Laura McCarthy

Postpartum Doula

Laura Interlandi is a postpartum centric full spectrum doula and educator with a background in writing and performing. After graduating from Brentwood in 2004 Laura sampled a year at McGill University before going on to study Classical Acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in the UK. Upon graduation she was awarded Top Vocalist on CBC's Triple Sensation, secured a fancy agent and became a member of the Canadian Actors Equity Association performing professionally across Canada in plays, musicals, opera, and film. After sampling cities across North America and Europe, she lived for a 7 year stint in New York City where she birthed 3 children and a new career as a doula, before returning to live on Vancouver Island in 2018 with her family.

She founded her business Birdsong Brooklyn in 2013 with friend and dream work wife (fellow actor/writer/idea generator) Erica Livingston. Laura is a self taught entrepreneur and forward thinking business woman. She has far more ideas than she does childcare and is always balancing her vision with reality. Sick of the question (that her husband has never been asked) “Where are your kids when you’re working?” Laura has a keen understanding of gender roles and the challenges female identifying (and non binary folks) face in school, life and the workplace.

To that end, Laura uses the words: placenta, menstruation and cervical ripener in her daily speech - not to shock (although that’s fun too!) but to normalize the experience of birthing people and encourage society to evolve beyond the internalized misogyny that underpins embarrassment around the terms and biological processes that create our lives in the first place. Doula work, in Laura’s eyes, is an ongoing commitment to self education in the intersecting fields of science, sociology, wellness, cultural anthropology and politics. To be a doula is to be at the edge of thought and unafraid to bring everything you are to what you do. Laura is honored to meet people at the most powerful and transformative moments of their lives, helping them navigate great change and facilitating conditions for personal empowerment and deep healing.

Additionally, Laura is the Dean of the Holistic Doula Program at Pacific Rim College in Victoria BC and co-writer/facilitator of the Postpartum Doula Training for Carriage House Birth, with whom she trained over 100 new doulas in NYC and LA last year. Through her business, Birdsong Brooklyn, she teaches and mentors doulas in person and online with original curricula written and facilitated by herself and fellow co-founder Erica Livingston. At present they have students in 13 countries on 4 continents, a growing list of applicants for their 2020 Mentorship Program SEEN, a new podcast and an exciting teaching and traveling schedule on the horizon.

Laura is motivated most by her 3 ridiculously amazing kids who are for sure the smartest, funniest people on the planet. She credits her current sanity to her parent's ongoing support and husband Sal, who goes along with her hair brained schemes and is committed to co-creating a life based on equity both inside and outside of their family home.