Candid Interview with Gather Women's Space Founder and Author of The Birth Space

We are sharing an intimate conversation with Gabrielle Nancarrow, a birth doula, Founder of Gather Women’s Space, and an Author of The Birth Space. Gabrielle Nancarrow started Gather Women’s Space in Melbourne to create a place to connect, share stories and gain help and advice for the unique challenges faced by women and mothers after moving home to Melbourne from New York City and not being able to find a doula for her second birth. Her experiences as a mother herself and a doula has since evolved into a book, The Birth Space. We spoke to Gabrielle about her mission behind starting Gather, her motherhood journey and the origins of her book.

Can you share a little bit about yourself?

I'm a mother of three. I have a seven- year- old girl, Cammy, and then , Audrey, my four- year- old daughter, and then Freddy is my youngest. He's about to turn one in at the end of September, so he's a lockdown baby from last year. He has  lived most of his life in lockdown, but you know, he's oblivious. 

I am a birth doula for about four years now. I trained just after my second daughter was born and I run Gather.

What is Gather Women Space and the inspiration behind it?

Gather is a physical, gathering space in the inner west in Melbourne. We do workshops and a lot of education. The space is really a space for women's wellness, connectivity and community. I felt like there wasn't enough in- person connection. I had no idea if it was going to resonate and when we opened it, almost three years ago now (in early September, it'll be three years), women flooded here. We were doing moon ceremonies every week and selling out from the very beginning. It felt so needed. So we've been doing our moon ceremonies. We do yoga. We do a lot of workshops here. We have consultation rooms. We have psychologists, massage therapists, and anyone working in the area of women's health in our space to offer support services to women. 

At the heart of our space is our doula collective. So we have 35 birth and postpartum doulas now as part of our collective, which is amazing. When we first started, I think we had six or seven. I feel like in the first few months we were open, I might have booked a baby three or four doulas. And now three years later we're getting inquiries three or four times a week. So I think in the three years that we've been open, people are women and families are just becoming so much more aware of what doulas do and how beneficial they can be and what kind of support they offer and how it's so needed. 

I've just seen that rise like crazy, which has been a really incredible thing to see. I work in the birth space, but I also work as sort of a middle ground for those families who are looking for a doula. I had a doula for the birth of my first daughter in New York city. She was born in New York and when I came home to Melbourne, I looked for a doula for my second daughter's birth in Melbourne and it was really hard to find one. In New York, I went to Carriage House Birth in Brooklyn. It’s similar in the sense that it's a doula collective, provides childbirth education and a gathering space. So I trained in New York and then I met my doula in New York as well through Carriage House. And it was such an easy process. They had a morning tea where you just come and meet lots of doulas and connect. I looked for a doula when I was pregnant the second time, and I had my toddler and I was working and it was such an effort. I googled, there were a few websites that were a bit strange. And then I looked around and I called a few and it was nice chatting to people, but I didn't feel any connection. And it felt like such an effort. When you've got a toddler and you're working, it's just too much work. And so I didn't have a doula for my second daughter’s birth which was a shame because I really love doulas and the support that doulas bring. 

My doula was incredible in New York for my first daughter's birth. So both my husband and I were sad that we didn't hire a doula for the second one. That's when I got to thinking that I needed to change that. I really wanted to create in Melbourne, the experience that I'd had in New York. The heart of Gather when we first started was our doulas collective, and it has continued and grown from there. 

How it works is families come to us, tell us where they're living, what kind of budget they've got, what kind of support they're looking for (if they're looking for birth and postpartum support or just birth support or just postpartum support), and I match them with doulas and they book them. It's a really special side of the business and, and what I'm really most passionate about. 

Did you find that your recovery was not as seamless not having a doula for your second birth experience? 

Yes, it was a different experience. I think the first time around, I really didn't know anything about birth. I think, like a lot of people, when you first become pregnant, I wasn't schooled in anything. I didn't know my options. I didn't know my rights. I didn't know where I could go to birth my baby. I just thought, like my family and friends before me, that I would get an obstetrician and have birth in the hospital. I didn't really honestly know that there were other options. I didn't know enough about midwives and in the United States, it works quite differently, especially in the hospital system. Midwives aren't working in the hospital system as they are in New Zealand and Australia. If you're a midwife, you work in a birth center. I didn't really understand all of the different options that were available. So I booked my hospital birth and had an obstetrician. Then I saw the Ricky Lake documentary, The Business of Being Born, and that really opened my eyes to the system that I was birthing in. I was freaked out. It felt stressful and I thought, I need more support than this. I hired a doula quite late in the game. I think I was around 35 weeks pregnant when we hired a doula and up until that point, I hadn't even really been thinking about my birth at all. 

