Meet Zaure Vuk of Pampering Doula

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zaure Vuk.

Hi Zaure, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Zaure, I am a postpartum doula and a Montessori parenting coach. My motherhood is what led me on the path of desiring to care for mothers in their transition to parenting and caring for newborn babies.

Also my background as a founder of multiple daycare centers in Cambridge, MA, I have seen thousands of parents in our community who struggled to balance the demands of their careers or advanced studies with the demands of the new life they had birthed in a foreign land (most of our parents were from overseas).

First, I found Montessori as a way to homeschool my children. I knew we were planning on adopting a nomadic lifestyle, so homeschooling children seemed like a logical idea; it would give us more freedom to travel. Later on, when I had my four children, I felt a calling to start a path as a postpartum doula.

I intended to share and educate newborn families about the importance of taking the time to heal, rest, and allow the postpartum doula to care for the mother and the baby in their Sacred Window (6-12 weeks of immediate postpartum). I believe that postpartum time is a very sacred and potent time for the mother, I come and care for her before, during, and after this powerful initiation into motherhood.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I started my path as a doula while traveling and intending to go back to Boston to start connecting with our daycare parents. However, when we returned from our European trip, we had to shut down our centers due to COVID. That put a huge pause on my plans.

All of our resources and energies were placed on a survival mode. We didn’t have any bandwidth to introduce anything new, like postpartum education and care. So that had to wait. A couple of years later, we find ourselves here in Colorado. And it is a completely new community, I don’t know anyone, and I am starting a new business. So yeah, these have been and still are to some degree struggles that I am facing.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Pampering Doula?
When working with moms and dads before they have a baby, I believe that preparation for a completely new season of life requires time and planning. I start by guiding them through a postpartum planning session, during which we review what it will look like for a mother to be recovering after childbirth. I love bringing Ayurveda and the wisdom from traditional cultures into caring: outside of the USA most traditional countries are similar in their way of caring for the mother.

The communities in those countries have a mother-centered approach, not a baby-centered. I share about the need for mothers to keep their bodies warm by eating only warm meals and drinking warm teas and water. I share about the necessity to have regular bodywork with warm oils. Traditional cultures believe that if the mother is well, the baby will be well. I facilitate these monthly in-person or virtual planning sessions using a guidebook “Well-being. After Birth” that I have written together with my mentors in Ayurvedic postpartum caregiving.

When I come to their house after the baby is born for home visits, I offer hands-on wellness sessions and bodywork. I have extensive experience working as an esthetician and a makeup artist in Boston. When I decided to create a postpartum doula business, I knew that wellness and hands-on bodywork would be its DNA.

In everything I do, I bring in Montessori philosophy. I have been learning Montessori first as an approach to education, then I learned that Montessori is great for my parenting style. I have developed resources and training for our daycare centers, for both teachers and parents. It’s been amazing to see how empowering for both the parents and children the Montessori approach can be when adapted to parenting.

After completing my M.Ed in Montessori Integrative Learning this summer, I have experienced and learned to apply the Montessori approach to adult education. It’s been quite rewarding and empowering to the parents and educators I work with: everyone knows and understands the authority and self-agency they have over their lives, their emotions, and their perspectives. And they know that in a frustrating situation, they have the power to change themselves (not to try and control the child!). Montessori to me is self-parenting, or re-parenting of self that brings healing to our broken parts we may never know we had.

Together, Montessori parenting and postpartum care create a container for moms and dads to not only prepare themselves for becoming parents but also see where they may need healing from their own childhood or pre-verbal and developmental traumas. And I am, just like a Montessori guide in the classroom, honored to prepare the environment for them and to facilitate their journey.

I regularly share announcements about my Well-Being After Birth planning sessions and Montessori Baby Parent groups on my Instagram. Please follow me there @zaurevuk!

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
My favorite childhood memory is being outside, playing with my friends! I always loved singing, so we sang a lot together. It snows a lot in Kazakhstan, where I am from. So I loved ice-skating and building forts. And then we come home when it’s dark out and drink hot black tea with milk.

Spending time with my cousins and my grandma was always full of fun and excitement. I loved being with people, and I also loved reading a lot.

Pricing:

• Well-Being After Birth planning session $125
• Montessori Parenting Workshop $95
• Home visits $175 (plus travel fee)
• Private consultation $95/hour
• My Well-Being After Birth guidebook is available on Amazon

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pamperingdoula.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zaurevuk