I had the pleasure of interviewing Carla Belliard, a doula and current midwifery student. All I knew about her was that she had an amazing vibe and that I had been following her on Instagram for a while, even though she lives in Utah and I have no idea how I found her page or if she found me? It turns out that deciding to film our first conversation was the right move! Her sincerity about her journey to motherhood is 100% the reason I created this platform. She is working through her healing and recognizing there is no such thing as a perfect mom. In this episode, Carla explains how she made her way from the Dominican Republic over to Utah, and how her own strained relationship with her mother made her doubt her own desires for motherhood. We touch on perinatal mood disorder, and how she came to discover this self-diagnosed condition 3 years after giving birth. Carla also shares her reaction to a 20-week ultrasound revealing her daughter would have a cleft palate, and how that lead her to a life-altering water birth that revealed her life’s purpose. Tune in for a seriously raw, truthful, vulnerable conversation about the things no one tells you in motherhood!
Carla is passionate about supporting and empowering people that are navigating pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and parenting in general. She was born and raised in the sunny island of the Dominican Republic, and currently calls Utah her home state. Carla is a mom to a beautiful girl and a wife to her best friend. Although she holds a bachelor’s in Food Science with a focus on Business Administration and Psychology, her passion is birth work. When Carla became pregnant, she was told at 20 weeks that her daughter was going to be born with a cleft lip and palate. This diagnosis meant that her baby was going to need countless surgeries throughout her life starting at 3 months of age. This is why she reconsidered the way she was thinking of giving birth and helped her make a safe decision of birthing outside of a clinical setting because she wanted her daughter and her to work together, at a deeper and more comfortable level, through labor, while being supported by doulas and a midwife. Her birth experience, the support she felt, and the calming energy she received, ignited her passion for birth work. She felt like a goddess during her birth, and two years later she decided to help other women feel the same.
Carla holds many titles, including public speaker and adult learning specialist, curriculum developer, DONA trained birth doula, childbirth educator, trained birth assistant, student midwife, and a yoga instructor. She has a certificate in Nutrition and Lifestyle in Pregnancy from LMU and loves working with all types of birthing people.
If you’d like to connect with Carla, you can reach her on Instagram @motherly.goddess or via email at carla@birthmindbody.com.
Show notes are also available on https://www.marivega.me/blog/season2episode3
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