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Through ten years of pregnancy and nursing in both OR and NH, I continued work as a teacher, community organizer, and freelance writer. I was also reading every birth book I could get my hands on while connecting with local doulas and midwives.
Eventually, friends began reaching out to me with pregnancy and birth questions for themselves and fellow parents. I began softly supporting them with book suggestions, where to look for answers online, or with links to local birth workers.
At one point, even before we had our second and third children, I was so inspired to support women in birth that I drove up to enroll in ME's Birthwise Midwifery School, only to find it was closing that year. As it turned out, the midwife who had agreed to be my midwifery school preceptor became the midwife we hired for our NH home births.
Finally, just after my youngest had self-weaned at three-years-old, and on the urging of another midwife friend, I decided to formally follow my passion. In 2024, I completed Doula Trainings International's Slow Doula Method coursework, participated in Body Ready Method's Better Birth Pro intro series, and began my training with Indie Birth's Sacred Sister Doula Program. In 2025, I officially started attending births as a doula and sometimes midwife's assistant.
The first and forever memorable birth I attended as a doula was a beautiful friend's VBA2C in hospital. The second was an amazing mom's sunny-side up home birth that I got to support alongside my own NH midwife just before she retired after thirty-five years. I am grateful to all my mentors and especially to all my clients who have trusted me to bear witness for them at such an intimate moment in their lives, no matter the location or type of birth.
Today I'm a NH OPLC Birth Doula who supports hospital, birth center, and home births. My clients are in NH, ME, and MA, within about 1 hour of Nottingham, NH.
Photo by Rachel Minery
Meet Your Doula
Hello! My name is Monica, and I can't wait to connect with you.
This photo is from the birth of my third baby. It captures pure joy! It also expresses more than words why I love providing doula support: I know what it is to birth completely trusted by the people I chose to have around me. I profoundly want to offer this kind of presence to my clients.
Before I was a doula, I grew up and went to college in NJ, attended graduate school in CA, and taught reading and writing at a community college in OR, which is the state where my partner and I met at a bike shop. He was working, and I needed a new tire tube.
Not long after I gave birth to our first child at home in 2012 (see "How It Began" below for why home), we decided to relocate to NH, where my partner grew up, to be closer to family. We traveled the first 650 miles east by bike – with our toddler! Once in the Granite State, we welcomed two more children at home in 2018 and 2021.
I know what it is to birth completely trusted by the people I chose to have around me. I profoundly want to offer this kind of presence to my clients.
Not long into pregnancy, I got in touch with a local OB's office to establish care. I remember getting about half way through their intake paperwork before I called to ask questions about all the information they wanted. It seemed like I was sick or getting diagnosed with something that had been made more complicated than it needed to be. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't want to set up an appointment with this practice after all.
Shortly after that call, I was between classes at Portland Community College where I taught for the English Department. My belly was clearly showing at this point when Bjorn, a friend and colleague from the Math Department, found me and handed me a book. It was Michel Odent's Birth Reborn. Bjorn and his partner Sasha had read it before she had their two children at home.
Reading it was life-altering. It felt like coming home to something humans have always known: Birth overwhelmingly works best when given the time and space to be led by the one birthing.
Bjorn went on to build our first born a step stool, which our family still uses every day. He and Sasha are also the long-time owners of Finn's Pizza in Homer, AK. If you ever get the chance to go, say hello for us!
Odent's book remains one of my favorites on physiological birth, and it solidified for me and my partner that we wanted midwifery care and a home birth for our baby. We went on to read and watch lots of other birth media as well, deepening our interest in empowered birth choices and leading us to two more home births.
On the topic of birth books and documentaries, I have recommendations galore, from the practical to the historical. If the only interaction with me you ever have is reading this, and if I had to recommend just one birth book without knowing you, it might be Britta Bushnell's Transformed by Birth. Or Sarah Buckley's Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. Or maybe Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. Or maybe... Ha.
The rest is your story!
How It Began
With a book! But before that, with family.
My mother had five children. As the youngest, I always heard from her that she loved being pregnant and nursing her babies and that she felt like she could have had all her babies at home.
My older sister went on to have six children, having her first at a free standing birth center, a choice I always thought was pretty neat for a hospital nurse to make. From watching her, I learned a great deal about attachment parenting, elimination communication, and extended breastfeeding.
With examples like these, when my partner and I got pregnant, I had no doubt that I could birth and nurse our baby. And to be fair, it might have been in the air around us too. We lived in Portland, Oregon, where there was a midwifery school and lots of home birth, but I didn't know anything about this yet.