Birth Services
Birth Doula, Birth Photography and Placenta Encapsulation
Birth is sacred—a powerful rite of passage that deserves to be honored, protected, and deeply supported. As doulas, we believe in holding space for the full depth of this transformative experience, trusting the wisdom of the body and the strength within every birthing woman. Our birth services are rooted in presence, reverence, and holistic care, and include continuous birth support, intentional birth photography to capture your story with depth and beauty, and placenta encapsulation to support your healing and vitality in postpartum. We are here to walk with you—mindfully, respectfully, and with deep belief in your power.
Birth Doula Support
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With GVL Doula Besties, birth support goes way beyond just showing up when labor starts. From the moment you decide we're your people, we’re in your corner—offering holistic, heart-centered care every step of the way.
You’ll get prenatal visits where we talk through your vision, answer all your questions (even the ones you didn’t know you had), and help you feel totally prepared, mind, body, and spirit. When labor begins, we’re by your side with continuous support—offering grounding presence, physical comfort, emotional encouragement, and evidence-based guidance, whether you’re birthing at home, in a birth center, or a hospital.
We also support your partner, helping them feel confident and connected throughout the process. And after baby arrives? We're still here—checking in, celebrating with you, and helping you process your birth experience. It’s full-spectrum support, bestie-style. 💛
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2-3 Prenatal Visits are included with our services. During our visits in office or your home, we walk you through all the decisions you might be faced with in pregnancy and postpartum. We talk about postpartum village planning, birth preferences and comfort measures.
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Who doesn’t love gifts?! We want you to have the best start to your journey with locally made, clean ingredient, mom & baby products to love on you and your baby.
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From 38 weeks-42 weeks we are your dedicated besties day or night. Our doula bag goes where we go and we are ready to be by your side when you need it most.
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At GVL Doula Besties we know the true value of postpartum care, offering a minimum of 2 postpartum visits after birth. In these visits we debrief your birth together, offer reassurance, and connect you to any resources your postpartum village needs.
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Whether you are getting an epidural or wanting to go unmedicated, having a doula with an extensive knowledge of comfort measures helps you to meet your goals.
In our “tool kit of comfort” we have a variety of tools and techniques such as birth slings, TENS units, understanding of body mechanics (Body Ready Method), massage oil, mindful techniques, peanut balls and more!
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Our guided Birth and Postpartum workbook is every expectant family’s dream with conversational topics for you and your partner, information on boundaries, stages of labor, birth preferences. This Planning Guide helps alleviate your mental load and the stress of trying to remember everything and feeling alone.
Birth Photography
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Birth Photography is a whole different type of photography. Can you imagine a flash and ‘click’ going off in your face while you are trying to focus?
Environment is crucial so having someone who understands “birth etiquette” and can shoot in low lighting is important.
This means that the birth photographer is utilizing tools to intentionally stand where they aren’t in the way and techniques that allow them to maintain the reverence of your flow.
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We want to ensure you feel comfortable with every person in your birth environment. Each Birth Photography Package comes with a Prenatal Planning Session where you can chat 1-1 with your birth photographer about your preferences.
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Placenta Encapsulation
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While there is not a lot of research on placenta encapsulation specifically, we do know that the hormones researched to improve postpartum depression are naturally occurring in the placenta.
We are also the only mammals that do not consume our placentas. At the end of the day, this is a personal choice and we are happy to offer a high quality, safe encapsulation option to you!
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There are many ways to process a placenta. At GVL Doula Besties, we use the steaming process. This means that we gently steam the outer layer of the placenta before processing and dehydrating it. We do this to ensure it is sanitized from all the hands and tools that touched the placenta without compromising the nutritional contents of the placenta.
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We include a complimentary canvas print with every encapsulation! We offer prints with vegan color food dyes or a blood print—your choice!
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This is also complimentary with each encapsulation! Yay! Depending on the length of the cord we can do a heart or write the word “love”
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All the doulas on our team specializing in placentas have a Food Handling Permit and a Bloodborne Pathogen Certification to prevent unnecessary harm when handling placentas.