It was almost like I was growing this baby, but I had this idea that it would be a seamless thing. Like I would have the baby, I would go back to work, our baby would fit into our lives, and we would just carry on as we had been before. That was my assumption. We were living crazy lives in New York City. We were meeting for dinner at 9 PM every night. We had big, busy jobs. I was the editorial director of Victoria's Secret and had a massive team. I was doing so much work and flying all over the country. And my husband was the same. He had a big job too. So I don't know why I thought that it was all just going to fit in and just work out, and that this baby would just be there and we would get a nanny like everyone else. 

I remember I did yoga throughout my pregnancy and I think my yoga teacher just picked up on this sense that I was just completely unprepared and said, “You really should hire a doula. You need to talk to someone about the fact that you're about to birth in a few weeks time.” 

It was just a nudge, but thank goodness because we did hire a doula because of her. We had only done a hospital birth class. When I hired my doula, she educated us in a way that we hadn't been up until that point. She said, “You've got rights and you've got options here and you don't have to do what the hospital is saying. You don't have to do that, that's policy. It's very different from what your rights are, your legal and your human rights. And did you know about this? And did you know about that option? And did you realize that you can do this?”

Up until that point, we were listening to the obstetrician and trusting them. And that was it. We weren't really thinking outside of or beyond that. And I find, like a lot of families that I work with now, it just opened our eyes. I felt like this is incredible information and why hasn't anyone told me this. She was a wonderful support at the birth and I had a really empowering birth. 

My husband was very grateful for her as well because it was semi-long first labor. It was 16 hours, but it progressed really well. But like any birth for a partner, it's an exhausting thing to be present the entire time and to stay emotionally and physically present for the person having the baby. So having a doula there allowed him to get food, take a break, go to the toilet, do what he needed to do, and I was never left alone. I think he was really grateful for that as well and it was just so nice for us both to have her presence there. It really felt like she was protecting our space in the hospital room. We were in the hospital, but it felt protected and safe. 

The biggest takeaway was that we didn't feel untethered. We didn't feel we were exposed. We were in our bubble and she was there protecting us. It was an incredible birth. Could we have recreated that without her?  Maybe, but I feel like she gave us the confidence to be able to birth in the way that I really had hoped that I would. She said, “Yes, you can do this. I'm gonna be there. I've got you. I'm gonna show up for you. And that's my role.”

We were so happy that that had happened and we had that experience, so when I got home to Melbourne, I didn't have a doula for my second birth and the birth experience was a really positive birth experience, I think we both just felt like we were missing something.

It was my second birth so I felt more confident. It was a very quick labor, six hours in all, but maybe three hours of active labor and in the hospital for only an hour. It all went very fast so it wasn't a huge loss not to have a doula, but it would have been really good to have had that support. I feel like it's good in the birth space to have someone who knows you beforehand, supports you through pregnancy, who's there at the birth, and then who visits postpartum and debriefs. They have been a part of your whole experience and it is like a touchstone. 

That’s how I work with all these families. I am there for them. I know them and I can remind them of things if they need reminding, or I can sit and just hold space and they can share their thoughts on how the birth went and just whatever they need to say. You have that safe person there to share and I think that's really invaluable. Without a doula, it's hard to find in our current maternal system.

Hiring a private midwife for a home birth is the closest you can get to it because you have that incredible bond with your midwife. They come to your home, they get to know you. And that's wonderful if you're in the hospital system and in Australia, it works quite differently in New Zealand. In Australia, if you have an obstetrician, yes, they get to know you, but in a very different sense.  It’s very medicalized. The appointments are very short. They're there right at the end of your birth. It’s not super personalized and that emotional connection can be lacking. 

In the system, you can have continuity of care with midwives, but it's quite rare to have that. So I was lucky to have that for my third baby's birth last year, where I had my own midwife in the public system. She was wonderful. She wasn't at the birth because she wasn't on call. It was her partner and her partner was wonderful. They both saw me postpartum. It was a really good sort of gold standard offering for maternity care in a hospital setting. I was very lucky, but in Australia about 10% of women have access to that program. 

