Starting a postpartum career: the good, the bad, the ugly!
Interview with Katie Parker
I chat with Newborn Mothers graduate Katie Parker. Together we discuss taking the leap from an established career as a hospital social worker to starting a business in postpartum work. From the struggle to get those first few clients to being overwhelmed with too many clients and putting some boundaries in place. At the core of this conversation, we explore the different seasons of working as a postpartum professional and how to care for yourself within each of them.
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About Katie
Katie Parker is a social worker, postpartum doula and parenting educator, passionate about supporting women to find their most authentic and resourced experience of motherhood and business - without the guilt, shame and overwhelm. Katie provides perinatal counselling, motherhood and parenting support through one-on-one sessions, workshops, local mothers' groups, and retreats on Gunaikurnai land in Victoria’s East.
We explore the following questions:
What was it that made you take that big leap from being a social worker to going into private practice working with mums?
Can you tell me a little bit about what your doula work looked like? How hard was it to get those first few clients and build momentum in your business?
What made you change from going into people’s homes and cooking to more counselling work?
How did that feel to have so many clients you couldn't even say yes to them all?
What do you feel like the future holds for you? What is emerging as your future focus?
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to Newborn Mothers Podcast. Today we have a very special guest, Katie Parker, who I can't believe we haven't had on the podcast before. Katie is a graduate from 2018 with Newborn Mothers and has a background as a social worker. You've done a whole range of work, and we'll go into more detail, but I know that the bulk of your work now is doing one-on-one counselling sessions. You've also done more in-home typical doula work as well in the past. You're looking to do more retreats in the future. You've also done some business support for other mothers in business as well. With that very broad range of experiences, welcome to the show.
Katie Parker:
Thank you so much, Julia. It's so exciting to be here.
Julia Jones:
I can't believe it's taken us this long to actually finally record a podcast. I'm thrilled that you're here. Let's rewind to the beginning. You had a background as a social worker, but what made you decide that you wanted to leave that, go into private practice, which is quite a scary thing to start, and work with mums. What was it that made you take that big leap?
What was it that made you take that big leap from being a social worker into private practice working with mums? (01:08)
Katie Parker:
That's such a good question because that's multilayered. I didn't actually plan to leave the hospital system, so I worked as a hospital social worker for about 13 years and it was after the birth of my second child. I had very challenging postpartum experiences after the birth of both of my children. After the birth of my second child, I was on maternity leave from my senior social worker role with one of the big tertiary hospitals in Melbourne, and with every intention of going back there. I had a year off and then was meant to go back at the end of that year. Then we had an opportunity to travel for a year with my partner's work. So we took off homeless and unemployed. We moved out of our house, sold a whole lot of our stuff, gave stuff away, put the rest into storage and just hit the road.
I was approved a second leave year of leave. While we were traveling around that year, I became quite interested in the personal development world and I started listening to a podcast Nourishing the Mother, and did one of their courses. That was all about living in alignment with your values. It was doing that course, the first time ever sparked an interest in me or made me realize that perhaps I didn't have to be a hospital social worker for the rest of my life. That there were other things.
During this course they got us to think a lot about what our values are, what are the things that light us up. If you're having a conversation with someone over here and there's a conversation going on over there and you are listening in and interested in the conversation over there, what are they talking about? For me, the topics that were coming up were birth, postpartum, pregnancy, motherhood, parenting and all of those sorts of things. That's what first got me thinking that maybe I could be doing something else.
It actually wasn't long after that I was just scrolling on Facebook one day and saw an ad for Newborn Mothers pop up and I watched the little video that you had there. I had never heard of a postpartum doula before then, but I watched the video and I think you had a webinar coming up as part of the launch of your next round. I jumped into that and it was almost like an unconscious decision, it wasn't a really conscious decision. I was just like, this is what I want to be doing. This is my life's work, this is my purpose in life. I jumped straight in really without much thought.
We were still traveling that year. I graduated in December 2018. By that point we had just moved to Gippsland. We'd always planned to go back to Melbourne. But my partner had got a job in Gippsland. During our year of travel we'd lived in a lot of the smaller towns, more regional areas. I really loved that lifestyle particularly, I had two young kids at the time. They turned one and turned three during that year. So we'd moved to Gippsland. I needed to resign from my job in Melbourne because we'd moved so far away. In the meantime, I'd secured a job at one of the local hospitals a couple of days a week. Then the opportunity to do your Mastermind came up at the end of that year. This is the thing, I graduated with this, “okay, I'm now a postpartum doula, but now what?” I didn't have any of the business knowledge or anything like that.
