A New Kind of Doula Training... Episode 122

🌿 Melanie Russell is back with big news: ToLABOR’s brand-new Combo Doula Training + Retreat has arrived!

Watch the full video version here: https://youtu.be/kdZoxtDIT9Q

This unique approach to doula education goes beyond classroom-style learning—it’s a thoughtfully designed experience that combines evidence-based training with restorative practices like yoga, meditation, sound baths, and shared meals. The goal? To equip doulas not only with the skills and knowledge they need, but also with the space and practices that replenish their energy and nurture their own wellbeing. Because when doulas are supported and cared for, they can show up with even more strength and presence for the families they serve.

Melanie is joined by Ocean Hak-Kuhn, leading the Postpartum Doula training, and Sarah Cole, guiding the Lactation Education portion. Together, they share heartfelt stories from their own work supporting families, and offer a glimpse into the magic of this new retreat-style training at Wintergreen Resort. Listeners will feel the excitement build for a weekend that promises not just learning, but renewal, connection, and transformation.

The ToRAISE Questions Doula podcast offers thoughtful, unfiltered conversations for doulas and birth workers who want to deepen their knowledge, elevate their practice, and uphold the integrity of birth work. Each episode features insights from experienced professionals in the field, helping you grow with intention and purpose.

Questions, feedback, show ideas, want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

→ Email: melanie@tolabor.com
→ Instagram: instagram.com/tolabor
→ Facebook: facebook.com/toLabordoulas

Interested in becoming a Doula?
Visit our website for more: https://tolabor.com/

Transcript

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Hi everybody, welcome to Therese Questions, a doula podcast created by 2Labor. I'm Melanie Russell and I'm really glad you're here. We're going to get right into it today. I have a couple of guests here to go over some new things. I've got Sarah Cole. Hi everybody. Hi Sarah. Sarah Cole is a 2Labor certified professional birth doula. She is also a postpartum doula. She's also a certified breastfeeding specialist, a breastfeeding educator, the education coordinator for a brighter birth, mom of four. I teach the childbirth education classes alongside you as well. That's right. That's a mouthful. So much stuff you do. And I'm really happy you're here. Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. I'm excited to be here today. And we've also got Ocean Hakun. Hi Ocean. Hi. So good to see you. Thank you. Good to be seen. Ocean is joining us on Zoom from Pittsburgh today. We couldn't lure her here for this one, but maybe another time. Ocean is also a 2Labor professional birth doula, postpartum doula. Ocean is an infant care educator for a brighter birth and for herself. And she is entering a new role with 2Labor as the membership administrator. So any of you sending in certifications, recertifications, any questions, you'll be communicating with Ocean. And Ocean is also going to be teaching a portion of our next training, the postpartum doula portion, which we're going to talk about today. How are you guys? Doing great. Hanging in there. I think whenever we do one of these, it's always just incredible that we're all in kind of the same room for a sort of undetermined amount of time. And we have a lot of hats that we wear. So how did you guys even make this hour possible? What went into getting here? Well, part of me is surprised it even happened. I mean, now we're here, so I don't feel like I need to knock quite as hard on wood. But whenever we have anything going on with the doulas, I'm always like, well, somebody's going to have a baby and someone can't be in it. We've got to be able to adjust things. But then all of my babies came one weekend. So I'm emptying out for better or worse. Pros cons. Exactly. Yeah. Doula coordination is always with the caveat of unless I'm at a birth, unless my baby's coming. I mostly work as a postpartum doula, so I didn't have any postpartum scheduled for today. And we kind of are juggling childcare on our end between my partner and I. So I'm free to do this. Nice. So you called in some reinforcements for some help. Maybe it's nap time. It's nap time, but also I'm not on the clock right now. Well, that is one of the really lovely things about postpartum work that it's just nice because you get a little heads up of a couple of days that you're going to be starting to do your work, and then it's generally set hours. So that is so much more manageable, I think, for a lot of people, which is why I'm really glad that more people will be able to be trained to do this work because that on-call piece might not be something that you can do right now or whatever. And it might be easier for you to be able to schedule something for a period of time in your life. Yeah. Scheduled doula work sounds great. That's real nice. I miss that part of the postpartum work. Yeah. Well, yeah, let's jump right into this new kind of model that Tulabor is bringing in. In the last episode, we talked about some changes we've made to the foundational curriculum of the birth doula training, but we've also added a completely different experience in for Tulabor training. So now we're doing a destination doula combo training and retreat. I've done a couple of these already and have worked with different doula organizations to kind of piecemeal that education together from birth doula, the birth doula portion being led by Tulabor, and then postpartum doula lactation being led by other doula organizations. And so this one is our first in-house Tulabor combo doula training, which I'm super excited about. So let's get