Shannon Kopelva, who is a citizen of the Ft. McDermitt Paiute-Shosone, Hualapai, and Hopi Nations from Moenkopi, Arizona, has always sought out medical providers of color. When she learned she was pregnant with her first child, she reached out to Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services, which provides expecting mothers with childbirth education, advocacy during labor and delivery, and postpartum care. Kopelva liked that Hummingbird doulas meet with their clients weekly during their pregnancies (as opposed to prenatal doctor visits which are typically monthly up to 28 weeks), and she also wanted to bring her child into the world with a sense of his Indigenous identity.
In late April, Kopelva was 38 weeks pregnant when her Hummingbird doula, T'leeuh Antone (they/them, a citizen of the Akimel O'odham Nation of Arizona), pulled up to her house in downtown Seattle for their weekly visit. Antone brought muslin wraps and a brown baby doll to practice swaddling. Also in their car trunk was a cradleboard, or a traditional protective baby carrier and sleeper, and materials to make medicine bundles of cedar herbs for the birth.
Seated around Kopelva's kitchen table, Antone went over the birth plan Kopelva and her husband, Andy, could expect at the scheduled Cesarean section at a nearby hospital for her breech baby the following week. She was still hoping the baby would flip so she could deliver naturally; Antone taught her some positions that could help move breech babies in utero. |
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