Izzy Bonecutter, CD(DONA)
DONA Certified Birth Doula
Certifying WCPS Placenta Encapsulation Specialist
Elephant Circle Doula
For Love and Babes Postpartum Circle Facilitator
Medical Assistant- Southwest Midwives
Midwife Assistant- Joy of Life Family Medicine
"She's like a sister" -AW
A Little About Me
Welcome! I’m Izzy. I am glad you’re growing your support for your upcoming birth. I can’t emphasize enough the impact that ones birth experience has on not only the postpartum period but for the rest of ones life. Peaceful births = peaceful mothers = peaceful children = peaceful societies. I deeply recognize the potency of this space in which I am supporting.
I grew up in Durango, Colorado where I was supported by the Durango community and the surrounding mountains, rivers, and deserts. I am grateful to continue living amongst and giving back the people in this community as a birth worker. It has also been a joy to support a wider population of moms through my virtual offerings.
Many people ask me how I survive the “on-call life” and supporting families through long hours of the night. I always tell them that no-one becomes a birth worker because they need a job. I am in this field because I simply have an internal burning flame of passion for birth. I really identify with being a birth doula. It is not “what I do,” but it is who I am.
I love romanticizing life and all-things nourishment. Simple pleasures like lighting candles, bathing in the morning sun, curling up with a book, making tea for a friend, smelling the rain, and baking bread fill up my cup. Reveling in the simple yet magical moments in a world that often feels fast and chaotic feels nourishing to me.
I love connecting with others and feel grateful to have a close knit and supportive community of women in my life. I truly feel like the most special connections I have are with those who I feel I can let my walls down and be completely myself around. To feel witnessed in my authentic expression and met with love and the absence of judgment has been the thing that I hold closest to my heart in this life. These relationships have helped me to feel less alone on my own journey. It is my deepest intention to show up in this way for my clients as we enter into this vulnerable and intimate time of life together. It has been special to host postpartum circles with new moms navigating the same waters too.
My journey first began when I pursued working as an intern with local midwives. I took a break from this track and went to school to study Psychology, another passion of mine. I dove headfirst into a multitude of social work opportunities and devoured as much experience and knowledge as I could. I worked with at risk youth, supported victims of domestic violence, worked for a nonprofit that provided free herbal medicine to underserved communities, led women on outdoor expeditions with an outdoor empowerment group, and worked for a small natural therapeutics/massage therapy business.
Each one of these experiences grew my heart and my capacity to support.
My Passion for Being a Doula
I backpacked through Central America for months. I could tell one million stories and write a whole book about my travels, but what is relevant to share here is that my desire to become a doula grew stronger. After living amongst cultures where women who resembled doulas were seen as an inherent part of every woman’s birthing journey, my fascination and drive for the birth realm was back.
In Guatemala, women called “comadronas” are highly respected and trusted community leaders who perform birth practices unique to indigenous communities. These include emotional support practices, dances, massage, traditional steam baths, praying, ritual burials of the placenta, etc. Many women are born from families with generations of comadronas and being chosen to be one is considered to be a gift and honor.
I left Central America feeling touched and passionate about devoting myself to the path of becoming a doula. Like the Comadronas in Guatemala, I wholeheartedly believe being invited into one’s birth space is such a profound gift and honor.
When I returned from my travels I registered for Denver Doula Training through DONA International. This training gave me the basic tools to support a family through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, but I devote the majority of my confidence, skill, and knowledge to the extensive hands on experience in the birth space with clients and my continual self study. To be a certified doula means to have not only attended births and fulfilled educational requirements, but to have received letters of recommendation from mothers, labor and delivery nurses, and providers such as obstetricians and midwives who observed the support provided by the doula. I have experience supporting home births, unmedicated and low intervention hospital births, medicated and high intervention births, births of “high risk” women, and planned cesarians.
For as well versed as I am in supporting a woman through an undisturbed, unmedicated, low intervention birth, I am just as well versed in navigating the medical system, interventions, and unexpected events.
I walk in the footsteps of the many women before me who time after time held women closely through birth. In my eyes, you deserve the opportunity to feel accompanied, emotionally and physically safe, informed, and advocated for through all stages of your birth journey. As a doula, I see myself as that opportunity for you.
I stand by the truth that this is your body, your baby, your birth, and therefore your decisions. Your birth choices are yours to make. Your intuition is one of the greatest tools that you have for birth and mothering and ultimately your best guide. I will lovingly stand by you and hold you without judgement through any pregnancy, birth, and postpartum path. I support women with where they are at.
As your doula, I am whatever you need me to be.