August 25, 2020
Jessica Roberts
August 25, 2020
Jessica Roberts
Miss Rosalind, so lovely!
This happy girl is the product of two doting and enamored parents. She’ll probably be told the story of her birth one day, but it won’t be the usual “this many hours of terrible labor!” version. It will be one about the joys, happiness and wonders of giving birth. It won’t be about ME – but about what WE had to do together. I know the baby has a lot to do in the labor too. That is one of the benefits of a doula.
First of all, let me tell you what a doula does. A doula is a trained pregnancy, labor and delivery support person who can make your birthing experience a positive and healthy one in a number of ways. In fact, doulas:
First of all, let me tell you what a doula does. A doula is a trained pregnancy, labor and delivery support person who can make your birthing experience a positive and healthy one in a number of ways. In fact, doulas:
It was the latter two things I was after originally, but I reaped the benefits of all the above.
For example, my doula taught us that eating dates daily helps to shorten labor and prepare your cervix for easier birth. That sounds like hippie stuff, but the study abstract from the National Institutes of Health can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280989.
My active labor and delivery ended up being only 5.5 hours even with an epidural (which slows it down), being a first time mother, an 8.5 pound baby, and a stall due to a complication.
It’s important to pair a doula with a doctor who supports mothers who are empowered to be part of their medical decisions and who want a doula. I don’t think there’s a better doctor on the planet than Dr. Sara Gerhards at Pacific Women’s Center. Both my doctor and my doula knew I had an appreciation for the science, and during my labor at one point my doctor brought me print outs of study statistics to help me make a key decision. My doula talked with me about the likely pain, time, worries and outcomes of our options – and both allowed me to make the decision for myself.
Unfortunately after our daughter arrived, I had a pretty uncommon bad reaction to the epidural (that I only had to get to deal with the complication) and a rapid response team was called in to help me regain consciousness, get my blood pressure back up out of the basement (it dropped to 53/18), and my heart rate back up to normal levels.
My doula was luckily there to help show us how to guide the baby to latch for breastfeeding afterwards and make sure we still got plenty of skin to skin contact despite my arms being hard to move due to all the IVs and blood pressure cuffs, etc. restricting my movement. Usually a nurse could help you do that, but my nurse was having to attend to keeping me alive. This can happen, and we would have been fumbling, completely inexperienced, to learn to do it on our own.
I think a lot of points through my birthing experience would probably have been pretty dramatic and maybe even traumatizing to process afterwards if it had not been for my doula. It’s pretty commonly known mothers process their birthing experiences for the rest of their lives, but not many people talk about it or what that means for mental health. And yet, still only 6% of women are taking doulas into their deliveries with them. I’ll never forget a question our doula brought up in our childbirth classes:
“Raise your hand if you think the best coaches are those who have never played the sport they coach..”
Doulas have attended far more births than any mother (although most doulas are also mothers). They don’t have to remember things from that one class that one night after work like most people are expecting their partners to – they have the experience and just habitually know what to do. They teach even the labor and delivery nurses a few tricks they haven’t seen before. Finally, they allow your partner to be just what they always are – the person who loves you, holds your hand, cheers you on, and helps to soothe your mind without them having to stress about coaching you through a sport they know nothing about.
Take a look at this article about the myths of doulas: http://thedoulahouse.com/5-doula-myths-debunked/
I agree wholeheartedly with the part about the expensive cribs, diaper genies, etc. No one questions that expense but they quickly get a judgey eye as soon as you say the word doula. I know people who spend as much or more on a fancy pram/stroller than it cost for our doula’s services and I would throw my stroller and most of our baby’s stuff in the river before I would give up my experience with our doula.
I realize most of my friends who will see this are already past the milestone of starting their families, but I hope you save this info in that brain of yours somewhere, and share it with your own kids when the time comes. Or at least now when you hear someone mention their doula, you’ll know what it is!
Now, don’t even get me started on the value of a postpartum doula during those first few tender weeks at home…
First of all, let me tell you what a doula does. A doula is a trained pregnancy, labor and delivery support person who can make your birthing experience a positive and healthy one in a number of ways.
I’ve heard expecting mothers and the people around them make a number of different statements about why they don’t think they need childbirth classes.