Friends Marisol Garcia and Danellia Arechiga were both working as doulas out of their homes when they decided to go into business together in 2018.
And so La Fuente: Birth, Postpartum y Mas was born—a space where expectant parents could receive personalized guidance through pregnancy, birth and beyond.
“La Fuente means the fountain, and so we wanted people to come in, take the knowledge, the education, the support, the love, the guidance—whatever it is that they are receiving from us—and to take that back into their homes, into their communities,” Arechiga said.
While doulas are not medical professionals, they help to support and inform parents through the complex process of having a child.
“We are more based on education, so really working with the clients to teach them the mechanics of labor, how it works, ways to stay comfortable, nutrition, ways to stay healthy throughout their pregnancy and things like that, ways to take care of themselves after birth,” Arechiga said.
Garcia and Arechiga assist in births that take place in homes, hospitals and birthing centers—helping parents follow the birthing plan that suits them best.
Doulas act as advocates for expecting mothers, during and before labor
When assisting with hospital births, they often act as advocates for the mother’s best interest when medical staff try to prioritize what is convenient for the doctor.
Even the position laboring mothers are placed in is for the benefit of the doctor.
A 2014 study in The Journal of Perinatal Education found that 68% of women in the United States give birth while on their backs, despite evidence that this is not the best position for them or their babies.
According to the study, positions like standing, kneeling and squatting were far more common up until the 17th century. These intuitive positions benefited mothers during the labor process.
“Standing, kneeling, and squatting take advantage of gravity to help the baby move down into the pelvis. In addition, squatting increases the size of the pelvis,” according to the study.
The reason women are now placed on their backs, in what is called the supine position, to give birth is because it makes it easier for the doctor to see what’s happening.
“More than three decades of research confirms that giving birth in a supine position has distinct disadvantages with no demonstrable benefits to either mother or infant,” according to the journal.
Garcia described a hospital birth she participated in where the mother was in so much pain the only comfortable position for her to be in was on her hands and knees.
“Like squatting and standing, the dimensions of the pelvis can be maximized by the hands-and-knees position, which is often used to relieve the back pain that may occur,” the 2014 study said.
While one nurse was accommodating to the mother’s needs and would examine her in that position, another later tried to insist that she sit down for a vaginal exam.
“She was like ‘I can’t, I can’t, like I can’t sit on my bottom’ like she couldn’t sit on her butt because it was so painful for her, and [the nurse is] like ‘Well I need to. I need to,'” Garcia said
“We’re left with people who doubt their bodies or their capabilities, but it’s not because of anything with them—it’s the expectation that is set forth by this institution, our medical system.”
—Marisol Garcia, co-owner of La Fuente
Garcia stood her ground—her client was not going to be moved.
She also factually noted that her client’s vagina was still accessible from that position.
“There was kind of like a little slight commotion because I kind of jumped in there and I was telling [the nurse] like ‘You can do it. There’s nothing obstructing your way of getting in there to check her,’ and apparently we got a little loud,” Garcia said.
The noise brought the other nurse running in, who then insisted that her colleague could still exam the mother from her hands and knees, settling the issue.
“I just kind of embed it in their brain—you’re pregnant, you’re the birthing person and nobody can make you do anything that you don’t want to do,” Garcia said. “So if you’re on hands and knees and your doctor comes in and wants to check you then they’re going to have to figure it out because that’s not your problem. If you’re in the shower and they’re like ‘oh you have to, you know, come to the bed,’ they’re gonna have to figure it out because that’s not your problem.”
Although she did add that she only gives this advice “if mom is healthy and baby’s doing great and, you know, all of those things. Obviously, I’m not telling this to somebody who is high risk or anything like that.”
Garcia and Arechiga said that hospitals don’t always present parents with the full range of options they have when giving birth.
For instance, many women do not know that a birthing bar can be added to most hospital labor beds so that they can squat while giving birth.
“As I say ‘they don’t tell you the secret menu items,'” Arechiga said.
Use of Indigenous practices in birthing
La Fuente’s personalized approach to care is rooted in traditional Indigenous practices from Mexico, which views each person’s body as unique.
“Someone who’s dealing with a really traumatic birth—we’re going to use a lot of herbs that are meant to cleanse, and to restore, because there’s a lot of releasing that needs to happen from that trauma of that birth. And so it’s very customized care, it’s very customized to that specific person,” Arechiga said.
Both Garcia and Arechiga are skilled in using the Mexican rebozo, a long strip of cloth, to massage, bind and support their clients’ bellies.
They also use the rebozo to provide Closing of the Hips (La Cerrada de Caderas) ceremonies to clients with that cultural background.
“We call it closing of the hips but it’s really closing of the bones—it’s the whole body,” Arechiga said.
Closing of the Hips ceremonies are practiced in Latin American communities to help new mothers recover from the vulnerable state they were in during pregnancy and labor.
“Because we believe in this practice that the birth is a spiritual experience where your portal, your womb portal, has opened between worlds, because you’re letting in this spirit, this baby spirit from the spirit world, into our human world, into our physical world,” Arechiga said. “And so when that portal is open, you’re exposed, your essence, your spirit is exposed.”
La Fuente counters pregnancy myths, focuses on individual needs
Medical settings can often try to standardize pregnancies and what parents should expect, while La Fuente reminds them that each pregnant person and each pregnancy is different.
It is common for parents to receive an approximate due date for when they should expect their baby to be born.
However, doctors are unable to determine the exact date when a pregnancy was conceived, and are only able to estimate a time period based on the date the mother last started menstruating.
This makes due dates an estimate at best since the doctor can’t tell the date someone became pregnant.
“There’s like a five-week time frame technically when you can have your baby. You can have your baby two weeks before your due date, you can have your baby the week of your due date, or you can have your baby two weeks after your due date. And so there’s a window, or sometimes more or earlier,” Garcia said.
However, many parents are unaware of this, and become concerned when they pass their supposed due date, sometimes opting to induce labor even when they may not actually be past due.
According to a 2013 report funded by the National Institutes of Health, “the inability of medical science to predict exact due dates may be a cause of early term and preterm birth.”
“We’re just so conditioned to [think] like, ‘No, this is normal. This is when you have to have your baby. This is what you have to do. This is what it needs to feel like. This is what the process looks like,’” Garcia said. “And then we’re left with people who doubt their bodies or their capabilities, but it’s not because of anything with them—it’s the expectation that is set forth by this institution, our medical system.”