Supporting families through birth, healing, grief, and life transitions with warmth, presence, and deep listening.Mindful Spaces
Listening to
Babies Before WordI was first introduced to pre- and perinatal work through personal loss.
After the stillbirth of our son Noah, my husband and I found ourselves navigating the anxiety and tenderness of a subsequent pregnancy while trying to care for our grieving family and our young son. During that time, a friend shared the book Spirit Babies by Walter Makichen, a book that introduced us to the idea that babies are conscious, relational beings before birth, and that connection can continue even after loss.
That introduction changed the course of my life.
Through conversations with Walter, I was eventually guided toward the work of Dr. Wendy Anne McCarty. For the first time, I began to understand how deeply babies experience pregnancy, birth, attachment, separation, and relationship. What had once felt like isolated moments of grief or overwhelm slowly began to reorganize into a larger understanding of the emotional and relational lives of babies and families.
One of the most profound moments came during a later pregnancy when our daughter was lying transverse near the end of gestation. Following Dr. McCarty’s guidance, I entered the bath and began speaking gently to her, reviewing our pregnancy together and preparing her for the transition from the inner world to the outer world. I shared that those waiting for her hoped her head would move downward in preparation for birth.
As I rested quietly with her, I felt her head lift beneath my hands. Instinctively, I placed my fingers gently behind her head and invited her downward. Slowly, she turned on her own. The following day, the midwife confirmed she was now head down.
Experiences like this profoundly reshaped my understanding of babies, communication, and relationship before birth.
Another deeply transformative experience came after the birth of our third son. The birth I had hoped would unfold gently in water ended instead with vacuum and forceps assistance. In the weeks following his birth, I felt something I had never experienced before as a mother — a painful sense of distance and disconnection from my baby.
Again, pre- and perinatal work became the bridge toward repair.
With Dr. Wendy McCarty’s support, I slowed down and entered what is often called a “breast crawl” repair process. Holding my son skin-to-skin against my lower belly in the bath, I slowly retold his birth story, pausing at difficult moments to allow space for his own responses and expressions. I shared how I wished the birth had unfolded and acknowledged the separation we had both experienced.
Then something extraordinary happened.
Very slowly, my son began to crawl upward toward my breast on his own. As he latched, I felt a powerful wave move through my body — an opening, an ignition of connection. In that moment, I felt our attachment reorganize. I saw him differently. We found one another again.
That experience fundamentally changed the way I understood healing. I began to see that babies are not passive participants in birth, but relational beings whose experiences matter deeply and whose stories can be revisited and repaired within safe connection.
At the time, I had already spent nearly twenty years working as a nurse, including many years in intensive care. I had accompanied countless people through illness, trauma, dying, and death. Yet through pre- and perinatal work, my attention began shifting toward beginnings — toward the earliest imprints that shape our nervous systems, relationships, and sense of safety in the world.
This eventually led me to train in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy with Ged Sumner with Body Intelligence, and later continue studying pre- and perinatal healing through the teachings of Myrna Martin, Eileen Sendrey, Kate White and others in the field.
Today my work supports babies, children, and families through Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, doula support, and pre- and perinatal approaches that honor the wisdom held within the body and within relationship itself. Again and again, I witness how slowing down, listening deeply, and supporting repair within early relational experiences can profoundly shift the course of healing for both children and parents.
Over time, poetry also became part of my healing journey. My book, When Time Stands Still, emerged from these experiences of birth, loss, love, grief, and transformation. Through poetry, I found another language for the spaces that often live beyond words — the spaces where connection, sorrow, wonder, and healing continue to meet.
Pre- and perinatal work transformed not only the way I understood babies and attachment, but the way I understood relationship itself — within families, within the body, and across the thresholds of life, birth, and loss.
A collection of pages holding meaningful items to help you through your journey:
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RESOURCES
BABIES BEFORE WORDS
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GUIDED MEDITATION
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Book PurchaseIf you’d like to hold your own copy of When Time Stands Still, you can purchase it online through the link below or through Friessen Press.