Today we’d like to introduce you to Tamara & Jesse Kankowski.
Hi Tamara & Jesse, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Our journey into this space started at the bedside. For years, Tamara has served families as a birth doula, childbirth educator, and founder of Stork Helpers. When you’re in birth work, your life revolves around supporting laboring mothers, navigating unpredictable schedules, and being there for families during some of the most transformative moments of their lives.
As Tamara’s practice grew, so did the administrative reality behind it—managing client communications, tracking birth outcomes, coordinating backup doulas, and living with a phone ringer on full volume 24/7. Jesse, coming from a executive tech and systems background, got a front-row seat to the chaotic behind-the-scenes world of maternal healthcare.
We quickly realized that standard business tools and CRMs weren’t built for the sacred, unpredictable nature of birth work. Most software treats users like corporate sales reps trying to hit quotas, whereas birth workers need systems that protect their rest, respect their clients, and handle real-world logistics like middle-of-the-night labor calls.
That shared reality led us to build BirthFlow—a platform created specifically for doulas and agency owners to streamline their entire operation, protect their personal boundaries, and map the true impact of their work.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth, linear road—but the struggles along the way are exactly what shaped the tools we build today.
On the birth work side with Stork Helpers, the biggest hurdle early on was simply surviving the operational grind. Birth work is deeply intimate and emotionally demanding, but when you’re running a practice, you’re also forced to be a marketer, scheduler, accountant, and 24/7 call center. Trying to balance compassionate client care with late-night admin work and an unpredictable schedule took a real toll on our personal life and sleep.
On the software development side with BirthFlow, our primary struggle was overcoming the ‘tech trap.’ Most standard business tools are built for rigid 9-to-5 corporate workflows. We spent a lot of time trying to adapt existing platforms before realizing they were fundamentally broken for birth workers. We had to go back to the drawing board to design custom features—like gestation-based notification overrides and live agency command tracking—that actually respected the chaotic, non-linear reality of labor and delivery.
Building something truly new for a niche, high empathy industry means constantly fighting the urge to take shortcuts. Every time we hit a roadblock, we reminded ourselves that if we were feeling this friction in our own practice, thousands of other doulas were feeling it too.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At the end of the day, our work is all about supporting birth workers and the families they serve—both in person and behind the scenes.
Through Stork Helpers, Tamara provides hands-on birth doula care, postpartum support, and childbirth education. We focus on being a calm, reassuring presence for families as they navigate pregnancy and labor, making sure they feel informed and supported every step of the way.
Living that life—waking up at 2:00 AM, managing on-call schedules, and dealing with administrative chaos—is what inspired us to build BirthFlow. Standard business tools and CRMs are built for corporate 9-to-5 jobs, not the unpredictable reality of birth work. Doulas don’t care about sales pipelines or corporate quotas; they need software that protects their sleep, manages client communications, and keeps their practice running smoothly.
What sets us apart is that we aren’t tech founders sitting in an office making guesses. We live this life every day, so everything in BirthFlow is built around what actually happens in the field:
Smart Quiet Hours: A notification system that silences non-urgent midnight texts from clients who are weeks away, but rings loud and clear the moment someone enters their active birth window.
Real Practice Stats: A simple way for doulas to track their actual impact—like bedside support hours, VBAC success rates, and local hospital trends—without drowning in spreadsheets.
Agency Command Center: A single dashboard that lets agency owners see who is currently at a birth, track shift hours, and handle backup swaps without frantic late-night group text chains.
As a brand, we’re most proud of building tools that prevent burnout. We want readers to know that whether we’re holding hands in a delivery room or helping a doula run her business, our goal is the same: giving birth workers the peace of mind and boundaries they need so they can show up at their best for growing families.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
At the end of the day, we put in the long hours and built this from the ground up ourselves, but we definitely had some incredible support behind us.
Most of all, we owe a huge thanks to our kids and our close family. Balancing an unpredictable on-call lifestyle while launching a software platform means ducking out in the middle of family dinners, dealing with wild schedules, and talking shop around the kitchen table late at night. Having a family that just gets it, stays patient, and cheers us on has been everything.
We’re also really grateful to the handful of doulas and birth workers who took time out of their busy schedules early on to talk with us. They shared their real-world headaches, gave us honest feedback on our ideas, and helped confirm that the problems we were trying to solve were happening all across the birth community.
Pricing:
- Plans start at $29/month. Free Trial: A 7-day free trial is available for birth workers wanting to test the platform before committing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.GetBirthFlow.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/birthflowdoulaapp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/birthflowdoulaapp
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/birthflow/posts/?feedView=all
