Maddie Burroughs

I was inspired to do birth work very suddenly, and through a somewhat unorthodox path. From a very young age I shared a special connection with my paternal grandmother, who was an ob/gyn. She was so passionate about her work and whenever someone would ask her why she loved it so much, she would say “I just love helping women.” I guess she passed on her passion to me somehow (though I wouldn’t have looked forward to debating the merits of out-of-hospital birth with her!) and I can give the same answer when people ask me what I love about birth work. However, I didn’t know what direction to take my passion for women’s well-being until I was in my mid-twenties. I had been working in a friend’s restaurant for a few years since college and was looking for something that felt more purposeful to me. Around that time I had a friend who had had a miscarriage a few weeks prior spending the night with me. I had a dream about her miscarriage that night, that she had asked me to be with her and support her through it. It was heavy and intense, but I felt such a deep sense of honor and love for her and her baby. I woke up knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I started asking every pregnant friend I had if I could observe their birth and spent the next year attending natural home births, birth center births, hospital inductions, and even a c-section. That same sense of heaviness and love has pervaded every birth I’ve attended. My first official doula client was my friend who had had a miscarriage, when she had her son almost exactly one year later.

I’m originally from the Skagit Valley, where my family lives on ten acres in the foothills of the Cascades. I spent the last ten years in Idaho and am now thrilled to be returning to my old stomping grounds to serve the birthing people of Seattle. In my free time you can find me spinning yarn, weaving textiles by hand (talk to me about a custom rebozo!), or reading some sort of weird nonfiction book.