We recently connected with Sofia Stafford and have shared our conversation below.
Sofia, appreciate you joining us today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?
As a birth worker, there are always so many heartwarming stories to share. Ones that remind you of the goodness in the world and rekindle hope.
The mom that gave birth on a NYC bus because she didn’t want to miss taking her older child to school.
The migrant mom who gave her food to another woman in in the shelter who was under nourished.
The outpouring of community support and determination that came from tragedy to make birthing safe for all people in NYC, especially people of color.
The migrant moms who look after each others children when they have appointments or give birth – it literally takes a village.
The mom who overcame her birth trauma with her first baby to have a successful VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section).
The new parents who for all intent and purposes are complete strangers but who send messages of support and validation to each other over whatsapp because they feel so alone in their postpartum bubble.
The mom who was brave enough to admit she was suffering from post-partum depression and sought help.
The community of migrant women that borrow and bring back the car seat after the return from the hospital, knowing that they are hard to come by and that other new parents will need the cart seat to bring their baby home from the hospital.
Watching perspectives and biases change.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a global health focused cultural anthropologist by training turned birth doula turned nurse-midwife.
I grew up in NYC as a Cuban American and went to school to study Global Health. I had always been interested in the intersection between maternal health, innovation, and education. It has taken me a while to figure out what to “do” with that and my path felt pretty linear until it didn’t.
After college, I worked for The US Agency for International Development (USAID) managing a portfolio of maternal health innovations/programs funded by the agency. I learned a lot about working within a system and how to get things done and move ideas forward (it helps when you have a great boss and team who believes and trusts you) and I also learned that I wanted to be closer to the work. If I was going to advise organizations on scaling up sustainable innovations to improve maternal and newborn health, I too needed to put myself in their shoes.
I then worked for a non-profit medical device company for 5 years focused on improving oxygen and surgical access in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly for moms and babies around the time of birth. I believed who heartedly in our mission and our work, but when I started training and practicing as a doula part time as a way to try and play a small role in improving maternal health outcomes in my own community and also understanding birth work in a more intimate way, I realized that I was my best, most grounded self in those moments. I’ve never really believed in there being one true “calling” for everyone and I do think it’s a privilege to even be able to explore what that may be, but it was in that experience of living these two lives, that I realized I wanted to dedicate my career to supporting birthing people through their journey into parenthood. People are often surprised/confused by my obsession and interest in birth given I’ve never given birth myself and am not a parent, but there is something so special and so unique about sharing such an intimate experience with someone and their family. To know that it is a privilege to witness their journey and to build the trust needed to be invited in.
Over the last few years, I have worked as a doula (alongside my full time job) serving over 80 families, supporting them in pregnancy, through childbirth education, birth, postpartum, and in feeding their babies. It is bitter sweet to “semi-retire” as a doula and begin my next chapter this summer as a student once again at Yale School of Nursing.
One of my favorite birth worker memories is working as a member of the Doulas en Español collective to support Spanish speaking pregnant migrant women in NYC. This work has truly been community work in action and it has made me feel closer to my community than I have ever felt below. I don’t know how else to describe it other than pure magic – when you get the right people together and just start doing even though you don’t know exactly where it’s going to take you, sometimes it sparks a magic that you never knew was possible. I started this project during a really low period of my life, and while the women we work with often express gratitude for the support we provide and the hope we have inspired, little do they know it is them who have saved me. I have never felt more in community.
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
It’s true what they say about your life that you have to collect the dots before you can connect them. For me, the thread that connects all the dots has been been about building meaningful connections with communities and individuals, particularly in times of need.
Building trust is a practice that I’ve nurtured and has become sharper through mistakes made and lessons learned. This practice is central to successful partnerships in my work – resilient partnerships catalyzing positive change and impact. Improving access to quality healthcare and working towards a collective goal requires looking beneath the surface to understand the roots of the challenge. Untangling those roots requires connection and compassion.
Meaningful connection is a key ingredient of trust, established and sustained through the accumulation of day-to-day connections: showing up, following through and being accountable when I don’t. It is acknowledging my privilege and shifting power dynamics while engaging from a place of humanity, not transactionally.
Trust requires genuine compassion. Compassion fosters vulnerability to share and comfort to speak up, especially in difficult situations – and modeling that behavior myself when appropriate. For me, compassion means showing kindness or sitting with someone to help solve a problem unrelated to the issue at hand. It is listening and validating, asking questions, or sending a WhatsApp to check in on their family. I’ve learned repeatedly that compassion includes setting boundaries for myself so that I can show up consistently in the way that I want to for others.
Professionally and personally, I’ve witnessed the consequences of trust and lack thereof – both at a systems level and 1:1. Mutual trust is the keystone to patient-centered care yielding positive experiences and improved health outcomes, particularly for those whose voices have been historically marginalized.
People often ask me how my doula clients found out about me or how I find myself involved in community projects, and it always comes down to earning trust and learning to deal with the consequences of breaking that trust.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start?
I have worked in various settings as employees, as a business owner, and for community collectives that require funding to sustain them. I’ve often undermined my own value as a public health professional, as a birth worker, and as an aspiring midwife. But what I’ve learned is that I must trust myself and the value I bring to the table if I expect others to trust me. That’s the biggest thing I see with people starting new businesses – they undersell themselves or they put off “starting.”
Most recently, I have been really excited about the power of crowdfunding, especially for community – oriented programs. Through Doulas en Espanol, we launched a crowd-funding campaign for both financial donations and donations of used items to support our community events for migrant women and to be honest, I didn’t think we’d raise funds beyond our immediate network, but the campaign has grown into a really beautiful movement (that’s what I meant when I said magic!)
So much of my career has been brokering partnerships and forcing collaboration to achieve a common goal and it’s been so amazing to see organically how things have grown. The number of partners we have on board to support our mamitas project, the number of mamitas we have been able to reach, and the number of inquiries we get each week offering to contribute to our work. Of course, things don’t always work this way, but my takeaway is sometimes you just need to get started. We didn’t know exactly how we were going to sustain this idea, but we know we were well positioned to provide birth support to the migrant community. We didn’t wait until the stars aligned, we just leaped. And because we each had the trust of our networks, the funding and partnerships followed organically.
The big thing I’ve taken away from starting something new – whether it’s my private doula practice, fundraising for community work, or even starting a new career that requires a huge upfront investment – is that work is not to be paralyzed by the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Have the courage and trust in yourself and in your community to act – whatever that may be for you – and believe that what you uniquely bring to the table and those who you bring into the fold – will have an impact and that impact will multiply exponentially. The plan and resources you need will follow – I promise. And you know what? Whatever solution you are implementing will be better suited to the need, because it will grow and evolve organically based on the response from the community. Part of having the courage to start and take action is giving yourself permission to pivot and evolve.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sofiathedoula.com
- Instagram: @SofStafford
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofiacaballerostafford/
Image Credits
Losmir Roma (headshot)