Your journey. Your baby. Your choices. Your way.
ABOUT ON POINT SUPPORT SERVICES
After all our preparation together and your hard work, your first moments with your baby are pure treasure.
The golden hour brings peace. Everything is all right.
WHY
Why do we at On Point offer this kind of individualized, sensitive expertise in supporting you? Fair question to ask!
Here's the thing. We are in this because you are in this. We know you can handle it. We know you are tougher than all those confusing moments when you've perilously scrolled through apps and posts on your phone and read about pregnancy and labor and parenting pitfalls. We know you're amazing. You're made for this, built for this, equipped for this.
We'll be with you and we’ll filter out the noise, share evidence-based information you can take in at your own pace and time. We do this because there are serious gaps in health systems of the medical-industrial complex, inequities in being served depending on how you’re seen by others. There are also blindspots in new parents' knowledge that we can help fill in during your birth preparation so you can make decisions enhancing your experience in pregnancy and labor. And again, in your early days, weeks, and months at home with the baby.
We do this because there is nothing that is more important than working with you and seeing you sure of yourself, asserting yourself, and giving yourself credit and recognition for going through these big experiences in the best possible way for you—your way.
HOW
[Currently, providing virtual services everywhere.]
We sit with you and listen to your hopes, your ideals, your goals in having a baby. We offer evidence-based education and wisdom of the ancients for you, and, if you choose, we inform people you rely on: your tribe, your pod, your family. When those around you understand more about what you're going through and how important it is for them to support your choices, the whole experience is better for everybody.
We review with you your rights during pregnancy and birthing and recognizing the points along the way for you to make final choices and make them known. We help you gain your own clarity and self-confidence. We talk with you about likely scenarios based on what you're learning with your care provider, whether midwife or doctor. When the time comes, we meet you at the hospital, birthing center, or home and support you with encouragement, affirmation, and appropriate comfort measures through labor and birthing until you're all settled and ready for extended bonding time.
Then we will meet you at home with your baby when you need us from time to time again, check-in, share with you and show you what you want to know about how to feed or care for your baby in the ways you want, and keep things running smoothly while you rest. We're passionate about providing professional care for you, our client. We offer an array of support to fit your needs, and then you empower yourself to evaluate data-driven, evidence-based options and choose what works for you. And, we return to support you from start to finish, when you need us and want us.
OUR TENETS. OUR COMMITMENT.
We have wide-ranging backgrounds as expertly trained and certified educators, doulas, and specialists. On Point professionals share dedication in providing support, comfort, and information that is:
evidence-based,
unbiased in content, and
judgment-free.
With that, you can make choices that are all yours.
We are also passionate about engaging in community and working for reproductive justice and birth equity. We donate time, services, and funding through our client engagements to organizations that are focused full-time in these efforts.
YOUR JOURNEY. YOUR BODY. YOUR RULES.
YOUR WAY.
As an expectant and new parent, you're going to be making thousands of decisions. When you're with On Point, we help you to feel informed, confident, and right about your choices for your baby and yourself.
We make it easier for you to make your most important goals concrete, with pen to paper, specifying your optimal birth plan and infant feeding plan that include:
your preferred path forward, taking into account any of your own concerns
your choices for some specific moments that may arise, and
your timeline for events you’ll have some control over.
On Point offers the same types of evidence-based services for our clients of any ability, age, ethnicity, race, gender identity, sexuality, immigration status, and religion or belief system...free of bias.
Some On Point professionals offer clients language support other than English, many of us identify in a variety of ways and may look through a lens similar to yours. Let us know what might work for you and we'll set up our best doula match for you. We also refer to other amazing professional doulas in our network to fit you best.
MEET MARTY DREHER, YOUR DOULA!
Marty Dreher
Owner,
Chief Encouragement Officer,
Doula
On Point Doulas
“As we work together and our relationship strengthens, I love sensing your self-confidence growing…
and that magical moment when you realize that you already are
the best parent your baby deserves. Go you!”
Marty Dreher (she/they).
I'm a birth and infant care nerd. My practice includes birthwork as a full spectrum doula, infant feeding support, and education. I started caring for pregnant people, their partners, and their babies when I was still a child. I learned what support and care for others look and feel like continually from wise people around the world, what works in helping pregnant people be as strong, confident, and ready as ever. I learned birth is —amazingly!— a natural, physiologic process, new babies signal us exactly what they want and need, hormones that invariably change after having a baby affect people differently, and some need more care and support than others to get through. Over the years while living and working in different countries, I continued providing new parents and infants support in local communities, not yet realizing this could be a profession.
Somehow, living back in the US and when pregnant four times and then in labor having babies of my own, it was like any sense of agency for myself was gone. Poof. I felt resigned, intimidated, and cornered by medical staff and hospital regimen, both in the US and UK, trusting they would put my care, desires, and interests first. That is not how it worked. I became dedicated to supporting others in their births, helping them know, call on, and use their agency and their rights.
I study and consume research in my field every day. I've combined and incorporated time-honored practices with current evidence-based care. These are all go-to tools I share with clients I serve.
I'm committed to helping new parents find their rhythms and become rested, skilled infant feeders and caregivers, and sure in mastering their own —often times dynamic— desired plan as goals. My aim in providing safe, client-centered care is to smooth the way for positive and self-empowered birth and early parenting experiences, strengthening the self-assurance and agency of parents, and sustaining healthy newborns, strong families, and communities.
It's important to me to to be able to share information on their rights with my birth clients, review how they might choose to assert their rights during pregnancy and labor, and include those choices in their plans. In the US, in a history that runs deep, some communities —including Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities— have been excluded from receiving equitable care and comforts while pregnant, while giving birth, and in the weeks and months after delivery. In my community commitment, pro bono work, and professional services, I actively challenge structural biases and systems that perpetuate disparities. All new parents and infants deserve access to comforts, safety, survival, respectful support and care. I engage so everyone who wants a doula receives the best-suited support for their journey.
CERTIFICATIONS, SPECIALIZED EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION
Certified Labor Doula — (ProDoula)
Certified Postpartum Doula — (ProDoula)
Certified Infant Care Doula — (ProDoula)
Certified Infant Feeding Specialist — (ProDoula)
Childbirth Educator — (ProDoula)
Certified Breastfeeding Peer Counselor — (WIC)
Evidence Based Birth Professional — (EBB)
Birth Future Foundation Professional and Founding Donor — (BFF)
Reproductive Justice Professional - (WOC)
Gender Affirming Birth Work — (MTD)
Advanced Full-Spectrum Doula — (Cornerstone)
Full-Spectrum Doula and Educator — (NCEA)
CPR Certified — (Red Cross)
We’ll build your plan.
We’ll talk it out.
We’ll write it out.
You’ll be ready.
JOINING OUR TEAM
We’re building a diverse doula team. We’re accepting inquiries from professionals committed to supporting birthing parents, babies, and growing families here in the Bay Area and who share our passion for advancing safe birth and postpartum experiences for all people.
Are you a doula now? Have you thought about being a doula? Are your values reflected in ours?
If joining On Point Doula speaks to you, let’s talk. We’ll discuss how you can become fully trained, certified, and ready to begin doula work with On Point.
