Full of Grace Birth Services opened recently on Buckley Hall Road, Cobbs Creek, in the building that houses Curves.

Owner Bettie Sheets offers a variety of birthing and parenting services. She began seeing clients in April, and plans to be operating with a full schedule in May.

A trained midwife, Sheets offers an at-home birthing experience instead of the more impersonal birth women often experience in a hospital. Also, Sheets is a doula, one who comforts a woman, also called a birthing coach. Doula is from the Greek for female bond servant, she said.

Sheets offers advice in nutrition and other aspects of readying a woman to give birth. The office includes a clothes closet where patrons and others in the community drop off clothing that a woman might need for her new child. There is also a lending library filled with all types of pregnancy, birthing and parenting information.

The office sells some nutritional supplements.
On the second Saturday of each month, Sheets said sh...