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Bunky Community : Nourish Consultancy

30/4/2020

This week we are featuring Lindsay of Nourish Consultancy, to share more about herself, her darling family and her amazing business.

I have personally known her through many seasons in each of our lives, and saw her battle with feeding aversions. The way she navigated it and how both her and Rigby recovered was a phenomenal thing to be witness to.

Keep your eyes peeled on our Instagram, as she will come on to chat more about feeding aversions, starting solids!

What’s your name?
Lindsay Wark

Where in the city do you live?
We live in Suffolk, UK (but still consider Vancouver one of our homes)

What’s your nearest and dearest heirloom?
A necklace from my Oma - it was hers. I love it.

What does your perfect day look like?
Starting with a heartfelt workout, open heart, open-mind. Followed by making breakfast for the kids, while consuming pots of coffee and discussing our plans for the day. This usually includes, walks, forts, playing dolls and pretending we are transformers or superheroes at all times. Finished with a lovely glass of wine and a movie! Oh yes, wonderful.

I’ve usually got some sort of client call or comms tucked in there, to mix things up! I love talking baby!

How have you found yourself in the pregnancy and postpartum realm?
Absolute bliss during my first pregnancy and postpartum. The second pregnancy was different, but not terrible. A few medical conditions to handle at the end, but I had a lot of support and guidance from the wonderful Emma Devin and our midwives at Strathcona Midwifery Collective. Postpartum was awful, to say the least. At the tender age of 3 weeks, my new baby girl stopped eating willingly, which is how I’ve come to create Nourish to this day. Anxiety, stress, depression - you name the negative postpartum signs - I had them.

What’s your tagline/mantra?
Professionally - It is your job to offer your baby nutritious meals. It is your baby’s job to decide how much they will eat.

Life - Push through the pain because pain is temporary.

Tell me more about your offerings!
Like you, I am a parent. I would go to the ends of the earth for my babies. I was heartbroken, afraid and desperate to help my baby who faced a behavioural feeding aversion.

My journey to find help took too many wrong roads including over-diagnosed medical conditions and doctors not truly listening.

I created NC for parents who are struggling with their baby who will not eat and has no medical reasoning for it. My experience is first hand and my consultancy continues to support parents around the world. I am not a doctor. I look holistically at your baby and provide a bespoke feeding plan to support your baby’s eating habits. From that point, we can work together to find peace, joy, and freedom from feeding aversion.

Who are your favourite parents and families to serve?
Any parent knows they are entrusted with an inborn ability to feed their child. When your heart and soul refuses to take your breast, a bottle or solids from you - you are quickly devastated and heartbroken. You begin to push said food onto your child because that is what your medical team has told you to do. Increase the numbers, watch the scales, track the input and output. Your world becomes fixated on charts, graphs and doctor’s appointments. I cannot help but feel all the familiar feelings come rushing back to me, as I too have a similar story. The work I do is for the parents, to show them they are not to blame and teach them new laidback approaches to feeding their baby. The program is life-long and I truly love when a family sees that and implements into their world.

Now for logistics:

What areas of the city do you serve?

International baby - 100% virtual. I’ve worked with clients in Canada, UK, USA to Singapore and South Africa. Unfortunately, baby’s across the globe are developing feeding aversions.

How do bookings work?

Through my website - you can book a free 20-minute connect call. If we believe we are the right fit for each other, you can book your desired program also through the website.

Where can we find you on the web and social media?

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Bunky Team : Tamara

1/4/2020

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When I first met Tamara I felt her calm kindness and passion for birth work immediately. She resonates deep empathy and willingness to grow, making her a phenomenal and empathic Doula. I am so proud and grateful she is on our team!

Continue reading below to learn about her journey, story and approach...

My journey to become a doula, whether it was me finding this work or the other way around, was an uncertain one, much like the winding journey of birth, life, and death.

Having the privilege and honour of attending, witnessing and supporting births has taught me how to find a sense of comfort within this uncertain journey, and I believe that anyone who finds themselves on the path of pregnancy, birth and parenthood will find the same.

My own birth took place in a small town in Serbia on the cusp of a war; because of this, at the age of 3, my family and I had to immigrate to Canada. As a result, I grew up in a country that wasn’t my own, which left me with a feeling of ungrounded-ness. I believe that it was this feeling of being uprooted that led me to search for a deeper connection, and which ultimately led me into the world of birth, for there is nothing more grounding than being in the presence of a birthing woman.

My experience upon this journey truly began evolving in 2014, after attending an action camp held by the Wet’suwet’en people on their traditional territories. Their teachings touched me deeply and made me realize, more so than ever, that my roots are not in Canada. A lesson that left its mark on me was hearing Freda, the chief of that territory, say “return to the lands you are from and just take off your shoes and walk on the earth there.”

After returning to Vancouver, I was inspired to enrol in a women's studies course at UBC, which sparked in me a strong desire to support women. At the same time I was interested in connecting more with the earth, and so I took courses on herbs and medicinal plants, which I continue to study on the side.

Through my interests in women and healing I had come across the profession of Doula, and it felt like this was something which I had to learn, a profession that was a meld of my two passions. I then registered and completed the Wise Woman Way of Birth course, which ignited my interest and desire to learn more and to begin working as a doula.

