Nurture welcomes Lena Wood

We would like to warmly welcome Lena Wood to Nurture. Lena is a doula with Cascadia Birth Services, and she has a special interest in supporting families who are adopting. Lena is also involved in many other projects and organizations; read more about all of her activities below! Welcome, Lena!

Cascadia Birth Services, LLC

lena@cascadiabirth.com
503.307.8614

Welcome!

I am thrilled to be a part of the Nurture community. As a doula and Montessori-trained educator, I love collaborating with families to support the full potential of human development.

I offer labor and postpartum doula services, with a specialization in adoption support. I am available to attend births for women who are considering or planning on placing for adoption, and for adult adoptees who may be processing emotions around the experience of pregnancy and birth. I also provide post-placement support for adoptive families in both domestic and international adoption. As a trans-national adoptee, I believe strongly that all members of the adoption constellation benefit from compassionate, non-judgmental support as they move through their experiences around adoption.

I came to doula work through several close friends who are midwives. Their excitement and passion for serving women’s birth needs resonated deeply for me. The more I learned about their work, the more I considered how I might be able to use my skills and experience as a Montessori teacher to give individualized support to new families. I completed my postpartum doula training with CAPPA, and my labor doula training at Birthingway College of Midwifery, in Portland, OR. I am also completing the Certified Lactation Educator program through CAPPA, to better serve the needs of my breastfeeding postpartum clients. It is an honor and privilege for me to be able to provide support to women and their families during such an intense and intimate transition of their lives.

Aside from my own practice, I am the Portland coordinator for Full Spectrum Doulas, which will provide abortion doula services based on the model of the Doula Project, in NYC. Currently I am collaborating with Adoption Mosaic to develop training opportunities for doulas interested in working with birthparents and adoptive families. I also volunteer as an advocate for Backline, a locally-based nation-wide pregnancy options counseling phone line.

When I am not doing doula work, I train in an Indonesian martial art form, Poekoelan Tjimindi Tulen, and instruct in the transported after-school and summer youth programs at One With Heart Tulen Center in SE Portland.

For more information, visit my website [www.cascadiabirth.com], or email me at lena@cascadiabirth.com

The Birth Mother Experience: A Panel Discussion

Adoption, and rhetoric about adoption, is finding its way into mainstream media more often these days. The recent airing of several documentaries on adoption and its impacts on all members of the adoption constellation are raising challenging questions about the ethics of adoption as well as the very real impacts it has on individual families and children. And yet, even with all the recent media attention on adoption disruption, or the challenges that adoptive families and adoptees themselves face, the missing voice of birth parents rings loud and clear.

Consider joining Adoption Mosaic for its second annual Birth Mother Panel, held at OHSU on Saturday, October 2, 2010. The birth mother experience is an integral part of gaining a better understanding of adoption and the impact relinquishment may have on all members of the adoption constellation. Four local birth mothers, ranging in age from twenty-nine to sixty-eight years old, will tell their stories and share how their experiences have affected their lives in the past through the present. A question and answer session will follow the panel.

Here are some comments from last year's panel:

"I found it most helpful to see the change of how Birth Mothers are treated over the decades. it was also interesting to learn how giving up their child impacted their lives over the years." Professional

"There was integrity and openness. Really engaged and respectful audience. Great!" Birth Mother

"I think this is something that everyone included in adoption, including agencies, needs to hear." Adoptee

"These are voices I haven't heard before and I would like to hear even more from them and others like them. This was unbelievably helpful and useful." Adoptive Parent

"Invaluable information! You can't relate to these stories by reading only? This has to continue!" Adoptive Parent

"I felt it was very moving to hear the stories. It really made me feel for Birth Mothers when it is generally not something I think about. I wonder if my Mother's story is similar?" Adoptee

"I expected regret, but even in the Open Adoption experience the regret that was experienced was helpful to understand/hear." Prospective Adoptive Parent

"Wow, I am so glad that we are educating ourselves now before the process." Prospective Adoptive Parent

REGISTER VIA PAYPAL HERE (https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e30xwd4d93c5816a&oseq=)

For more information, email Shelise at info@adoptionmosaic.org