Doula Offers Advice on Choosing Birth Attendant
February 10, 2007 by Angela White, J.D., breastfeeding counselor
Filed under pregnancy
MammamayI posted a very interesting and helpful response to my post on Choosing a Doula Worldwide. I particularly appreciated the information she provided on how women who are not able to afford a doula can find free or low-cost services. Read on for her advice on how to choose a doula:
“I’m a doula, and it’s GREAT that you’re addressing this! One of the best ways to have a mom who gets off on the right foot breastfeeding is to have that mom hire a doula. Women who have a doula in attendance at the birth of their child are statistically significantly more likely to have a successful (and longer) breastfeeding relationship. And, thank you, too, for listing more than just the DONA site for help in finding a doula in one’s area. Although DONA is perhaps the most well known certification group, they are certainly not the “best” or the “only” one. Not that they have drawbacks, per se (my partner and back-up is a DONA trained doula and I’d feel great knowing she was supporting one of my clients if I weren’t available because of some emergency), just that they’re not the only ones around.
For the most part, I’ve found that the certification process, and who is running it, doesn’t really matter to mothers looking for a doula. However, oftentimes, it DOES make a difference to the woman looking to BECOME a doula. The organizations all have a little bit of a different perspective on birth and how birth should be attended, so most women looking to become a doula will spend many HOURS carefully considering how each certifying body and its course will benefit her as a doula. It’s actually a pretty important milestone in the “life of a doula” to have chosen one’s certification course, and sometimes it’s Childbirth International, CAPPA, or ALACE.
Bellywomen dot net [http://www.bellywomen.net/] is a great resource, too, for women who have a need to be attended by a doula, and can’t afford (really, honestly can’t afford, not don’t want to fork out the money…what I do is REALLY hard work, both emotionally and physically, and if a woman CAN afford to pay me my fee, it is wonderful to be recognized for my abilities) to going rate in the area, they can look on bellywomen for a doula who is willing to work on a sliding scale or willing to fully donate their time (for really destitute clients). Many of us are willing to take a sliding scale or free birth per every so many full fee births to help women in the community who otherwise wouldn’t have the benefit of labor support. I have had many women contact me off of bellywomen, actually, simply because they want to breastfeed and having a doula gives them the best chance they have in their situation to breastfeed.
When you look for a doula, if there are several choices in your area, I highly suggest that you meet face to face with your potential doulas and talk for a while before you make a choice. This is to gauge chemistry. Having this woman in your birth space could be a significant decision for you, and if you have time to make the choice carefully, you should do so! I love my job, but I’d much rather my friend get a birth over me if the chemistry is better between a woman and her than to get the job myself and have the mother have a less than optimal experience because the chemistry just wasn’t right. And you’ll know right away with most doulas if you’re a good fit or not, so don’t worry that, after you’ve met your prospective choices, you’ll make the wrong choice. Kinda like finding the right mate…you’ll know!
The goal of a doula should really be to have birth be something that YOU DO…not something that happens to you or for you. That means that one of her major goals is education before your birth. Informed consent is a big responsibility. And to be TRULY informed when you sign any paperwork and/or make any decision, no matter how big or small, is a large part of birth being something that the mother does, rather than something that is done to her. Next, after having done her first job well, it is a doula’s responsibility to support the mother in the informed choices that she makes. I know of one doula who, if the client doesn’t take her advice, will leave the mother. This isn’t only malpractice right then, but also in that she doesn’t trust her SELF to educate her clients fully, to ENCOURAGE them to make decisions that will make their births their own. So, no matter the decision, if it was made with foreknowledge, then if it’s the right one for the mom, it’s the doula’s job to support it. This is why some women I know make very compassionate friends but would make awful doulas!…because they wouldn’t be able to support a mom no matter her choice.
Good for you, for talking about Doulas. Unfortunately, not enough women know about us and the work we do. I can’t tell you how many women I have met since I started working as a doula who say, ‘Wow! I really wish I had known about doulas when I had my baby!’”
Thanks MammamayI (cute username by the way)!
If you want to read more by MammamayI, she also had a passionate response to the Mom to Mom question on Toddler Nursing.
Thanks, I kind of like my user name, too.
I used to use my first name and middle initial…but I would then run into people IRL who would say, “Hey! You’re XXX aren’t you?!” I like having a little anonimity!
Thanks, too, for posting my reply. I am very passionate about what I do. I really believe that every woman deserves woman to woman support during their childbearing year. It’s one of the drawbacks, actually, of living in our society–that childbirth is so taboo, so private, and so technological. We actually have one of the worst rates of morbidity and mortality (injury and death) for mothers and babies of all the industrialized nations in the world. You wouldn’t think that, as we have the best technology in the world, right? What our culture has lost, though, is the reality that a woman doesn’t need a machine to birth the baby that her body knew so well how to conceive and to grow. We need support, love, and a safe place. Studies have shown over and over and over again that in a normal healthy pregnancy, that support and safe place best comes from the midwifery model of care, not from obstetrics. Obstetricians have a very difficult job. They are trained to deal with HIGH RISK pregnancies. We are the only society in the world where our normal healthy pregnant women are sent to high risk doctors, who are trained to FIX pregnancy and birth, rather than to midwives, who are trained to watch pregnancy and birth, and to educate a woman about how best to stay normal and healthy while pregnant.
I strongly believe that supporting the midwifery model of care during labor and birth helps a woman to find the power inside of herself that she may or may NOT have known she had. It’s the difference between being DELIVERED (ie: being saved), and BIRTHING (ie: bringing life into the world). Semantics is often a small thing, but can make a world of difference to a woman who has become a mother. It can be the difference between starting this new life as a broken person who needed to be saved, or as a potent force that can take anything that comes at her.
I believe this is also the difference between the breastfeeding rates (or lack thereof) in the US and the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees birth as something that women can do. They support them, educate them, and stand by and watch them birth. Then they do the same thing with breastfeeding.
For the women in the US, we are told that our bodies are broken. We are told that we need to be saved from labor and birth, that we can’t possibly do it on our own. Then we’re told that we can “TRY” breastfeeding, but when it doesn’t work, here’s the free formula. We can just tuck it in the back of our cupboard for that inevitable three o’clock feeding that just doesn’t go right. Once again, rather than being supported, educated, and watchfully helped, we are “saved.”
I love my job, because I have never saved a woman. I have only encouraged her, whether it be in birth or in breastfeeding, to do what her body KNOWS HOW TO DO. And, you know what? The moms I support? They birth (I have a ten percent cesarean rate, which is what the WHO recommends as a realisitc rate for unforseen issues that can come up during labor…but these ceareans were not “emergencies,” rather they were carefully considered decisions). And they breastfeed. IT’S AMAZING WHAT WE CAN DO WHEN WE’RE SURE WE ARE CAPABLE OF IT…EVEN IF IT’S HARD!