Medically-assisted birth

Even though you are planning a home birth, it can help to be knowledgeable about medically-assisted birth options. Aimée can help you to understand the reasons why your caregiver might recommend a medically-assisted birth, the attendant benefits and challenges involved, what is normal to experience - whether it's caesarean birth, epidural, or foetal monitoring - and how to claim the experience as your own. Aimée has attended over 30 Caesarean Births, both planned and unplanned and many more assisted births of other kinds. Through guided visualisation and learning what each process entails, you can begin to demystify them and imagine yourself coping well and remaining connected with your partner and your baby no matter what path your birth takes.

High risk

If your pregnancy changes and is labelled as “high risk” by your caregivers, Aimée can help you to access the most current evidence relating to your circumstances and help you to craft questions that will help you to get the understanding you seek. In some circumstances, this can help you to keep your home birth plans or stay at home longer than originally expected. In other cases, you might decide that you want to follow your caregiver’s recommendations just as they are. In either case, Aimée will support your choices 100%. She has attended many hospital births and is adept at helping families make that change in plans if it occurs.

Home Birth

Pure Harmony Families is a Home Birth practice. Aimée has attended over 70 home births and is pleased to support families in preparing for and experiencing birth at home so that they feel confident, supported, and comfortable.

• We want you to feel heard, so we listen.
• We want you to feel understood, so we reflect on what you tell us.
• We want you to feel respected, so we commit to understanding your principles and helping you to enact them throughout your journey.
• We want you to feel supported, so we are there when you need us, fully present, 24/7.

We support and advocate for informed choices in pregnancy and childbirth. We can help you to discern what's motivating your decisions and use that information to serve you in communicating your choices to friends, family, and your caregiving team.

In the event that circumstances change and you decide – at any point - to transfer to hospital, we will continue to support you and help you to make that change a positive one.

Multiples & Preemies

The Ontario College of Midwives allows midwives to attend multiples and preemies in hospital only. If you are expecting multiples or a preemie, and had thoughts of having a home birth, please get in touch! Families of multiples and preemies have unique needs and Aimée can help you to plan for hospital birth in a way that honours your transition into parenthood and to dig deep into your own thoughts and beliefs about home and hospital birth and create an atmosphere that makes you feel nourished, courageous, and respected, wherever you are. She can also help you to set up your home in an optimal way for multiples and preemies, develop a routine, (including feeding) that’s tailored to you, and support you in understanding sleep and getting as much of it as you can.

VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean)

VBAC at home is an option for some families; you will need to discuss this with your midwife. Aimée can help you to prepare all the questions that are relevant to your situation to make sure that you have all the information you need to make the decision that is right for you. Aimée has been delighted to assist at five planned home VBACs, two of which moved to the hospital. She also assisted at one unplanned home VBAC (which resulted in a very happy and healthy baby and mother) and was instrumental in helping the midwife when things went very quickly.

Waterbirth

Pure Harmony is pleased to support your plans for labouring or birthing in water by providing you with a birthing pool as part of your doula package.

If you don't know much about labouring or birthing in water, feel free to contact us to talk about whether it's a good option for your family.

Aimée was trained by Barbara Harper, the founder of Waterbirth International, and has been attending waterbirths at home and in hospital for 16 years. She loves the calm and relaxing effect that being submersed in water can have on a person in labour. It also has a very relaxing effect on partners!

Cross-cultural adaptivity

Aimée was a volunteer doula with South Community Birth Program for ten years and became known there as having a special capacity for cross-cultural and even cross-linguistic communication and understanding.

Feeding

However you choose to feed your baby, we will provide you with informational and practical supports to make the experience as smooth as possible and to ensure that feeding time is a loving, relaxed, bonding experience.

Aimée was trained at Douglas College in the Breastfeeding Course for Health Care Providers (a comprehensive education in breast/chestfeeding counseling and lactation theory). She is also very careful to refer on to other specialists – most often IBCLC Lactation Consultants – when something is outside of her scope.

Hypnosis

If you have a hypnosis program or trainer and are planning to use hypnosis as a part of your pregnancy, birth, or parenting experience, you can feel confident that Aimée will know how to support you properly. She is a certified Hypnodoula, which means that she knows what kind of language to use, how to help your birth team support you, and how to help you to work with your scripts throughout pregnancy, birth, and the early postpartum period.

Non-nuclear family structures

Whether your family is polyamorous, single-parent, living in a home with many generations under one roof, or creating your own family structures that don’t follow the dominant models in North America, Pure Harmony Families is there to support you in your parenting and family journey. Aimée will guide you through the process of making sure that your family is acknowledged in the ways that you wish them to be, as well as helping you to set-up your home and routines in ways that will take advantage of everything that your particular family structure has to offer.

LGBTQI Families

Pure Harmony supports all families.

Aimée is part of the queer community and has served many LGBTQI families in her time as a doula. She makes a point of continuing to educate herself on trans & intersex issues in particular and the challenges that trans & intersex people face in the health care system, particularly around pregnancy, birth, and parenting.

Postpartum mood disorders

Your doula will be there by your side through the emotional ups and downs of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. She can help you to prepare for the postpartum period by identifying and communicating your hopes and expectations.

Postpartum mood disorders such as postpartum depression or anxiety often go undetected, especially for those who feel themselves to be low-risk. Aimée can help you to be aware of the signs to look for and know what to do if you think that you or someone in your family might be experiencing a PPMD.

Trauma-informed support

If you are a survivor trauma, you may or may not want to disclose that to your doula, sleep coach or other care providers. Aimée has received training from Penny Simkin (author of, When Survivors Give Birth) in how to make safe space for disclosure, should you want to talk about your experiences. She is also adept at helping to create a safe and respectful atmosphere in which the thoughts and needs of your family are centred and honoured, whether they’ve disclosed a traumatic event or not. Every parent deserves to be listened to, validated, and supported as central agent in their own experience. Pure Hamony Families practices strict confidentiality. We will not discuss your situation or experience with others – even your family or care team – without your express consent.

You’ve got this.

And we’ve got you.

Pure Harmony supports families through the joys, challenges, and transitions of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. We believe that you are the expert when it comes to your body and your baby, and we respect that expertise.

Parents also need help learning new skills and acquiring the information they need to make decisions that are right for their family. Our “toolkit” approach to sharing information takes the stress off of this process. Every experience we share, every study we pass along, is for you to pop in your parenting toolkit and use if and when your instinct tells you it’s the right thing to try.

We listen carefully to your story in order to understand your deepest principles and we help you to walk your path in a way that reflects and honours those principles.

But it’s not just a theoretical exercise. We’re there with you every step of the way to support you emotionally and physically, and to help you to connect with the resources that are available in your community.