Birthkeeping Services: Pregnancy, Birth & Postpartum Support

Offerings

Birth Companion
closeup photo of baby on blue blanketcloseup photo of baby on blue blanket
pregnant woman in bathtubpregnant woman in bathtub
Iveth Balanta cutting cacao pasteIveth Balanta cutting cacao paste

Support during labor & birth.

Ideal for those who have a strong support system and only want support during labor and birth.

Wholesome Birthkeeping

Support during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

Comprehensive support means that you get to prepare, be accompanied, guided and resourced during your birthing journey. This is ideal for first-time parents and those wishing to have a dignified experience that can support the healing of a previous negative birth experience.

Postpartum Dieta

Support during postpartum.

Postpartum is often the most challenging time of your birthing experience. Find the support you need to be nourished, rested, and resourced to recover from birth and enjoy the wonderful early days of your baby.

My birthkeeping services are categorized in Labor & Birth only, Pregnancy, Birth, & Postpartum, and Postpartum only to serve families with different needs and budgets, yet the same desire to have holistic support during their birthing journey. The quality of care is the same, even though the number of times and the stages of your experience in which we meet vary.

Please read a detailed description of each experience by clicking on the images. If your would like to have a conversation before deciding on which one is best for you, please click on the button to book a complimentary call with me.

My offerings are the refining of family, community, classroom, and personal lived experience of the art of birthkeeping, the act of nurturing and tending to community health in good relationship with the ancestors, with the Earth Mother, and her spirits.

Why Birthkeeping?

Find in my offerings the tools for remembrance of your ancestral wisdom around birth and parenting. I will bridge that knowledge for you so that you can feel empowered, validated, and independent. It's not always about learning new things; it's about believing in what you can do with what is already yours by ancestral right.

Birthkeeping is Nourishment for the Mind: Remembrance and Knowledge share
Birthkeeping is Nourishment for the heart: Emotional containtment

Expanding into pregnancy, birth, and parenting can be an intense experience full of emotions that sometimes you are unable to process. Your trauma can then take the lead and sabotage your vision altogether. I will provide you with tools and support you, wherever you are in your journey, to honor your feelings as much as your coping mechanisms to bring integrity, love, awareness, and healing into your experience.

Birthkeeping is Nourishment for the Body: Movement and Ancestral Foods
Birthkeeping is Nourishment for the Soul: Ritualizing and honoring the sacredness of everyday life

Happy, healthy bodies move joyfully with the flow of nature. I can guide you in sessions of stretching and release, dancing, and song.

Nourishment is about joy and pleasure, I guide you in recognizing your ancestral foods and help you bring them into your life with a sense of gratitude and appreciation.

I believe we are spiritual beings having an incarnated experience, we are the sacredness of the universe and our birthing experience is a rite of passage, a time to honor our growth into a more vast, fulfilled, and healed being, able to nurture with integrity, patience, love, and creativity the next generations. I bring presence, humility, dignity, and tending to your birth experience so that you walk into your new role as a parent in gratitude, confidence, and full power.

Birthkeeping is a comprehensive approach to family and community support and care before, during, and after pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

Ancestral veneration

I have your family and ancestors at the core of all my offerings. Before and after I see you every time, and especially during your birth and honoring rituals of Placenta, and Closing, I offer a container of prayer, song, and protection for you and your loved ones so that the healing happening unfolds peacefully.

Iveth in a red jacket is holding an incense plate
Iveth in a red jacket is holding an incense plate
Iveth holding a white amaranth plant
Iveth holding a white amaranth plant
a bowl of soup with sunflower seeds in it
a bowl of soup with sunflower seeds in it

Indigenous traditional practices of care

As part of your traditional prenatal care sessions, you have the unique opportunity to enjoy harmonizing herbal baths (Baños), Traditional massage (Sobos), Healing talk therapy (Conversa), Dreamwork (Siembra de sueños), Plant walk meditations (Sanar con las plantas), and Energetic harmonization (Limpia). And as part of the traditional postpartum care of La Dieta Andina, you and your little one are blessed with the First bath after birth, Umbilicus ceremony (Ceremonia del Ombligo), Baby naming ceremony (Nombramiento de la wawa), and closing ceremony (Cerrada).

Plant Medicine

From getting insights and inspiration about what resonates with you, growing the herbs for your baths, and making the medicine you and your baby need, I bring all my gardening and yerbatera (herbalist) gifts into your life.

Ancestral foods as birth medicine and preparation of traditional meals.

Our food is nourishment and medicine. I offer a personalized meal plan of ancestral foods to help you reconnect with the plants, mushrooms, and animals that made you, your family, and your ancestors be who you are. I support you in sourcing local organic foods, generously share recipes, and help you with the preparation during my visits. 

What makes your experience with me special and unique

Iveth Balanta holding a leafy plant in her hand
Iveth Balanta holding a leafy plant in her hand

Presence

I proudly serve a maximum of one birthkeeping family per month, which means that you get my undivided attention and care. This allows us to create a true bond and have more fulfilling experiences. 

