It all started when…

.. I had a baby.

Or maybe it really started when I was 14 years old and was along for the ride when my Aunt Margaret had an ultrasound. I still remember the awe I felt, and looking back, it was the first spark of my fascination with birth.

Things really changed with the birth of my first son, in 2005. While I had hospital-based midwifery care, it was a traumatic experience. Then with the birth of my second son, at the same place and with the same providers, the trauma deepened.

Neither of my births were what I wanted or planned for, and so in becoming a doula I fought hard to assist, advocate for, and support my clients birthing in the medicalized maternity system.

In over 18 years I have been supporting births in hospital rooms, birth centers and at home. I’ve been at water births, inductions, in the OR, even supported client’s births that happened on the side of the road or at home unexpectedly. I found myself working for 3 years in a homebirth practice with a CNM, and this vastly altered my knowledge and understanding of birth.

Once I left there, there was really no going back. It was my apprenticeship in what I do now, and I didn’t even know it.

I learned that the system is not broken, as is so often said. It’s working exactly the way it was built to, and that system is the cause of so much trauma, injury and it the worst cases, mortality of women and babies, all for the profit that maternity care brings into the technocratic system.

Please do not get me wrong. There are certain times and certain reasons that a woman or a baby might need medical care in pregnancy or birth, or even postpartum. However, if this care was so necessary for every single woman and baby, why are our outcomes so stunningly poor?

As a Traditional Homebirth Companion, I bring the tradition of the wise woman to your birth. For more years than we can count or recollect, this was the way women brought their babies into the world - at home, surrounded by women who knew birth, knew physiology and knew how to support it. Women who knew time-honored skills, traditions, plants and nutrition.

Before regulation, laws and governments got in the way, women were birthing safely, on their own terms.

Taught and mentored by elders who are bringing back these traditions and skills, I’ve stepped into this work to provide more options and possibilities in my community, so that babies are born safely into their parents’ arms, and so that women are treated with dignity and respect.

Things my boys and I never received.

I’m happy to speak with you regarding your birth plans, and all the possibilities that are before you.

More Tamrha Tidbits

Born and raised on Long Island, NY, I come from an Italian-American family and am a first generation on my mother’s side. After earning two degrees from the fashion Institute of Technology, I worked in Exhibit Design for company’s such as Macy’s and Nordstrom.

Then I became a mom and a Birth Worker.

I’m also a mama of 9 cats and 1 Maltipoo, extremely picky about pizza, love going to concerts with my oldest son and concert buddy, love nature walks and wildcrafting, reading, and all types of school!