Compassionate, inclusive support for birth and beyond

Light blue watercolor line Pittsburgh childbirth classes
Marlee and Malone-Franklin Pittsburgh doulas

Supporting families with diverse backgrounds and values since 2014, we love offering personalized care for each client.

We tailor our work to help meet our clients’ individual needs - from birth preparation classes, to doula support for labor and birth, to in-home support and care during the newborn/postpartum period.

We believe EVERYONE deserves compassionate, inclusive, trauma-informed, non-judgmental support and advocacy during the perinatal time!

Learn more about our commitment to anti-racism.

About Us & Our Practice

  • We are a wife-and-wife doula team and we have been best friends since high school. We love working together!

  • We moved to gorgeous Western PA in 2020 and we LOVE it here! (Yes, even in the winter!) We spend a lot of time appreciating the plants and animals in our neighborhood.

  • We are both California natives and lived in Orange County, southern California for most of our lives (Fullerton, Brea, Santa Ana, and a brief stint up in beautiful Monterey on the central CA coast). If you want to learn more about our work and perspectives, visit our blog on our California website.

  • We’ve been active as birth workers since 2014 and were leaders and mentors in our southern California community. We are still very connected to the birth community there and continue to work virtually with many CA parents.

  • We’re vaccinated! Learn more about our COVID-19 protocols.

Marlee and Megan with our dogs, Robin and Wren, in our California backyard right before we moved to PA

Marlee and Megan with our dogs, Robin and Wren, in our California backyard right before we moved to PA

We have particular specialties in supporting:

People who are members of oppressed groups who want to have a pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience where they feel seen, heard, comfortable, and safe

Advocacy, antiracism, and trauma-informed support are key parts of our practice as birth workers. We do everything in our power to support clients who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color to have as positive and safe an experience as possible as they navigate a medical system that is intrinsically unsafe for them in so many ways. We are also members of the LGBTQIA+ community and are passionate about supporting others in the queer and gender-diverse community to receive competent and safe perinatal care.

People giving birth in a hospital who still want to have a more holistic, whole-person experience (whether or not pain medication is planned or used)

We love helping our hospital clients (the majority of our clients) create a warm environment within the hospital setting as much as possible. We also have a heavy emphasis on facilitating effective communication between our clients and their care team. Creating space for our clients to make decisions that feel right to them is really important to us, as is advocating for their wishes to be honored as expressed. And of course - all of this is in addition to the physical and emotional support we provide that even the most well-meaning medical staff just can’t guarantee because the system is set up for them to be caring for multiple patients at any given time.

Parents who have experienced a long or challenging fertility journey (including pregnancy loss, infertility, assisted reproductive technology, surrogacy, and more)

We’ve also worked with parents who are pregnant after loss(es) and parents expecting babies who may have complicated medical situations. We understand the anxieties and the complex (and sometimes contradictory) emotions that can arise in these situations. We offer strong, compassionate support and advocacy to help parents get the care they need to feel as safe and comfortable as possible.

People experiencing medically complicated pregnancies

We’ve worked with many families who have been given the label of high-risk, and we understand the confusion and anxiety that often arises in these kinds of situations. Throughout pregnancy, birth, and the early newborn period, we love helping these families feel heard and supported as they navigate not only the life changes that come with pregnancy and having a baby, but also the medical challenges that may arise along the way.

Paying It Forward

 We believe that perinatal support and advocacy should be available to everyone who wants it.

Small package with a heart Pittsburgh sliding scale doula

Too often, our services are least accessible to those who most need support.

Accordingly, we offer a sliding scale as we are able to those who qualify for Medicaid, SNAP benefits, TANF, or WIC, or are otherwise experiencing financial hardship. We prioritize people who are members of oppressed groups, including those who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Our Pay It Forward fund allows clients with more resources and financial privilege to help us increase the number of people we can work with who wouldn’t otherwise have access to this kind of support and guidance during such an impactful time of their lives.