You would know the story. I jumped on a call with you because I was just really agonizing over, do I jump right in? This was a big investment of money at the time for me. A big commitment, time commitment. I think you were saying you needed around 10 hours a week. Or do I do the two days a week at the hospital social work, which is the really secure, stable, I suppose the ‘should’, you should go back to your job after your maternity leave. That ticked a lot of boxes in terms of what I felt I should be doing, stable income and all the rest.
I was midway through a Masters in palliative care at the time. I also really wanted to get back and do the research project component of that Masters. I had all these things, I'm like, ‘Well, I can't do it all. What am I going to do?’ I remember having this conversation with you just before I was meant to take this job. Anyway, I had the weekend to think about it. I talked to my partner about it and I'm like, okay, I'm going to jump. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it properly because I knew I needed the business support and I knew that if I didn't jump into that Mastermind, it could be a very long time before I had a business up and running. That's how I got into it. Right back at the start, it was not a conscious decision, it was just a calling. I just knew where I wanted to be, what I wanted to do.
Julia Jones:
I love that story because you were just following little threads, little opportunities saying yes to things that came up until suddenly it snowballed and you were like, “Oh my gosh, am I doing this? I'm doing it!”
Katie Parker:
Then all of a sudden there I was setting up a business in a town of 1800 people. We moved to this tiny town in Gippsland where I did not know a single person when I moved there. It was a pretty big move actually in that way. I know a lot of people who go into postpartum doula work have their community already established because they've been pregnant and had babies in that particular wherever they live. I just didn't have that network and those connections and that sort of thing. It was really starting from scratch and building my own village, my own support network and friendships and that sort of thing, as well as building the business from scratch.
Julia Jones:
What a life-changing time. I think that often happens, you're not the first person to have started studying Newborn Mothers after taking that year or a long travel with their family. We’ve had a few people actually on the podcast with that story. I think when you do take your time out from your daily drudgery of life, it does really make you look at the bigger picture and what the longer term vision is.
That was 2018, that's five years ago. I just find that so fascinating because a lot of people would look at your website now and just go, ‘Oh, she's got it all together and she knows what she's doing and it looks so easy for her.’ So it's always really nice to hear about that you found that challenging. At first you did that more typical doula work. Can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like and how hard it was to get those first few clients and get that momentum in your business?
Can you tell me a little bit about what your doula work looked like? How hard was it to get those first few clients and get that momentum in your business? (07:50)
Katie Parker:
I'm always so happy to be transparent about this because it really was hard at the start. Getting the first doula clients was hard. I just didn't have that network of people. I didn't even have local people who I knew who could share my Facebook page that I had at the time. It was really hard. I was advertising in-home postpartum care packages, but I was also running a ‘Preparing for your Postpartum workshop’ for couples to come along to in pregnancy. I was so excited about this workshop and I put a lot of effort into preparing for it. I got the flyers and put them around town, had put the information on my Facebook page, created the events through Eventbrite, put it out there and just waited for the people to come and got the big fat zero people turning up to that first workshop.
I was fortunate to be in your Mastermind at the time, so I was seeing you on a fortnightly basis in those calls we had together. I loved something you said to me that really stuck was, “Fail fast”. So I embodied that pretty well. I was like, right, okay. It was always amusing to me that I had no people sign up. I'm like, oh, here I am, failing fast. Then I advertised another one and I got one couple coming along to that one. Then I had another one another month later and got none again. So it was really hard at the start.
That was a paid workshop and then I thought, I decided to change tack and then started offering a free pregnancy support group at a cafe in one of the local bigger towns. It was at that point that things started to grow a bit. I got my name out there a bit more and people were turning up and started to hear about me a little bit more.
From then, which would've been later in 2019, I started getting my first few doula clients booking in. I saw a couple during 2019, but then the bookings were more coming in for 2020. Then what happened in 2020? First of all, what happened was we moved. Actually from our tiny little town, we moved to a larger town. I now live in Warragul, which is a bit bigger than the little 1800 people town. I moved there around Christmastime and not long after there I found out I was pregnant with our third child. Then I was very, very sick. So not much happened over those six weeks of my first trimester, I was just so unwell with morning sickness that business just got shelved for a bit.
