“I am passionate about helping my clients have the birth they envision. Birth is a natural process of life. I believe in your ability to give birth and I will come alongside you with my education and experience to help you have the birth you desire. I consider it an honor to be on this journey with you. I will educate you on your childbirth options, help with comfort measures, guide you through laboring and birthing positions, help with relaxation, natural pain management, and facilitate a safe and comfortable birth environment.”
— Ginger Lea Armstrong
You are valuable.
I have been supporting families through pregnancy, labor and birth since 2016 through the Hearts and Hands Doula Program at UCSD. I am so excited to come alongside families in this exciting time in their life. My journey to becoming a Doula started with the birth of my second child in 1988, when I had a midwife and a home birth. I was surrounded by loving and supportive women who cared for me and my baby. What an impact these women made on me throughout this journey! I again had a wonderful home birth and supportive team with my third child in 1995, and my fourth in 1998. After my last was born, I signed up to take a Doula class and paid the fees only to have it returned to me alone with a phone call from a very wise women informing me that she didn’t believe I should be a Doula at that moment. I was 29, had four kids and a husband who was never home due to his work in the Navy. She said, “Sweetheart, I am sending you your check back because your kids will all be grown up before you know it and for now they need you- all of you. You can return to this dream of being a Doula when your baby is 18.” My young mom’s heart was prideful and felt a little bruised by this call, but I took her advice to heart. Fast forward 18 years, my husband had retired from the Navy and almost all the kids had left home, I had been teaching art and drama for a private school for 16 years, and started to look toward my future and dreams that I wanted to achieve. I saw a former student post about the Volunteer Doula program at UCSD and I knew that was what I was going to do. Now, three years later, I have helped with over 100 births and have completed certification with DONA International. This is why I became a Doula: to offer unwavering support to laboring women and their families during such an amazing, yet vulnerable time. Birth can be amazing! And it is my hope that all of my clients feel at PEACE on their birth-day.
More about me…
At home.
When I am not at births or meeting with clients, you can find me spending time with my amazing husband, creating artwork, or spending time with our grand-baby and daughters. San Diego East county has been our home, and where I taught High School for the past 20 years.
At heart.
I believe God is the Great Creator who knew us from the beginning. I believe birth is transformational. It is an experience families carry with them all of their lives.
In mind.
I love to listen to mothers as they share their hopes, fears, dreams and goals for birth. I’m an inspired witness of their journey from fear to confidence, doubt to trust, expectation to realization. I’m passionate about supporting women in childbirth, and I’m captivated by the miracle of new life. It changes all of us.