Courtney Hall, 37, Birth Advocate
The arrival of a new siblings is certain to transform your life. For Courtney Hall, the
moment sparked an interest that would one day become her career.
“Once I found out my mom was having twins…at that moment I became obsessed with babies and maternal health,” Courtney says.
Today, she’s got a mile-long list of qualifications that make her just the right person to guide expectant parents through childbirth. She’s doing that at Bump.Baby.Bliss, what she calls a “one-stop shop for all your pre- and post-partum needs.”
Courtney grew up in High Point, the first child to young parents who didn’t expand the family until she was older. Courtney was so fascinated with her little brothers, she wrote “the most thorough paper a fifth grader has ever written” on twins. She offered to get up in the middle of the night to take a shift feeding them.
“I just really liked everything about it,” she says.
In high school, she met a social worker who inspired her.
“She was so helpful,” Courtney says. “I said, ‘I want to do that. I can see a small set of kids and still be impactful.’”
She studied social work at NC A&T State University and later got a Master’s in social work from the University of South Carolina. She worked with adults transitioning out of the psychiatric ward and dialysis patients at different companies before she moved to Greensboro and started working in Guilford County Schools.
Courtney worked at the best schools – and the toughest ones. She saw it all: children experiencing homelessness, absenteeism, families needing resources to deal with ADHD or Autism diagnosis.
Her focus started to shift when she began to grow her own family. After she had her first son, she found that others would share a lot of unwanted advice on her breastfeeding journey. Which was a lot for a first time Mom.
“The social worker in me said, ‘What is a way I can help mothers advocate for themselves and learn their body to improve their breastfeeding journey.’ It was a lot for me,” she says. “You just always feel like you are doing something wrong.”
She started out thinking she would become a peer mentor for breastfeeding parents. She ended up at a YWCA-sponsored D.O.N.A International doula training and certification course, which teaches you how to provide support for the physical, emotional and informational needs of clients before, during and shortly after childbirth.
Within a year she had her certification and her first client. “I am advocating for moms.”
Her background as a social worker helps. She sometimes does therapy with her clients, to get them talking about the emotional issues that will come up – above and beyond a typical birth plan.
She built up her toolbox of skills. She’s a certified mindfulness professional and certified to process placentas, and has special perinatal mental health training. She loves everything about working with parents.
While continuing to work full-time providing private practice therapy, Courtney started dreaming of taking Bump.Baby.Bliss into more than just a hobby. It was keeping her up at night.
“My husband kept saying, ‘Just make it happen.”
In February, she opened up a storefront on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive downtown – the first Black-owned ultrasound studio in Greensboro. She and her staff offer non-medical, elective ultrasounds, counseling services, early gender DNA testing as birth doula services.
Courtney likes to be the person in a mom’s corner. “What’s most important to me is maternal health and infant mortality decreasing,” she says. “I feel like women are not advocating the way they should.”
She argues that the services doulas provide are not a luxury, they are a necessity.
“This are so important. It is so important for you to have these things in your pocket.”
