We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sheila Daniel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sheila below.

Sheila, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

To sum us up, we’re birth nerds. That’s what we tell our clients. All three of us are so excited whenever we get to educate, empower, and support couples on their birth journey. Sheila and Brooke are Certified Birth and Postpartum Doulas, as well as Certified Lamaze Childbirth Educators. Corinne is a Certified Birth Doula, as well as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.

We’ve always loved talking to expectant parents about what we do and what knowledge & comfort measures they will learn in our classes. The cliché is true, knowledge IS power! Through our education we get to watch their concerns and fears turn to courage, excitement, and empowerment.

Birth is so much more than just showing up on the day your baby decides to make his/her arrival. We often tell our clients that you wouldn’t just show up on your wedding day! It takes thought, preparation, and planning. The day you give birth is a profound experience that will stay with you forever. On a day with so much importance, wouldn’t you agree it should take some planning and preparedness so you can march into your birth with a calm & confident demeanor?

We’re passionate because we know how impactful this experience can be! We know what it takes to have a positive birth experience and we want to teach everyone so they can avoid birth trauma; which is unfortunately all too common. That’s why we created our comprehensive online Childbirth Education course “Made for Birth & Beyond.” It’s everything you need to know in an at–your-own-pace format where you can learn on the go or in the comfort of your own home!

Whether you’re first time parents or you’ve had babies before, we are very confident that you will learn new information that will help you in your birth journey. We have parents having a second or third baby who take the course to prepare for an upcoming birth and then they share with us how they learned so much about their previous birth experience. Through our course, we are able to shed some light and connect the dots in their previous traumatic experiences. We want parents to heal from those experiences with a redemptive birth. By learning evidence-based information and advocacy skills through our course, parents are better able to create an empowering, positive birth experience. And those parents who have experienced a traumatic birth before can now feel empowered to make informed decisions about their care, and they can begin to heal from previous ones. Feeling a part of the process can prevent traumatic births.

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.

Sheila Daniel: My journey into birth work began over 30 years ago, when I fell in love with everything about pregnancy, birth, and babies while preparing for my first child. I loved being pregnant, dove into learning, and treasured the Lamaze classes my husband and I took together. That education left me feeling calm and confident—and it paid off with the empowering birth I had hoped for. Becoming a mother was so transformative that I felt called to support other families.

When I discovered the roles of doula and childbirth educator, it immediately clicked—I had found my purpose. Today, I’m as passionate as ever about helping parents feel informed, prepared, and empowered to shape a birth experience that feels right for them. Through evidence-based education, I hope to help families create meaningful birth memories—with partners feeling connected, confident, and emotionally present every step of the way.

Brooke Cozby:
I have always had a pull towards birth. Even from a younger age, I wanted to be in the room when someone was in labor. I didn’t fully understand why that was until later in life. My path into birth work began after two Cesarean deliveries and, ultimately, a successful vaginal birth after two C-sections. This is when I learned about doula work. I immediately knew this is what I was called to do.

Since attending my first birth in 2002, I have loved walking alongside families during both labor and the tender postpartum period. I love helping parents adjust, heal, and thrive in those first weeks at home. One of my greatest joys as a doula is watching fear melt away as education and continuous support empower families to move forward with confidence and excitement in welcoming their baby.

Corinne Chilton:
After I earned a degree in Public Health Education in 2018, I began my career in elderly care. My path shifted dramatically after the traumatic birth and difficult breastfeeding journey of my first daughter, which left me feeling overwhelmed and under-supported. That experience ignited passion within me to create a better way for families — and that ultimately led me to birth and postpartum work.

Since then, I have gone on to experience two deeply-healing home births, each surrounded by a supportive team. Those experiences transformed me not only as a mother, but as a person, and confirmed my calling to provide that same compassionate support for others.

My greatest passion lies in serving families during the postpartum season, with a special focus on infant feeding. Nothing brings more fulfillment than helping parents navigate newborn life, find confidence in feeding, and feel supported through the joys and challenges of early parenthood. I believe every family deserves to feel seen, heard, and supported through birth and beyond. I consider it a great honor to walk alongside parents during one of the most sacred and vulnerable seasons of life.

Sheila & Brooke:
Although we completed our doula trainings separately, we ultimately joined the same group practice—and that’s where our paths first crossed. When Sheila later decided to focus on her own growing business, she was surprised and deeply honored that Brooke wanted to join her. Both were tired of long commutes and ready for something new—and local. With Sheila’s original logo and Brooke’s idea for the name “Birth & Beyond,” their shared vision grew into Made for Birth & Beyond. They officially opened in January 2020.

Corinne:
We initially recruited Corinne for backup doula support while she continued working with her own clients. Our business was growing, and we needed help—and she was the perfect choice. To this day, we’re so grateful she joined our team. She truly became like the third leg of a stool, bringing balance to the two of us as owners.

