Hi Family <3

I hope life’s been gentle with you. I’m closing out one of the busiest seasons I’ve had. The last client who booked with me last year just gave birth & I’ll wrap up this cycle once their family is fully settled & snuggled in. After that, I’ll be on a break, a couple of months off I promised myself last year. I’m grateful I planned ahead, especially since some things have come up that need my full attention.

Before I go, I wanted to share more of myself here. When I stepped into birthwork, I hit the ground running & skipped over some juicy details of who I am & what I bring to this work. In consultations, I noticed how much people love learning about me, way more than I expected. I think it’s important for potential clients to know who they’re trusting with such an intimate role. I have also had consultations where families felt I was grossly underqualified. I share my story, approach & values so they can feel confident deciding if we’re truly aligned. My past clients check in to see what I’m up to & I think I was the only one who assumed no one would care.

It’s currently 3:23 AM ET on a random Tuesday. I wish I could say this wasn’t the norm, but truthfully, I’ve grown to love my life so much that I’m excited to start my day & my body truly never shifted away from working the night shift. Summer is my season. The earlier I work, the earlier I get to go outside & play or tend to my indoor jungle. Both are therapy in their own way. Adults deserve to play, too!

Your eyes will get a workout through reading this, thank you for being here.

My Background, Extended Edition

If you’re new here, hi & welcome. I’m Anjanette, if my name gives you pause, you can call me AJ. I’ve been a registered nurse for 17 years & worked in healthcare for nearly 25 years (this October, ayyyyyye!). Over the last 3 years, I transitioned into birthwork as a birth doula, Lamaze educator & lactation counselor. But honestly, I’ve been in these healthcare trenches since before I could talk.

I will always pay homage to my family, they’ve paved the way for me in so many different ways. My granddad was a physician, I spent most of my early years with my grandparents while my mom worked. I helped care for them when their health declined. I was 12 when I watched my grandfather take his last breath at home. I sat beside my grandmother in SUNY Downstate Hospital each day after school for 14 months before she transitioned from a broken heart. The nurses & doctors that cared for my grandmom were kind to me & kept me entertained through teaching me about all their shiny little gadgets. Healthcare has always been a huge piece of who I am.

I often share that I’m a mama of two but haven’t shared that I was once a mother of four in my blended family. Cooking for a family of six is a full-time job that I wish I could list on my resume. I wouldn’t wish that amount of math homework on my worst enemy. I’ve been married, divorced & have done the solo parenting thing. I watched my mom struggle as a single parent, my dad passed away when my mom was pregnant with my brother. I’ve experienced pregnancy loss & issues with fertility. I went through postpartum depression after both pregnancies. After my second birth, depression remained with me for 2.5 years. For a long time, I kept that to myself, afraid it meant something was inherently wrong with me.

At 21, I became one of my brother’s legal guardians. My brother was diagnosed with autism at a young age. He is non-verbal & has special needs. My mom became the people’s advocate amongst the community of special needs. Despite being responsible for an entire household, her parents & a classroom of students, my mom always made time for us. After our mom passed, I became my brother’s sole court-appointed guardian. I became the elder of my family at a young age after all the elders I looked up to transitioned. Stepping into that was terrifying & heartbreaking, but I am here to tell the story. I didn’t ask for the genes of nurturing or advocacy, but as my mom & dad’s (only!) daughter, I definitely inherited them. It makes perfect sense that I became a nurse & even more sense that I found my way into birthwork.

“Life is a sacred dance between grief & joy”

— Devi Brown

A Moment of Silence

Losing my mother altered my brain chemistry. In protecting me from the pain, it erased years of my memories. When she was diagnosed & given less than one year to live, I slowly began to lose my mind. My body already danced with depression, it was easy to lean into its arms. I thought I would have so much more time with her. I imagined us sitting in our rocking chairs sharing stories about our lives with my children’s children sitting at our feet. Vacationing in Florence, Italy. Playing Santa on Christmas Eve, sneaking presents under the tree together. Raising our glasses in honor of our legacy, the bloodline we created, we did that! But life had other plans.

After mommy received her diagnosis, she asked if I would consider moving closer to where my brother lives in Staten Island. I said good-bye to Brooklyn, the city that raised me. I took care of my mother alone. Over the course of two months, I lost my best friend & confidant. I moved from renting an apartment, to being a first-time homeowner. I took over responsibility for our family’s home in Brooklyn. The house my family called home for four generations. I worked full-time & made the decision to walk away from my Master’s with just two classes to go. I became a landlord & had multiple tenants, the raggediest tenants in tenantry history. My children hated Staten Island, they weren’t the happiest about my decision to move. My son started a new school & had a challenging time. We were all grieving, even before our final goodbyes. Life flipped upside down for all of us. The energy in our new home was so heavy, we were all convinced we moved into a haunted house.

