E126: Hatched & Latched - What Can We Learn from Mother Birds?

A business name change shouldn’t feel emotional, but this one does. After more than 20 years supporting thousands of families through pregnancy, labor, birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum life, I’m stepping into a new “face” for my work: Hatched and Latched. The name ties together the moment a baby arrives and the moment feeding begins, and it better reflects how families experience the transition into parenthood as one connected story, not a set of separate appointments.

To explain why I chose it, I go somewhere unexpected: birds. Mother ducks, geese, and other bird parents have become my personal blueprint for courage, protection, and trust. I tell stories that range from tender to heartbreaking to hilarious, including a duck nesting near a church door that suddenly turns busy, Disneyland cast members forming a protective bubble around a goose family, and the gut-punch of ducklings left to navigate the world after loss. Each moment opens up a bigger conversation about maternal instincts, postpartum vulnerability, and why comparing yourself to other parents can make even simple decisions feel impossible.

We also talk about what support can look like in real life, from childbirth education and breastfeeding preparation to postpartum doula care, overnight help, and lactation services. If you’re pregnant, newly postpartum, or simply trying to feel steadier in the chaos of new parenthood, come listen for practical perspective and the kind of reassurance that doesn’t sugarcoat.

Subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a rating or review so we can keep having thoughtful conversations about birth and feeding.

Visit our website, here: https://hatchednlatched.com/
Follow us on Facebook at Hatched & Latched
Follow us on Instagram at @hatchenlatched

Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier 
Music: Michael Hicks 
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood 
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Transcript

Welcome and A Big Shift

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Roger, hosted by Hatchon Last. Here, we explore the many layers of pregnancy, labor, birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum life through the lens of more than 20 years in a busy Doula practice, supporting thousands of families. Whether you are preparing for birth, navigating feeding, or adjusting to life with a new baby, this podcast is designed to offer practical knowledge, thoughtful conversation, and empowering support for the real experiences of parenthood.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I am your host, and I'm kind of excited to share a newness about what's going on with me, my business, and my surrounding partners. And that as I as I've had a shift, and I'm kind of excited about it. So I've had I've been in business a long time now, over 20 years, had several different business names, um, kind of similar business models, worked in different states, worked with different lots of different people, learned from so many people. It's been just phenomenal. And as I've combined my birth doula um experience, and I have always some postpartum stuff going on as

The New Name Hatched And Latched

SPEAKER_01 1:40

well, and my lactation experience, I kind of just rolled out a new business I've been working on for the last little while. And it is called Hatched and Latched. And so that is going that's my new business name. So you will find my website at hatchedandlatched.com. Um, and of course, that refers to birds, and I want to tell you a few bird stories in a moment, but um, this name kind of came to me over a period of time as I was looking at making some shifts and changes in my business, and hatched came up first. Actually, I'm like, okay, hatched, that's cool. I was working with that for several months, actually, developing things around that. And then um, between lactation appointments, actually, I was grabbing a bite to eat, running between appointments, and it just hit me latched. Oh my gosh, hatched and latched, that's perfect. So um the and and my logo has had a bird on it for a really long time as well. So same logo, different name, um, same services, just kind of a different different uh facade to it. But some a couple things I want to talk about. My favorite type of mother, like the the the type of mother I love to observe, um, and I learned so much from and I absolutely love to watch kind of the perfect mother. And this is something I've honestly had a fascination with for a really long time. These mothers, these perfect mothers that I have enjoyed observing and interacting with for a long time, are birds. Like birds of the perfect mother. And I've kind of I know in motherhood in our culture, in a lot of cultures, is um it's a big deal, right? Like it's all-encompassing. Um, it can make us feel all the feels, we can feel, gosh, so much purpose, like too much purpose sometimes. We can feel all the guilt, all the joy, all the pain, all the happiness, all the satisfaction. There's

