Heidi Schmidt

As a full-spectrum doula, Heidi Schmidt is one part friendliness, one part feistiness. She puts her diplomatic skills as a former Peace Corps volunteer and city government spokesperson to use in helping you advocate for the best possible medical care that places your mental health on equal footing with your and your baby's physical health. Heidi will work with you to build coping skills and resilience to bravely ride the rollercoaster that is each person’s reproductive journey. Having trained with Birthing Advocacy (BADT), a Black-owned, queer-run organization that centers anti-oppression and reproductive justice for all people, Heidi approaches birth work through a justice, equity, and access lens, with trauma-informed care at the core – a method of practice that centers personal agency, informed consent, evidence based information, and trusting your gut. Heidi can provide a full picture of the risks, benefits, and alternatives to each test, intervention, and procedure, and will back you up, whatever your choice. As a single parent by choice via donor conception and IVF, Heidi is intimately familiar with the need to develop a village, and she would be honored to be a member of yours. We all know it takes one to raise a child, but it also takes one to ease you into parenthood or through loss, to affirm your family structure, to provide comforting touch during labor pains, to keep you off Dr. Google and from 2am comparisons of others’ "perfect" pregnancies on IG, to confront the real challenges of the journey, and celebrate the transformation, healing, joy and even liberation along the way.