Baby or Child Naming/Welcoming Ceremony
Are looking for your own unique way to celebrate your child’s arrival and begin to build that village of people who will dedicate themselves to helping you raise your child?
- Maybe you wish to welcome your child into the world and your life and share the child’s full name and its meanings to your nearest and dearest.
- Or you have chosen a person or two to be special people in their lives, guardians, god or soul parents who dedicate themselves to this child’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.
- Or perhaps you are adopting and want to dedicate yourself to raising this child and present him or her to your family and friends
- Or you are giving you child up for adoption and as the biological parents you want to create a ceremony to express you love and wishes for your baby.
I have officiated a number of Child/or Baby Naming or Blessing Ceremonies, customized and unique to each family and child being honoured. I once worked with the two couples to create a ceremony that honoured these two simultaneous and connected right of passages and entrusted the new born baby girl from the biological parents to the love and care of her adoptive parents.
“I wanted to thank you again for your sensitivity, caring and skill in facilitating the Entrustment Ceremony last Saturday. We were both emotionally exhausted at the end of the day, but we felt like Nicola’s parents rather than temporary childcare providers. The ceremony was beautifully planned and executed thanks to your planning and working with Joanne. You are a talented doula from my point of view – your support of Joanne has been steadfast. Please accept my thanks once again.” Lynda and Ron
Mother Blessing
In North America, it is common to mark the imminent arrival of a baby with a Baby Shower in which family and friends “shower” the mother-to-be and her partner with gifts for her baby. Since the 1970s, some women sought ways to create ceremonies that would help the pregnant woman prepare emotionally and spiritually for the birth as well as develop emotional and spiritual bonds between the mother, her baby and her community.
I learned the Mother Blessing Ceremony from midwives in British Columbia, who learned it from Navajo women. A circle of women from the family and close friends get together and, with simple rituals and singing, they bless the way of the pregnant woman and help her to prepare for the birth of the baby. I facilitated many of these ceremonies in British Columbia and Quebec, sometimes with the participation of men, and always according to the wishes and needs of the woman and her baby who will soon be born.
“This Blessed Bee is for your garden, and to thank you for being a loving soul. This Ceremony has filled my heart before it has even taken place. Your generosity, strength, commitment to planting healthy seeds, all your good stuff inspires me as I ever so gently take steps into motherhood to join you in welcoming others.” Tanis