Then unfortunately I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. I found out about that, and then that's a whole nother story in itself. I had quite a profound spiritual experience of this miscarriage being at a women's festival, at Seven Sisters Festival. Actually I was very well-supported, felt very held and very nurtured . I was able to, during that whole weekend while I was away, process a lot of my grief and came back from that weekend quite a changed woman. I really saw things in a different light and actually felt very emotionally strong and physically strong. The morning sickness had gone by that point and I just felt like I'd been so nurtured through that process.
Then it was a week later that we went into lockdown here in Victoria. For me I just had this drive to like, ‘okay, I'm going to make this happen now’. Because my business had been resting for those six weeks of being so unwell that I was like, ‘Right, we're going into lockdown’. I was just in the process of launching my first in-person mother circle series. I had to cancel that and that gave me an opportunity to shift my focus elsewhere. I then went on this process of running a whole lot of different online offerings over the next couple of years.
To answer your original question around in the in-home support, it was really slow to get started. It did take time. Things like running the free group for example, and then later in 2021, because I'd moved to Warragul by that point, I actually started a free pregnancy and new mama group in a cafe, a free group. That was actually at that point where things really exploded for me in terms of one-on-one clients. I just started getting my name out a little bit more around town and that sort of thing. People were just so craving that support at that point as well, that whole period coming in and out of lockdowns.
Julia Jones:
I think I've said this many times, but I actually think the pandemic has really made people realize the value of care and community. I think there's been a really big shift in our culture around that, which has been a little bit of a silver lining. We have that taken away from you and you suddenly realize you're never going to take that for granted again. We found many of our students have come through that actually with a lot more clients and more people realizing that you should invest in care and community. You're definitely not the first person to have that experience.
What I also really noticed about that story is the consistent action that even when it doesn't work and even when you feel like you're a failure, you come back again the next month and you do it again. After a long time of consistent action, then you start to get the results. But you have to keep doing the consistent action even when it's not yet working. That is a really hard thing to go through.
Katie Parker:
I knew going into this that I just had to make the choice to believe in myself and that I had something of value to offer others. Without that really strong sense of self-belief which can feel really uncomfortable, it can feel arrogant in our culture, women are not conditioned to think that way about ourselves. We often get told as children, don't get too big for your boots and that sort of thing. It was really hard, but I didn't see any other option. I'm like, ‘I have to back myself. If I don't believe in myself, how am I going to get my clients to believe me, trust me to sign up for packages and that sort of thing’. It was big.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. Now you've moved into doing more social work at the moment with counseling rather than going to people's homes and cooking and that sort of thing. What made you change into doing that?
What made you change into doing more counselling than going into people’s homes and cooking? (14:52)
Katie Parker:
That was a decision based mainly around time. The point where I made the decision to stop or slow down the doula work, I did make a decision to stop, although I ended up keeping a couple of clients along the way, It really came down to time and that I only had at that point in 2021, I only had two days a week to work. My daughter was in three-year-old kinder and my son was in prep. The way I'd structured my week was one day I saw counseling clients and one day I did a visit for a postpartum client. The counseling work was just getting so busy by that point that I just didn't have capacity for it all. I was getting pretty stretched and burnt out.
Also by that point, when I graduated from Newborn Mothers in 2018, postpartum doulas weren't really a thing in Gippsland. There was one other that I knew of. But she was also a birth doula as well. I was the only postpartum doula around just doing postpartum work. Whereas by 2021 there were multiple postpartum doulas around and it's just ever growing. There's more and more arriving all the time now. It was actually a really nice time to be able to step back from the doula work knowing that there were other people that I could refer onto who I'd built up relationships with.
Julia Jones:
You could trust them to care for these new moms and not feel like you're abandoning them.
Katie Parker:
Exactly.
Julia Jones:
I also just want to point out there, we've jumped very quickly from you saying how hard it was, you couldn't get any clients, you were putting in so much effort, no one was showing up to suddenly then saying you were so busy that you didn't have time to even work with all of the people who wanted to hire you.
Katie Parker:
When you put it like that, yeah.
Julia Jones:
That's a big shift. How did that feel to have so many clients you couldn't even say yes to them all?
How did that feel to have so many clients you couldn't even say yes to them all? (17:10)
Katie Parker:
It was hard because every time I had someone inquire, I wanted to be able to support them. If I look back now, I can see that I didn't have great boundaries. I was saying yes all the time. It got to a point where I was so stressed, my health was affected and relationships with my children were affected because I was just working all the time. They was still little at this point, they would've been, I don't know, four and six probably. I can't even remember, probably four and six that year. They were still so young. I was like, ‘Oh gosh, I just don't want to miss their childhoods because I'm so busy because I can't say no.’ It is hardworking in this area because if there's new moms out there who need your support, you want to be able to help them.