Why Birds Feel Like Perfect Mothers

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a lot of things that go into motherhood, and it's complicated for humans, right? It's super complicated. And we're always second-guessing ourselves, are we doing it right? Are we having our baby in the right way? Are we conceiving our baby in the right way? Are we feeding our baby in the right way? Are we taking care of our baby in the right way? Do I we have all the things for our baby? Um, and I just see so many people, myself included, cycle back on that. Like, are we doing it good enough? Are we are we trying our hardest? Do we still like it? Do we care? Right? We go through through all these cycles of caring a whole lot, not caring enough. And anyway, the complexities of that, I like to watch a perfect mother example to me, and that is birds. And I've actually given several presentations over the years as I've kind of gathered bird stories, um, which are may not be unique to me by any means, but just some little things I love about bird mothers who are such a perfect example. Um, let me just tell you a couple little stories, several actually. Um, one of them uh there was years years ago, and these stories go way, way back. Um, some are sad, some are happy, some are amazing. They're all, I think, all amazing. Some are funny. Um, but there is this little bird, a little duck, and she built a nest. Probably on a weekday, she built a nest, um, and she built it by a church. And during the week, probably on the weekday that she chose this spot, an incredibly quiet, boring place. She was behind a bush, not a super secluded bush, but she was behind a bush, and there was a pretty main church door not far from where she chose to build her nest. Um, and come Sunday, she was probably alarmed to realize how busy this little, quiet little place that she chose got had gotten while she sat on her little eggs and waited for her babies to hatch. And as people went to that church over a few weeks, kind of watched and observed, and the mother duck got incredibly defensive, and she's just cute and tiny and so much smaller than any of the humans, big toddlers,

The Church Nest and Fierce Defense

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big kids, adults that were kind of watching this very threatening to her, right? Over a period of weeks. Well, she was phenomenal. Um, and we all kind of watched as she let her little ducklings hatched, and then she guided them away from there. So she she built her her her place. She didn't know it, but in an unideal situation, she stuck to it, she defended it. Um, she was fierce, she she it was just phenomenal to see her like cute, mighty little efforts as she protected. Another similar story. Um, you might have seen similar um things in your life, human life. Um, I believe I was at Disneyland, and this has happened a couple of times. I don't know if you've ever been to any of the Disney parks. I love going to Disneyland, Disney World. Um, and and there's just some some uh they they've they're set up well for so many things. Their systems and how they do things is just fascinating to me, and it's fun too. Um, but there's a system in place for when a duck walks through or a goose. A particular visit I was at years ago, there was a mother goose, I think a mother and a father goose, they had goslings, baby goslings who obviously follow them everywhere. That's another cool thing about baby birds and mother ducks and geese. Like these these birds just follow, they're very intuitive and um it's kind of cool. So these geese, unbeknownst to them, they're in Disneyland, a very busy place. Um, crowded, uh, you know, there's a lot going on, and they're trying to make their way through the place, through the park. Um, I've seen this at other amusement parks as well, and Disneyland in particular, they had a system for that. It was so cool. I don't know if you've ever seen their, I guess it's security people, I don't know, but they're in all white, right? So everyone in Disneyland has a different costume, all the workers, they call them cast members, I guess. And everybody, I think it's security. These, this little family of geese was immediately surrounded by people in white that came out of I don't know where. But there are several of them, and they just made a protection, a bubble of protection around these geese as this family of geese bravely, inadvertently walked through a Disney park, right? They were Disney geese that day and didn't know it. That was cool. People stop, they pause, they watch that, and it was it was so touching to me. I was like, wow, look at this little bubble of protection that surrounded this family and helped them through a treacherous area that they did not probably mean to be in. How cool it'd be if we had guys in white guys and girls. There was a lot of people in that just come out of the woodwork to protect little families as they are protecting their children, and that can happen in a lot of different realms. So, another good little bird story for me. Um, I'll tell you a sad one, one that's really touching to me. I would think I was about 16, and my mom and I, every Mother's Day, would take a corsage to my grandma's house, like on Saturday before Mother's Day, so she could have a corsage to her on Sunday. And one Saturday, I think I was a new driver, as I recall. I was driving, I was driving with my mom. We just had Mother's

