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.