How I bring my Christian faith into my practice as a doula and birth educator

 Leanna Mae is an author, women’s health educator, and birth doula. Her degree is in health sciences. She is passionate about patient education. Leanna loves to write and share helpful information. She loves to teach! She's also passionate about patient rights and healthcare ethics. Leanna became a birth doula in 2008, a certified breastfeeding specialist in 2014, and graduated college in 2018. After graduating, she started teaching classes. She now offers online classes and in-person classes in western Ohio as well as birth doula services in the greater Dayton/Springfield area. 

Hello! I’m Leanna Mae. I’m a nonfiction author of paperback books and a blogger. I’m also a faith-rooted birth doula and birth educator. Being a Christian who owns a business and being a Christian operating a faith-based business is not the same thing. Christians can easily run a secular business. Let’s talk about how we can bring our faith into our practice.
 
My writing, my classes, and my support is founded on Christian faith. What makes it a Christian business? The Lord called me to do this work, and I want to integrate my faith into my practice. Here are the ways that I intentionally do that.
 

• I am a devout Christian, Apostolic Pentecostal. I follow Jesus daily and strive to grow in my walk with the Lord. I seek to glorify God in everything I do. It is always my goal to point people to Jesus.

 

• All of my writing and educational content is written from a biblical worldview.  

 

• I weave our faith into my curriculum as much as I can. For example, my birth plan class has a module on “plan for faith” where we talk about ways to bring faith into birth prep and the birth itself. My coping with contractions class teaches that faith is our firm foundation and we use that to prepare for a strong mindset in birth.

 

• We use scripture to prepare for birth with faith. I have bible verses that are encouraging for birth and I bring index cards if you want to write them down to hang around the room.

 

• We have faith-based assurances (affirmations from biblical truth). God is in the room. He is with us. Let’s nurture our faith and fix our eyes on the sovereign King. You can see the blogs I have on bible verses and faith assurances for birth here as well as encouragement cards you can download.
  

 

• We worship during labor. One of my favorite things to do during labor is listen to worship music. I have public playlists on my YouTube channel that all are welcome to use.

 

• I pray for and with my clients.

 

• My desire is to take care of families with a servant mindset. I’m not here to watch you give birth or to hold your baby. I’m here for you, momma. I’m here to serve you and support you. My focus is on taking care of the woman. For me, this job/calling is all about serving women and improving women’s health.

 

• My goal is to serve others with the fruit of the Spirit. I want to bring peace into your labor. I want to serve you with love and kindness and joy. I always want to be gentle in my care so you feel safe and respected with me.

 

• This company has biblical family values. Family is a beautiful design.

 

• God-given womanhood is honored. Women are uniquely created to bring life into this world through pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. Motherhood is a gift. Traditional/biblical gender pronouns are used.

 

• Children are a blessing from the Lord. We cherish life from the moment of conception around here and we pray for these little ones that they may be healthy and grow up to love Jesus. This is a pro-life company.

 

• 10% from every class and doula client is tithed to my church. Some of that then goes back into the community through outreach and service to others. I like to give offerings when I am able. My favorite things to give to is missions and the food pantry fund. If you’re a client or student and there’s something specific you want me to give an offering to, let me know!

 

• I also offer weekly faith-rooted encouragement. Every Sunday morning, I post a bible verse for birth encouragement. Every Tuesday morning, I post a faith assurance. Every Thursday morning, I post a general birth affirmation that is Christian-friendly (nothing new age). My habit is to sit down every Monday and schedule those posts out. I save them to my phone. On Saturdays, I will send clients all 3 images as encouragement for the coming week. (I don’t mind if other doulas save those images from my social media to share with their own clients.)

 

• I also clearly label my doula services as Christian. I share my faith on my website a lot. For me, that’s mainly through blogging. Another way we can do that is to add bible verses on our website.

 
 
 
If you’re in western Ohio within an hour or so of the Dayton/Springfield area, I’d love to serve your family as a birth doula or teach you my signature class on coping with contractions. If you’re not local to me, you can take my online classes. Learn more about doula services here and about my classes here.
 
If you’re a Christian doula, I invite you to bring the faith into your service as well.