Featuring: Hally Blake

We have Doula, Midwife and Rollerskating Extraordinaire, Hally Blake, on the blog today. Hally is doula and midwife who has a passion for helping others from pregnancy through bringing baby home. We love watching her candid content on TikTok which discuss everything from “crunchy motherhood” to amazing roller skating moves. We actually met her because she made a video about “hating ring slings” to which we responded and the rest is history. You can check out her awesome moves and fun tiktoks on her TikTok page here!

You wear many hats including doula, midwife, business owner, and mom. How do you balance everything on a day to day basis?

I’m what I would like to call a very organized mess. I could not live without my planners, millions of sticky notes and coffee. I am very grateful to have a very supportive partner and family. They truly help fill in the gaps.

Doulas are a great resource for pregnancy and postpartum care. What would you say to someone who was debating on choosing to use a doula for their care? What is one thing you wish people knew about how they could benefit from having a doula for support?

If you can afford a doula, I always highly suggest them. There is a sense of confidence you receive from having a support person who understands your wishes and desires without all the pressure being on your partner. Doula care has been shown to lower birth complications and a great doula can in fact make all the difference in your birth. One thing I wish more people knew and understood about hiring a doula is that there are many programs, sometimes even insurance that can help you access doulas.

On your Instagram we can find you making fun videos as well as keeping it real with the daily struggles parents face. Do you have a guideline or plan for your content you post? What encourages you to continue posting fun content for others even during the hard moments?

Remember when I said I’m an organized mess? I hardly sleep much and most of my content thrives off of chaos and caffeine. It’s clearly how I create the best work!

Why did you decide to incorporate babywearing into your parenting? Was it something you grew up seeing or did your own family practice babywearing? If not, do you feel more connected to your culture through babywearing?

There are many reasons I wanted to incorporate babywearing. My number one reason was I wanted to allow myself freedom to move postpartum while still keeping a close eye on my child. My sister had my niece 6 years prior and I saw such a major difference in her mental, physical and emotional freedom when she wore my niece around. It wasn’t something that I even thought twice about because culturally my friends and family all wore their babies so it was a very easy choice. I was taught how to traditionally baby wear my son on my back with just a simple piece of fabric when he was much smaller then, Skye introduced me to how to wear my son properly with a ring sling and It truly has made all the difference.

We all want to know. Do you now love ring slings? What helped make the shift (other than Skye’s persistence)?

Oh well, if anyone knows YOU CAN NOT say no to Skye. She's very passionate about her carriers. I was sent the most beautiful sling, meaning basically bullied me into loving Hope & Plum (with love). Then I started using ring slings and realized how compact and easy they are in comparison to my soft structured carriers ( which I still use daily as well). Ring slings are small enough to fit in just about any one of my bags, I can get my son in fairly quickly by myself and last not least, they look spectacular with my flowy outfits. Such a vain reason, but sometimes soft structured carriers can really cut the flow of your ‘fit.