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| photo from here |
The word "doula" comes from the ancient Greek meaning "a woman who serves" and is now used to refer to a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after birth; or who provides emotional and practical support during the postpartum period.
Studies have shown that when doulas attend birth, labors are shorter with fewer complications, babies are healthier and they breastfeed more easily.
I'm just a day away from completing my initial training as a doula at Bastyr University in Kenmore Washington. From there I will work towards achieving DONA certification and become a working doula.
Why do I want to be a doula? That's a little bit complicated.
**Warning, things are about to get real ranty**
I haven't always been outspoken, I remember being at Costco with my mom when I was probably 10ish and she wanted a mocha shake. She sent me to the concessions to make the purchase and when I got to the front of the line they were out of mocha shakes and then asked if a fruit shake with chocolate blended in would suffice. Thinking — wow, that sounds disgusting — didn't stop me from saying "uhh sure" because I was too bashful and shy and awkward to say "uhhh gross, no".
When I was in college I discovered The Business of Being Born, a documentary by Ricki Lake of all people primarily focused on natural birth and the state of the birth "industry" in the United States. I was, to put it lightly, appalled at the endless cycle of unnecessary interventions, needless c-sections, and in the end traumatic births taking place because they are most easily regulated, "safe", and speedy for the doctor and hospital. What-the-heck I thought, I need to change this.
I started small, spreading the word through my friend group about movies like The Business of Being Born, and books like Spiritual Midwifery by one of my now idols, Ina May Gaskin. I drug a helpless friend along to see Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin & The Farm Midwives which includes a pretty gnarly breech-birth video.
I also started reading, reading about birth but also studying things like c-section rates in the U.S. vs. other nations, the rate of VBACs in the U.S., infant and maternal mortality rates. I took anthropology courses that included sections on birth and asked many a question about home births, hospital births and everything in between.
It wasn't until I decided I really wanted to be a midwife myself that I had to sort out my feelings about birth and life and death. I decided, then at 23 and now at 24, I'm too young and inexperienced to become a midwife. I haven't actually seen a birth yet, I might hate it, and becoming a midwife is rather involved as one might imagine and not really worth doing and then quickly abandoning.
It was with those, what I consider to be quite mature realizations, that I decided to become a birth doula for a while, test the waters (birth-tub waters, as it were). I am going to witness birth in all forms, from natural home births to hospital births with doctors and epidurals and catheters. I will see all the fun that comes with operating under the roof of western medicine that treats the birthing process as scary and unpredictable and takes all measures to medicate those unknowns out of it.
Will I like it when my clients are told they should really consent to pitocin or else, or that they really need to have their amniotic sacs broken, or they should should should circumcise their newborn sons — I surely will not. Will I help them to gain a voice, stand up for what they want, ask questions, and be skeptical, I surely will.
For a myriad of reasons I have become probably a worse-case scenario patient for my doctor, eye doctor, dentist, etc. I do not take suggestions at face-value, I do not consent without proper information. When my doctor told me a treatment for my persistent hiccups would be low doses of anti-seizure, anti-psychotics, or anti-depression meds I said — but why, they're hiccups.
In college when the student health center refused to acknowledge a study regarding frequency for Pap tests in women my age published by the United States Preventive Services Task Force and jointly by the American Cancer Society, the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology, and the American Society for Clinical Pathology I flipped out. I was told "we'd rather over-Pap you" and I wrote a scathing review of the information I was being given vs. what the study had revealed and sent it to the staff of the health center. My next visit went a little better.
Being a doula, for me, is all about giving women information and options. It's not really informed consent if the information being given isn't thorough, well researched, and true. It's giving clients the voice that I didn't have until I was 22 and had all sorts of dentists and doctors treat me in ways I didn't like or didn't think was necessary. I'm excited to share both my enthusiasm for birth as well as my enthusiasm for being a woman — what an amazing gift to help others express themselves, their choices, their wishes, and their feelings during one of the most transformative times in life.
#dothedoula