I had the pleasure of interviewing HeHe Stewart, Founder of Tranquility by HeHe Birthing Services. HeHe is a Maternity Concierge, Doula, and Infant Development Specialist. Tranquility by HeHe serves women and families in pregnancy, postpartum, and parenthood through mindfulness, educational support, and luxury services.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Thank you for having me! My story is a very peculiar one. I started my path studying Autism and Sensory Processing Disorder. The led me to a career in the field of Early Childhood Education serving as a Teacher, Early Interventionist, and Developmental Specialist with Infants and Toddlers. I found through my work with new parents that having a baby was actually a very big transition in people’s lives and one that most people were not prepared. This caused me to look into supporting people in the process of having babies or had just had a baby. Well..that was a rabbit-hole because that research led me to where it all took a very sharp right hand turn — doula work. Doula work opened my eyes to an entire behind the scenes look at women’s health in America and it served as the last piece of my puzzle to shaping my perfect and unique career path. Now, I get to serve women who are trying to conceive, pregnant and postpartum and support parents who have questions about infant development. I’m living the dream!
How have your personal challenges informed your career path?
First, I come to the table with no business background whatsoever. My parents are entrepreneurs, but they were not when I was growing up. I have degrees in things like Psychology and Human Development and Family Studies. Second, I moved from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Boston, Massachusetts after having lived all of my life in a teeny town in South Mississippi. I have built a business while simultaneously learning to adjust to an entirely different lifestyle, culture, and weather. While all of this has posed it challenges, it has allowed me to see the world, situations, and people through different lenses and you can see that throughout my practice and the TBH approach.
Can you share five pieces of advice to other doctors/clinicians/healers to help their patients to thrive? Sure!
- Your pregnant patients are not sick. Please stop treating them as if they are. They are growing another human, not contagious.
- Take the time to really listen to your patients. They put a lot of trust in you.
- Be as transparent as possible with your patients. Again, they trust you so much. Don’t take advantage of that.
- Practice mindfulness so you can give 100% to your patients. They deserve it.
- Practice mindfulness so you can give 100% to yourself. You deserve it.
Social media and reality TV create a venue for people to share their personal stories. Do you think more transparency about your personal story can help or harm your field of work? Can you explain?
See question above! Ha! I feel like it can be helpful to an extent, but I definitely see the dangers. I am not a medical provider so I think that is the first place I’d start. Doulas are not trained in medicine and therefore, I can be pretty transparent about the things I do. Providers should always keep people’s identities safe and follow confidentiality standards, but being able to see the behind the scenes is really important because it allows us to learn. There are those things so rare that when they happen you want to have it on video so you can share it with other. However, having things on video can really cause some trouble or truly clear things up. It depends on which side of the story you’re on.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant to your life?
“Do no harm, take no shit, and always be kind.”
Some of that came from January Harshe who I adore and admire. The “always be kind” part is my own. The birth world is often thought of and explained as this wonderful women supporting women world and unfortunately, in Boston it has not been that way for me. I have been bullied by another doula in the community and people just let it happen. I have watched other women be bullied in the birth world, too. It’s brutal and it’s the most shocking thing to see an adult with such little emotional intelligence. Which only reminds me, yet again, that you have no clue what has hurt that person so much. But they are hurting so much that they chose bullying as a coping strategy like a toddler. It’s really sad. So always be kind, yal. Stand up for yourself, take no shit. Along the way, remember to be gentle and do no harm.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂 #takingcontrolofmybirth #theTBHway #TBHtakingcontrol #takingcontrolwithTBH
I want women to begin to take control of their births. They have total control and it’s a matter of them deciding if they want this information and then make decisions based on this knowledge, whatever that looks like for their family. The research is out there, the answers are out there, the strategies are waiting, you just have to decide to do it. If you’ve ever wondered if there was an alternative to something during your pregnancy or postpartum, I’m talking to you. If you have had a previous birth that was traumatic, this one’s for you. If you are scared to death of birth, we need to talk. Take control of your birth, ladies. You can do this. This movement is all about women who want to be in control of their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience from vaginal exams to medicinal pain relief and newborn routines. You have choices in pretty much everything, you just have to want to search for them.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Instagram: @tranquilitybyhehe
iTunes: The Tranquility Tribe Podcast
Facebook: The Tranquility Tribe Podcast private facebook page, Like our business page
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Thank you so much for having me!
Originally published at medium.com