Hi Ciarra, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2010, I gave birth to my daughter in a military hospital. She was my first child and I really wanted an unmedicated birth, but I didn’t quite educate or prepare myself for accomplishing that goal. After 11 hours of labor, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore and needed pain management help. While that’s a totally reasonable outcome for anyone who wants an epidural, it wasn’t what I wanted. Seven years later, when I was pregnant with my son, I told my husband I wanted to give birth in a birth center. He reminded me we would need to prepare for that and asked what I wanted to do to make sure we made that happen. I have a family member that had three children using the HypnoBirthing techniques and decided that was probably a good option since she was so successful with it. I looked into HypnoBirthing, read the book, hired a HypnoBirthing educator to do classes with us, and also hired her to be our birth doula. I had a smooth, easy, comfortable birth with my son, surrounded by many family members in a beautiful, relaxed birth center atmosphere. After his birth, I looked up at my husband and said “I have to help other people do this. They have to know it can be like this!” Being the quick-witted man he is, he replied with “Just Doula It!” When my son was about a year old, I went to training with the HypnoBirthing Institute, finished my certification, and hit the ground running. I immediately began teaching HypnoBirthing classes to people in and around Austin and started my birth doula certification with Tiny Love Doula Certification program. It is not required for doulas to be certified, but it was important to me to educate myself so I could help people with a deeper understanding of birth and what it entails. When I was in HypnoBirthing training, the word “Empowered” kept coming into my head. I came up with the name of my business, Empowered Beginnings, while I was there in Florida. Empowered Beginnings doesn’t mean I am empowering people. Quite the opposite. I educate and support people, but they are empowering themselves when they choose to hire me, choose to take childbirth classes, and choose to own their pregnancies and birth journeys. I am just a piece of their empowered journey. I knew I had to help other people in their pregnancy, labor, and birth journeys. So here I am, Just Doula-ing It
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I have been blessed to have a fairly smooth transition into this profession. I never imagined I would suddenly have an epiphany at 32 and change my career path. When I took a leap of faith and decided to quit my other job to focus on my business full time, I wasn’t sure if I would succeed. It quickly became clear I made the right choice. Two weeks after I put in notice to quit, I fully booked the next four months of work. How’s that for a sign? God has blessed this journey and I am forever grateful that I get to do what I have a passion for while getting to spend more time with my kids than I ever did before. The biggest struggle has been childcare. My step-dad is on call for births and watches my son two days a week for me to do meetings and office work. I have an amazing support system, but counting on other people to be available at the drop of a hat is a lot to ask. Another struggle is never knowing when I’ll have to head out and cancel plans. Being a birth doula means sacrifices for both me and my family. Driving two cars to dinner in case I have to leave, leaving in the middle of pumpkin carving, wondering if I’ll miss the birthday party we planned for one of our children, cancelling plans last minute, and always ending a confirmation of us doing something with “Unless I’m at a birth.”
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am the owner of Empowered Beginnings and am a certified birth doula (TLCD) and childbirth educator (HBCE). I am always continuing to expand my education. I am trained in TENS unit usage in labor and birth, nearly finished with my Stillbirthday training, and I’m a Certified Sleep Consultant with the Center For Pediatric Sleep Management. The thing I am most proud of is the success rate of birth outcomes for people that participate in my HypnoBirthing class series. Without induction or medical indication for cesarean, as of writing this, people that used me as their doula and took my HypnoBirthing class series have a 100% success rate for accomplishing an unmedicated birth. That’s incredible and gets me even more excited about teaching these classes.
What makes you happy?
When people come to me and inquire about doula services or childbirth education, they’re usually pretty anxious and unsure. While working with them I get to see them transform from nervous and unsure to excited and confident. Seeing the rates of cesarean births, postpartum mood disorders, and birth trauma be lower with my Empowered Families than they are statistically is beautiful. THAT makes me happy!
Contact Info:
- Email: Ciarra@EmpoweredBeginningsATX.com
- Website: www.EmpoweredBeginningsATX.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empoweredbeginningsatx_doula/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/EmpoweredBeginningsATX
- Yelp: https://yelp.to/uCxtJMUgcbb
- Other: https://g.page/r/Cc11EhXD-sqcEAE/review
