All parents deserve compassionate, quality support as they prepare for their journey through pregnancy, birth, & postpartum. Due to a multitude of factors, many young parents have a more challenging time accessing care, and being treated with respect when they do. In this episode we want to challenge those knee-jerk reactions and showcase how to provide meaningful support for teen parents.
SeQuoia Kemp of Doula 4 A Queen joins us this week to share about her role as a birthworker and how she supports all parts of the journey and cultivates joy in the process as she provides doula care for young parents.
SeQuoia Kemp, CD, BSN 
Maggie Runyon, MSN, RNC-OB
SeQuoia Kemp is a Black feminist community-based birthworker from Syracuse, NY, where she serves as a community organizer, health justice advocate, and public health educator. SeQuoia Kemp is the Founder of Doula 4 a Queen (D4Q), and Co-Founder of Sankofa Reproductive Health and Healing Center. She currently holds a Bachelors of Arts in Public Health (2016) and Bachelors of Science in Nursing (2020) from the University of Rochester. SeQuoia aspires to become a Nurse-Midwife with the hope to reduce racial disparities in maternal and infant health through a community-based model of care.
Kemp founded D4Q to provide holistic community-based doula services to families through reproductive justice and birth justice praxis to help improve maternal and child health in the Syracuse community. Her work is rooted in ancestral, liberatory, and evidence-based practices to promote mental, physical, and spiritual alignment for optimal birth outcomes. You can connect with SeQuoia on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at @Doula4aQueen. If you would like to further support SeQuoia’s work, you can find more information in her linktree.
SeQuoia shares with us in this episode how her passion for supporting birth started when she herself was a teenager and how those formative experiences and her Black feminist roots impact the doula care she provides now.
~SeQuoia discusses how her public health background helps her to look broadly at all the systemic & structural factors that are impacting the pregnant person and may stop them from flourishing as parents
~She explains how she is able to help birthing parents & their families address their own internalized bias around younger pregnancies.
~SeQuoia reflects on how teen parents can be encouraged to find joy as they approach parenthood, especially for Black women who often have many social limitations on their joy.
~We discuss educational tools and techniques that can help us to connect with younger clientele in engaging, approachable ways.
~She will also share the top 3 things we can do as birth professionals to relate to and support our younger clients during labor and birth.
For the inclusive, accessible graphics & childbirth education materials SeQuoia mentions she likes to share with clients, check out The Educated Birth.
If you’re looking to freshen up your understanding of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and how that may impact connecting & sharing information with younger clientele, you can get a quick overview here.
During this Black Maternal Health Week (BMHW), we honor the Black & Brown women who are leading the fight against the racism-driven disparities in birthcare. We so appreciate the way birthworkers like SeQuoia advocate with their communities & increase greater access to representative birthcare. We encourage you to find more resources about BMHW and how you can support & partner in this activism over at Black Mamas Matter Alliance. If you would like to make a financial impact this week you can contribute to SeQuoia’s birth justice fund.
Check out this episode’s full transcript or tune in wherever you enjoy podcasts.
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Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Gonna Start” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)