into it. Sarah, you're going to be leading the lactation portion. Ocean, you're going to be leading the postpartum doula portion. I'm going to be teaching the birth doula portion. And we're going to be in Wintergreen, Virginia, which is like an hour outside of Charlottesville. It's 45 minutes from Roanoke, hour and a half from Richmond. Easy to get to and gorgeous in the mountains in Virginia. Mid-September, perfect weather. It's going to be so nice. We have a hot tub and a sauna at the house. Go just for that. Say no more. Go in just for that. And Sarah and I, I come, my family is Swedish. And I'm from, my family's from the Netherlands. So we both have kind of in our blood this need for a sauna. I want to be outside. I want to be in the outside. There's actually recordings of me as a little kid being like, I want to be in the outside. Yes. It would be nice to have access to the outside. Yeah. So that'll be present in our daily rituals for those participants that are staying with us. We have three different options for people to take this training, staying with us in the house, the retreat experience, all the meals. We'll get into more of that. All the wellness activities. We'll get into more of that. Obviously the hot tub and the sauna situation and the training, of course. And then we have a commuter experience. So people who don't need to stay in one of the rooms, but can join us for all of the daily activities. And then we will always offer a virtual experience for people who can't join us in person. So either way, you're going to get a little extra, no matter how you attend the training than you would in one of the normal trainings throughout the year. Yeah. So, you know, you all who are listening, who have taken the training or have thought about it, you've really only looked at the birth doula portion. We have added and included these two new skill sets into the training because we've seen the need for it. We've seen the want for it from all of you. Being a doula and really making this work sustainable as a career usually means you're adding in a few more pieces to, to what you do, to what you offer. So we chose these two because this is where we think the needs really are. And it creates this consistency of care from the prep of the birth, all the way through the birth into postpartum care, into helping your clients feed their babies. So let's get into postpartum. Ocean, give us an idea of first, just tell us kind of what a postpartum doula does. Yeah, it's a great question because I think postpartum can look a lot of different ways. And so therefore the role can fill a lot of different gaps. A postpartum doula is there for you anywhere between the first couple of days of your baby's life into kind of it's variable, but around the first three months is the typical amount of time for a postpartum doula to be in your home. So postpartum doulas can help you just solely with that transition of the emotional adjustment, the physical adjustment, the sleep deprivation, any questions that might come up. And so it's really helpful to have someone coming to your home in those early days. And so I think that's the biggest value of a postpartum doula is that in home person, in-person support. And then there's specialized care too. So most postpartum doulas have a baseline knowledge of lactation and feeding different sort of feeding plans. And then obviously there are people who have a specialized experience in lactation and all different levels. The other thing that they can help you adjust with is helping siblings adjust. And so it's just helpful to have an extra set of hands around the house for the whole family going through postpartum. And then the last kind of main part of postpartum is helping with the practical things. So not always holding a baby, but sometimes it's holding a baby and sometimes it's tidying up the kitchen, tossing in a load of laundry and making sure that the house feels like a conducive environment to recover in because life continues on even when you have a baby. And so it's just, again, helpful to have an extra set of hands. And sometimes postpartum doulas are the only person in your life who aren't expecting anything out of you, who don't have their own relationship to your baby. And so it's nice to have someone supporting you who's solely there for you and has no kind of like stake in how you're doing things. And it's a different type of relationship. And so it's a special period of time for, from the perspective of a postpartum doula to be in relationship with someone. And so yeah, it covers a lot. And I think it's important to be fluid in it because postpartum looks so different person to person, family to family. And so I'm excited that, yeah, we're adding this on as a training to get more people support in postpartum because we put a lot of emphasis for good reason on labor and pregnancy support. And then what happens once you go home from the hospital and you have this baby for the rest of your life? And so it's, yeah, it's really pivotal that people have support to kind of propel them into the rest of parenthood. Yeah. It's so interesting when we talk about like a model of care that we really admire, we talk about it a lot with birth and we talk about, you know, countries in Europe, like the Netherlands being one of them and just kind of a wonderful model of care for birth. But they also have a really wonderful model of care for postpartum that we don't have in the United States. In other countries, there is someone who comes to your house that takes care of you for a certain period of time, maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe three weeks, depending on where you are and your insurance or whatever the system is like there. And we don't have anything like that. We just send people home. With a