About Me

Hi, I'm Jylani! I'm a proud mom of two and a grandmother (affectionately known as Bibi), and I feel incredibly blessed to do this work and to celebrate such a sacred process. I'm a contemplative full-spectrum doula and perinatal care practitioner with over 35 years of experience in women's health and embodied practice. Originally from Brooklyn, I now live and work across Southern and Northern California, bridging the wisdom of multiple traditions with evidence-informed, clinically grounded care.

My background includes 29 years of licensed nursing practice, doctoral training in clinical psychology, and specialized training in lactation consulting, infant massage, early childhood education, prenatal yoga, and perinatal and postpartum care. I've had the privilege of supporting 80 to 100 families across the full spectrum of perinatal experience, including birth, postpartum, loss, abortion, and fertility-supported pregnancies.

I specialize in guiding women into the sacredness that meets all the transitions from the beginning to the postpartum period - holding space for mothers navigating the deep interior shifts that follow birth, moving beyond the clinical and the logistical into the territory of identity, embodiment, and becoming. Supporting families through this tender season is truly my calling.

I offer in-person and telehealth support across California, serving all families with particular attentiveness to BIPOC communities, for whom culturally grounded, contemplative care has historically been absent. Every mother deserves to be witnessed, not managed, and that is the center of everything I do.

Practice Philosophy

I approach perinatal care as threshold work filled with significant transitions and waves of emotion. Pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period aren't medical events to be managed; they're profound crossings that ask a woman to release who she was and meet who she is becoming. My role is not to fix or direct that passage, but to be a steady, informed, and embodied presence within it, celebrating the mother, the baby, the family, and the process itself.

My practice is rooted in 29 years of mother-and-baby care, 35 years of contemplative practice across multiple lineages, a clinical background as a licensed nurse, and doctoral training in clinical psychology. I bring all of that into the room, not as authority, but as a resource. I listen at the level of the body, not only the words, and I follow what a mother is actually carrying, rather than what she thinks she should feel, using somatic practices to support well-being and embodied understanding.

Having supported families across the full spectrum of perinatal experience, I'm equally at home in a quiet postpartum room and a labor room that has become complicated. I meet each family exactly where they are, without agenda, with full presence.

Overall, I believe pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care, done well, guide a woman to herself. That is always the direction I am moving toward.

Population Experience

BIPOC Families, LGBTQIA+ Families, Single & Partnered Parents, Adoptive & Foster Families, Teen & Young Parents, Neurodivergent Families, High-Risk Pregnancies, NICU Families, Vaginal Birth, Cesarean Birth, Fertility-Supported & IVF Journeys, Families Navigating Pregnancy & Infant Loss, Families Navigating Abortion

Specialties

‍

• Contemplative & Mindfulness-Based Perinatal Care
• Prenatal
• Postpartum & Fourth Trimester Support
• Perinatal Mood & Emotional Wellbeing
• Trauma-Informed Birth Support
• Postpartum Care
• Lactation Support & Infant Feeding
• Infant Massage & Newborn Care
• Prenatal Yoga & Somatic Movement
• Childbirth Education
• Infant CPR & First Aid
• Pregnancy Loss & Bereavement Support
• Abortion & Reproductive Loss Support
• Fertility & IVF Support
• Community Health & BIPOC Maternal Health

Services Offered

‍

• Prenatal Care
• In-Person Labor & Birth Support
• Virtual Labor & Birth Support
• Postpartum Care
• Pregnancy Loss Support
• IVF Support
• Extended In-Home Postpartum Care