“Baby Will Slip Out Like an Egg”: Love, Loss, and the Sacred Work of Women Holding Women
This spring, I lost my best friend, Irene.
Long before anyone really talked about “doulas,” Irene was my doula. She was present, supportive, steady — everything a doula should be.
After a long and courageous journey with cancer, she made the brave decision, last fall, to stop treatment and simply live with whatever time she had left. She did just that — living fully, intentionally, and surrounded by love until her passing just a few weeks ago.
Irene wasn’t just my best friend — she was my inspiration. I met her when I was 19, and our lives have been interwoven ever since. She was by my side during one of the most intense moments of my life — when I went into early premature labor with my first baby, a birth that eventually led to a cesarean.
After that birth, it was Irene who encouraged me to try for a natural birth again. Her belief in me became the foundation of my triumphant VBAC. And it was that experience that inspired me to become a doula myself.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Nurture exists because of Irene.
In her final weeks, Irene asked me to be her “doula” as she transitioned — not into motherhood, but into whatever comes after this life. The way she asked was quiet, but full of trust. She knew what I do as a doula for women in labor. She understood the space, the intensity, the pain and power— And so she looked at me, that familiar steady gaze I’d known since I was nineteen, and said, “Will you stay with me through this, too?”
It was the greatest honor she could have given me. Her decline was slow but steady. We knew the end was coming, but we didn’t know exactly when. I spent time at her bedside, sometimes talking with her when she was awake, sometimes just holding her hand as she slept, sometimes simply watching her breathe. These were quiet, reverent hours — full of both peace and ache. I tried to be present for every moment, to give back to her even a fraction of what she’d given me over the years.
One night, during one of those long vigils, I got a message: a first-time mom — one of my Birth With Ease clients — had gone into early labor. Her birth was beginning just as Irene’s life was gently winding down. It felt like standing at the edge of two worlds. I was holding space for a death and preparing to hold space for a birth, all within the same breath.
I stayed with Irene through the that night, her room quiet and dim, the air full of whispered prayers. At one point, she stirred and squeezed my fingers. I squeezed back, silently letting her know I was there. In the morning, after some rest and a warm breakfast, I left her bedside and stepped into another sacred space: a birth room.
The contrast was almost surreal — from one threshold to another. From a life ending to a life just beginning. The mom in labor didn’t know the story of what I was carrying with me, and she didn’t need to. All she needed to know was that she was surrounded with love and support. Her beautiful baby was born the next morning.
Later, as I drove home, I cried. Not out of sadness, exactly. But out of awe. Out of the overwhelming beauty and intensity of it all. This work — this life — it asks so much of us. But it gives so much in return.
Recently, during a final Birth With Ease session with a client, I was encouraging this new mamma-to-be — as I often do — to create a sacred space in her home to support herself physically, mentally, and emotionally during early labor. A space that feels safe and held. A space that reminds her that she is not alone, that this journey is woven with love.
As I shared this, I told her about one of my own pregnancies— and of course Irene was in those memories. At that time, I had taken long walks through the woods and around my neighborhood, and on one of those walks I slowly and intentionally collected stones. Each one was a kind of promise — a little piece of my world that I could carry into labor. I invited my closest friends to come over for a simple gathering, and we painted those stones together with affirmations, blessings, and bits of encouragement. It became a kind of ceremony — soft music, warm tea, the low hum of women talking and laughing. My oldest daughter, who was five years old at the time, was there with us too. I wanted her to be part of it, to witness the strength and love that women share with each other. She dipped her little brush into the paint and painted several of the stones. It was a tender and joyful time.
Among the stones was one painted by Irene. She drew a small bird perched delicately on a branch, and beneath it, she wrote a blessing passed down from her Greek grandmother — something the women in her family said to each other before giving birth: “Baby will slip out like an egg.”
It made us all laugh softly when she shared it — it was a grandmother’s wisdom, wrapped in humor and grace. That stone became one of my focal points throughout my labor. In the quiet spaces between contractions, I would open my eyes and see those painted stones — small, unassuming reminders of the women who loved me, who believed in me.
When I went into labor, that rock became one of my focal points in a hospital full of sterile equipment, uniforms, and blinking monitors. I had this tiny, hand-painted reminder that birth is not just medical — it is embodied. Emotional. Sacred, and I could feel that I was not alone.
Who could have imagined that 17 years later, after Irene’s death, I would be telling a new mom that same story — holding that same rock in my hand — as this new mom prepared to begin her own journey into birth?
Being a birth worker is a sacred privilege. We are invited into some of life’s most tender, vulnerable moments — the first breath, the final breath, and everything in between. The friendship of women, the legacy of women helping women, holding each other — it lives on through us, and in the stories we share.
Like birth, death is a thin place — a sacred threshold.
Irene helped me become who I am. Her presence echoes in every birth I attend, every doula I train, every mother I hold space for. And in grief, I remember that the love we give and receive doesn’t end. It transforms us. So yes, I feel lost without her. I feel the ache of grief in my bones. But I also feel immense gratitude — to have lived life so closely with someone, to have been held by her love, and to now have the privilege of mourning her with all the depth of that connection.
We don’t always know how the choices we make now will shape the future. But we should live like they will. Because they do. The things we do now may be someone else’s anchor now and decades from now. The stories we live may inspire someone long after we’re gone.
I carry Irene with me. And now, so do you.
