Mrs. RickJay and I are expecting MissRickJay sometime in early October. We have become voracious consumers of baby and child care books.
One phenomenon I’ve seen mentioned a lot is the “doula.” The precise duties of a “doula” are somewhat nebulous, but is basically amounts to a person who just kind of helps out around the time a woman has a baby and knows a lot about what it’s like to have a baby.
We’re not getting one. But what I find fascinating is that I cannot find anyone who’s ever used one, and specifically, I cannot find anyone with children above the age of 10 who’s even *heard the word * “doula.” Although Mrs. RickJay long ago shot down the idea (we don’t have enough money anyway) I tried asking around, and I can’t find anyone who’s ever used one or even knows what it is.
I’m not interested in discussing the value of doulas. What I’m curious about is whether or not the “doula” thing is as new as it seems to me. Have doulas been around for a long time, or was this made up recently?
The term “doula” appears to be of modern origin. Coined by an anthropologist based on Philippine women who serve this function. While the idea of this as an actual job title is probably recent, the basic concept is hardly new in human society.
From the brief reading I just did on this topic, basically the idea of a doula is a woman who is paid to help along a mother around the time of childbirth in cases where there are no family members to fulfill this task. This is what I was getting at in my previous post where I mentioned “the basic concept is hardly new in human society”. Throughout history all over the world there have been cases where a couple would have no family member around to do this. The most obvious case would be if the couple had moved to a new area where they had no family. Simple solution in this case if they could afford it: pay some suitable local woman to do this.
One of my nephews was delivered by the help of a doula. From what I understand, midwives are illegal here in California and getting a doula was the next best thing. Not sure if I’d go that route. Whatever floats your boat sinks my rubber duckie.
“Midwife” is one of those terms that is fuzzy. In particular it has evolved over time. Historically (and probably still the case for much of the planet), a midwife not only assisted the mother around the time of delivery, but would also deliver the baby in cases of normal childbirth. Thus a midwife was a sort of medical care professional.
Whereas a doula to me seems basically to be a handmaid who assists a woman around, and during, the time of delivery. This wouldn’t necessarily require much, if any, medical training. As someone posted, a modern doula sounds like what they used to call grandma.
I first became aware of the term some 20 years ago, when I was pregnant. We didn’t hire one, either, but somebody must do so. I have a friend who is a doula.
Four years ago a doula hit my motorcycle. When she told me what she did for a living, I had no clue what she was talking about-- but I saw several of them in the hospital six weeks ago when my wife delivered her baby.
Essentially, they act as a nurse for the birth mother-- because the hospital nurses aren’t going to massage your back, rock you in the shower, or go make you tea and consomme.
That can’t be right; my high school boyfriend’s mother was a midwife. She may well have been a nurse midwife, but I don’t remember. This was in Santa Monica, in the early 90s.
Did a bit of googling and found that there are some complex issues governing midwifery in CA. Cite1. And Cite2.
My SiL is a bit of the hippy nonconformist type and chose to have her baby at home. Legality seems a bit vague though I’ll admit. (ain’t it always the way?) Although it seems to have changed a bit recently. The birth in question also occured in the early 90s. The main issue seems to be the whole “under supervision of a physician” thing which IMO is something better suited for GD.
Doulas do several things. Some provide emotional support during the pregnancy and are present at the birth to support mother and father. Some only come after the birth, to help around the house.
The thing is, with a hospital birth, you may well be left essentially alone for hours at a time during labor, with only your external monitor, wired to a computer at the nurse’s station, for company and support. That was my experience with my first labor. Alone for hours, except when the nurse would come in to ask me if I wanted pain medication yet. Or you may get a nurse who doesn’t “click” with you. I had one like that. She didn’t even talk to me. I might as well have been a disembodied uterus attached to wires, for all she paid me any attention. I was frightened, exhausted, and my husband was no better. And she was…ugh.
If I’d had a doula, she would have suggested position changes, suggested comfort measures, rubbed my back or helped my husband do these things, etc. She could have spelled my husband and let him have a little sleep. I might have even avoided the cesarean I wound up with. I might have avoided an epidural, which I hadn’t wanted, but was driven to accept after 8 hours of pitocin hell.
Doulas do not give medical advice. They do, however, help the mother or parents decide what they would like in advance, write up a ‘birth plan’ or wish list, and then help them remember this during the stress and vulnerability of labor, when very frequently, they are under pressure to accept a one-size-fits-all hospital policy, and least able to stand up for themselves. They help parents understand interventions that are offered or necessary (barring true emergency situations when all bets are off), translating doctor-speak into laymans’ terms.
I hired a doula for my last birth. She was of inestimable value to me during my pregnancy, when I was an absolute emotional wreck, terrified I would be steamrolled into a 3rd cesarean birth for no better reason than because I’d had 2 others, etc. The night I went into labor, she didn’t have her pager with her. When she woke up in the morning, she found 6 or 8 pages from us…and called my room about fifteen minutes after the baby was born (vaginally, yay!). She was very apologetic (and absolutely forbade me to pay her, even though she’d spent hours and hours with me during my pregnancy, in person and on the phone.). My husband took over the support I had expected from her, and he was wonderful.
Professional doulas take a great deal of training, not as much as a midwife of course, but enough to make them educated, even professional labor assistants, and not “merely” a helpful face in the room.
I for one am very glad they’re becoming more and more known and popular. A lot of women get treated callously and impersonally during labor (perhaps because their nurses are understaffed), and have no one there who is there for them, who works for them and not the hospital. A lot of women get pushed into accepting routine interventions they don’t understand and might not want, if they had somebody with them to help them understand when their brains are busy being primal with labor. And of course, for people who prefer the standard medical paradigm instead, that’s always available.
I appreciate the explanation of what doulas do, but the OP hasn’t really been answered yet; how long has this concept existed, or has it existed for a very long time but only recetly become popular? Does anyone know this?
Oh, I think it has existed since always, although some cultures eschew any sort of support for the mother (I’m thinking of the !Kung, for instance, where the laboring woman walks away into the bush and delivers, and comes back afterward). It’s just that in American culture, as hospital birth has become the norm, and for a long time *no one *, even the father, was allowed in with the laboring mother by policy, the idea of the woman taking along support became a foreign concept. There’s probably been a resurgence since the 60’s or 70’s, along with homebirth, midwife-attended birth, and women trying to take back and ‘own’ their birth experiences.
Right. As mentioned by an earlier poster, it used to be called “grandma” or “auntie” or even “a respected elderwoman neighbor who’ll tell ol’ Doc the country physician where to shove his little black bag when so called for”. When you combine in the mid-20th century parallel trends towards both the atomization of the social structures and childbirth-as-clinical-procedure, you end up with a niche that calls out for filling with someone who’ll be dedicated to this. Why “doula” instead of “Mother’s Helpmate”, no blessed idea.
I actually asked this question, along with several others, about eight years ago when I was doing ad design for a parent magazine. The doula I spoke with insisted that this was a position that had been around for years, but had been “forgotten” during the modern era, like so many female traditions. I was skeptical, but there is a limit to how far you can challenge a paying customer. Anyway, if they make the time before and after childbirth easier, then more power to them.