After my mother transitioned, life went into overdrive. My therapy used to be work. Keeping busy kept my mind occupied. Sitting still felt sinful. I sat & wondered if my mother would still be here if she didn’t have to carry the world on her shoulders as a single parent. Not long after, I was laid off for the first time in my life. I was tight because those paychecks were looking right. I was forced to sit alone with my thoughts. For the first time I had no way to escape them. One random day, when I was brushing my unemployed teeth, I started to question my life choices. It was dawning on me that I spent most of my life grossly underestimating & undervaluing myself. Like, dang, I could now understand why my mother used to roast me about how I lived my life. I was also always missing out on some pretty important moments in my life because my job consumed a large majority of it. I paid good money to be stressed out. That didn’t sit right with me. It was too late to get a refund on my college tuition, but it wasn’t too late to create the life I’ve worked hard for.

Let’s be very serious rn, a grand majority of us work the way we do to pay bills. If bills didn’t exist, what would our lives look like? That question became my starting point. I remembered all the patients that I met along the way, the ones that pleaded with God & with me for more time to live. I decided to finally live life on my terms. This sounds so poetic, but it takes a ton of work, which includes dragging out those skeletons we keep buried deep within our closet & maybe some wine.

For the first time in my entire life, I’m not stressed out. At this big age, I’m finally getting to know myself-because all I’ve known was the stressed out version of Anjanette. My children that I brought into this world only knew the stressed out version of their mother. That became the push I needed to create a better life for all of us. I will always credit my children & my elders for saving my life.

Grief has been one of my greatest teachers. I beg people to not walk in my footsteps. Don’t wait for grief to teach you. Don’t allow life to pass you by. Please.

Back to our scheduled programing…

What is a Birth Doula?

I’m a birth doula, of all my roles, this one gets a barrage of questions.

The million-dollar question. No matter how well I explain it, someone always thinks I catch babies. In many cases, that huge responsibility belongs to the midwife or OB/GYN. Doulas that catch babies can potentially catch lawsuits. Orange will never be the new black. Ever.

The New York Coalition for Doula Access (NYCDA) provides the best explanation of the birth doula’s role (read here), but I’d like to explain our role through something I personally experienced not too long ago.

Before I was a certified diver, I took a scuba diving course. Our diving group had a divemaster & dive instructor. The dive master, Poseidon himself, was knowledgeable, confident, but impatient. The instructor was slower, more attuned to the fears of a beginner & saw us as his equals because he remembered where he came from.

During our first 60-foot-deep-dive, I geared up, jumped in the water, glanced beneath the surface & was met by pure darkness. Girl, that thang was pitch black. I watched in horror as the rest of my group disappeared into that darkness. Before I could say anything, the divemaster deflated my BCD. My heart dropped & so did my body, straight towards the bottom of the ocean like a little human torpedo. My brain could only rationalize that this man was trying to feed me to that dark abyss. Those last moments that people describe after a near death experience started happening to me. I panicked & tried to climb my divemaster’s body like a ladder to launch myself towards the surface. Ascending quickly during a dive is a big NO. The changes in pressures can cause a medical emergency. Poseidon decided that was a great time to grab my feet to keep me from ascending.

Thank goodness my dive instructor was there. He grabbed my shoulders & locked eyes with me. No words. Just energy, that stuff they talked to us about in physics class. In that moment, I surrendered in the middle of truly believing that I wasn’t going to make it. It felt like we were suspended in the water. He stayed with me until I calmed down. I didn’t finish that dive. I went back to the boat & cried. I didn’t cry because I ended the dive or possibly ruined my chances of becoming certified. I cried because I was scared, for a moment, I couldn’t see myself making it through that. I really didn’t want to dive anymore. I was honestly mad at myself completely overlooking I was new to this.

I felt horrible because people warned me before the trip that I was walking into something dangerous. My doctor wouldn’t sign my medical form to gain clearance to dive. Even she had a scary story to share. People’s words have power. Without realizing it, their worries became my worries. But I kept going & completed the rest of my dives & finished my certification. My instructor guided me the rest of the way. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I barely had to exchange words with him, he just got me. He’s still one of my favorite humans.

I am a mermaid now, not really lol but I meet that dark abyss with every deep dive & I’ve learned to swim through it. Past that abyss are sea creatures ready to give you a tour of their world. Something inside of me changed during that moment with my instructor. Things haven’t been the same in the most positive way. I am so glad that I found the courage to move forward, the underwater world is something every single person on this planet should experience at least once.

That’s what having a doula feels like. That calming presence in the middle of the unknown. A human tether.

If you related to any of this, you may understand that sometimes parenthood feels like spiraling into a dark abyss & there’s nothing wrong with having a tether. Because being a birthworker will lead you straight to that dark abyss & you also deserve a tether. As doulas our clients are a reflection of ourselves. We are their mirror & they are ours. Our experiences speak to how it feels to move through a new chapter. We get one another in a unique way.

When something life shifting happens, you remember who was there. Doulas offer that kind of presence. Not loud. Not know-it-allsy. Just there. This is the standard of a good doula.

Up next, part 2…