Birthkeeping is Comprehensive Care

My comprehensive support sessions tend holistically to you and your family from as early in your pregnancy as you desire it and for as long as you need it after your birth, so that you feel resourced, heard, respected, and cared for during the whole transitioning into parenthood.

Iveth nursing her daughter
Iveth nursing her daughter
Labor and Birth Support

When labor comes, I come to your birth nest and help you be as comfortable, resourced, and held as you need to be. I bring healthy snacks, broth, cacao, and herbs for steaming, my prayer, my song, my breath, and pain-relieving techniques to help you go through your opening process with ease. I hold space for your loved ones so that you can peacefully surrender to bringing your baby from your womb to your bosom.

Traditional Postpartum Care Sessions

After your birth, and according to your vision, I provide support with breastfeeding, light cleaning, meal preparation, and traditional care therapies for postpartum recovery. If you wish to follow La Dieta Andina, you and your baby receive the first bath postpartum; I also guide you to do a protection amulet for your baby with their umbilicus and to name them in ceremony. Finally, I help you close your birth experience on the 40th day postpartum with a Cerrada, which includes a bath, a massage, physical alignment, a meal, and emotional processing of your birth. Besides La Dieta Andina, you are free to have as many postpartum visits as you need.

Traditional Prenatal Care Sessions

My traditional prenatal care sessions are weekly, biweekly, or monthly sessions of bonding, knowledge sharing, homemade meal sharing, and the enjoyment of the traditional care therapy of your choice to bring about the sense of equilibrium, peacefulness, and nourishment you need to be content, empowered, and in alignment with your birth vision.

After both your baby and placenta are born, I honor them by reading the messages brought to your family in the placenta. I light a candle for the spiritual containment of the placenta and proceed to make the artistic or medicinal preparations of your choice. If no preparations are required, I dry your placenta and place it on your birth altar until the time for planting her comes.

Placenta Honoring
Your Dignified Birth Vision Session - A vision for birth and beyond

Your empowered and dignified experience will become a reality if you have a crystal clear understanding of your needs, of how you want things to feel once those needs are met, and of how the whole experience aligns with your life purpose. This session can help you determine your preparation actions, the kind of care you need, your companions, your birth nest, and your postpartum/parenting support system.  

I support you in making YOUR birth & parenting vision a reality

Book Your Dignified Birth Vision Consult

Frequently asked questions

What kind of service is a birthkeeping service?

I am a Certified Full-spectrum Doula. The kind of service I provide to you will depend on your family's individual birthing needs. I bring my ancestral knowledge, wisdom, and skills to your experience to ensure you are supported and tended to during pregnancy, birth & postpartum. Birthkeeping is not a medical service or a replacement for the medical care a Midwife or any other medical provider could give you. It is more of a holistic way of tending to your birthing experience.

How does your birthkeeping service work?

I offer an open 40-minute consultation called Your Dignified Birth Vision Consult, in which we determine if we can walk your birthing journey together. If so, you can choose from my predetermined support packages and group them in ways that best align with your needs. We sign an agreement of rights and responsibilities, you make your initial payment, and I start providing support on the schedule of your convenience. I'll visit you as often as we agree to do so and at least until your 40th day postpartum or according to our agreement. My booking process is simple, clear, and convenient for you.

How much does your birthkeeping support cost?

My packages' pricing varies depending on the number of visits, supplies, and meals you require. I offer a variety of options to fit your needs and budget that will be presented to you according to your unique birth vision.

Do you offer payment plans?

I do. I often let families accommodate their payments according to the financial planning of their birthing vision. The full price of your support package must be paid in full by the estimated due date of your birth.

What are your inclusion criteria? Can just anybody work with you?

My practice is deeply influenced by Indigenous, Black, and Mestizo Latino traditions, but my services are open to all families who are seeking an intentional and dignified birth experience. While the cultural aspects of my work will resonate most with Latino families, I welcome everyone who shares a commitment to creating a meaningful, respectful birth journey. I inspire families to tap into their own ancestral wisdom and cultural practices so that they can be more resourced to make their birth vision a reality.

I work best with families who are ready to cultivate an open, trusting relationship with me. Ideally, these families have a certain level of awareness and connection to themselves and the Earth, understand their reproductive sovereignty, and practice self-sufficiency in their health.

Whether we work together depends on our ability to connect and trust that we can share this life experience in harmony, with mutual respect and an open heart.

Do you offer a birth doula service on its own?

I do, I call it Birth Companion. It's birthkeeping focused on your labor, birth, and early postpartum. Please find more information here.
If you are looking for Birth Doula services covered by insurance, they differ from birthkeeping, you can find more information here.

Do you have a refund policy?

Services are not refundable or transferable. Changes to your support package can be made as we move forward in your birthing journey, and you will be invoiced accordingly. You can exchange services that have the same value, but no money can be reimbursed for sessions not provided because of a decision you made. If by Force Majeure events I can't provide a service that cannot be rescheduled, such as the birth, you will be covered by a backup provider. I reserve the right to cease service and return your investment minus expenses incurred if our agreement is not respected at any point of the journey.

an abstract photo of a curved building with a blue sky in the background

If you have more questions, reach out!