Testimonial for Suzanne DeSelms
We'd given up hope of children after years of disease and disappointed prayers. Then suddenly, without warning, conception on the edge of forty! I think we held our breath for eight months, we were so scared, and so committed. I knew Suzanne was our doula the moment I felt her hands "speak" to my baby. My whole, tense body relaxed and focused at the same time.
Each visit with Suzanne was like a spa day for our hearts; she was there for our fears and there for our dreams. We were staggered by her knowledge and the impact of her support on our experience of the pregnancy itself-- the number of little tricks and details she knew about care and comfort that were in none of my two dozen books.
My labor *started* with five minute long contractions every five minutes on a late night trip to the bathroom and very shortly thereafter all sense of time, world, and linear thought were gone as I just gave everything I had to staying present in the pain in that dark little room. Four hours later, the wall-pounding of transition finally alerted my husband, and when Suzanne rushed into the apartment twenty short minutes after his call, I was in the most inelegant of positions on the porcelain pedestal and what little mind I had left was total convinced of my complete physical inability to move. I couldn't even make eye contact!
Instantly, she leaned in close making a buzzing low moan that gave me greater peace with the pain as soon as I imitated it. In rapid succession, she realized I was pushing; coached me into panting; used Herculean persuasion, humor, and faith to get me moving; helped me dress; grabbed my coat; reoriented my husband away from loading up our marathon preparations for labor and into loading up ME; and then followed our car to the fantastically amazing Puget Sound Birth Center, where we arrived at 2:55am and our succulent little butter-bodied bundle was born sixteen minutes later.
Plus she knit us a hat.
-Treebyleaf McCurdy
June 20, 2013
Suzanne DeSelms
Waiting With You
Birth Fee: $2400 to $3400
