THE PERSON BESIDE YOU
Hi, I’m Kiki.
It’s lovely to meet you.
I would like you to feel comfortable enough with me to let a conversation wander, or to sit for a moment without needing to say anything.
My learning in traditional midwifery from Indigenous communities in Latin America shapes how I understand care: the body, our inner life and the relationships that hold us belong together. I continue learning with respect for the women and communities who share this knowledge.
I’m a doula based in Leiden, supporting women and their partners from conception through pregnancy, birth and postpartum. I would love to hear a little about you.
Let’s meetTHE WAY I UNDERSTAND CARE
Pregnancy
as medicine
Water, earth, fire and air.
I understand pregnancy as medicine through the way it comes to move the elements within us.
When I think of water, earth, fire and air, I feel how close we are to what moves in nature. During pregnancy, that movement can become intimate; your body asks for something unfamiliar, a feeling rises, and the way you have known yourself begins to change. Your partner may be changing too, as each of you discovers what becoming a parent means and how you want to support one another.
My learning in traditional midwifery gives me a way of accompanying this movement with attention to body, mind and spirit. We can take time to feel what is happening, without needing to understand it all at once.
THE NAME OF THIS SPACE
Macayotl
Macayotl brings me to the umbilical cord, to the quiet connection through which a baby receives nourishment before knowing anything of the world outside.
I chose the name for its association with the cord and lineage in accounts of Nahua birth traditions in Mexico. For me, it carries a question about how we continue to hold one another as we grow and become separate, and how the care we have received finds its way into the care we give.
About the word
A UNAM account of childbirth in pre-Hispanic Mexico uses macayotl in connection with the umbilical cord, lineage and rope. The Online Nahuatl Dictionary records mecayotl for ancestry or lineage, related to mecatl, cord. Macayotl is the name I have chosen for this space, inspired by these connections.
UNAM · Birth and motherhood in pre-Hispanic Mexico
Online Nahuatl Dictionary · Mecayotl