About The Birth Bag
The Birth Bag exists because preparation and information are not the same thing.
Most birth education gives you knowledge. It tells you what birth is, what might happen, what your options are. That knowledge matters. But knowledge alone does not prepare your body. It does not prepare your partner. And it does not prepare you for the moments when birth takes its own direction.
The Birth Bag is a complete preparation system. Professional birth tools hired and delivered to your door, paired with a practical video program that teaches you and your partner exactly how to use them. The two are inseparable. The tools only work if you know how to use them. The education only lands if you have practised it.
It was built by a certified doula who learned the hard way what the gap between information and preparation actually costs.
A Founder's Story
My first birth
I had done everything right. I had read the books, done the hospital course, understood the research. I knew what birth was. I thought that was enough. It was not.
I went into labour at 35 weeks with a breech baby. I was talked down to and bullied when I tried to advocate for myself. After an unsuccessful attempt to turn my baby, I had a caesarean. The paediatric team took my son to NICU and I was separated from him for four hours with no information. I didn't know if he was alive.
My brain did what brains do under that kind of stress. It protected me. I felt nothing when I finally held him and what followed was almost a year of postpartum depression and suicidal thoughts.
I have thought a lot about why that birth went the way it did. The answer is not that I lacked information. I had more information than most women walking into a birth room. The answer is that I was not prepared. Not practically. Not physically. And my husband, who wanted to help more than anything, had no idea what to do.
A Founder's Story
The second birth
My second birth was different in every way. I chose my midwife, I trained my husband and I worked hard to get my body and my mind ready for the birth I actually wanted to have this time round.
I laboured on the beach for most of the day, walking up and down the sand and jumping into the ocean for every contraction. I came home at five in the afternoon and my son was born at nine that evening. The midwives were outside drinking tea for most of it. My husband was the only person I needed in the room. My body knew exactly what to do and my husband knew exactly how to support me.
It felt like an ordinary evening. That is still the most extraordinary thing I have ever experienced. My HBAC.
Why The Birth Bag exists
The gap between those two births is why The Birth Bag exists.
Not the information gap. I had information both times. The gap between knowing what birth is and being ready for what it actually is. The gap between a partner who wants to help and a partner who knows how. The gap between understanding the theory and having practised the thing.
I spent a decade in strategy consulting before training as a doula. I know what a system problem looks like. This is a system problem. The Birth Bag is the system I wish had existed the first time.