What Is A Doula?
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
Since the beginning of time, pregnant and birthing women, and those with children have had support from women who are more experienced.
The Greek word “doula” translates to “a woman who serves”, and describes a professional who provides physical, emotional and informational support to parents and directs them to evidence-based resources if needed. The support, care and advocacy she provides seeks to empower women and their partners along their life-changing pregnancy and birth journeys.
What Do Doulas Do?
The essential role of a birth doula is to provide continuous labor support to the mother, no matter what decisions the mother makes or how she gives birth. A doula’s primary responsibility is to the birthing person to achieve a positive and safe birth experience, and not to anyone outside of that sphere of immediate support.
Doulas provide support that can be categorised as four main pillars; physical, emotional, informational and advocacy.
Physical Support
This fundamental pillar of support helps the birthing person maintain a sense of control, comfort and confidence, and includes a doula soothing with the aid of touch sensory in order to create that calm environment. Though it is important to note that the physical support a doula offers is non-medical.
Emotional Support
A doula provides emotional support in helping the birthing person feel cared for and her them with a sense of pride after birth — this enhances the birth experience and helps in creating positive memories of it. Additionally, a doula works with the birthing person’s partner through their fears and self-doubt to ensure that both parents are calm, are both supported and nurtured throughout the birthing experience. This support will ultimately boost the confidence level of both powers and in turn empowers them to verbalise their preferences, especially to care providers to ensure a birth that is right for themselves — this ties in with advocacy!
Informational Support
Guiding the birthing person and their partner through labor with evidence-based information about the different labouring and birthing options is a core serviced offered by a doula to ensure an empowering birthing experience. A doula will suggest different techniques in labor, explain medical procedures as they occur to minimise that fear of the unknown and will help the birthing person’s partner in understanding and interpreting the different tells of their loved one.
Advocacy
A doula is an advocate for the birthing person’s choices and amplifies her voice to support her in her right to make decisions about her body and baby. Being a facilitator of communication between parents and care providers, and encouraging parents to ask questions is part of what this last pillar embodies.
On top of all that, a doula also forms prenatal relationships with parents, assists in crafting a birth vision and plan, aids with breastfeeding processes and questions of among other things and provides referrals to medical professionals upon request or as needed.
The Benefits Of Engaging A Doula
Studies have shown that overall, birthing persons and their partners who have received continuous support from a doula were less likely to have any pain medication, epidurals, negative feelings about childbirth, vacuum or forceps-assisted births, and cesareans. In addition, they experienced shorter lengths of labor, reduced time in neonatal intensive care units and have higher rates of successful breastfeeding mothers.
Statistically, this means that both mothers and their babies are more likely to have better outcomes!
What Is The Role Of A Postpartum Doula?
A postpartum doula works with new families in the postpartum period provides them with the four fundamental pillars of support as with birth doulas. In ancient times, a community of women would typically support new mothers after birth. However in present day, mothers are sent home just days after birth to face the challenges of parenthood and postnatal physical recovery without that support. A postpartum doula would step in here, to recreate the support that would have otherwise been provided by the community village of women.
Her assistance includes filling in the gaps to support new mothers and typically involves;
Offering breastfeeding support — latching and positioning help
Assisting in mother-baby and father-baby bonding
Helping parents with baby cues, feeding, changing diapers, basic newborn care, bathing and soothing the baby
Offering non-judgemental emotional support and physical recovery tips to the mothers
Helping to build confidence in both parents to take on their new roles
Providing referrals to practical resources online, or to professionals (if needed) — such as postpartum massage services, support groups, paediatricians, chiropractors, baby goods, helpful apps, acupuncture, TCM, night nannies, etc.
Processing the birth experience and screening for postpartum depression
Studies have shown that families with a postpartum doula enjoy smoother transition periods for the entire family, higher success rates for breastfeeding and lower postpartum depression in mothers.
In my next blog posting, I will be sharing an in-depth insight into what a doula does, and how we differ from your care provider and birthing partner. If this has left you with any burning questions, or you are interested to learn more about some topics I have not covered in this posting please leave a comment down below — let’s start a conversation!
“A positive birth does not have to be unmedicated, it just needs to be from an informed place of positivity and not fear.”