I thought Australia was quite similar in that you had a midwife that followed you through and then it's only an obstetrician if it's high risk?

In Australia, you have the option of private and public. You would be surprised, but a lot of people pay privately to have a private obstetrician even if they're not high risk. In the public system you have, it varies from hospital to hospital, but where I gave birth at the Royal Women’s Hospital, which is the biggest maternity hospital in Melbourne in Victoria, about 10% of women get into the continuity of care program where they have their own midwife. That midwife works with one or two other midwives in a small team. So I was very lucky to get into that program. 90% of women see a different midwife at every appointment. They don’t know who's going to show up to their birth. If they have a story, if they have trauma, and they're telling that story over and over again to different people, it's exhausting, stressful and it's not okay. 

So why is that the case? Funding. There's not enough advocacy for why continuity of care is important. I'm hoping the tide is changing, but it’s happening very, very slowly. At the moment, it's really hard to get continuity of care publicly without having to pay for it. So you can hire a doula or you can hire a private midwife, but you're paying out of pocket for that. New Zealand has a much better system in my opinion, where you do have your own midwife and it's publicly funded. 

When we think about the role of a doula, we often think about them as a support for the person giving birth, where it is also really beneficial to have somebody else there that knows you so well and can support you through that, allowing your partner to take breaks. 

Absolutely, that is what I say a lot of the time to the families I'm supporting. I'm there just as much for the partner and to normalize the experience for them and to help empower them to support the birthing person. That is such a key role of doulas to empower them and to help support them. I have a lot of the women that I support say that the partners weren't doing a lot until I showed up and then started encouraging them, and then they started encouraging the birthing person. They've never been in that birth space before and while some people are very natural, you don't always know how to support someone. So just using the words that I use, the gentle nature that I approach with and the things that I say, I often hear partners mimicking that. 

That really helps the partner understand, You're here, you're vocal. I can hear that you've got me. That can just make them feel more comfortable being in that birth space. First births can often go for a long time and partners can be up at night for three or four days in a row with someone during early labor.  When I get to the birth, it's usually getting closer to active labor, so the partner can go for a long walk, or a surf, or a sleep or whatever they need to do, and then they come back refreshed. I think without that opportunity, as the partner, you can be so shattered by the end of labor and when you're truly needed the most, you're just so exhausted. 

As a doula, I am tag teaming with the partner. Beyond all of the emotional support, it's having a person there that lets you go to the toilet, get through whatever you need to do, and get a break. It's a lot for that to be on just one support person. 

Additionally, when I’m educating couples before labor and birth, I feel like I'm overwhelming them with information and if I'm not going to be at their birth, that's a lot up for the partner to carry all of that information into the birth. To remember the birth preferences and on the spot, make big decisions or help advocate if the birthing person can't advocate for themselves at that moment.  That's a huge role and a lot of responsibility.  As a doula, I want to take that load off them so that they're fully present for that birthing person. 

By doing that, they can be the physical and emotional support without having to be weighted down with all of the information. As a doula, that’s what I bring and that's what I carry with me. I know birth so well that in the moment I can say, “We talked about this, and these are your preferences. How do you feel about this now?” I just think it's good to have that source of knowledge with you because carrying all of that on your own is a lot. 

Can you tell me about your book, The Birth Space, and your inspiration for writing it?

I always felt like I had a book in me. There was so much that I wanted to share, and a lot of it comes from my learnings of my own personal experience of going through my first pregnancy without any knowledge to getting to the point with my third where I so adamantly knew what I wanted  and how strong I was in all of my convictions. I knew so much about the landscape. I knew so much about my options. I knew about my rights. Every time I work with a family and I share this information with them, they're always so shocked that they haven't been given any of this information yet and wonder why it isn’t publicly available information.

I think there are so many amazing birth books out there, but a lot of them are about the physiological birth process or active birth or how to give birth physiologically or hormones. There's a lot about that, but there wasn't enough about your rights and your experience in that space, including stories about birth and conception. A lot of what we do at Gather is storytelling circles with women coming together and sharing their stories. It’s incredible how much connection can come from that. So I thought, yes, there's a book. I want it to happen, butlast year, I was pregnant, I had my two children, I had my business, and I just didn't have time. I began thinking that this book wasn’t going to happen anytime soon and then Hardy Grant in Melbourne, which is an amazing, independent publisher, approached me. 