Corinne first supported us as a backup doula and eventually began assisting with our in-person childbirth education classes. At the time, she was a lactation educator and counselor, which added even more depth to what we could offer families. She officially joined our team as a co-owner in 2023, and in 2024 she went on to become a lactation consultant.

Since the beginning of time, women have been cared for and nurtured as they became mothers. Experienced women supported others through labor, offering comfort, reassurance, and guidance. After birth, families, friends, and neighbors naturally gathered around new parents, helping them navigate those tender first weeks with a newborn.

Today, birth and postpartum doulas carry this timeless tradition forward—expanding and professionalizing the role. Their support is more important than ever as birth has become increasingly medicalized, often more than it needs to be. Our goal is to help clients understand the process, learn their options, and create a birth plan that reflects their preferences—not a rigid script. Through comprehensive childbirth education, they also learn about alternative choices if their birth unfolds differently than expected. All of this education is offered through the lens of a doula who is committed to protecting their memory of the experience and helping prevent birth trauma.

Our goal is to help couples have a positive experience and avoid birth trauma. We also want to lower rates of cesarean in the US, which is over 30% versus 8% in the world. Medically managing a physiological process is the main contributor to this high cesarean rate. In most cases, birth should be left alone until well into active labor, if at all.

Whether or not the couple decides to hire their own local doula, the Made for Birth & Beyond online course prepares the partner to support the birthing person. The online course also teaches hands-on comfort measures, breathing and relaxation, positions for comfort and labor progress, and the best questions to ask about any interventions that may be brought to them. Helping them learn the skills to advocate for evidence-based practices that are proven to be best for them and their baby is so empowering! Sometimes the benefits of interventions, such as artificially breaking water or starting Pitocin, will outweigh the risks and it should be utilized. But, other times it’s just a way to speed up the process out of convenience for the hospital or care provider.

Doulas provide continuous emotional, physical, and informational support before, during, and after birth, ensuring families feel cared for, confident, and connected as they welcome their baby. Being a doula can be very involved work and it’s difficult to do that on your own while attempting to keep a work/life balance. When we first started our business, it was just Sheila & Brooke, and eventually Corinne. We were on call every day. It is so easy to hit burnout when your job requires being on-call every day!

We had a dream to build a team that would allow doulas to do what they love and serve more families, while maintaining that work/life balance. We are grateful and blessed to say we are accomplishing that, both locally and globally! We know our local work is important, but with our online course, we’re so excited that we’re able to reach and empower so many more families on this journey around the world.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We opened our business a couple months before the pandemic hit. Our job is based on supporting our clients labor and birth in the hospital. We also support homebirth where there is a licensed midwife present, but the majority of our work is in the hospital delivery room where advocacy is often needed. We were shut out of the hospitals for about 6 months.

Despite the devastating blows from the shutdown, our desire to serve families continued to drive us. We put our heads down and didn’t lose sight of our goals. We kept grinding to build the business and bring awareness about doula support. We started advertising in magazines, created and sent out flyers, set up rack cards in target market businesses, took trays of goodies to different providers and scheduled meet ups for networking opportunities.

Since we couldn’t work in hospitals, we had to pivot for a time and focus on supporting families in their home for postpartum care. We had the honor of working with several amazing families who kept our business afloat till we were able to return to the hospitals.

As challenging as the Covid shutdown was, it actually became an opportunity for hospital staff and families to learn about the role of doulas. Hospitals started creating policies that allowed the laboring mom to have one support person PLUS a doula in the delivery room. People would see that and wonder what a doula was and, we believe, that led to more awareness of doulas and what our support is all about.

Any advice for managing a team?

We’ve grown, stretched and pushed ourselves in so many ways as we built this company and learned how to manage a team. We knew when we started this business that it could only be successful if it had a strong foundation. Sheila and Brooke agreed that there were two non-negotiables at the foundation of this company: trust and communication. We have to communicate honestly with each other.

We tell our clients and our doulas that we LOVE communication. There is no such thing as over-communication. We are very open with our team and it’s been so important to us that they feel comfortable approaching us about anything. We are blessed to have the team we have and are so thankful for them.

We work really hard to keep our team happy. It’s been fun planning baby showers, spa days, and team retreats. It creates a closer bond when we can all relax and have fun together because we get to be off call (with a back up of course)! We also love to send birthday gifts and thank you gift cards when our doulas go the extra mile. We give a lot of encouragement and feedback to our doulas. Anytime we hear from a client who loved their doula, we always share that and make sure they hear about their positive impact on a family and just how amazing they are!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://modestobirthandbeyond.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madeforbirthandbeyond
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madeforbirthandbeyond/
• Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/modesto-birth-and-beyond-modesto
• Other: TikTok: . https://www.tiktok.com/@madeforbirthandbeyond/

Image Credits
Christy Naranjo, Shayna Cox, Erin Householder