DOULAS OF MARQUETTE’S STORY:
For many years, Melinda Britton, Owner of Doulas of Marquette, was a solo doula through Birthed in Joy, Doula Services. After years of being on-call 24/7, coupled with tremendous growth in the number of families she was supporting, she came to realize that something needed to change. She couldn’t do it all alone. Marquette County families, and families throughout the entire Upper Peninsula needed something new.
Melinda has always believed that every family needs the security that the doula that comes to their birth has been part of their entire journey. All the meetings, phone calls, emails, everything. She decided to create a new model, a Doula Group, to provide better care all around.
This model is where two doulas work together on a team (we have multiple teams). The doula group is all under the same umbrella, rather than the previous model which involved being solo with random backup doulas, no backup doula at all, or unreliable backups.
In August of 2015, after over five years of Melinda being a solo doula, Doulas of Marquette LLC was born! And along with it came many new services- postpartum doulas (because we can’t just leave families hanging after they have their baby), private childbirth education, lactation services, belly binding, and placenta services.
And the list just keeps growing.
As her team grew, strong and secure systems were put into place for families with the new model. In addition, relationships with medical providers also grew. Melinda is proud that her group has great working relationships with all local care providers, and that many collaborations have come out of working respectfully with each doctor, nurse, and midwife.
Maybe it’s because you can often hear Melinda saying that she “loves breaking the mold of doula stereotypes” including doulas having there own agenda, doulas supporting only certain types of birth/only being for “unmedicated births”, doulas working solo (and often letting clients and their families down), and doulas that undermine providers.
Melinda and the Doulas of Marquette team have raised the bar, and are leading the way in what Marquette County families can expect when investing in the support of a doula.
So that’s a little bit about our story, and now we’d love to listen to your story.
We would love the opportunity to hear about your desires, fears, questions, concerns, joys, (EVERYTHING!) about your pregnancy, birth, and early parenting.
Because here’s the thing, at some point all of these feelings will lead to the day you welcome your baby.
And then that will lead into your early parenting.
And from there, your birth and early parenting will become a collection of stories you will tell over and over again for the rest of your life.
