Meet the Founder and Owner: Sara Pixton

This is the first post in a series of blog posts introducing each member of the Summit Birth Utah team.

Hi, I'm Sara!

There are two of us (Sara(h)s) on the Summit Birth Utah team -- I'm Sara Pixton, the founder and owner of Summit Birth Utah.

I love hearing people's stories! It helps us get to know one another at a deep, authentic level. In this post, I'm going to share some of my story. I would love to hear yours, too! Please feel free to drop it in the comments below, send me an email ([email protected]), or include it when you reach out to us through the contact form. We want to get to know you!

My Story

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up. I may even still be figuring it out. :)

After high school graduation, I headed to college, thinking I would study English and get an editing minor, and would spend my career ridding the world of comma splices, bad grammar, and sentence fragments. After not too long, though, I decided I wanted to make a gentler, more inspiring impact on the world. I switched my major to Elementary Education and graduated with that degree.

After teaching for a couple of years I realized something important about myself: I do not have the patience to manage the behavior of large groups of small children all day. At the end of my second year of teaching, I also gave birth to my twin daughters, which kept me busy for a while. :)

I can just FEEL the exhaustion of those days when I look at this picture.

Over the next few years, I did some private tutoring of elementary-age kids, but have not returned to classroom teaching. Around the time my son was born, I decided to go back to school again to get a master's degree in applied linguistics, emphasizing K-12 education for kids whose primary language is not English. I planned to go back to work as an elementary educator, but as an ESL specialist rather than a classroom teacher. That way, I reasoned, I could still inspire and teach kids, but wouldn't be responsible for a class full of kids. And I would be putting my love for language to good use!

Then, my son was born, and everything changed. I fell hard for birth. I was smitten, twitter-pated. In love. My son's birth was the single most empowering and transformative event of my life. My twins' birth had been an emergency-laden medical event during which no one really recognized that I had a voice or preferences. It just happened to me. And, unfortunately, ended with an urgent c-section, which led to many other health complications for months and years afterwards.

I prepared differently for my son's birth. I took a 10-week comprehensive childbirth class, and I knew my options. I chose a care provider who was supportive of them, and I had an unmedicated VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). I came away from that birth with a sense of wonder for my body and my strength. I wanted other women to experience birth this way. So I became a birth doula.

And then a postpartum doula, and then a childbirth educator. I used my applied linguistics MA to host a podcast and trainings for birth professionals about the power of our words. I planned for years on becoming a certified nurse midwife. But then, after five years of being a birth doula, I burned out from the on-call role of being available any time, day or night, for an unpredictable length of time. My mental health and family well-being called for a more predictable, daytime schedule. And I wasn't enjoying my nursing pre-requisite classes. I reeled for a while, wondering what I would do, when I had been so set on my dream of becoming a CNM.

And then one day, I was driving my daughter to therapy, and she said, "You know, Mom, if you ever get tired of birth stuff, you would be a great therapist."

That beautiful gift from my daughter started me on my current path. While I continue to teach childbirth classes and offer a postpartum support group, and I still manage this wonderful team of birth doulas, I am no longer practicing as a birth doula. I'm in school (again!) to become a mental health therapist, and I plan to specialize in perinatal mental health, serving clients struggling through infertility, miscarriage and loss, prenatal and postpartum mood disorders, and recovering from traumatic births.

I love the twisty-turny path my story has taken, and it feels so good to be where I am now on this path. I am so grateful for all of the students and clients I have worked with over the years, and can't wait to see what comes next!