That's why it was great that I formed these relationships with other doulas. One, in particular, had recently finished your course, she reached out and she wrote me this beautiful email of, ‘I've just done the course and something along the lines of, I don't want to be your competition’. I was just like, ‘Oh, thank you.’ I just appreciated that so much because I was already in the back of my mind thinking I can't keep doing this. I can't keep taking on this many clients. It was actually the perfect opportunity, it wasn't long after I met her, she actually did one of my Business Mentoring for Mums courses and it was great. By the end of that, I'm like, ‘Great. I feel like I have a really good knowledge of who you are and how you work and that I can send clients your way’. It is hard in this line of work when you want to help all the mamas.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, absolutely. What I always like to point out then is just how many babies are born because it is a real fear that like, ‘Oh, there's so many doulas now and maybe I won't be able to get clients, or I don't want to be in competition with the one person who was already in my town’. There are 300,000 births a year in Australia. The other number I was looking at recently, and I can't remember it off the top of my head, was how many registered midwives we have because we should have really the same number of people providing postpartum care as well. There are currently 450,000 registered nurses and midwives. That's not just midwives, but my point is there is such a long way to go in our industry. The need is so massive and no one should ever feel like there's not enough clients to go around. Usually we're really grateful, anyone who's doing postpartum care is really happy to welcome new people into that industry.
Katie Parker:
Absolutely. I remember learning this probably through your cause as well, the more postpartum doulas out there, the better because the more knowledge is spread around our role and what we can do to support women. I think it can only be a good thing. The thing that I have always remembered and remind other people of is that you're never going to be for everyone. We all bring different things to our roles. We all bring our own personalities, temperaments and skill sets. I'm not a great cook. Although I have cooked in people's homes before, one day I did set myself on fire. So I'm probably not the person that's going to come and cook.
Whereas I have skills in other areas. What I will do when I've taken on clients, one of the other doulas in our town, she does meal packages. I'll say, ‘Right, let's get her meal packages and I'd rather come in and do more the emotional support, supporting your mental health and other things rather than the cooking.’ Where there's others who will, we all have skills in different areas, don't we? And our own personalities. There's going to be, I so strongly believe there's people for everyone.
Julia Jones:
Yes. Also as you get more experience in business, you learn more about what you're good at, what fills your cup and what your boundaries need to be and that kind of thing. As you've gone on this journey, you've tried a lot of different things, what do you feel like the future holds for you and what is emerging as more what you want to focus on?
What do you feel like the future holds for you? What is emerging as what you want to focus on? (21:00)
Katie Parker:
It's such a tough question. It's honestly something I've battle with all the time because I've always been someone that's had all the ideas and just have wanted to do all the things really. This year in particular for me has been a year of trying to strip back a little bit. Particularly the years of 2020 and 2021 for me, I was launching the most ridiculous number of group programs, while also having the one-on-one clients. I look back and I just don't even know how I was doing it. I mean most of the programs I was running, it was evenings. I was running online calls in the evenings. Now looking forward, I've realized I don't really like working evenings. I don't mind working the occasional weekend. That's how I was fitting in all these clients, I was doing visits on weekends or seeing counseling clients via Zoom on weekends and that sort of thing.
I'm like, ‘No, actually that's not something I'm really willing to do that much more of anymore.’ Also the programs that are low cost program, I'm getting reasonably small numbers in, but it takes a lot of effort to launch each one. In terms of the preparing the content, paying my VA to do the backend, set up things that way, the social media marketing, sending emails. I find that I'm spending so much time and my energy on these small group things that really aren't... and I love running them. This has always been my dilemma, because I absolutely love everything I do. It's been very hard to pick what goes. It's just got to a point where I've been in what we call brownout, which is the point before you hit burnout. I've been at this point so many times over the last four or five years, and I just keep pulling myself back each time and it builds.
Julia Jones:
It builds up again.
Katie Parker:
The cycle continues again. I keep bringing myself back. This year I have been much more intentional about, I'm literally going into a hibernation period now. I've just started my final round of my Mums In Business mentoring program. I've just made the call that I'm not going to run that anymore and shift instead my focus to running retreats, which is a one weekend, it's two nights. I've got the first one coming up in August in Gippsland.