Disney Geese and A Safety Bubble

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Day in our real time, right? Just a few weeks ago. But I was 16, new driver, driving with my mom over to my grandma's to take the corsage. So I'm with my mom, going to see my grandma, and I come around a corner and I witness a scene, a scene that has burned into my mind and memory, and it was so tragically sad to me of my 16-year-old heart. But around this bend, a car or two in front of us um had done done this terrible tragic thing on total accident, I know. But there's a mother duck crossing the road at a place where there's duck crossings frequently, and there's little signs about it. This mother duck was crossing the road, being followed dutifully by her, I don't know, four, five, six, seven little ducklings, right? And a car, a few cars ahead of us, hit the mother duck and she died. She didn't make it. And these, and I was just heartbroken coming upon this scene with my mom going to my grandma's, right? Before Mother's Day. And there's this mother duck laying there, and all the little ducklings just gathered around her. They gathered on her, they waited to follow her. Um, and even in the short amount of time it took for us to drive by, they figured out pretty quickly. I'm like, we gotta get out of here. Um, and so they continued crossing the road. Now, I don't know what happened to those little ducklings. My heart was broken for them. I begged my mom if we could please stop and gather up those little ducklings, take them home, love them, raise them, feed them. We didn't do it. They disappeared into the woods pretty quickly. Um, and I was just heartbroken. And I went with my mom to my grandma's, gave her the corsage, and it was kind of just a poignant motherhood day for me. And in that these little babies will follow, right? They will follow where we go. And so, um, to the best of our ability, this mother duck on a street, you know, um, go in good places, go to good places. Um, so that the because these babies will follow. Another um kind of touching, sad one, and I heard this story secondhand. I didn't see this myself. Most of my stories I've seen with my own eyes when it comes to birds, but this particular one, um, someone told a story of, I think it was a grouse, some kind of grouse. And there was, this was perhaps long ago, but it was on a farm, um, and there was lots of different animals on the farm, and one of them was a I believe a grouse, maybe a hen of some kind. I'm not sure the type of bird it was, but there was a barn fire. Um, and this barn burned down, barns built burn wood, hay, you know, that got the animals out. And after all the ashes had settled and the barn the fire barn fire had um quelled itself or people had put it out anyway, the next day. Um, the farmer or owner, whoever it was, went to kind of assess the damage. And inside the burned barn that was now kind of just smoldering, there are these little what they thought were little stacks of hay, like this little, it looked like straw,

Loss, Protection, and Hard Lessons

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a little like pile of straw. And someone went and tapped it. They like tapped it with their boot, and the straw fell down just like into a pile, and from under it scurried a lot of little baby grouse or hens or whatever this bird was. And they realized there were several of these little piles around the barn that these were mother hens, grouse, whatever the bird was, that during the fire had gathered their their um baby birds, their offspring, gathered them under them, protected them, built a um an a shelter around them in a very dangerous situation of fire, right? A barn fire where almost everything was destroyed, including this mother bird. Um, and and the lesson there that was so poignant for me was the protection, right? The sacrifice that was made and the absolute power to protect that these birds had. And we know that bird feathers, bird, that gets phenomenal material with their feathers and um are made of, and it was strong enough. It was amazing enough. Those materials were strong enough and amazing enough to protect these little babies from the fire. And to add to the poignancy of the story, these little baby birds stayed there, right? In the fire. They stayed with what they knew. Um, they stayed with their mother, they didn't run into the smoke or the flames or um into an exit they might not have known of. They stayed put even hours later after the fire was gone. These little baby birds trusted and stayed put. So, gosh, what a lot of cool messages there. The power of protection, the power of sacrifice, um, the power of safety that was created. So that's kind of a touching story with a lot of different um aspects to it. So now I want to move to uh some funny stories actually about birds. Kind of, well, interesting stories anyway. I think kind of funny, it's kind of sad. Um years ago when our girls were little, we were visiting my in-laws, and they lived on a big piece of property kind of out um with a lot of fields around it and trees and stuff. We'd stayed late into the night, and um long about, I don't know, 10 p.m. we were getting ready to leave. And my mother-in-law's cat, she had a cat that was an outdoor cat, came up to the porch where we were all sitting, and she dropped out of her mouth three baby birds. And I'm talking tiny baby birds, probably hatched hours earlier, tiny baby birds. And my little girls were like, Oh, mom, it's baby birds, look, look. Um, one of these three baby birds in the cat's mouth came out alive, and it was sitting there on the deck, you know, and they're like, We need to save it, we need to keep it. And I said, No, absolutely not. We're not gonna keep this baby bird. We don't know anything about raising baby birds. Well, my little girls who are huge animal lovers got a little bowl, got a little washcloth and wrapped it up and took it home. I was certain it was gonna die. I'm like, it's gonna be dead. Like, give it an hour, give it two. It was in a cat's mouth for crying out loud, right? The other two little baby birds in the cat's mouth have are dead. Um, I give this bird two hours max. Well, we finally made our way home. We got home super late that night. I I just remember because at midnight we were home by then, and this little baby bird is still alive. And in my mind, I'm like, wow, what a fighter! Like, we're still alive a couple hours later after having been in a cat's mouth and I don't know, fallen out of a tree or gotten taken, plopped down, not eaten. Um, and we're just in a bowl with a washcloth at this point. So we got online um and we started looking at all right, what does it take to raise a baby bird? We didn't even know what kind of bird this was, but it was so new, like you could the thin, thin, transparent skin, like um so incredibly delicate. So we looked up some things, we learned some things. Um, we have a dog, and they said soak some dog food, give them dog food, and I don't know, I haven't researched this since much. But my little girls were so dedicated to it. And one thing that we looked up that just cracked me up that they were willing to do, it said the baby bird must be fed every 10 to 15 minutes while the sun is up. Like, wow, the sun is up. Every 10 to 15 minutes, you guys want to commit to that, and they did. So we put this little baby bird in a small bedroom in our house, one of my daughter's bedrooms. We put it on a very lightly uh warmed heating mat. Um, I think we kept it in that bowl with that washcloth, I don't know. Um, and we made food for it, and we as the time time went on and time went on, and we made more sophisticated food for it, and it was a lot of work, like it was a lot of work, but it became kind of a family project that was pretty awesome as we tried to keep this little baby bird going and keep it alive. Um, and I came to love that room, and even when the door was shut, I'm like, do you know there's a mighty struggle for life in there? This tiny little thing that shouldn't be alive is alive. We don't know how to take care of it, but we're doing it. Um, and this little bird is is living and keeps living, and it got bigger and bigger, and we kind of

