​​HI, I’M LUA. she/her ​ 

I'm a psychologist, birth doula, and film photographer based in Amsterdam West.

For the past seven years, I've been supporting international and expat families through pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period, in English and Spanish, in their homes and in hospitals, through straightforward births and complicated ones.

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I've felt connected to birth long before I fully understood why. It was during my own first pregnancy that the pull became undeniable. I started reading, listening, learning, but it was the support I received during that time that changed everything. Someone showed up, stayed steady, and held space for me. That planted a seed that eventually became this work.

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I trained as a doula in San Francisco in 2018, and from the beginning I brought my background in psychology into the room with me. Birth is as much psychological as it is physical. Anxiety, fear, past trauma, the weight of expectations, the disorientation of becoming a parent far from home, these are part of the birth experience too. My role is to hold all of it, not just the physical.

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Over time, supporting individual families expanded into something larger. I co-founded Hello Doula, an Amsterdam-based doula platform connecting families with the right support for their birth. I also teach at The Labour Department, contributing to a growing network of birth workers across the city.

I live in Amsterdam West with my husband and our three sons, each five years apart, each teaching me something new. Every family I support carries me forward too.

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