More Than Massage: Prenatal Spa Day

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This blog was last updated March 2024

It isn’t difficult these days to find a prenatal massage near you. What proves hard to find is providers that truly cater to pregnant clientele with their services. If you were a regular spa-goer pre-pregnancy, it can be disappointing to lose a routine for relaxation you’ve become accustomed to.

Not to mention, pregnancy often brings a host of discomforts and changes along with it.

The Prenatal Massage benefits extend far beyond days of relaxation. Through the art and science of touch, pregnant individuals can experience pain reduction and relief, mental relaxation, and tap into their parasympathetic nervous system via increase in Oxytocin in the body. By activating our “rest and digest” hormones, we can experience lowered levels of stress overall, which impacts every system of our bodies.

We did the heavy lifting for you and found some of the best options for locally owned pregnancy spa treatments in and around Baltimore. These local options offer a variety of Prenatal Massage techniques. We’re sure you’ll find one that matches your needs perfectly.

For the Holistic-Minded: Anhata Massage

Logo of Anahata Massage Therapy located in Baltimore, Maryland

Sanskrit for “heart”, Anhata Massage is owned by Joshua Gosnell. Offering a holistic approach, this massage will focus on more than just physical wellness, venturing into spiritual wellness as well to treat you as a whole person.

Instagram: @anahatamassagetherapy

 

 

For a Full Spectrum: Sweet Willow Massage

Logo for Sweet Willow Massage + Wellness

Sweet Willow offers services not only during pregnancy but preconception as well. Owner Jessie Bernstein-Newton additionally offers Infant Massage Classes for when your little one arrives! These classes can be incredibly beneficial for connecting with your baby and helping to relieve discomfort from things like gas after feedings.

Instagram: @sweetwillowmassage

For an Integrative Massage with Options: Metta Integrative Wellness Co-Op

Employee owned wellness co-op, Metta, in Baltimore, Maryland

An employee-owned cooperative, Metta offers a host of Integrative Health services including Prenatal Massage. Co-owner Molly Farwell creates an experience that can be adapted to all stages of pregnancy and all levels of comfort.

Instagram: @mettawellness

 

 

For Massage and Bodywork: Charm City Integrative Health

Logo for Charm City Integrative Health, a wellness business in Baltimore, Maryland

Charm City Integrative Health has been consistently voted Best in Baltimore by Expertise.com! Offering Prenatal Massage and Bodywork, they focus primarily on comfort for the expectant parent.

Instagram: @ccintegrative

 

 

For Massage with Optional Add-on Personal Care Services: Indu Wellness

Logo for Indu Wellness, located in Baltimore, Maryland.

Indu Wellness places emphasis on treating the whole person as a part of a comprehensive approach to wellness. While you’ll find Prenatal Massage there, you might also add on your routine personal care services such as Facials, Waxing, or Acupuncture.

Instagram: @indu_wellness

 

Massage can be a key part of nurturing your wellbeing. With the right provider, incorporating this science-based approach to care during pregnancy is an easy choice.

Looking for referrals to other professionals? Check out our Growing Family Professionals resource page for vetted local individuals and businesses.

Safety Note: Wherever you have your prenatal spa day, be sure to check in with your provider about any treatments you plan to receive, inform your spa technician that you are pregnant and need accommodations, and speak up if something doesn’t feel right. You are the expert on your body and baby!

2023: A Year of Growth & Teamwork

This year was one of tremendous growth for Baltimore families and the DOB family alike!

Our Doulas of Baltimore Team

Our small but mighty team of 5 who weathered the first years of the covid pandemic together, expanded to a team of 10 in 2022. This year our team has grown again – we now have 17 incredible birth professionals! 

We work hard but like to have fun, too. Lots of fun team outings this year, including some lovely lunches, a happy hour at Union Craft Brewing, and an Orioles’ game!

Childbirth Education & Parenting Workshops

We have had the privilege of working with 41 different families in our childbirth and parenting education workshops this year! This included 13 group workshops in our gorgeous studio, as well as four virtual group sessions and two private in-home classes! 

While both Emily and Debbie have been thoroughly enjoying spending time in the studio, on Zoom, and in-home educating new parents, the demand (particularly for group classes) has exceeded our capacity. So two of our incredible doulas are joining our education team!

We are now able to expand our offerings and 2024 will be bringing new opportunities for Baltimore families. Among the things we are most looking forward to is our brand new infant care class – the Essential Newborn Series! Keep an eye on our social media for more updates on our class offerings coming in 2024. 

Birth Doula & Postpartum Doula Support

We were honored to support 91 growing Baltimore families over the course of 2023!

GBMC took the number one spot this year, up from tied for number 2 last year. While 20 families choose GBMC as their birth location this year with Mercy and Hopkins remaining in the top 3 (18 and 17 respectively). St. Joe’s, Howard County and UMMC remained popular birth locations with our clients as well. 

Our team worked nearly 4,000 hours of in-home postpartum doula and newborn care support!*

(*That’s over 165 days!)