I think that's going to be more my focus because it still meets my value of community connection and bringing mums together and that sort of thing. I really am so passionate about that, but it's not committing huge amounts of my time. It's more one big thing that will promote my business. I suppose similar for you with your Newborn Mother's Collective,, it's changed the name now. Where you have the one launch of the one big offering rather than multiple constantly. I was just doing launch after launch, after launch, after launch and it was just absolutely exhausting me. I was just so stressed and overwhelmed trying to do all those things.
I think that's the way forward for me at the moment. I'll still keep my one-on-ones going. I'm looking at actually maybe going back to the doula work because I have realized that something about myself is I do struggle when I've got lots and lots of things on the go. The more one-on-one clients I have, the more stretched I feel between all of them. Whereas if I had just the one doula client and focused on them, I feel like that is probably the way. I really love my doula work, so I'm thinking of perhaps returning to that one day a week or something like that, with the one-on-one counseling stuff and the retreats as well.
The other thing I'll still keep up is my free group. I run a free pregnancy and new mama meet up in Warragul once a month. That's something that's pretty easy to run. I just turn up and hold space for women and it's more creating the opportunity for them to start building their village. For people who can't afford the to work with me one-on-one, it gives them an opportunity to ask some questions and get some information.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. That is actually really similar to the journey I've gone on my business too. Everyone has different things that will work for them, but similarly we've decided to focus on one thing. I used to teach the Collective, then we created a breastfeeding course and my original plan was to then have also a sleep course and a mental health course that then people could pick and choose. One I was burning myself out from launching all the time and people were getting confused about which course was which. When we were running Facebook ads, the consultant would use the wrong copy. I was like, ‘No, that's not the course we're running at the moment’. It was just doing my head in.
The other reason was I realized I actually want all of my students to have all of these skills. I don't think it should be optional that someone who does postpartum work can choose to learn about mental health or not, or choose to learn about breastfeeding or not, or choose to learn about sleep or not. I think those are really critical key elements of postpartum care that I think everyone should know. Now it's all one course, which is now the Postpartum Education and Care Professional Training. It's much longer and it's much more expensive. That's a little bit scary as a business owner to make that leap. I resisted it for a long time and finally just had the courage to go, ‘I've got to do this. This is the way forward.’
Katie Parker:
I feel the same. The package that I'm planning on offering will be more expensive than other packages, but I also believe there's clients for every sort of market as well. I've just realized that if I'm going to offer care to a family in their postpartum, I don't want to just do six weeks and be out of there. I want to provide more ongoing support. I’m thinking about monthly visits after the first six weeks or something like that. Bringing in other services as well, whether it's meals or massage or women's health physio or baby wearing consultant. Those sorts of things as well to make sure that it is a holistic, comprehensive package of care.
Julia Jones:
I love that. That's a really good point because you don't have to be an expert in all of those areas, but providing that deep, broad and longer-term support, it's much more satisfying as a professional. It's more rewarding. Also I do think people get better results. A lot of people want to just have three sessions and fix their lives, but we know that's not really how it works.
Katie Parker:
I know my own experience from therapy. If people book a session thinking things are all going to be fixed at that time, I'm like, ‘Oh, I'm sorry. I'll help you where I can, but this is going to take longer than one session.’
Julia Jones:
Yeah, that's it. It's frustrating because sometimes people don't want to make that investment or they wish that it was quick. No one wants it to be a long time.
Katie Parker:
No. We live in the McDonald's culture where everything's fast and you get results quickly, that sort of thing. It doesn't work like that.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. Then it's unethical really to make people think that that's how it will definitely be. I think we'll wrap up there. That's been really, really interesting to hear about that journey. Do you want to let people know a little bit about, so you're at katieparker.com.au, we'll pop the links up. Do you want to let people know a little bit more about how they can learn about what you do?
Do you want to let people know a little bit more about how they can learn about what you do? (29:54)
Katie Parker:
I probably share most over on Instagram, my handle's @katieparkerparenting. I also have a Facebook page, which is Katie Parker - Pregnancy Postnatal and Parenting Support. That's something else that I haven't really spoken about, that I've moved more into providing parenting support. Initially it was very much more pregnancy and post postpartum care, but have moved more into the parenting support side of things, as babies turn into toddlers and beyond. I've had a bit of a shift towards that. As much as I love that as well, I do feel this coming home to the postpartum care. That's where you can find me and my website. I have a mailing list and I try and do monthly emails. <ost of the time I get there, not always.
Julia Jones:
That's great. It's so lovely to catch up with you again. People can go and check you out, we'll put all the links in the show notes and thank you so much for sharing so generously.
Katie Parker:
Thanks so much for having me, Julia. It was so lovely to chat.