I had worked with someone that they knew and they must have told them that I might be a good person to this book. I think they were looking for a new kind of modern take on pregnancy and birth so they approached me and asked me to pitch a book, which was an amazing opportunity. 

So I pitched the book that I felt needed to be out there. They were so encouraging from the start. My editor who I worked with is pregnant now jokes that the book got her pregnant. 

My editor said, “I trust you. You need to lead the way here and I'll support you.” They just had so much faith in me which was beautiful. So I pitched the book that I wanted to write and they were really happy with it and I started writing. 

I got the book deal in April 2020, so at the beginning of the pandemic. I think the book deal came through a couple of weeks into our first lockdown. At the time about 15 weeks pregnant with the worst morning sickness of my life and food aversions. With my first two pregnancies, I was pretty unwell for about 13 or 14 weeks, but managed to get on with my day. With my son, I was so sick. I was on the couch, the girls were just watching television all day, and I couldn't eat anything other than grapes. Grapes were the only thing I could stomach and I'd never experienced being so sick during pregnancy before this.

It was horrible. I had no energy. I could barely drink water. I just was very unwell. Then I got this book deal and the deadline was the end of August, which was a few weeks before my due date. I thought it was too good of an opportunity, but there was Covid, I was homeschooling, I’m on the couch sick, but I decided I was going to get it done. I literally started writing on my phone in the notes, just sick on the couch. Through working with families or  learning things or seeing things as a doula, I already had a wealth of knowledge and notes to pull from. It just was really just a matter of organizing it, and thankfully I started to feel better a couple of weeks later around by 20 weeks in my pregnancy. 

I could eat again and I got some of my energy back. Meanwhile Gather, which was taking up all of my work time, completely shut down because of all the lockdowns. We had some online offerings, but the day-to-day running of the space was taken off my hands because we weren't allowed to operate. So that freed up some time for me to work on the book. I thought about what kind of book I wanted. 

I knew I wanted a book that began with preconception and conscious conception because my first two babies, I conceived without even thinking about it. I had no body literacy. I took some prenatal vitamins for a few weeks and got pregnant. Fast forward to my third baby, we consciously conceived him. For six months before he was conceived, we stopped drinking alcohol and coffee. Both of us, my partner and I. Obviously the male has 50% impact, but a lot of people forget that. Women often get themselves healthy and the men aren't always sort of on the same train, but I made sure that we were both doing that. And then just really thinking about this baby and calling this baby in and doing some work around that and the meditation that I did. That was all so new to me and the knowledge that I'd gained during the few years before his conception, it just felt really special and I wanted to bring that into the book. 

I started with conception. The book goes through conception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and then matrascence is our last chapter. I just shared all of my knowledge as a mother and as a doula and throughout I have stories from women around the world who share their conception stories, their IVF stories, their single mother stories, their pregnancy loss stories, their birth stories, their postpartum stories. So it's not just my voice, but it's the voice of many women. I think that you can find so much connection from reading about someone else's experience. 

Before I had my first baby in New York, I had a miscarriage and it was the most alone I've ever felt. I didn't know anyone who'd ever had a miscarriage before. I didn't speak about it. I didn't have anyone around me. 

I had wonderful family support, but no one who knew how I was feeling. I felt like the book needed that element of I’ve been there. I see you. If you're going through this, now women have gone through this before we're holding you in spirit. That was really a really important element. I also interviewed lots of women who work in the birth space. So Aviva RO who's a herbalist in the us. I don't know if you know her. She's wonderful. Dr. Jessica Zucker, who started the, I had a miscarriage campaign. I interviewed her and then I interviewed a lot of women who I worked with through Gather in Melbourne. The book has a lot of interviews with doulas, naturopaths, fertility specialists, psychologists, and more to share a really wide range of voices which I felt was really important. 

My own sort of content sort of flowed. I didn't find the writing process difficult. I really loved it. I took myself away for a mini writer's retreat for four days in August, and I just pumped out half the book in four days. As mothers, four days is like a year. 

You basically birthed two babies. You were like pregnant with your third baby and the book. 

Absolutely. It was so special. It was so special growing the baby and writing the book. I sent the manuscript at the end of August and I felt this massive sense of accomplishment. I thought, It’s done. This is amazing. However, that was just the beginning of the work. I've never written a book before. I didn't know the process. When you send the manuscript in, that's really where the work begins. From there, it went to an editor and then came back with all of the edits. It was such an incredible process. I loved working with the editor. I loved having feedback. My editor was a mother as well, and I loved her take on things and the way that she saw things, which was so refreshing.