six-week follow-up visit with their provider. Best of luck to you. And we live in a society where so many people have to work on both sides, so we don't necessarily have family members or don't feel comfortable with those particular family members because sometimes family members are helpful and they have their own agenda. Sometimes their help isn't the help that you needed at that particular time. Yes. Right. Ocean, I've known you for kind of a long time. Will you describe to us or just kind of explain how you got into this work being the youngest of six kids. Ocean is also Therese's youngest daughter. And so being the youngest of six and getting into the work of caring for others, and also having a mom who was a doula, obviously, how did you forge your path into the postpartum realm? Yeah, I think, so as you said, I was raised by Therese. I'm the last in line. I didn't have a younger sibling after me. So I think for better or worse, it didn't tarnish my image of what babies are. And so I was really interested in babies. And there were a lot of babies around me in the world. My like anecdote of childhood was, you know, we would be at the grocery store and I'd see a mom with a new baby and I'd be like, mom, mom, do you know her? Can you ask her if I can hold her baby? You know, I'm like seven years old. Really? Can I hold your baby in the produce section? Because they were probably like, yes, my mom. Yeah. Your mom was like, yes, I know her. Yeah, high probability she would have known that woman and that baby. So I was always interested in babies from a young age. And it kind of started out as child care. And so being a mother's helper as like a really young kid, I think like 10 years old was the first time I was like in charge of another child. And then, you know, that transition transitioned into babysitting and nannying. And honestly, like birth work, quote, unquote, was not didn't feel like my path. It was my mom's world. And so I think my interpretation of that was like a little bit of distance of just like, that's what she does. And after being like a career nanny for a few years, I really started to look at what I wanted to be doing professionally, where my interests, where my passions lied and postpartum was kept coming up because of the baby thing. And I took a postpartum doula training at my mom's, you know, not in not even like pressure of encouragement of just kind of like, you could try it, like, see you see what it's about. And it felt like a spark in some ways, because it had so much overlap with child care. And it was like, okay, like, I already have like the skill set of working with a specific family, kind of like fitting into a gap and into like already an established culture and just helping. And so being able to do that on a more rotating like schedule with postpartum, because with when you're a nanny, obviously, you usually work for one family. And for postpartum, you can work for multiple families over the course of the year. And so that felt really exciting to me to to be able to help more people in that way. And after that training of postpartum, I was like, okay, what's this like birth doula part two? And let's see what that's about. And should I talk about the like, taking the training? Yeah. The training, I don't think I necessarily had like a an intention of this, and this is a to labor training that my mom was teaching. I don't think I had to take that one. I don't think I had an intention of like, maybe this will be my next career move. I think it was like a curiosity was like an interest in like, learning more about seeing a lot of postpartum at that point. And then like, what does pregnancy look like? What does what does the beginning part of this look like? And then also like twofold of this is my mom's work. I've like known that she's been doing this for most of my childhood, and I haven't like seen her in this light. And so I had to look up what year was 2016. I took my training with Hunter, that was her training as well. And so it was really eye opening. It was eye opening in a lot of ways of some of the information, you know, in the background, I understood and had heard of before, but a lot of it was new. And the big shift, I feel like for me personally, it was like watching my mom do it. It's like, being able to see her kind of like through both lens of this is my mom, and I can like relate to it in this way. But I also could look around and be like, oh, I see how other people are seeing her. I see how impactful this is on other people. Because I think part of being the way that I was raised and like how immersed I was in like this type of like support and care and community, it sometimes almost put like, there wasn't a significance on it, because it was just normal. It was my normal. It was the way that like, we moved through the world. You got to see her doula in real time, without calling it doulaing. Right. And I feel like without, it wasn't until I had a little bit of distance until I had lived in like my own world, realizing, oh, this is really unique. This is like, not how everyone is raised. This is not how everyone moves through the world. And it was really emotional. I remember being the first, like in our closing out, like, goodbyes, like the first one to cry, because I was just like, so moved by the experience. And lots of people are, you know, like, I think anyone who's taken to labor training, like you, you, a lot comes up in it. So, but I just remember being, I was like, of course, I'm the first one to cry. Weeping, can't get through my like, my just like, little, like, two sentence speech at the end. And your mom was probably so proud. Yeah. She gotcha. So, it was just, it was really impactful. And I try, I mean, in preparation for this conversation, like, reflecting on times I've had big shifts