Before I could truly begin however, Freda’s words came back to me, and I knew that I had to return to my birthplace and reconnect with my roots. And so, I left for Serbia, and spent the following 6 months living between three houses; I spent time with an herbalist in a small village studying native Serbian plants, at the house of a meditation instructor doing silent retreats on and off for those 6 months, and in my hometown with my grandma, the matriarch of my family. I finally felt at peace for the first time in my life.

I returned to Canada having understood that though my roots were in Serbia, I had made a home here, and I eventually, felt ready to answer the call of being a full-time doula. The feeling of being ungrounded I once had was now gone, and being surrounded by birth brought me back to earth completely and gave me the sense of grounded-ness and connection that I was unknowingly longing for. My journey, though never-ending, brought me to this work which I feel I was meant to do - to support women in their own experience of becoming grounded, of connecting to their roots as they give birth to new life.

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Bunky Community : Oh Baby Nutrition

4/3/2020

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Welcome to our latest feature, community interviews! Where we took the time to meet with practitioners in our community that we love and trust. Finding out more about what makes them tick, and how they serve our Bunky families.

What’s your name?
Carley Mendes

Where in the city do you live?
East Vancouver

What’s your nearest and dearest heirloom?
Oh hmm, I can’t even think of one. I’m terribly unsentimental.

What does your perfect day look like?
My kids letting me sleep in while my husband cooks me breakfast. It basically doesn’t matter what happens after that.

How have you found yourself in the pregnancy and postpartum realm?
I've always been in absolute awe of pregnancy in general. My mother spoke highly of her own pregnancies and instilled a deep reverence in me from a young age. As a teenager I started to become fascinated with the effect that nutrition has on our health. Around then a close friend became pregnant and had a health worker visit her home to discuss prenatal nutrition. I remember thinking… wow, this woman gets to talk about nutrition and support pregnancy. What a spectacular job. It really stuck with me that this would be the most wonderful and fulfilling thing that I could devote myself to—nourishing mama and baby through pregnancy and postpartum. It’s when nutrition matters most.

What’s your tagline/mantra?
One of my favorite quotes is by Jabina Coleman: Everyone wants to hold the baby, but who will hold the mother?

And also anything and everything from Ina May.

Tell me more about your offerings!
I’ve created the Oh Baby guides to help parents nutritionally support pregnancy and babies. Googling “what to eat during pregnancy” or “how to start solids” is a painful process. These guides were designed to provide all the information you’d need in one place.

I also founded Oh Baby Academy, which is an online school that offers programs to become a certified nutrition consultant for pregnancy, postpartum, and babies.

Who are your favourite parents and families to serve?
I just love my job so much and like working with all families. Helping a family start solids is always fun.

Now for logistics:

What areas of the city do you serve?
- Oh Baby is 100% online, so everyone/everywhere!
How does working with you look?
- Select one of my nutrition guides and read it wherever you want, whenever you want.
Where can we find you on the web and social media?
- Parents: www.ohbabynutrition.com
- Practitioners: www.ohbabyacademy.com
- On Instagram
- On Facebook

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Bunky Team : Aimee

2/3/2020

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Hi, I’m Aimee.

I live in Strathcona with my husband and four wonderful and wild children. I love exploring nature alone or with my family, drawing and painting, making jams and pickles, good conversations with friends, reading memoirs and novels, and getaways in cabins. I am currently a student at UBC studying to become a midwife – hard work but so very interesting!

I’ve been doing doula work for almost 10 years. I got into doula work through photography. I photographed my first birth in 2010 and that started my journey. After documenting a couple of births and witnessing the strength and beauty of the birthers I knew that this would become my life’s work. I completed my doula training and began offering doula support in addition to photography.

A couple of years ago I joined the Bunky Bambino team and have absolutely loved walking alongside families as a postpartum doula. My favourite thing about being a postpartum doula is helping families grow in confidence as they start their parenting journey or as they navigate adding another member to their family. As a mom of four myself I remember some of the swirling feelings and uncertainties of the early days and I love to encourage and affirm parents as they find their way.

A central focus for me is to help parents learn to trust their instincts and parent the way that works best for their family. To step out from under all the shoulds and should nots in the mountains of baby books and internet forums and to discover what works for them. There are only a few things that are non-negotiable, but how you go about them is up to you. You’re going to need to feed your baby, love your baby and take care of your self. That about sums it up. And as a postpartum doula I can help!

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My Doula Journey : The Now

19/2/2020

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As our on-call life thrived, and babies were joining us left, right and center. Marlo came to me with another proposition. Did I want to buy Bunky Bambino? I had to take a day and assess how this would change my life, my balance of things and my future.

Another clueless and passion-driven YES, and the next chapter began. We planned together, with countless hours in coffee shops chatting logistics and working through the details. I spent months rebranding, figuring out what being a boss and agency owner would look like. How did I want to come to this? After some time, a few freak-outs, and a deep commitment to this work and team. And off to the races we went.

Now our team has grown by five, we have many more pillars of support for our team and external community and many more families have joined our ranks. To say I am blindingly grateful for where I am is still an understatement. The hard work, personal growth and love I have gained from our families, team and connections have been the real MVP of this career. I have been swept off my feet more than once, and yet the siren call of birth work has continued to draw me back into its arms.

Let’s see where the next few years get us, shall we...