Nurse. Lactation consultant. Doula trainer. Founder.
Fifteen years in maternal-newborn care. Hundreds of community doulas trained. One Louisiana-based mission to expand who gets supported in birth.
Hi. I’m Madeline. Most people call me Maddy.
I’m a wife, a mother of three, and a Louisianan to the bone — married to an amazing man, raising three kids, and living and working in a state where birth inequity is rampant. The maternal mortality numbers here aren’t a mystery; they’re a result. I count myself one of many leaders in this birth community trying to right the wrongs we see in our rooms every day — to improve outcomes and put birth education in the hands of every family who needs it.
The way I do that is education. Books, training, presentations, social posts — anything that makes evidence-based birth content fun, accessible, interesting, and dynamic enough that someone actually wants to read it. The dense medical textbook didn’t exist for the doulas I was training. The fear-based pregnancy book wasn’t going to help the families I was caring for. So I wrote what was missing.
I started at Belmont Abbey College intending to become a Catholic sister and a midwife. That was the plan. The Lord laughed gently and gave me a different one — and here I am, married to an amazing man, raising three children, still walking into rooms with laboring families, just by a different door.
I earned my BSN at Southeastern Louisiana University and went straight to the bedside as a labor and delivery nurse — the formative years where every page of a textbook gets stress-tested at 3 a.m. with a fetal strip dropping and a family asking you what comes next. Years later I added an MHA from LSU Shreveport, because the systems-level questions kept finding me whether I wanted them or not.
From the bedside I moved into workforce development — first as a healthcare programs manager, then as director of healthcare initiatives and partnerships — building the kinds of pipelines that get more people, more equipped, into more rooms. I’ve taught both undergraduate and graduate coursework at William Carey University. And right now I’m working toward my doctorate at Oklahoma State University, because lifelong learning isn’t a slogan for me; it’s how I’m wired.
Through all of it, I never left the work. Mary’s Hands Network grew out of the same conviction every other piece of this work shares — that birth is sacred, that families deserve better, and that the way you change outcomes is to put real, rigorous, joyful preparation in the hands of the people who do the work.
LeBlanc Health Training publishes books and supplemental resources for birth workers at every level — from the partner who wants to actually be useful in the room to the doula who needs a 965-page training manual. Every book grew out of a gap Madeline kept hitting in fifteen years of practice and teaching.
For doula training and certification, the work happens at Mary’s Hands Network — an ICEA-approved community doula program in Louisiana that provides free and reduced-cost doula services to families across the state. If you want to become a doula, start there.
The same voice you read in the textbook is the voice on social. Direct, evidence-forward, allergic to fear-based content, willing to use a swear word when the moment calls for it. She talks to the reader, not at them, and she assumes the reader is smart.
She believes pregnancy and birth deserve more than slogans. She believes the people in the room — nurses, doulas, partners, families — deserve real preparation, not platitudes. And she believes the maternal mortality numbers in this country are not a mystery; they are a result, and the work is to change the inputs.
“Birth deserves real preparation. Not slogans. Not fear. Real, evidence-based, human-centered preparation.”
The work doesn’t get done by one person with letters after their name. It gets done by communities of people who refuse to let each other walk into a room unprepared. I believe in giving of yourself, in service learning, and in the potential every person carries to make this great world a better one.
If we’re going to do this work for thirty years without burning down, joy isn’t a luxury — it’s a discipline. I’m here to bring as much of it into the room, into the pages, and into the work as humanly possible.
I love to laugh and I love to cry. I have no filter. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. If that’s the kind of voice you want in your books, your training, or your speaker lineup — we’ll get along.
Just unasked ones. Ask the question. Say the thing. I’m a lifelong learner dedicated to making a difference, and I haven’t met a question yet that wasn’t worth taking seriously.
Hundreds of births supported across hospital, birth center, and home settings. Hands-on intrapartum nursing in inpatient OB. Lactation consults at the bedside, in clinic, and via telehealth.
Trained more than 250 community doulas through Mary’s Hands Network. Built the curriculum that has graduated cohort after cohort of birth workers prepared to walk into Louisiana’s rooms.
Author of four titles: a 965-page training manual, a pregnancy guide, a specialty bereavement training, and a pocket-sized comfort reference. All available at books.by.
Public-facing education through @maddy.thedoulalady on Instagram and TikTok. Speaking, partnerships, and continuing-education work that pulls evidence-based birth content out of the journals and into the room.
965 pages. The training manual the field was missing.
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$14.99 Read more → Reference50 doula tricks for the birth room.
$9.99 Read more →Train every doula to walk into the room ready. Put real preparation in the hands of every family. Close the gap between what the literature says and what the bedside delivers.
For doula training and certification, visit Mary’s Hands Network — an ICEA-approved community doula program providing free and reduced-cost doula services to Louisiana families.
Visit MHN →