge about birth and infancy and parenting and helping people to open their eyes that this matters.

Why Sex?

I think most of us who are sexuality educators or counselors initially started with a question.  And that question was, “Why?”  Whether it was about a behavior, a value, or a sexual practice, we wanted to learn more about it and to understand what was behind it.  Much of human sexual behavior is still a mystery in one way or another.  In this last decade we are beginning to realize how much of what we feel is actually influenced by our biology.  Because of the historical feeling that sex was private and somehow shameful, asking questions about sex has had this same stigma.  Unless it is deemed relevant to public health, it is very difficult to obtain funds for sexuality research.

However studies show that open dialogue and acceptance of sexuality as a normal part of being human leads to better adjustment and satisfaction in life.  Because I don’t feel shy talking about intimate matters, becoming a sexuality educator felt like a natural next step.  Using my doula and interviewing skills, people naturally open up to me about their experiences.  So I find sexuality research compelling and needed in our culture. 

Becoming A Good Communicator

My family background is in communications and my father was an excellent public speaker.  Although my major in college was communications, I put off taking a public speaking course until the summer before my senior year.  After that, I competed and won several times in my category for the university forensics team.  After that I taught the course for two years at the University of Wisconsin Madison while working on my first master's degree (which I did not complete). 

My specialty in communications is interpersonal communication with a great interest in small group dynamics.  I have found my university studies to be tremendously useful even when I was a full time mother and volunteer.  I attended and led meetings for La Leche League, where I was a Leader.  For LLL, I also did phone counseling and met one on one to help mothers with nursing problems that required products to assist them (nipple shields, supplemental nursing systems, etc.).  I loved teaching childbirth classes and taught for five years as an Informed Birth (now ALACE) certified educator.  In my community, I used my skills to help advance awareness of midwifery and doula issues–there are a few videotapes of my sound bites from news programs over the years.

I've perfected my skills teaching doula and attachment trainings for over ten years, and reworking the material for different audiences.  I enjoy bringing theory and ideas to life for people in all my workshops– giving people the information they need to be more effective in their own lives is one thing I am passionate about. 

My family

My family of origin still resides in the bay area of California, and my children are still mainly at home here in Madison.  My oldest son, Alex, was born in 1985 at a hospital birth center.  He is the child that made me a mother and helped me struggle through all the changes that brought.  Joseph was born at home in rural Cross Plains, Wisconsin, in 1988.  I had a dream prior to the pregnancy that this child would want to be born underwater so that is what we did.  Joe, all 10 pounds and 10 ounces of him, was born in our bedroom in a clean horse trough.  He was one of the first water births in our state and a blessing to his father's and my life. 

My daughter, Auriana, followed in 1990.  She was also a home birth in Cross Plains, but did not want to be born in the water.  As she has proved to us time and time again, she knows what she wants and knows how to communicate it too!  My children are my anchor and my joy. 

When he was eleven Alex was diagnosed with a form of autism, Asperger's Syndrome.  It has been a major challenge in my life to raise him so that he can grow to his fullest potential.  AS was not written about or explored scientifically in English until the late 1990's, and the first book written for parents appeared in 2000.  I had to figure out what worked for my child with no guidelines or examples.  We tried several different kinds of therapies to help ameliorate specific problems.  Some worked and some didn't.  I am highly grateful to occupational therapist, Sheila Frick, who was willing to try more experimental therapies.

While Alex's high IQ has helped him learn in specific ways, his lack of organizational abilities and social skills has been a major hindrance.  While I've been able to teach the social skills through clear communication and cognitive methods, the "executive functions" of his brain will likely always be a challenge.  Now that Alex is an adult, we have begun to speak to classes at the university and other groups about our experiences and what it is like to be an adult with Asperger's Syndrome. 

May 2005

Things You Wouldn't Know (Unless I Told You)

If I could drive any car I'd drive: an Aston Martin Vanquish.
What I do drive:  a 1998 Volvo sedan with a 'WI Doula" license plate.

My favorite vacation:  Usually involves somewhere warm with a beach and flowers blooming.

I don't like coffee. 

If I could have dinner with anyone famous who is not currently alive:
I would choose Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck to discuss the development of their theories of evolution. 

If I could go back in time and change history, I would:  Speak up so that women's experiences of childbearing do not take a back seat to reproductive rights in the women's movements of the 1960's and 70's. 

The most annoying thing about growing old is: all the maintenance!