Hello, thank you for having me. My journey truly has been interesting, I am a birth and body worker; I am a certified massage therapist who specializes in prenatal and postpartum massage. In addition, I am a birth and postpartum doula supporting families in birth education, preparation and support from the first 6 weeks postpartum up to 6 months postpartum. In my industry I have learned in the past 7 years of this work that so much power and credit has been taken from the person giving birth and given to the medical care provider. Everything from when to give birth to how to give birth. I believe the people giving birth should be trusted, supported, and believed when they share something about their bodies. I believe people need to be more embodied in an effort to make educated and informed decisions when it comes to their maternal health care. Too often I hear people use phrases such as, “I am going to the hospital so the doctor can deliver my baby.” or things like, “Well my doctor said ___ so I am going to ___.” Did we forget who made this baby? Did we forget who is carrying this baby and doing the day- to- day work to develop and deliver this baby?

The person who is carrying the baby is the one who is going to go through the labor, literally do the work and they will deliver their baby, no one else. The medical team or whatever support team the family chooses to have, is there to help and step in when and if needed. The western medical system has truly lost sight of this and has hijacked birth for many families and completely disregards this as a special experience for the families. They do not know how to sit on their hands and support the family and only intervene when truly medically necessary. There is this agenda to hurry labor and birth up in an effort to get the next family in and out of the hospital rooms. I have heard care providers say things like, “You are not progressing as quickly as we would like to see, so we are suggesting ___.” (Insert any unnecessary medical intervention to help ‘speed things along’)

In addition, as a birth doula I am usually the only person in the labor and delivery room with my client and their partner. More often than not, the medical team is monitoring them from their computers at their desk and only ever in the room if they see something slightly off on their screens. I supported a family in 2022 who was never seen by their OB while in labor, already admitted into the hospital, until the 5min it took for them to deliver the baby, clean up and get out.

My goal in my work is for my clients to trust their body and to listen to their body. I teach them how to advocate for themselves and how to provide embodied consent. Always taking a moment to sit with the information they are being presented with and asking for clarity if they do not understand what is being told to them.

I also talk to them about true medical emergencies. If you are birthing in a hospital, it is their job to be prepared to respond to medical emergencies. When this happens, they usually call codes and do everything possible to save your life and your baby’s life. If they are presenting you with information and options and simply having a conversation with you it is very likely that this is not a true medical emergency, and you have options.

The industry I am a part of does not like this because they are the ones with the coats on, they are the ones who went to school for many years to be in the position they are in, and they do this every day. For our client, this might be their first baby and according to many, they don’t know what they are talking about. They do, and we need to begin to listen to those who are birthing their babies! This is one of the many steps we need to take in an effort to tackle the maternal health crisis that impacts primarily families of color in the United States. By listening to our clients and our client speaking up and listening to their bodies we will decrease our induction rates, decrease our cesarean rates and decrease traumatic birth experiences for many. This way we will also increase better birth outcomes in regard to physical health for both mom and baby, mental health for the whole family and overall maternal health experience for families.

My name is Jasmin Olvera- Dena, I go by Itzpapalotl in my community which means Obsidian Butterfly in the native language of Nahuatl. I am a Mexican Indigenous woman who specializes in birth and body work serving families in the California Bay Area. I come from a lineage of Wixarika people from Jalisco, Mexico and have a very large family, I became an auntie at the young age of 7 yrs. old and have taken my role very seriously. I have a core memory of when my oldest sister was pregnant with her first son which has been a big reason as to why I do the work that I do. We were all in the room one day when my sister was complaining about some back pain, I remember looking at her belly and noticing that it was very big and hanging forward, what I now know is called a pendulum belly. I remember looking at her and asking her if there was anything she could wear to support her belly. She gave me a long elaborate explanation as to why she could not wear anything because it could hurt the baby. I remember that explanation not sitting well with me and thinking she was wrong, I have learned I was correct at only 7 years of age.

I am a sister, a daughter, an aunty, a wife, a fire keeper, a birth worker, a womb keeper, a teacher and an active member of my community. I am the owner, doula, and massage therapist of Oxomohco (oh-sho-mo-ko) Birth & Body Work striving to grow my team.

I have a background in business with an emphasis in accounting, I also went to school for massage therapy and became a CMT. I have attended workshops and training in regard to birth work with traditional birth and body workers and many organizations such as Postpartum Healing Lodge, Birth Workers of Color Collective, La Matriz Birth with Partera Tema Mercado, Mi Xantico with Sewa Yuli, Apapachar Wombyn Services with Byanca Franco, I have taken Spinning Babies courses and I continue to educate myself.

At Oxomohco I offer many services such as fertility massage, prenatal massage, in-home postpartum massage, postpartum massage regardless of birth outcome, new parent Swedish massage, and womb massage. In addition to body work I offer doula services such as birth doula support, birth education and preparation, and postpartum doula care. With postpartum care, I offer massage, herbal body bath, bone closing and most importantly holistic check ins. I check in with my clients as to how they are doing, if they are needing any additional resources (i.e. lactation consult, pelvic floor therapist, chiropractic care. etc.) and how their body is healing from their birth.