Maryland Medicaid Doula Program

This year also marked a huge step forward in the accessibility of doula support for many Maryland families utilizing the Medicaid Doula Program. We were able to support several families under this new system. We are looking forward to serving more families while ensuring our doulas are adequately compensated for their time, expertise, and knowledge. 

New Office Space

Don’t worry, we are at the same great location! In addition to our lovely studio space, we now have a cozy office for client meetings, private classes, and team meetings.

In early December, we hosted a gathering of growing family professionals there and it was such a delight. Finding resources to share with our clients and connecting with like-minded professionals? Yes, please!

Giving Back

In addition to maintaining our longstanding commitments to Maryland Families for Safe Birth, Fluid Movement, MOMCares, and The Family Tree, this year we were fortunate to be able to donate over $5000 and to expand our contributions to include the following worthy causes:  

    • There Goes My Hero – an organization dedicated to supporting families impacted by blood cancers, founded by Erik Sauer, our incredible business coach and leukemia survivor;
    • The Bloom Collective – a perinatal wellness cooperative in Baltimore dedicated to advancing racial and reproductive justice, advocacy, and human rights;
    • Black Mamas Matter Alliance – a national network of women-led and Black-led birth and reproductive justice organizations and multi-disciplinary professionals, working across the full-spectrum of maternal and reproductive health;
    • Baltimore Family Alliance – an independent alliance of thousands of families, educators, and community activists & organizations committed to city life and improving the lives of all Baltimore residents.

We also had a hugely successful supply drive as part of our holiday open house for Growing Family Professionals.

We collected menstrual and dental hygiene supplies for our local food bank – GEDCO CARES. And many thanks to all the generous donors!

As we close the chapter on 2023, the DOB family is grateful for a year of growth, community impact, and unwavering commitment to supporting Baltimore families, and we eagerly anticipate the possibilities that lie ahead in the coming year.

Find out our busiest birth month, zip codes with the most DOB clients, and more of our 2023 stats on our Instagram page!

2022 Year in Review

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Welcome to our Year in Review! 2022 marked a return to more familiar circumstances for many families.

While we continue to practice infection reduction measures like masking, routine testing, increased air circulation, and the like, we at DOB are incredibly grateful to have been able to provide support to Baltimore families relatively uninterrupted during this last year. 

Throughout 2022, we supported 60 Baltimore families as they welcomed 60 babies (another year with no multiples!).

Childbirth Education & Parenting Workshops

DOB held 33 birth classes and parenting workshops. 15 in person group workshops at our beautiful studio space at the Cedarcroft Center, 16 virtual live interactive group workshops, and 2 private, in-home classes. 

In-home Postpartum Doula & Newborn Care Support

The biggest shift from earlier pandemic-era years was in our ability to provide exceptional support to families in-home. Through 2022 our team of postpartum doulas and Newborn Care Specialists offered a whopping 2040 hours (and counting!) of in-home postpartum support. This means that our doulas spent the equivalent of 85 full days in client’s homes! 

Top Birth Locations for Doulas of Baltimore’s Clients

It was a busy year for our birth doulas, too! For the second year in a row, the main campus of Johns Hopkins maintained the top spot on the list of birth locations for DOB clients with 18 births. Greater Baltimore Medical Center and Mercy Medical Center tied for second place with 10 births each, and with 8 births, St. Joseph Medical Center was the third most popular. 

Our clients also chose to deliver at home as well as the following hospitals: Hopkins Bayview, Baltimore Washington Medical Center, Carroll Hospital, Franklin Square Hospital, Harbor Hospital, Howard County General Hospital, Sinai, St. Agnes, University of MD, and Walter Reed.

Supporting Baltimore, Families, & a Better Future for All

Together with our doulas, DOB has supported (through time, donations, and/or amplification) the following local organizations: The Family Tree, MOMCares, Fluid Movement, and Maryland Families for Safe Birth. Additionally, we donate a percentage of every sale to carbon removal efforts.

We remain steadfastly committed to Baltimore and to helping growing families thrive – by supporting parents, building community, and protecting the future for our clients and all the children of Baltimore.

4 Lessons from Childbirth Education that Helped Us Get Through COVID

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At the very beginning of our Complete Childbirth Education classes in Baltimore, we ask you to fill in sentences about how you feel about birth. While “I am nervous about…” is definitely not the same for everyone, over the last year, COVID-19 has made expecting parents nervous. And it brings up lots of questions for new moms: What does coronavirus mean for a hospital stay? Could baby meet grandma and grandpa? Who will be able to help me after delivery? 

Although 2020 was totally unexpected, at Doulas of Baltimore, we’ve tried to keep the safe, nurturing, and smart perspective we’ve had serving you for the last 7 years. As things are slowly getting back to normal, we wanted to share how 4 lessons from our CBE classes helped us get through this past year. 

Need to Make a Decision? Use Your B.R.A.I.N.!

