Tag: Doula Love

Doula? A do what now?

Midwives and doulas have very different jobs!

One of the most common misconceptions that I run into as a doula is that people think that we are the same as midwives. While I have worked with some really great midwives in my time as a doula, and LOVED having midwives catch my own 2 babies, I do not want to be a midwife or be confused for one. Doula care can compliment midwifery care very well, but we certainly do not replace a midwife.

As a doula, I do a whole lot of things that can improve your pregnancy, labor, delivery, and immediate postpartum. I help you ask more (and sometimes better or more specific) questions prenatally and think through all those decisions about what you want for your delivery before it is actually the big day. I help you practice different comfort techniques and even help you know exactly what things you actually need to have for your birth and immediate postpartum period either at the hospital or home. I hold hands and help people move around, sometimes with all kinds of wires attached to them. I push on your lower back, squeeze your hips, and massage your hands during labor. I help you to the bathroom and comfort you through the challenges of labor and deliver with all kinds of affirming words. I will let you squeeze my hand and listen to the changes in your voice and demeanor for clues on how I can better help you. I do not doula the same for any two births, as each one presents its own unique set of circumstances.

Midwives provide care for healthy pregnant people prenatally, during labor and delivery, and postpartum. They approach birth differently than an Obstetrician, but essentially do all the medical things an OB can do other than surgery. Midwives view birth as a normal process and often practice watchful waiting while expecting everything to be perfectly normal and fine instead of trying to prevent things from going wrong through action. It can seem a very subtle difference in philosophy, and not all midwives take this approach, but this is the midwifery approach generally to pregnancy and birth.

  • A short and completely non-comprehensive list of things a midwife can do that I do not as a doula:
  • Check your vital signs like blood pressure and temperature
  • Order labs
  • See you for in-office prenatal visits (monthly, biweekly, then weekly)
  • Check your cervix
  • Catch your baby
  • Give you stitches
  • Check your fundal height after delivery
  • Order and administer medication

If you want to learn more about midwives, this link is a good place to start.

If you would like to learn more about doulas, you can read about us here. I would also LOVE to talk to you about my services! You can contact me through this website, via email, phone, or message me on social media–whatever you are comfortable with is fine with me. You can read reviews from previous clients and check my availability at this link as well if you would like.

I love helping my clients navigate pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, and have more than five years of experience as a doula at both hospital and home births. I have worked with some amazing midwives and OBs too. I have been to 8 different hospitals as a doula and learned all about their policies and who has which equipment. I know which cabinets have the towels and where to find the emesis basins. More than that though, I support my clients however they want to be supported, because each one is different and each situation demands different techniques and approaches.

Someone once asked me what the #1 most important quality is for a good doula. That was easy for me to answer: EMPATHY! What I may lack in midwifery clinical skills, I make up for in compassion and listening skills. Midwives and doulas can work really well together and there is definitely room for both in your chosen birthing space!

Dads Doulas Love

Some dads are just the best.

Father’s Day is this weekend, and I want to give some special shout-outs to some of the amazing dads that I have had the privilege of working with in my time as a doula. Before I go there, let me just say that as a doula I ADORE working with some fathers, and not always for the reasons that might be so obvious. There are some rumors out there that doulas replace dads, and frankly that is insulting to both of us in my opinion! First it is insulting to fathers, as it assumes that I am sooo good at my job as a doula that I can possibly get to know a birthing person better than the father of the child they are about to bring into this world. While, yeah, that *might* be possible in some odd constellation of circumstances, for the most part, that is just not true. Secondly, it is insulting to me as a professional, because I am in no way ever trying to replace anyone’s partner for any amount of time.

I LOVE all kinds of fathers for different reasons, and these are 3 types of dads that I think they are ever so special for bringing what they do to the birthing room, wherever that is!

  • Super-involved & helpful fathers are really easy to love as the doula. These are the guys that step into the situation that they may never have been in before and step-up to help as much as they can. These are the guys that ask me pointed questions about how to do better hip-squeezes and where exactly on their partner’s back they should be pressing. They unflinchingly grab a towel to sop up the amniotic fluid that dripped on the floor and watch me like a hawk to see what angle I’m holding their partner’s leg at so that they can do the same. They are enthusiastic, very much present in the moment, and do everything they can to help the process. But these are the easy dads for a doula to love for so many reasons, the biggest reason being that they help make my job easier.

