Privacy Policy

Who we are

Hip to Heart is a doula agency operated by Hip to Heart LLC ("Hip to Heart," "we," "us," or "our"), located at 25 Messenger Street, Plainville, MA 02762. We match families with birth and postpartum doulas and provide support through pregnancy, birth, and the early postpartum period.

We know that reaching out to us often means sharing something personal at a vulnerable time. This policy explains what we collect, what we do with it, who else sees it, and what control you have. If anything here is unclear, email [email protected] and ask.

What this policy covers

This policy applies to hiptoheart.com, our consultation and intake forms, our email communications, and the information we gather in the course of matching you with a doula and supporting your care.

Information you give us

• Contact details — your name, email address, phone number, and address or service area.
• Family and care information — the details you share when you inquire or complete an intake form. Depending on what you tell us, this may include your due date or your baby’s birth date, where you plan to give birth, who else is on your care team, your birth preferences, your feeding plans, the support you are looking for, your household situation, and any circumstances you want your doula to know about.
• Scheduling and communication — consultation bookings, the messages you send us, and our notes about our conversations.
• Payment information — your billing details and payment history. We do not receive or store your full card number; that goes directly to our payment processor.
• Session records — your doula keeps records of your sessions so she can support you consistently and hand off cleanly to a backup if one is needed. If any part of a session is audio or video recorded, your doula will tell you clearly beforehand and it will be covered in your service agreement.
• Feedback — reviews, survey responses, and testimonials you choose to give us.

Information we collect automatically

When you visit our website, we and our analytics and advertising partners automatically collect your IP address and approximate location, your device and browser type, the pages you view and links you click, how you arrived at our site, and whether you opened our emails. This is collected through cookies and similar technologies, described in our Cookie Policy.

How we use your information

• To respond to your inquiry and schedule your consultation
• To match you with a doula whose availability, experience, and approach fit what you need
• To share what your doula needs to know in order to support you well
• To coordinate your care, including scheduling, on-call arrangements, and backup coverage
• To process payments and manage your account
• To communicate with you about your care, and — if you have opted in — to send you occasional updates and resources
• To improve our services and understand how families find us
• To run advertising campaigns, using website activity and aggregate data only
• To meet legal, tax, insurance, and recordkeeping obligations

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it in these situations and no others.

Your doula and care team

The doula matched to you receives the information she needs to support you. Our doulas are independent contractors who are contractually bound to confidentiality. Where a backup doula is called in, she receives the same information for the same purpose.

Service providers

Others

• Administrative support — an assistant who occasionally helps with scheduling and correspondence may see your contact and booking information. Anyone in that role is bound by a written confidentiality obligation.
• Professional advisors — our accountants, attorneys, and insurers, under confidentiality obligations.
• Legal and safety — where required by law, subpoena, or valid government request, or where we believe in good faith it is necessary to protect someone’s safety. If we ever have reason to believe a child or vulnerable person is at risk, we will act as the law requires and as our conscience requires.
• Business transfer — if all or part of our business is sold, merged, or transferred, your information may be among the assets transferred to the new owner, who would then be bound to handle it consistently with this policy or to give you notice of any change. We will notify you before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Testimonials, photos, and stories

We never publish your name, your photograph, your baby’s photograph, or your birth story without your specific written permission. If we would like to feature you, we will ask, and you can say no without it affecting your care in any way. You can withdraw that permission at any time by emailing [email protected], and we will remove the content from anywhere we control, though we cannot recall material that has already been printed or shared by others.

Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights. We extend them to everyone.

• Access — request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correct — ask us to fix anything inaccurate
• Delete — ask us to delete your information
• Portability — receive your information in a portable format
• Opt out — of targeted advertising and of any sale or sharing of your information
• Limit sensitive information — restrict our use of sensitive information to what is needed to serve you
• Withdraw consent — at any time, where we relied on it
• Non-discrimination — exercising any of these rights will never affect your care or your pricing
• Appeal — if we decline a request, reply to our decision and we will reconsider in writing

To make a request, email [email protected] from the address associated with your file. We will verify your identity before acting and respond within 45 days, telling you if we need more time.

Some records we must keep even after a deletion request: completed transaction and tax records, signed agreements, and records our insurer or the law requires us to retain.

Advertising

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for targeted advertising. We do not run retargeting ads, we do not build advertising audiences from our contact list, and we never use what you share on an intake form to market to you or to anyone else.

We do use Google Analytics to understand how families find and use our website. You can opt out through our cookie banner, through Google’s browser opt-out add-on, or by sending a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser, which we honor.

If we begin advertising in the future, we will update this policy before we start.

Email

Messages about your care, your appointments, and your invoices are part of the service and continue as long as we are working together.

When you inquire with us, we add your email address to our mailing list so we can follow up and occasionally send you resources and updates. Every one of those emails includes an unsubscribe link and our mailing address, and you can unsubscribe at any time without it affecting your care or any future inquiry. Unsubscribing stops the list emails; it does not stop messages about an active booking.

Text messages

Your doula may text you directly about your care — scheduling, on-call coordination, checking in, and reaching you when labor begins. Those messages come from her own phone, because that is how on-call support works. They are part of the service, not marketing.

We do not send marketing text messages. If that ever changes, we will ask your permission separately first.

How long we keep your information

How we protect your information

We use encryption in transit, access controls, and multi-factor authentication on our business accounts, and we limit access to client information to the people who need it — the office and the doula assigned to you. Our doulas are bound by written confidentiality obligations. We maintain a written information security program covering how personal information is handled.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and any required regulators as the law requires.

Children

Our website is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children.

We do collect information from you about your child — due dates, birth dates, feeding and sleep details, and health context you choose to share. We use that information only to provide your family’s care and we hold it to the same standard as everything else in this policy. You may ask us to correct or delete it at any time, subject to the retention requirements above.

Where we operate

We serve families in Massachusetts and surrounding New England communities. Your information is processed in the United States. We do not knowingly provide services to families outside the United States.

Links to other sites

We link to other websites and resources. We do not control them and are not responsible for their privacy practices.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy and will change the "Last updated" date above. For material changes, and for any change of ownership, we will notify you by email or a prominent notice on our website before the change takes effect.

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