of perspective. And they don't come up all the time. And they can't, you can't like plan for them. But that was like a big shift for me. And not necessarily career wise, even, but just of like, worldview, and seeing like, the allowing to put a significance on this type of action in the world. And like, again, because of growing up around, like around an advocate, that just felt like, oh, this is how you like, this is how you talk to people. This is how you Yeah. And so realizing that that's sometimes needs to be like, reinforced and to be taught. And yeah, so it was, it was just a big shift of, oh, this is important to witness, I think, as her daughter, and important to like, perpetuate it for myself to and have like, my own reasoning for it. Because, you know, relationships with parents, like there's so much around that of that influence. And so being able to kind of come to it in my own, I think only helped it feel even more important for myself. Yeah. And so that's so interesting, because you kind of came into it backwards, you started with the postpartum training, and then did the birth doula training. And so would you say now that you're really pulling from the birth doula training still when you're doing that postpartum care? Yeah, absolutely. Because I think there's, like I mentioned before, postpartum is last so long, it's the rest of your parenthood, it's, it's everything. And so learning how to be an advocate during pregnancy, or for yourself, or as a doula for other people. Of course, you carry that through your parenthood. And so the advocacy piece is really, I think, we don't talk about it enough. And even in some other trainings, that wasn't like a part of it. And obviously, advocacy looks a little bit different. And it's sometimes I like to like, frame it in building up your like, gut, like your intuition to to have these conversations to kind of like flag things that don't feel right. And sometimes Yeah, that is a skill we need to build up, we don't always have it. And especially you have to learn as a parent to do it on behalf of someone else. And so yeah, definitely influenced my postpartum work. Because from that training, I didn't right then jump into being a birth doula. I was still working in postpartum. And so yeah, from there, it it definitely influenced the work in postpartum. Yeah, I think it really goes hand in hand. You know, if you're caring for a family post birth, and they need to process their birth experience, which a lot of times that falls on the postpartum doula, it's really important to understand the scenarios, all you know, all of those moving pieces of what happened during the pregnancy, how were they prepared? Who were who was their team? What did their birth look like? You know, were were their voices heard? And then holding that space, helping them process it in that postpartum time is so important. So I think it, it really just adds to that skill set. Yeah. So Sarah, you I've known also for a long time, also for a long time. I used to teach childbirth education classes in the basement of a maternity clothing store. And Sarah was the manager of that. Yeah. So I would be helping fit someone's bra. And downstairs, we'd hear, Oh, and I'd be like, Oh, that's just our childbirth. That's a good downstairs. Those are just nice. Yeah. And so, you know, and so we got to know each other a little bit that way. And I actually got a chance to sit on one of the classes with a friend of mine who was taking the class. Her partner couldn't be there. And so I got to sit in on one of the classes and I absolutely loved the experience of getting a chance to do that. So that was my little introduction. Yeah. And then you just went, you just jumped right in. I went a whole hog. I was like, let's just do it, which is actually kind of like my experience. I kind of spread out over a year what we're doing with this retreat. I took my postpartum training, my birth training, my certified last patient specialist training, and other trainings as well, all in one really big year. And what was really cool about learning them together, I already had four kids at that time, but I had only had my experience of having the kids. And while those varied widely, there was so much more that I needed to learn and understand about the whole process. And so learning postpartum and learning birth and learning lactation and learning about the body through a yoga teacher training I was doing at the time that I said I wasn't going to mention. But the, you know, like learning all of these pieces in tandem and I could see directly, ah, yes, this relates to that. And that relates to that. And if we aren't having a great breastfeeding experience, we're not having a great postpartum experience. And if we aren't having an empowered birth experience, then we are moving into the postpartum experience already behind, you know, and already even more depleted than we are, you know, when we start postpartum. And so it was, so I was thinking about this training. I was like, man, this is like a really gentler in a way way of doing this because I was not having a sauna in between these. I was driving around and trying to manage my four kids. And so it would have been so nice if I had had this space to sit and process all of this stuff together. You know, it would have been so nice to have somebody go, oh, I also took that training and I also know that piece and I am, you know, doing this together. We can do this simultaneously. So you just jumped right in, but your experience took a full year and without the real-time processing within a group. Yeah. And not everybody was taking each training. So what's really special about this is that when other people are there to help you make those connections or they're making the connections, you can be like, oh yeah, I didn't