But I was literally editing at 40 weeks pregnant and sending back edits at 40 weeks pregnant. The way that I support my families as a doula I always tell them that by 36 or 37 weeks to stop everything. I say, “Can you just slow down? Can you not have any work? Can you just turn your phone off.” And yet here I was - editing like crazy at midnight at 40 weeks pregnant. Both of my girls were born at 39 weeks. I really wanted this baby to come around 39 weeks as well. I'd never been to 40 weeks before and I got to 40 weeks and I just had this massive breakdown wondering why isn’t my baby here yet. 

I was feeling so overwhelmed and that I just wanted this baby to be born. My husband told me, “You are working like crazy. I don't know nearly as much as you do about birth, but I know that this baby is not going to be born right now because of the way that you're working, how stressed you are, how in your head you are, and how much you are working on the book. The baby's not coming anytime soon. So stop thinking about that, finish what you're doing, and then just give yourself a break and some space. So I literally sent those edits at 40 weeks which was a Thursday and on the Friday, I woke up still pregnant. 

I was feeling really low. Then I went and got acupuncture and woke up Saturday morning still pregnant. So my partner said, “Okay, I'm taking the girls out. I'm running you a bath and I'm putting your birth playlist. You need to just get in the zone”. So I had this amazing bath, wrote a letter to my baby, and said to my baby, “Okay, I'm ready when you're ready.” And he was born that night. 

It was really amazing. There were so many learnings in that week where I went over 40 weeks and what was going through my head. I'm always supporting families and tell them that 40 weeks is not a deadline. Telling them that babies can come within this five week timeframe, anytime from 37 to 42 weeks is very normal for a baby to be born. But when you are in it and you're over 40 weeks, it's just such a different thing. So now I've got that perspective, which I didn't have before. I know that it's hard to be there. So it was a great learning experience for me just to fully surrender and let go, because up until that point, I was quite stressed. So essentially the book was sent and then he was born. 

Every birth experience is different. You still kind of hang your hat on your previous birth experiences. You're say things like my babies come early or my labors are quick. So I think I was nervous for my third birth because with my first two, I hadn’t seen other births. Then I became a birth doula and had seen so many different births and I was carrying a lot of those experiences with me. So I think I was holding a lot of that in as well, and I just had to let that go and say to myself, “No, this is my experience. This is my baby. This is my story. This is not everyone else's stories that I'm carrying”. 

What is one piece of advice you would give other mothers that are making their transition into motherhood? 

I would say hire a postpartum doula. My one main piece of advice would be to understand that period after birth. It's a wonderful thing to prepare for your birth and it's important to prepare for your birth. But you need to prepare for your postpartum. If you have the budget, spend it on a postpartum doula. Don't buy all of the things, but instead spend it on you and the support that you need to have around you. The reason that I think a postpartum doula is so wonderful is that they come and they're solely there for the mother. Doulas support the family unit, but they want to make sure that the mother is resting and bonding with the baby. They cook, hey clean, they hold space, they provide emotional support, and they are just that transition to motherhood. I think whether it's your first, second, third, or fourth baby, it's always a new experience into motherhood. 

If you don't rest in that period, you can be depleted for years. I know that because like I said, my first baby was born in New York city. I left the hospital and two days later, I was brunching with champagne on day three. I went to a wedding at day 10 and people were like, you're amazing. I write about this in the book. People kept telling me “You're amazing.” And inside I was dying. I was so in so much pain. I couldn't sit down. I was trying to feed. I was trying to be a mother and it was so wrong. Then there was a gallery opening. I was at a rooftop barbecue in Brooklyn in week two, and I just did not stop. My parents were there to support me and they were amazing. So through the days I was resting, they were cooking for me, but we were still going out for dinner. 

And like I said, I was just doing this New York life thinking that's what you do, without any knowledge of the importance of rest or the importance of that period for bonding and for emotional sanity. The second time around, I had my laptop at the hospital and was working. I had no awareness of this period. My third baby, I did the first 40 days of rest at home, in my cocoon in bed with all the food. So I had so much food cooked for me. My sister-in-law was dropping off broth every couple of days. I was just drinking so much and I knew what to eat. I knew what to do. Our breastfeeding journey has been so much more seamless than the first two times around. 

