Seasons of Tending
Doula & Lactation Care
Pregnancy, birth, and the first year of your baby's life are not separate events. They are one sacred, unbroken season — a rite of passage that asks everything of you and gives back something that cannot be named until you are standing on the other side of it.
This season deserves to be honored. You deserve to be held with compassionate, non-judgemental, expert support.
The Birthing Year
At Emerging Hearts Collective, we call this The Birthing Year. And the Seasons of Tending is how we show up for you within it — with whole-hearted presence, expertise, and the kind of unhurried wisdom that only 28 years in the birth world can offer.
Awakening — First trimester. Everything changing beneath the surface before the world can see it.
Emerging — Second trimester. Your village begins to gather. The ceremonies of a season.
Ripening — Third trimester. Preparing the nest.
Crossing the threshold. The delivery of a mother.
Tending — The fourth trimester. The most under-honored season of all.
Rooting — Months four through twelve. The roots go down. The family finds its rhythm.
Offerings
Threshold
Expert support for your first days home. Fifteen hours of in-home doula support, IBCLC lactation assessment, and newborn care guidance..
$850
Hearthside
Sustained tending through the fourth trimester. Thirty-five hours of in-home support, two lactation consultations, birth experience processing, and unlimited text support.
$2200
Sacred Season
The full arc. For families navigating NICU transition, high-risk recovery, complex feeding, or those who want the most complete support available. Sixty hours of flexible support across weeks 1–12..
$3800
Additional Support
Can be added to any of the offerings above
Kindling
Prenatal preparation session. In-home visit to create your postpartum plan and prepare your nest before the baby arrives.
$200
Welcoming
A sacred ceremony to mark the arrival of your baby and the emergence of you as a mother. Woven from ancient blessing way tradition, The Welcoming honors both lives born the day your baby arrived.
$650
Unfolding
A standalone feeding and lactation consultation for families who need focused, expert, non-judgemental support.
$250
Why Willow?
You are not meant to do this alone, and you don't have to!
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I have sat with women in the hardest moments of their lives — at 3am when everything felt impossible, in NICU rooms where hope and fear lived side by side, in living rooms where a mother was holding it together for everyone except herself. I have been there for the beautiful and the messy and everything in between. I have also lived it. There is nothing you can bring to our work together that will surprise me, nothing that will make me think less of you, and nothing too hard or too tender to hold. Over 28 years I have cared for families in every imaginable circumstance as a postpartum nurse, NICU nurse, lactation consultant, childbirth educator, high-risk OB navigator, and trauma transformation specialist and nurse coach. I am here to meet you exactly where you are — with steady hands, an open heart, and nearly three decades of knowing how to help.
Willow Merchant
Registered Nurse OR, CA, ID, WA
Lactation Consultant-International
Board Certified Nurse Coach
Certified Trauma Transformation Specialist
Certified Childbirth Educator
Certified Infant Massage Instructor
Mastery of Circle Facilitator,
Certified HeartMath Clinician
Reiki Master Teacher, Levels I, II, III,