Queer Affirming Doula Carein Portland, Oregon

Families are made of love! And queer families often face challenges that require extra intention, creativity, resourcefulness, and planning. Let our doulas support your family with queer affirming doula care in Portland, Oregon.

Queer Affirming Doula Care
LGBTQ+ Affirming Doula Care

What Is Queer Affirming Doula Care?

Doula care is all about having a trusted relationship with a birth professional who works just for you, helps ensure informed choice, and respects and celebrates your family each step of the way. Our Birth First Doulas services provide individualized emotional, informational, and physical support to families who feel they do not fit into the cis-hetero-monogamous-normative box. Queer-affirming doula care advocates for your family by placing extra emphasis on navigating medical systems and offering a counter-balance to the tendency for reproductive spaces to be heteronormative and strongly gendered. Queer inclusive doula care can look different depending on your family’s goals and the types of biases and assumptions you may face in birthing spaces. Our doulas can also help to locate resources and practitioners for a variety of services that are inclusive and affirming during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Everyone has the right to feel supported and respected as their family grows.

Queer-Inclusive Doula Care Focuses On:

  • Understanding your family’s hopes, needs, and preferences.
  • Learning about challenges or harms your family has faced or anticipates facing while working with medical providers and navigating reproductive spaces.
  • Noticing and helping to interrupt microaggressions that queer families frequently face.
  • Informing medical providers of who your partner is/partners are to avoid assumptions or harmful questions.
  • Using the pronouns and vocabulary that you use.
  • Redirecting providers who ask inappropriate questions about you, your family, or your conception story.
  • Asking permission before touching and making sure informed consent actually happens.
  • Providing trauma informed care.
  • Focusing on safe, responsive, affirming treatment.
What Is A Doula, Portland

We support everyone who wants to experience the gift of childbirth.

Birth First Doulas is committed to supporting and celebrating all families in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington areas. Some of our doulas are queer identified, sensitive to the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ folx, and dedicated to helping every family feel honored and respected in reproductive spaces.

Kind Words From Our Lovely Clients

“If you’re looking for support, kindness, advocacy, and knowledge during your pregnancy/birth, look no further than Birth First Doulas. Not only did we get paired with an amazing doula, but we had access to classes and resources during our pregnancy that made us feel prepared and reassured. Having a postpartum visit built into the doula services made us feel like we were supported throughout our entire parenting journey!

Sara, Portland, Oregon

I am so grateful that we had our Birth First Doula’s support. From the first meeting to the weeks after my daughter’s birth, she was a huge support. When we got to the birth center she supported me both physically and emotionally. Through each contraction she was there. Wether it was providing counter pressure, breath work, suggesting movements, encouragements, or providing my partner with support, she was there.

Michelle, Portland, Oregon

We had a fantastic experience with our Birth First doula. She was a supportive presence before our baby was born, when we experienced some unexpected complications during the process and afterward, while we adjusted to the postpartum period. The parenting resources offered by Birth First in the form of classes were also really helpful before our babe came. We would highly, highly recommend Birth First Doulas to anyone expecting a baby.

Theresa, Beaverton, Oregon