I don't think I've lost the weight now, but I put on weight postpartum. I don't think many mothers do that, but honestly I was in bed just eating so much food and I loved it. I loved being full. I loved having the milk. I loved resting and what that did for my body and my sanity. I can't even explain it. 

So my advice is that new mothers dedicate a time to rest after birth. If at all possible, the first six weeks or the first 40 days. It's so important and it’s necessary to put plans into place to make that happen. It's not going to happen on its own. You need the support around you. You need to ask family. You need your partner to take off as long as possible from work. You need your family to rally around you. 

You need to have boundaries. You want to make sure that you're not having people around you during postpartum who are judgemental, who are offering advice, who are saying things that you don't really want to be hearing. When you're trying to sort of find your own feet as a mother and are trying to trust your own instincts, but then you have people around you giving you all of this advice which can cause you to question yourself. That's really difficult. So if there are people in your life who you know will be like that, you need to put some strong boundaries into place. Only let the people into your space who will be there to hold you and to support you. The way that I felt emerging from that cocoon after six weeks, I felt better than I ever have in my life. 

Comparing that to my first two experiences where I felt depleted forever. I really feel like this third postpartum experience helped heal a lot of that. Up until getting pregnant with my third baby, I still felt quite depleted from those first two experiences and if I tracked it back, it really was that I didn't rest, I didn't eat well, I was zipping around working, going out with friends, and not taking the time to go inward and focus on myself and my baby, and the fact that I'd just done this monumental thing and birthed a child. I just thought that what you do is just carry on and actually, no, that's not what you should do. Yes. Eventually when you're ready to emerge from that wonderful space, hopefully you've rested enough to emerge and you feel well, but please focus on your postpartum. 

Cook meals when you're pregnant, arrange support, get your village to rally around you in the best way possible. With COVID it's really difficult, but postpartum doulas are still working. So if your friends ask you what you want as a gift, say, “Food. Please cook for me. Drop it off.” 

I think we're sort so attuned to someone saying, “Can I help you? What can I do?” 

And we just say, “No, I've got this. Don't worry about it.”

 If someone offers to help, say yes. Say Thank you. Say, Can I have some food? Please cook this for me. Please bring this around. I need all of that support. Now is not the time to be a hero and to think that you can do it all.

The other thing I'd say is it's enough to feed a baby and hold a baby all day long. That enough. Especially with first time mothers, we think that they're not achieving anything in the day because what we have done at the end of the day is hold and feed a baby. That is enough. That is more than enough. That is everything. Time will come again for you to, if you want to, go back to work or if you want to do this or that, but in the moment, that's enough. If you can just hold and feed your baby, you are doing so much for that little person and for yourself. 

It  matters so much that we are doing this for ourselves. I think we put ourselves last in so many ways and it’s not okay. I really want to put a stop to that. I think yes, you've got to be there for your family, but you matter, you come first. If you don't feel well, the whole family falls apart. Mothers need to put themselves first and I think that we just aren't accustomed to doing that at all. I'm still learning to do that. I still am not doing that most of the time. There are things that I've been putting off, blood tests that I've been putting off that I haven't had time to get done. And I think to myself, no, this is important. This matters. So you matter as a mother and you need to put yourself first because if we don't, honestly everyone suffers. 

It feels like an effort for that to happen and for us to take the initiative for that to happen. And that's why I think during postpartum, there needs to be so much more support around mothers. Every new mother should have lactation consultants without having to pay for them. I had the privilege of hiring one and it costs lots of money. I had her come often because I wanted a good, successful breastfeeding journey, but I can pay for that. Not everyone can. We need pelvic floor physiotherapists and psychologists. Why is this not government funded? I can just go on and on and on about this because it's not okay. We cannot just be birthing these babies and then left alone to ourselves and work out what we need to do to help get our body back together. And our emotional health that should all just be given. It should just be a given that we are given these services postpartum and that we are just not left. It's not okay. 

Right now it’s a privilege. It's thousands of dollars and it shouldn't be, it should be government funded because if we want healthy families and healthy communities that needs to happen. We should not just be left alone to work it all out. I personally had the funds to work out where to go and who to have and what to do, but there's nowhere where we can sort of have that advice and that support. So that's a big part of what we do at Gather. So women can come and say, Hey, this is what I need. Where can I get it? How can I get support?