Five years ago, when Kelly and I started this journey into birth work together, both of freshly-new grandparents, having supported our own children into parenthood just a few months prior, we envisioned a world where more people had access to birth support and how we could really play a role in making that happen here locally. While I knew that we were creating something really special together, I had no idea just what that would entail.
Since our conception of Birth and Beyond Doula Services, we have each grown and expanded in so many various ways. We are both now trained and certified to teach Childbirth Education classes (more on that this year!). We both are fully certified and approved to support and bill Medicaid for services, and supported about 25 clients together in 2025, the first year that Washington State medicaid paid for doula support. That is a huge testament to how important birth doula support is to people! We both are doing overnight and daytime postpartum support, too.
While we both focused on LESS clients this year, we ended up actually being steadily busy and involved in the community just the same. We hosted two community events where the public was able to come and meet local birth doulas (don’t fret, there will be more!). We continued taking trainings aimed at making access to birth support easier, ways to help our clients more, and even managed to both take vacations to reset and focus on our mental well-beings for a bit.
All in all, 2025 was an amazing year at Birth and Beyond and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have gotten to support the clients we did. We were humbled, tested, and welcomed into so many families and spaces, all of which taught us something new to take forward in our business for future clients.
2026 brings an important milestone for Kelly and I, as we get to celebrate five full years as business owners, as ‘official’ doulas, and as birth workers in the community. We couldn’t be more proud of what we have become together, the services that we get to offer people, and the connections we’ve established in the five years of doing this work.
If you’re one of the 52 birth families and a few dozen postpartum families we got to serve in 2025, we boldly thank you and honor you for trusting us with supporting you, your partners, and your babies. We couldn’t be more proud of how hard you all worked and how awe-inspiring your stories really are to us. You’re the reason we are doing what we do and we truly do LOVE our roles as birth keepers.
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