Hello, everyone! I'd like to start this blog post with a commitment to do more blogging here. I've been working through the Shining Life Workbooks in the hopes of better dreaming and planning for a shift away from full-time nanny work to full time birth work and through the process have decided that I need to be 100% focused on content in this space. If you've been reading all along, thank you! If this is the first time you're reading this blog, welcome and I hope you find some content that you enjoy and find to be helpful. And now, on to the blog. Q. When is the right time to hire a birth doula? A. Right now! In my opinion, it doesn't matter if you've just found out you're having a baby or if you're in your 38th week and have decided that, "Yes! OKAY! I do want another support person by my side at my birth!" Whenever you make that decision is the best time. There are definitely some benefits to hiring a birth doula early on in your pregnancy; you can take your time to find the right doula for you and your family, you can take time to craft a birth vision and be thoroughly educated on what to expect during pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum, and it allows you and your family to be completely comfortable with a person (your doula) who will be by your side at one of the most important days of your life. On the other hand, a good doula is perfectly capable of providing you with consistent care and support if hired a week before or even the day of your birth. In fact, many hospitals are starting to hire doulas as staff and a lot of the time people may not have been introduced to the doula until the day of your birth. If you have the time, I would add hiring a doula to your baby prep list. Just as you pencil in provider appointments, time to shop for your new wee human, etc. If you live in the Seattle Metro area and are looking to hire a doula, I currently have availability for late May, June, and August births! Please call or email
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I remember my first tough postpartum visit like it was yesterday even though it was three years ago. It was one of my first births and it went beautifully. The mother labored at home all day and when we arrived at the hospital she was 10 cm dilated! She pushed out her baby girl and had skin-to-skin right away. It all went according to plan.
So when I arrived to her apartment two days later I wasn't prepared for what I encountered. Her little one was wailing in her bassinet and the mama's face was streaked with her own tears. "My breasts!" she exclaimed and threw open her shirt. They were large, bright red and painfully engorged. I wracked my new doula brain for what to do; we got her little one settled down and latched on, but it was at that moment that I realized that the entire birth process tends to be focused on labor and birth and not so much on the postpartum period. We found that Mama an amazing Le Leche League Lactation Consultant and she nursed her Little One until she was almost 2. Since then I have been suggesting that all of my doula clients come up with a solid Postpartum Plan. These plans can include specific thing like rules for visiting the new family after the baby is born, a chores check lists guests can help with, and creating a meal train plan. I also encourage clients to create a list of resources including lactation consultants, postpartum doulas, new parent groups and more. Your Postpartum Plan, like your Birth Plan, should be as specific and as personalized as possible. Think of everything you could need to make your transition into parenthood easier. Having a plan can take some of the surprise out of those first few weeks. I'll admit it, "Doula" is sort of a buzz word in birth now. Almost as common as "When's your due date?" is "Do you have a doula?" For some a doula seems like a bit of extravagance, an expensive accessory for the rich. And for others a doula is something that only hippie-dippy folks have.
Both can be true, and more. Ill give you an example. I have a friend, let's call her Chana. She's a Type-A, badass lawyer. She's no nonsense and gives the best side eye of anyone on the planet. Period. When I told her that I wanted to move to the country to raise chickens I never thought I'd see her eyes again, she rolled them so hard. So when she got pregnant and asked for my help finding a doula I was shocked. And when I got an email from her of her requests I understood she was one of those people who wanted the support, but none of the other "hippie" things. She had no problem with pain meds, she wasn't going to try to do something natural if she couldn't handle it and wanted a doula who understood that. She just had her second baby with her second no-nonsense doula. While having a doula may seem like a new thing, it's actually quite old, as old as it's Greek name, perhaps older. When people gave birth they would be traditionally and historically be joined by family. Grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins and close friends would join the birthing person, in many cases the birthing woman to give her the support she needed to bring her baby earthside based only on experience and instincts. As birth moved away from the home and into the hospital this tradition was lost, when we need it the most. And with hospital schedules that work on rotations and shifts giving birth can be a sea of unfamiliar faces. A doula is sometimes the only constant. I've heard snide comments that doulas don't really stay for the entire birth, especially for long labors and I can say, in my personal experience as a doula, that I've never left a mother's side. The one exception was when my sister passed away during a birth. I've spent multiple evenings in hospitals, and my longest was just over 50 hours. Check out this informational page over on Evidence Based Birth for more ways that Doulas can help in a birth. fThis year I'd like to try something new. I'd like to share an article or blog post that I think is interesting, has important information for birthing families to consider, or is just plan awesome. I think this one falls into the important information range. Birth Stories. As a part of the generation that grew up watching shows like "A Birth Story" on TLC I seriously FEARED childbirth. My own birth story was one of a long (50+) labor that ended in an emergency cesarean. To add a bit more drama, my mother often tells of looking over at me from the operating table and watching my little body heave, trying to catch my first breath, and then stop. And in her words, I was "whisked away." When I look back at my first pictures, I see a fragile baby with tubes attached to it's body, flushed palms and feet with pale skin. I determined that when I got pregnant that I would avoid all of that drama and go straight into the OR for a beautiful, forgettable cesarean birth resulting in a nice, round headed child. It wasn't until much later that I realized that a cesarean section wasn't "easy", but that it was major surgery. Basic knowledge of anatomy teaches us that! So I learned about birth, considered becoming a midwife and decided that I wanted to be a doula. One of the first questions I ask my clients is to tell me birth stories they've heard. And while some of them tell stories of cesarean births and others of blissed out natural births, it's how we tell stories that it's important. And the understanding that no two births are the same. There are benefits to hearing "good" birth stories where mothers feel empowered and partners are connected. Hearing more of these stories, I think, over stories of panic, pain, and fear, are a vital step to creating the births moms and birthing people want. Life happens, births can veer off course, but in the span of human existence it's only been in the past few decades that we've dis-empowered women and our ability to give birth. Let's take our power back, trust our bodies and trust birth. I'm thrilled to share a site I recently found called Good Birth Stories. Below is a snippet from a positive birth story. I hope you enjoy. Vanessa’s story – Matheo’s birthThe Spanish phrase for ‘give birth’ is, brilliantly, ‘dar a luz’ (give light to). I gave light to Mathéo Zen at 7.30pm on a late May evening in St George’s hospital in Tooting, London. The room on the delivery ward was luminous with mellow evening sun and crackling with energy; the air iron heavy with the raw smell of blood. I’d used hypnotherapy and my sheer bloody-mindedness to achieve a birth of my first baby that was natural, vaginal, drug-free (except gas and air – woohoo!) and seeing our miniature creature on the outside for the first time was mind-blowing. He was the softest thing I’d ever touched; a tiny peach; deliciously creamy and a little bit fuzzy all over. He had come in his own sweet time and was very pleased with himself indeed. He was calm, bright as a button, and he seemed to suckle contentedly – if painfully, but that’s another story – when I put him to the breast. keep reading |
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AuthorHi there! I'm Erika Davis and I'm a doula working in the Seattle and South Puget Sound area. Archives
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