Use your B.R.A.I.N is a philosophy we use in class. When making a decision, think about benefits, risks, alternatives, intuition, and what would happen if you did nothing. At the very beginning of the pandemic, we used this philosophy to think about what services we could safely offer to you all. While we’ve always known the benefits of comprehensive support, there were many risks involved in continuing in-person classes and doula support. Our intuition (and clients and friends who work in medicine) helped us make the call to move all of our support to an alternative – virtual classes and support – until it was safe to be in person again. 

Confidence and Support Help Get Us Through

Doulas are experts who provide steadfast and nonjudgemental support to you and your family during pregnancy, labor, and after baby arrives. While our classes continued with all of the regular topics, we also dealt with the most pressing issue: navigating the obstacles of COVID. What is the absolute need-to-know information? How can we help make this a less stressful situation in a very stressful climate? Like in all of our classes, we focused on evidence-based information and provided straight talk about birth and postpartum care in the pandemic. We also used that same evidence-based information to make decisions about how to run our business and what we could safely offer to clients. 

Take a Deep Breath 

Was that a contraction? A real contraction? Or just pre-labor? In our classes, we always go over the stages of labor  and how to tell the difference. Over this past year, each time a wave of infections started coming down and businesses started opening up, it was almost like Braxton Hicks contractions. They are stressful, because you are trying to figure out if they are real or not, but ultimately, they are not the real thing. 

When we went virtual, we wanted to wait until it was safe and realistic to provide in person support again, and we wanted to know the difference between pre-labor and real labor. The last thing we wanted to do was tell a client, “Yes, we can be with you in the hospital,” and then back out. Now, as vaccinations are available for everyone, case numbers remain low, and hospitals have permanently re-opened for professional doula support, we can offer in-person support again. 

Adapting is Key

If you’ve been in one of our classes or been pregnant, you know: labor takes many paths. And what you want to do is know the unexpected situations and what to do about them. No one knew what 2020 would bring us or when, and adapting to the ever-changing scenarios has become key to keeping our support going. We were able to bring classes to a virtual space, and some aspects of online meeting and learning are great (including no commutes on weeknights!). This is one reason we plan to continue to offer some classes online in the future. However, some things such as comfort measures, are hard to teach over Zoom. And, a big part of what we do is supporting you during and after birth, in person. So, we are adapting again. This fall, we will be offering a few classes in person in addition to our online Complete Childbirth Education class, and we have begun working one-on-one with families in person again for both birth doula support and in-home postpartum and newborn care

You can find out more about our classes here and contact us to find out more about in person doula support this summer and fall. 

A Letter from Doulas of Baltimore

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Greetings DOB family, 

You may have noticed that we have been pretty quiet over the past year. As doulas and entrepreneurs we are well-versed in being flexible and living in the moment, while always keeping an eye on planning for the future. All of that still did not quite prepare us for living through a pandemic. Like so many small businesses (and families), the past year did not look anything like we had planned for. We hunkered down with our own families, continuously evaluated and reevaluated how we could be of service to expectant parents, and simply made it through as best we could. 

We remain committed to what we do, while adapting to how we do it. We want to share with you how we shifted our business over the last year, and what we are planning for the rest of 2021 and into the future. 

In the early days of March 2020, while watching and listening to former clients and friends who work in medicine and epidemiology, we decided not to wait for the inevitable decision to be made for us and opted to suspend all in-person support and classes. 

We set  to work immediately, transitioning doula clients to virtual support and fashioning internet-based childbirth classes and parenting workshops. We knew that between the news cycle and long days of working from home, we could not expect people to have the same attention span. We distilled our usual content down to the truly “need to know” information and provided students with videos and other supplemental materials. 

Our classes also dealt with the most pressing issue: navigating the obstacles of COVID. How can we help make this a less stressful situation? As is always our approach, we focused on evidence-based information and provided straight talk about birth and postpartum care in the pandemic. 

We did not want to add more uncertainty into the lives of our clients (or our doulas) by going back and forth between in-person and virtual doula support. We knew that the situation was ever-changing, so with few exceptions, we have only been offering entirely virtual support over the last year. 

At the end of 2020, we did not know what the future held for DOB. Like many other small business owners, we asked ourselves, how much longer can we do this? We had some serious and difficult conversations. In the end, our commitment to Baltimore families felt bigger than our struggles. Thanks in part to grants and other pandemic related support, we’ve been able to take the time to think about what we offer and how we offer it, and plan for the future. 

The real turning point came this spring, when our doulas were able to be vaccinated and hospitals began allowing an additional professional support person in labor and delivery again.  

We have fine-tuned our popular virtual Complete Childbirth and Baby 101 classes. We are planning a couple of limited-size in-person classes later in the year. With hospitals allowing professional doula support in addition to a partner, we have doulas who are fully vaccinated and are available to attend a birth in person for this summer. And our in-home doula support and newborn care has been re-worked with COVID-19 safety protocols. 

Take care and thank you for continuing to support us as we help Baltimore families thrive,

Emily & Debbie