About our Cooperative Members

Abby Bordner, CD, ICCE,  is the Director of The Birthing Tree Cooperative.  She brought together this wonderful group of women at the end of 2004 to offer the community of Santa Fe (and surrounding areas) a unique collaboration of services related to pregnancy, birth and parenting.  She has worked in family health for over ten years; at Planned Parenthood, Lovelace Pediatrics and Galisteo Ob/Gyn in a nursing capacity.  Abby works in the Cooperative as a childbirth educator, labor and postpartum doula and as a private consultant for childbirth and parenting.  She draws from all her experience, especially that of being the mother of two.  In relationship with her class participants and clients, she builds a safe and nonjudgmental space that leads to self discovery and connection with partners and family members.  Abby believes our birth experience is an opportunity to practice determination, letting go, acceptance and grace.  If a woman uses these skills to birth her baby, the same skills are useful for parenting and all of life’s greatest tasks.

Sharon Laurie, CD, Attending births since 1983, Sharon has a full range of birthing experiences at both home and hospital births. Drawing from her life long work as a healer, she sees birth as a natural and normal process and works with a woman to trust her own body wisdom for the different stages of labor. Understanding birth as an act of true power and a spiritual passage, Sharon is passionate about assisting women and their partners to be well prepared- through informed choice and the reminder of her power and ability to birth from a place of flexibility and strength, love and grace, surrender and wisdom- however their unique birthing experience unfolds. Through the Cooperative Sharon also teaches Childbirth Preparation classes, the Natural Childbirth class and directs the Mentoring Program of the Birthing Tree, guiding and supporting new interns into becoming certified doulas. Sharon feels it is a great honor to attend women and their partners while birthing their baby.

Simone Snyder, CD was first introduced to the concept of a Doula while attending New York University for Anthropology and Women's Studies. Her inspiration for becoming a Doula came from her own experience of having labor support present at her son's birth in 2001. Simone believes that pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting offer a unique opportunity for individuals to gain knowledge, power, and strength. She also finds inspiration in the ways in which women empower themselves and make informed decisions about their own birthing philosophies. Simone is also a licensed massage therapist specializing in prenatal and postpartum massage as well as a Reiki practitioner. She has plans to also become a certified childbirth educator and infant massage therapist in the very near future. Simone feels very blessed to have found this path and is grateful for each birth she attends. She has many passions some of which include; spending time with her family, traveling, being outdoors, and she is an avid reader.

Rebecca Servoss, PPD.  After receiving her BA from Eugene Lang College in NYC, Rebecca spent a few years teaching in a Preschool in Brooklyn.   After Rebecca and her husband David started a family together, she became a Postpartum Doula based on her own experiences of her daughter’s birth and the challenging postpartum period. She has since moved to Santa Fe and begun working with the Birthing Tree Cooperative. She is passionate about helping new parents and siblings through the deep transition to life with a newborn. It is an incredible time in a family’s life, and Rebecca is honored to work with each family.  She enjoys sharing this time with them; whether it be helping with infant feeding, newborn and mother care, helping older siblings adjust, doing laundry or cooking, or just giving new parents a chance to take a nap! Rebecca is also working toward becoming a Lactation Consultant and is dedicated to assisting mothers in creating a successful breastfeeding relationship with their babies. In her spare time, she loves to crochet and makes custom baby and children’s hats and blankets.     

Jinny Erdely, LM has been attending home births in Santa Fe and the surrounding areas for many years.  She is a lactation specialist and teaches the Breastfeeding Class for The Birthing Tree Cooperative. Of her many hobbies, she enjoys gardening and traveling the most.

Myriah Haggard, CD, has known for many years that she would work with women during the childbearing year, but before pursuing this work she has enjoyed passionately traveling and dancing throughout the world, receiving her degree in French studies and Dance from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and becoming a licensed massage therapist at the Scherer Institute in Santa Fe, NM.  Now she has settled back in Santa Fe, her home town, to begin her work with women.  She has spent 2008 attending births as an intern doula with The Birthing Tree where she is now a certified doula.  Myriah is also studying as a Midwife’s apprentice.

Eleanor first arrived in Santa Fe in 2004 to work as an intern at St. Elizabeth Homeless Shelter. Her interest in healthcare prompted a move to Rhode Island in 2006, where she began her work as a doula through AmeriCorps in Providence. She worked with immigrant women, teenage mothers, and uninsured families in Providence providing prenatal education and doula services. After her year in Rhode Island, she returned to Santa Fe to continue to work at St. Elizabeth Shelter. She joined the Birthing Tree as an intern in the Spring of 2009 and is thrilled to now be working as a certified doula. She is planning on pursuing her nursing degree from the Santa Fe Community College and hopes to ultimately become a nurse midwife.