think about that. So I'm really excited about seeing people go through that process. I think the real benefit of taking a training retreat like this and really diving in to invest in the retreat experience of being in the house with everybody is actually the behind the scenes. Totally. When the training is over, the camera is off and we are feeding people. I'm cooking for everybody. My life before being a doula was in restaurant work and owned a really cool little clandestine supper club at some point, a little private catering company. And so it's just another form of how I love to love other people, how I like to care for people. So you're an amazing cook. I know. I'm really, I'm just as excited about the food than I am about the sauna. Lucky, lucky. Still working on the menu, we'll see. But that's something that really gets me excited. And I think that creating the meals for people, you know, we just had dinner with all six of our kids last night and I was cooking and I was getting things ready and I was just listening to what was happening around me, just the dynamics of the kids and their conversations around back to school stuff and what they're all doing. And I had this little moment of like, oh, this is why I love this. Like I don't, I'm not engaged. I'm kind of engaged. I'm present. I'm there if they need me. I'm doing my own thing. I'm creating something with so much love for them to sit around this table, but I'm creating space for them to connect. And that's what is going to happen here at the training, you know, creating space for these new doulas to connect, to be able to ask the trainers who just trained them, what did you mean by this? Can you elaborate on this? You know, over a meal, we'll obviously be talking about birth. That's all that we talk about and other things. But I think just those little nuggets of wisdom that's, that are going to be thrown into the behind the scenes are so incredibly valuable. And, you know, that's what I learned so much from Therese and the behind the scenes work with her. And, and so that's what I'm, I'm just super jazzed about this whole retreat experience with, we've got, you know, I, we already talked about the hot tub and the sauna rituals, but we also are bringing in a sound bath professional who's coming from Charlottesville, Liz Reynolds. She will be performing a sound bath for us the, the first night under the stars. So we'll all be outside on this gorgeous deck overlooking the mountains and we will all have probably all fall asleep and just like under blankets and pillows and have this incredible sound bath. And then we also have one of my most favorite yoga instructors. Marge Allen is coming also from Charlottesville. I have followed Marge all over the world with her yoga retreats and she just has, she really awoken something in me that created me to even be able to hold these. So I owe a lot to her. So she's coming to do a custom yoga class created for birth workers in mind. And this is a yin class. If you all know, different types of yoga, it's a very chill type of yoga, but she has reframed it into a meridian class. And so she kind of goes down the meridian of the body and with pressure points and talks about really how to reset your central nervous system, which do we need as birth workers after a long birth is so nice to have those skills. And even when you're working with clients, when you're working with clients on anxiety and all of the things, even prepping for birth, giving your clients, these tools and skills are just so incredibly valuable. And making space for that next day. And that next amount of stuff that you're going to feel like the rest and digest part is just as important as the taking end of the knowledge. And so to be able to do it, to have space to do it there and let that settle in before we move on to the next bit. Start this work with your cup full, and then you will have more and more opportunities to refill that cup as you move through this work and you'll know how to do it. So thank you both so much for sharing your different segments. We're just going to tease you with these now. We're not giving too much away because we want you to join us, but then let's move into our Doola experience segment. So, you know, I love to hear a Doola story. Sarah, what do you have for us? What, when you think about a snippet, a little moment in time of your Doola work, what comes to mind? Well, usually not always, but often like the most recent experiences I have, have been on my mind or, you know, are usually like kind of fresh. Although I have a lot of stories that I will take with me forever, but I did just have two clients go into the hospital at the same time and one, her water broke and she was GBS positive. And the other one was going in for an induction. And I went because prenatally, I had discussed coming in with the induction because she has a lot of anxiety around needles. And so I was just going to come in, get her settled, get her through that part. And we discussed prenatally that I would be leaving after that. So they come in without a, within about a half an hour of each other and not nobody's laboring quite yet. We're kind of at the beginning. And what was so great was that I have been working in this hospital for years and the midwife, she's like, girl, I got you. You're in two rooms. I got you. You know, I've got your back. The nurses were like, you're in two rooms. I got you. When I was going out to get water for my client, I would see the nurse from the other ones. She's like, you know, here's what's like, is this a good time for me to go in there or should I not? She's like, you know what? They just went to sleep. Like don't, you know, because you're going to wake them up and then you're going to get stuck. And that is one of the wonderful things about