The Professional Podcast Network
11233 Catrice Harris-11 22 24-Childbirth Education-Matt
Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network, where brilliance meets business, elevate your brand, and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, and today I'm talking with Catrice Harris, who's the owner of Baby's Best Start in Missouri City, Texas. How are you doing today, Catrice? Doing well, thanks Matt. How are you? Doing good. So, why don't you tell me a little bit more about yourself and your business? Well, I am a licensed certified professional midlife in the Houston area. Yes, the address of the businesses in the very city, which is just an area across the tracks from Houston, but I support women and families in the greater Houston area with home births, and birth center births, childbirth education, lactation support, and just about anything that's related to having a holistic, natural childbirth experience. I see. And how long have you been doing this for? I've been doing birth work for about 16 years now. And what inspire you to pursue this career path? It's honestly one that happened when I had children of my own. There were a lot of questions that seemed to not have answers, easily found, and I didn't want other women to have the same struggles. And while one person can't change everything, I thought if I could just help a couple of women or those that I would come in contact with, that that would be enough. And it seemed like the more I got involved in it, the bigger the scope of the work became, and it really just snowballed into more of a passion and something that I feel compelled to do. That's great to hear. So explain to me some more of the services you provide and how you help out your clients. Sure. Well, initially, the work I was doing was supporting women through hospital births as a birth doula. A birth doula is someone who provides non-medical hands-on support to women when they're having babies in the hopes that they can avoid a lot of medical interventions. So I did that for quite a few years, and there were a lot of things I saw in hospitals that seemed like they were textbook or routine, kind of a one-size-fits-all model that didn't really apply to everyone who was having a baby. So from that, I started doing a little bit more research, more observation of births in general, and realized that there's not a one-size-fits-all model, and that birthing outside of a hospital is a safe option for most women. If a woman is low risk without a lot of medical problems, then she should have the option to have a baby wherever she wants, whether that be a hospital or her home or a birth center, which is more of a free-standing facility for holistic, unmedicated births. Is there anything about you or your business you want our listeners to know about today? Well, let's see, there's so much. I'm trying to keep it nice and brief for us. My goal in working with families is to preserve autonomy through the birth experience. I feel that having a baby is not just something that happens. It really is a life-altering, life-changing experience, and whole societies are affected when women are not honored through that process. So with my business and the women that I work with, our goal is to support families in the way they want to be supported, and if someone has questions about that, I'm always happy to just educate, even if they don't retain my services and have a baby with me. I'm always open to helping people find the experience that's best for them, but within baby's best art, we still offer childbirth classes in the privacy of family's homes. We offer lactation classes in support, and also newborn care classes as well as attending births and helping them through that whole process. And for anyone who wants to learn more, what's the best way to reach out to you? You can reach me through the website, which is babiesbeststart.org, and that's B-A-B-Y-S, not B-A-B-I-E-S, babiesbeststart.org, or just, you know, I'm okay if folks call me directly or in Instagram, I keep forgetting I'm working with a generation of social media folks, so I'm on Instagram at babiesbeststart as well. All right, well, I want to thank you again for talking with us today. Thank you, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Oh, you're welcome. And take care. Thank you. So the rest of our listeners, stay tuned. We'll be back with more after the break. Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network, where brilliance meets business, elevate your brand, and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]