If you are able and would like to help increase our ability to offer classes and support to those who wouldn’t otherwise have access, you can leave “gratuity” on your invoice. No amount is too small!

Marlee Malone-Franklin

she/her

Marlee Malone-Franklin Pittsburgh doula, lactation counselor, childbirth educator

Growing up, I adored helping my mom care for my three younger siblings and loved to organize activities for not only our family, but all the other families on our block (hello, recreating Disneyland in the front yard!). I had a magical childhood that still inspires me today.

Caring for other people and seeing them thrive is one of my greatest joys, and when I learned about the work of birth and postpartum doulas, I was hooked then and there!

I love walking with families, especially through those raw, early, new baby days. I specialize in normalizing the vulnerable and challenging experiences of birth and new parenthood, and helping families strategize to find gentle rhythms that work for them.

Favorite podcasts: Savor | Harry Potter & The Sacred Text |  Stuff You Should Know  |  Stuff You Missed in History Class

Ways you can work with Marlee:

Megan Malone-Franklin

she/they

Megan Malone-Franklin Pittsburgh doula and childbirth educator

I am a serious planner. I like to know what's coming next and how I can prepare for it in pretty much every area of my life.

Like me, many expecting parents are thirsty for realistic preparation for what birth and parenting can bring. It is a privilege to share what I have learned (and am learning) about birth as a rite of passage, and to support parents through the life-changing experiences that come with welcoming a new baby.

In addition to birth work, I use my doula skills to help nonprofits expand their impact by improving their database software.

Favorite podcasts: Terrible, Thanks for Asking | RadioLab  |  More Perfect… But I’ve mostly been into audiobooks recently.

Ways you can work with Megan:

Personal Tidbits

Our beautiful rescue dog Wren nursing her newborn puppies

Our beautiful rescue dog Wren nursing her newborn puppies

  • In 2017 we rescued a cocker spaniel who turned out to be pregnant… a few weeks later we had a puppy home birth on our couch! (Yes, we kept one of the puppies!)

  • The TV shows we watch over and over again are Schitt’s Creek, Heartstopper, Ted Lasso, The Office, Friends, New Girl, and Parks & Rec

  • We love going to museums. We have a print of a painting from the Carnegie Museum of Art hanging in our office.

  • In addition to birth work, Marlee is an artist and Megan is a professional choral singer. We both identify as multipotentialites (people who have multiple passions in life) and love meeting others who share that identity!

A note about language

Having an inclusive practice is very important to us. We try our best to avoid triggering language, but we recognize that in the very personal topic areas of conception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and parenting, it’s always possible that something may feel upsetting or sensitive.

If you experience any painful moments as a result of our work or material published on our website and you think we could make a change to avoid this in the future, please let us know. You can submit a contact request, send us an email, or otherwise reach out in whatever way feels safe for you. Let us know if you would like to see a specific action or correction, or if you would just like to share feedback that we can use to improve our language, shift our perspective, or make our services safer and more equitable.

Our Training Background

 Formal Training and Certification:

 
Queer Doula Network Member badge Pittsburgh infant sleep consultant
 
 

Note: Doulas are not required to obtain any form of certification in order to practice, as this is an unlicensed role in most jurisdictions (including Pennsylvania).

We have chosen to participate in some formal training programs because we felt that the particular offerings from each would help us provide better support for our clients, not out of obligation or belief that we need a piece of paper in order to do this work.

Continuing Education

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

 About the quote in our footer

We've included the following quote on the bottom of each page on this website:

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world more habitable and humane.”

— David W. Orr

This quote resonates with us, and many others (you may even have seen floating around the internet misattributed to the Dalai Lama).

We agree that the generally accepted definition of success comes from a capitalist, imperialist perspective, and we reject it. We have found in our own lives that when we let go of that “traditional” definition of success and instead pursue compassion, justice, equity, and healing, our lives are much richer.

Birth work is part of our personal social justice practice, and we approach each client interaction as a small step toward “making the world more habitable and humane.”