fostering relationships in the spaces where you work that there have been times where I have to do the same for our midwife. She's in another room and I've got to, you know, and I'm like, girl, I got you. It's fine. I'll let you know. I'm going to send you a quick text if I'm like, get over here. And so it was really nice to be held and supported by the team that I worked with when I ended up there for a really long time. Another midwife was like, I have a room you can go sleep in if you need to go sleep there. And, you know, I think a lot of times when people go into this work and I was been thinking about this too, in terms of this training and how people are entering in the training, kind of what they're thinking about when they come in is that we can have really beautiful relationships with providers, nurses, hospitals, and still be willing to say, hey, we haven't discussed all of our options. And there's like a mutual respect and a taking care of each other and having each other's back. And so it was really, it was really nice to go in and be like, okay, I've got this tricky situation I'm going to have to navigate, but I've got a lot of support from the team and we made it happen. I love that so much. It's you just hit on two of the five essential components of doula work that we talk about our first night of training, which is collaboration and advocacy. And when we create that positive rapport with the staff, you know, from everyone, from the person behind the information desk, when you walk into that hospital to the labor and delivery nurse in the room, the midwife or medical provider on call, we create and foster that collaboration kind of care, which then just spreads everywhere. You know, the client feels it. Everyone feels like they're part of a team, which is so important. And then when you do throw something out, they're going to be more likely to hear that because it's hard to, if you're somebody constantly saying no, no, no, no, no. Then why are they going to listen to you? When you say no, that time you've said no every single time, and you're just an obstacle in their way. Yep. And you can still advocate within that collaborative model. Yeah, I love that. Thanks, Sarah. How about you, Ocean? What do you think about? Well, so I was thinking about times I've been doula'd because I was a doula before I had my own baby. And so I hadn't been doula'd in this way until I had her and Melanie was my birth doula. And I realized thinking about, obviously, I didn't have this perspective doulaing before I had my baby of what it feels like, what the memories are of a doula in your life. And I realized that some of the doula memories I have are just like flashes of like feelings I had that like the way that my doula made me feel, or like a picture, like focusing on your face, holding your hand. And that's how the memories are created. And so it's helpful even to remember that as I'm doulaing too, of like, these are flashes. This might not be a full scene that this person is going to remember. But they're going to remember these little instances of the way you made them feel, how you made them feel supported. And so Melanie was a wonderful doula. She hung in there with me for my really long labor. This story is not about all the good that Melanie did. This is about when I was laboring at home for 30 hours. We decided to transfer to the hospital in a non-emergency way. And so, you know, we go to the hospital. I'm 30 hours in. Melanie had been at home with me. So Melanie was wearing her I'm doulaing at home clothes, open toe shoes, which I think is not her usual for the hospital. Within like 20 minutes of me checking into the hospital, guess what? I just peed all over the floor, all over Melanie's open toed shoes. And I think Melanie had a quick lesson of like, oh, yeah, we got to pack my extra shoes in case, you know, landscape of birth changes, environment, all of that. So like I said, Melanie was, had many wonderful moments of support. But that was one of my flashes of like, I remember that part. Melanie would be like, oops, there's my foot. Oops. And I feel so connected to your birth too, Ocean, because I backed you up while you were there. Because I had two in labor at the same time. Doing different kinds of work at that time. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And Melanie's husband's birthday for the day before of labor. So it was all interconnected. We hit all the points. Yep. Yeah. Yes, we did. It's funny. I don't even remember that. I don't, I didn't remember that you peed on my foot. Oh, good. Yep. But you brought it all back now. I think I didn't. Yeah, Flynn had to remind me of this. He's like, remember when you peed all over Melanie? Oh, yeah, I do remember that. Thanks, Flynn. And if that isn't the best plug to become a birth doula, I don't even know. That's right. Become a birth doula, you'll never notice. You will not remember when people pee on you. Thank you so much for being here, guys. Thanks for sharing your stories and your wisdom with us. We are so looking forward to hosting this retreat together. See all the fun stories you're going to hear around the dinner table. Please check us out at 2labor.com. You can register there. If you have any questions about the training and retreat, please just email me, Melanie at 2labor.com. If you have questions that you want highlighted in the podcast, if you have comments, if you want us to add anything in, please let us know, Melanie at 2labor.com. And please follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. This podcast was recorded in Richmond, Virginia at Overcoast Music and Sound, produced by Travis Tucker, mixed by Perry Young. And special thanks to my husband, Jared Russell, for filming and directing this episode, and for all of his input all along the way.