There are two things that I feel set me apart from my peers.

1. I will not leave my client after their birth until they are ready to be left alone. This can take anywhere from 2 hours to 5 hours or more depending on how their birth experience went. Many of my peers have a set time frame for their birth packages.

2. It is important to me for families to find the care they want and deserve for their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience. This means, even if the client does not choose to hire me, as long as they find someone who can support their family is all that matters to me. In an effort to support this goal I host yearly maternity fairs. In 2024 I will be hosting my 3rd maternity fair at Oxomohco. I invite local birth and body workers in all aspects of maternity care to share with families about their services. This gives families an opportunity to meet the local birth workers, put a face to the name and get a real understanding of the work we offer. Too often I hear families saying, “oh, I wish I knew this with my first.” or, “I wish I had found you sooner!” My peers and I are here, doing this work and I want more families to know that they have options and they do not have to go through this experience alone. Parenting is not meant to be done alone and we are here to support in any way we can.

Check out my website to learn more about the yearly Maternity Fair happening June 15, 2024, in Los Altos, CA. www.oxomohco.com

I am so proud of how far Oxomohco has come, I now have a team of three therapists including myself and I am working on growing Oxomohco in an effort to be able to support more families. Due to all of this hard work, I was contacted by Telemundo for an interview for Oxomohco and myself in an effort to share with people about birth work. This was such a huge accomplishment for me, having an opportunity to be on TV and share with such a large audience about my work. In addition to this interview, being a part of this article, and one other article in the magazine Parents Latina, it is truly my clients feedback that I am most proud of. Seeing my clients faces, energy, and confidence change after one session inspires me and pushes me to continue to do this work. I had a client recently tell me, ” I had prenatal massages throughout my pregnancy, and I thought a prenatal massage with you was going to be the same. After our session I realized all the other massages were not prenatal. Your massage helped me so much and you even taught me how to get up, how to move my body and listen to it. I am so glad I met you!” She made me cry! It was so sweet to hear her words and see how big of an impact my work is doing to the individuals I have the opportunity to work with.

I would love for people to know that their bodies are so very smart and for them to connect with that. Do not discredit your body, take care of it, thank it for all of the amazing work it is doing. Take care of yourself so that you can have as many babies as you want, and you can have a beautiful experience. Even if you choose not to have children you are very deserving of care, do not dismiss your body!

I began to do birth and body work as a part time job. I had finished massage school, and no one was offering the work that I wanted to do already which meant I had to open my own business. I was very hesitant to do this as I was new to my town and this type of business was and is a very personal business. I decided to continue to work in accounting in an effort to cover my bills and just keep working.

I had gone back to school to continue my education in accounting and was going to become a CPA. One of my first classes back in school required us to do a community service project. I used this project as an opportunity to dip my toes a little more into the birth work world. I found a doula volunteer program at the county hospital in my area which completely pivoted my work.

During my time as a doula volunteer, I had an opportunity to see so much on the medical side of things in regard to how the medical team spoke amongst themselves about patients, how they decided on medical treatments and interventions and so much more. Even better, I got to see how they interacted with patients and how those patients responded to their medical team. This truly pushed me to work with clients on my own and share with them the preparation and education for birthing in a hospital.

When COVID hit, I decided to leave my safe accounting job and do birth and body work full time. So many families were seeking options for out of hospital births. Those who delivered in hospitals needed and wanted more information on their options and also additional support if they had other children. I could not stay in an industry that did not fulfill my true calling of doing birth work and showing up for my community.

It has taken me a long time to build my audience and it is still relatively small compared to others in my industry (1,500 followers). However, I have learned many things that are helpful in creating engagement and meaningful interactions on social media. Posting consistently is truly necessary in order to keep your social media relevant and alive. If you do not post you will not show up on other people’s feeds and that is not helpful. I focus my social media on Instagram and YouTube, I know there are many other platforms which are much more popular but these two work well for me. I have noticed sharing personal stories and images gets a lot more traction than created content. Hashtags can make or break your post in addition to how often you post. Now let’s be realistic, posting every day, sometimes even multiple times a day is not possible for anyone so here is where you find tools and resources to work for you. I have found Canva to be a life saver, the membership options gives you access to a content planner. Here you can schedule your post and it saves you so much time! You can post to many different social media platforms, write out your caption, hit schedule and you are done.

Doing this ahead of time can be very helpful when you know you have a busy time ahead of you and I am not talking about batch creations that sometimes work for certain people, I just mean scheduling. Find a relevant topic in your industry, break it down into several posts in small digestible pieces of information, find great pictures or videos to go with that and you are all set. Dedicating at least one day a week just to this has helped me grow my audience. I would highly recommend for those just starting off to not get consumed with the idea of personally posting every day, that is not sustainable and unless you are planning to become a content creator, this may not be the best use of your time. Look at it as another tool to support your work but not the only tool.

Thank you for your time. I hope we can connect soon!