Raising Baby Birds Every 15 Minutes

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graduated to different foods. My girls set alarms at night to take care of it. They were very dutiful during the day. As I recall, there were some things we had to go to where we didn't we couldn't feed it every 10-15 minutes, so we'd have somebody else watch it for a little while. Um, we did take it camping with us, I think, in a little cage and fed it every 10-15 minutes. Anyway, it was phenomenal. And this bird grew and it got so it was vocal and it got so that it could jump around and it got full of feathers, and we had it for several weeks. It got to where it could fly across the room from one of us to another of us. Um, and as its food preferences changed and food needs changed, we didn't understand all of that. And we had this bird a few weeks and then it died in our possession, which was sad, very, very sad, right? But a really a cool experience and a cool miracle that I wasn't looking for. Um, but uh on the this wasn't a mother, we were doing the mothering and probably doing a poor job of it, but this mighty baby, right? This um mighty little struggle for life, which was adorable. And so when we see that in in our lives, right, like babies are so cute and their will to live and their instincts is just phenomenal. So it was cool to see a baby bird develop and grow. Um, so a few years goes by. Here's another funny story. Well, this one, funny sad. Um, my husband and I were doing some work. Our kids are a little older now. I think they're into teenagers by this point, and we were doing some work in the backyard, and a nest had fallen out of a tree, and there were baby birds on the ground. I don't know what kind. I think the same kind that we had last time, which I think was a starling, I'm not sure. Um, this was a long time ago. And my husband's like, oh no, here's baby birds again. And one of them was alive, the others were not, and I'm and I'm like, just take care of it. Just like don't let the girls see it, just like take care of that thing. So this is terrible. A little bit of confession here. Like, he's like, All right, I'll take care of it. So I kind of watched him. This is a hot, hot summer day. He took the bird with all the clippings. I mean, we'd been trimming and clipping, and we had yard waste to put in our garbage bag or our garbage. Um, so he to put all that in the garbage and then he took the handle of a shovel or a rake or something. Now, this is the gruesome part of the story, and he just smashed and mashed everything in there, including these birds, two of which were dead, one was alive, right? Smashing, mashing, smashing, mashing. Because we knew what kind of work it was at this point to take care of and keep a baby bird, feed them every 10 to 15 minutes while the sun is up. Um, and we only took it so far until we didn't know what to do, and it and the baby bird didn't make it. So we didn't want to do that project again. We knew that, although it was cool. Later that day, we went somewhere. I don't know if it was a like a cookout with our friends or meeting family, I don't know, but we went somewhere, it was hot, got in the car, left, came back kind of late at night. It was probably 10 p.m. Things were starting to cool off. We get out of the car with our tired girls who are kind of teenager-y or young teenagers at this point, I think. And we get to go in the house and we walk by the garbage can, and there's this little choop, choop, choop, choop, like this little bird cry from the garbage can. Our girls heard it first, right? And they're like, Oh, oh my gosh, there's a I hear a bird in the garbage can, and they all rush to the garbage can to see what's making this noise. And I looked at my husband, and I just like sent him glaring darts, I think. I'm like, I thought you took care of that. You said you'd take care of it. And this garbage can sat in the heat of the day for a long time, and then we were gone for a few hours, and and he did some what we thought was damage to the contents of the garbage can, but no, this baby bird survived. So now my girls are so excited, they dig into the garbage can, they find the live baby bird who's doing just fine. And they're like, Oh, can we keep it? We're gonna keep it, we know what to do. And they did, they kept it and they knew what to do, and we did it better this time. Um, we fed it better, it grew. Um, the girls were older, there they everyone helped. This bird again got pretty phenomenal, grew all its feathers in, hopping around, could fly across the room to us. Um, we kept up with its food much better. We learned a lot as it its food preferences and needs changed, and we had this bird for longer, a longer period of time, a few weeks. I don't remember how long, but we had this bird for a few weeks, and it got to a point where it was time to release the bird. So we researched that. How do you release a bird into the wild? And and we released it into our backyard in time, and we saw it actually around our yard and neighbors' yards near us for a couple days and then it was gone. So we don't know the end story to that bird, but um it was phenomenal again to see this this process, how birds birds just fascinate me, how they live and grow and the absolute confidence and with which they do it, right? The mothering, the parenting of them, and birds are pretty cool co-parenters, actually. There's a lot of species who the dad does a whole lot of work too, which I love that expect aspect of as well, whether it's sitting on eggs, feeding baby birds. Well, all of this came to mind fairly recently.

