We recently connected with Parris Tiumentsev and have shared our conversation below.

Parris, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I truly hope that as a person and as a company I will be remembered as a helper. There is quote by a wonderful Buddhist teacher named Thich Nhat Hanh that I try to live my life by. He says, “Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help mom wash the dishes.” It is easy to start to feel hopeless that everything is so big and so bad. We can start to sink into apathy feeling that the problems in the world are just too big to do anything about. I definitely spent my fair share of time in that very dark, sad hole. Once you realize you can help with a small action you can take today, right now, you see you are able to make something right.
When I was having my children I felt very alone and overwhelmed. During their births I didn’t know what the next correct step was. Once they were born I felt alone and hopelessly lost. What I needed was simple. A kind voice and a pair of hands to come alongside me and help sort through the messy business of becoming a new mother. It didn’t matter to me who was president, or what massive tragic injustice we were facing as a nation. I had not slept in three days and was living off of slices of lunch meat I could shove into my mouth every few hours. I have enormous respect for those brave folks fighting the big battle! We desperately need them. However, we also need those people who are willing to help out of the spotlight. To help families and people just keep going from one day to the next. We are now proud to say we have expanded into Houston, Dallas and San Antonio and are providing birth doula and postpartum doula support to families all over Texas! Being able to part of the solution not only as an individual but as a family means the world to me! I hope this will be my legacy and the legacy of Circle Birth.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I like to say that I didn’t choose birth work—birth work chose me. My journey as a doula began unexpectedly during my sophomore year of high school. My godmother, after a long battle with infertility, was finally expecting her second child. My mother, a registered nurse, was going to be her doula, and I was asked to care for her son during the birth. Although I’d been babysitting since I was 12, this felt like a much bigger responsibility.

To help prepare us both, my godmother signed my mom and me up for a doula training. That experience lit a fire in me—it was my first real exposure to birth support, and I was completely captivated. Growing up in a small town like Fredericksburg, word spread quickly that I “knew about pregnancy and birth.” Soon, classmates—many navigating teen pregnancies—started coming to me with questions. Looking back, I think that was the real start of my path as a doula.

Years later, I married my high school sweetheart, Vlad—who is now my partner in life and in business. We became pregnant with our first child when I was 21. At our 20-week ultrasound, we were shocked to learn that our baby had a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. My birth experience was nothing like the ones I had supported before. I felt scared and unheard—as if I were just a vessel for this medically fragile baby. No one seemed to care how I felt or the fact that I was becoming a mother in the midst of all of the fear.

A month after his birth, I unexpectedly became pregnant again. Determined to have a different experience, I chose a home birth with a midwife. This time, I felt held, heard, and deeply cared for. That experience solidified my calling: I knew I wanted to be part of the solution—to help birthing people feel seen, supported, and empowered.

Over the next several years, I had three more children—five in total for anyone counting! I became certified as a birth doula through DONA International and even spent time in midwifery school. I eventually realized my heart was in supporting the emotional transformation of motherhood— I wanted to focus less on preventing death, and more about fighting fear and nurturing strength.

While I immersed myself in the world of maternal care, Vlad built his career in marketing and business development, helping startups find their footing. After COVID, his industry took a major hit, while I was growing increasingly frustrated with some of the outdated norms in the doula world.

That’s when the spark hit. We realized we could combine our passions—mine for birth and support, his for strategy and innovation—and Circle Birth was born.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

When I was going through my studies as a birth doula many of the classes had a framework where the medical professionals were presented as problematic and they along with their medical interventions were the cause of many of the issues we face in the birth process; while home birth and midwives were presented as the saviors of birth. Of course as a new practitioner I accepted this as truth. After four beautiful home births with fantastic midwives I internalized this as fact even more. However, once I started to provide support to families in the hospital setting on a regular basis I learned quickly that things were not as black and white as they had been presented.
At this point in my career I have attended about 200+ births and I can say I have rarely seen medical providers, doctors or nurses intentionally cause harm or be disrespectful to birthing people. Yes it happens and I have seen it but it’s uncommon. I have encountered midwives who are absolutely less than ethical or safe as well. At the end of the day we are all well aware that the American Medical System has many flaws and struggles, but its main hope is in the individual nurses, doctors and midwives who work themselves to places beyond exhaustion to do the best they can to support their patients. Mothers and families choose what feels right to them, their care providers try to keep them safe, and doulas try to help everyone along the way be heard, informed and as comfortable as possible. I want the families to hear WHY their doctor wants them to be induced even if she doesn’t choose to do so. I want the nurse to hear why the mother wants to push on her side and not in stirrups. I want dad to hear and understand why he can’t be in the room when the love of his life needs an emergency c-section under general anesthesia. Birth is unpredictable and babies do what they want when they are making their grand entrance. Sometimes, things go wrong and it is usually no individuals fault. We all just do our best to strive for the best outcome possible for mom and baby.
Learning that with a very few, rare exceptions no one means anyone harm has revolutionized my approach to doula care. Instead of trying to protect the mother from the medical establishment, I try to facilitate communication between all parties so that every single participant in the delivery knows their options and is making informed choices. Ultimately that is the true goal. We are all on the same side.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Vlad and I met in high school! He was our families exchange student through AYUSA. To be very sappy but very honest it was quite literally love at first sight. From the car ride home from the airport he and I were inseparable best friends. I was a very shy theatre geek in high school having been homeschooled most of my life and he was an outgoing, super smart guy from an exotic place no one in Fredericksburg had ever heard of. Everyone actually assumed we were dating months before we were “official.” After his year in America he had to return to Kyrgyzstan to stay for two years and I had to finish high school. The year long distance was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my entire life. We both feel it was a major contributing factor to the success of our relationship and our business since right from the start we were facing incredibly difficult things together. Two days after I graduated I moved to Kyrgyzstan to live with him and his family. Being in Kyrgyzstan completely changed me as a person. When I was growing up we didn’t have much. I always qualified for free lunch in school, having our power turned off was not all that strange and we often received governmental help in order to be fed. So I thought I knew what poverty and hardship were. I was so very wrong. Kyrgyzstan opened my eyes to the reality of humanity and how much we take for granted in the United States. Living there off and on throughout my 20ies gave me perspective that I am only now beginning to be able to put into words. Birth there is a completely different animal! My mother in law even shared with me the story of how my husband was switched at birth with another baby for an hour or two! It forever engrained in me a desire to help.
To go over our journey together would be an article of its own, but to sum up, our lives have uniquely fashioned us through deep pressure and circumstance to not only do this job but live this business. Birthing and raising our children with him, side by side has also helped us tune in to what fathers are going through as they meet their children. We have seen how the father needs to be supported if he is going to support the mother of his children. Without Vlad, Circle Birth could not have become what it is today!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.circlebirth.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doulaaustin/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/circlebirth
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/circle-birth-austin-doula-care
• Twitter: https://x.com/circlebirthtx
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CircleBirth
• Other: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2516286.rss

Image Credits

https://www.annysmirnova.com/ – Anny Smirnova, Austin Maternity Photographer