This next one might be a bit more surprising:

  • Dads who made sure I was hired to help because they know they can’t are also big on my list. The fun part for me as the doula, is that I often don’t know that this is why I was hired until we are actually in the moment. This includes one dad that everything medical made him nauseous, so he stayed flat on his back on the couch in the room with his eyes covered the whole time we were at the hospital and kept apologizing to his partner. Seriously, it was the sweetest thing ever and I felt so bad for him throughout the entire birth. These dads know their own limitations, whether they are spoken to me or not prior makes zero difference to me as the doula. I LOVE that they ask for what they personally and their partners need, and honestly wish more people would.
  • Skeptical turned overly appreciative dads might be my favorite though. These are the guys that weren’t sure that they should be hiring me to help at the birth, and it is sometimes clear that they are really just humoring their partners when they agree to spend the money on hiring a doula. These are the dads that eventually become my biggest cheerleaders afterwards. It isn’t that they think they know everything about birth and how to help their partner get through it, rather they are more typically skeptical about spending the money on a doula that may or may not actually be helpful when it comes to the birth. I appreciate the skeptics especially, probably because I tend to be one myself.

As a doula I work with partners to see how they want to be involved. I NEVER want to replace a partner, and always want to help encourage that relationship in this most amazing moment of change. Fathers are special, and there is no possible way I could replace one, even with all my expertise and experience. I help partners participate in a way that they are comfortable with and without requiring them to become experts on childbirth.

Happy Father’s Day to all your amazing dads out there! I hope your day is full of relaxation and appreciation for all you do for your families!!

If you want to read a little more about Dads and Doulas, here is a blog post from DONA International on the subject that debunks some of the myths.

What is your favorite pro-tip for all the new fathers-to-be??

Cesarean Awareness Month

I took that picture above at Indiana University many years after I graduated and I was walking around campus with my family, and I saw the statue with new eyes–with my doula eyes. I had never seen the low-transverse incision mark on her abdomen before that day. It made me smile in admiration and wonder if it was intentional. I’ll probably never know for sure, but I like to think that it is.

April is Cesarean Awareness Month. This was started by
ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network) to direct attention to the fact that the cesarean rate in the United States is too high.
32% of American babies in 2017 were born via cesarean section according to the CDC. That number actually hides quite a bit though. That is the number for TOTAL cesarean births, as Jill Arnold explains on cesareanrates.org, and looking at the low risk first time cesarean data gives us a more accurate picture of what we should be targeting to change, especially given the lack of access to and support of VBAC in many places in the country. There are some amazing people working to try to reduce that first cesarean, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists with this statement originally published in 2014, and Neel Shah and his team at Ariadne Labs who are working to reduce medically unnecessary cesarean surgeries. Shah says that as many as HALF of all cesareans may actually medically unnecessary, and he is not the only one working to reduce that number!

Sometimes cesarean surgery IS necessary. Sometimes surgery saves lives. NOBODY is suggesting that there should be ZERO cesarean surgeries! I join the chorus of people saying that perhaps we should question the efficacy and long-term health consequences for individuals all the way up to the population level.

I’ve never had a cesarean section surgery personally, but I have been in the operating room as a doula for some. Cesarean surgery can be scary, especially if you don’t know what to expect and your support person doesn’t either. Many times you weren’t expecting to be in that operating room, or are questioning whether you should be there right then. Learning about what to expect before you go into the operating room is one of the things I talk about in my childbirth classes. In my first prenatal visit with my clients, we talk about birth preferences, and I always make sure to talk about cesarean birth preferences with every single client no matter what their plans are. Plans sometimes go awry, and knowing what your options are if everything else is going sideways is a great way to mitigate fear as well.

Cesarean birth IS birth, and great medical staff can make a world of difference. There are even some hospitals that will allow a doula into the operating room as a second support person, which can be extremely beneficial for parents who can often feel like strangers in a strange surgery land. I know I have learned so much each time I have been in the operating room, including how best to support a person undergoing surgery, what is normal and expected, what exactly happens in that surgery, which staff is in charge of what action, where to stand, what not to say, and soo much more.

I sincerely hope that more doulas will be allowed in the operating room as a second support person for people undergoing cesarean surgery! I hope that it becomes just one more way that doulas can support the rest of the 32% of births in this country!


Photo by Chris Ensey on Unsplash

Birth is amazing, no matter how it happens. I seriously believe that! The bravery of having your body literally sliced open to bring a child into this world is not lost on me at all. I honor and respect all cesarean parents, and know the sacrifice you have made for those tiny humans.