Comparison Culture vs Instinct Parenting

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Um, my 17-year-old daughter and I were on a long walk just a couple days ago, actually, last week, and um we came upon a mother duck who had six little ducklings following her in a in a river that we were next to. And um, they were the only kind of ducks around, and we were kind of watching them for a while. And these babies, I call them teenager ducks. They weren't tiny, they weren't the tiny fluffy cute ones, they were kind of teenagers getting kind of bold, you know, getting a little bit brave in their old age. And they kind of popped out of the water and came towards us, which surprised us as we were walking near the water. Um, and I just leaned down and picked one up, and my daughter wanted to hold it, so she held it, and it was not large, but not tiny either. Um, super easy to grab. And the mother duck, again, like the absolute courage and bravery, she hopped right out of the water. She's so tiny, so mighty, so much smaller than us. And with her open beak was just hissing at us, going for us. Um, and we put the duck down and they all went on their way. But it again, these mother birds, as we compare ourselves a lot to other mothers. Um, we look at how our neighbor or our friend or our relative or um an influencer, someone on social media, how they're a mom and how we should be a mom, what they look like, what they sound like, how their baby's turning out, how they're what their schedule's like, how they're feeding their baby. These mother ducks have no other examples. They have instincts, right? Yes, they're creatures. Yes, they have a lot of um analytic instincts available to them that we actually have too in a lot of ways, if we really touch into them. So that's a reason why I absolutely love the perfect mother is mother birds, and I love watching them and the the mighty, the fierceness of the baby birds as well. Um, I just absolutely love that. So that's uh a little bit of a background why I love the named Hatched and Latched, and how these cute little baby birds, mama birds, and papa birds, too, I guess, can teach us a lot about parenting um and motherhood in our human world, which is much more complicated, obviously. Um, but anyway, that's a little intro and um background to my um this new face that my business has right now, Hatched and Latched. If you want to go visit hatchedandlatched.com, please do so. We have some classes on there. We have childbirth education classes. I like to keep things affordable, um, a full series of first sale on there. I think it's $75 and a full breastfeeding preparation class for $50 for those of you who are interested in that. It's so important to get some preparation. Also, of course, have birth dealer services, postpartum services. We've got some a great team that does um overnights, daytime, um, and lactation services as well. So we like to provide all of that, keep it within one team if if for those who are interested in it. Um, but please go visit hatchedonlatch.com. So happy to have you here with us today. Um, and hopefully you can find something outer nature that also inspires you, um, thrills you, kind of gives gives you a kick like birds have for me over the last many

Classes, Services, and A Closing Ask

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years that I have learned lessons from baby birds and mama birds. Pretty, pretty awesome little group of people there. Anyway, glad you could be with us today on the Ordinary Deal of Podcast. Again, this is Angie Rose, your host, signing off. Please join us next time and please make a human connection or bird connection. Go out and make a connection with someone that you know or someone that you don't. It's important and we need each other. I'll see you here next time.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Roger, hosted by Hatchon Labs. You can find episode credits in the show notes and more information by visiting HatchonLabs.com. If this podcast has been helpful to you, please leave a rating wherever you listen to a podcast. Your support helps us to continue having thoughtful conversations about birth, breastfeeding, and other art and life.