I have been given the name & number of a supposedly AMAZING Doula/Midwife (our baby is due in November).
I’m wondering what are your experiences (or what have you heard) about the effectiveness and helpfulness of having a doula or a midwife assist with the birth (and all of the prenatal and postnatal assistance as well).
Worth it? Or a rip off?
I definitely plan to give birth in a hospital, not at home or in a bathtub or anything like that. I’m pretty traditional in most ways. But I thought it would be nice to have someone there who’s focused on me and the baby in perhaps a more holistic way, in addition to the hospital staff and doctor who will be looking after the medical stuff.
We found our doulas very helpful. I went without pain relief the first time and my doula was very good at keeping me focused on the techiques that helped. The second time I tried, but ended up with an epidural (something I highly recommend if you feel you need it.) Even so, the doula can take a lot of strain off your partner, since she’s trained and a bit more removed from your pain than he is likely to be. It also allows him to take breaks and attend to paperwork, etc., without feeling like he’s abandoning you.
A doula will not assist with the birth itself, and different OBs have different attitudes about who does what, so you’ll need to discuss any plans with yours.
Haha Stainz ! You seem to be reading my mind lately…I’ve also been wondering whether to hire a Doula or not. I wasn’t sure if it was really necessary or worth it. I suppose it depends on the Doula… I’m going to have my mom and husband in the delivery room with me. I was thinking it might be too many cooks in the kitchen!
I’d definitely recommend against delivering in the kitchen. You’re just not going to be able to get it sanitary, particularly with all of those people cooking in there.
We had a doula the second time around and it was definitely a better experience. We used Bradley method (no drugs) for both of our kids.
Make sure you read up and discuss with your potential exactly what a doula and a midwife are and what you each expect their duties to be. They are not synonomous. In a nutshell, a midwife is responsible for you and your baby’s physical safety and often does prenatal care and delivers the baby. A doula is responsible for your (and sometimes your partner’s) emotional well-being. A midwife’s job is at the foot of the bed, a doula’s job is at the head of the bed. (Assuming there’s a bed involved, of course!)
A doula cannot and should not do prenatal care or deliver the baby. What she can and often will do is talk with you, help you and your partner with any breathing/hypnosis techniques you’ve learned, show your partner how to massage your shoulders or where to press on your back to ease the pain of labor, help your partner to know when to offer you a sip of water, a loving word or when to just get the heck out of the way. A good doula will NOT get in between you and your partner, she will help him (or her) to help you more effectively. Especially if this is your partner’s first childbirth, s/he may not have a clue how to be helpful, and may feel very anxious and worried. This can make people either frozen and useless or fussy and irritating. You may not be able to adequately express your needs. (Heck you many not know what you need - I had no idea that my partner’s foot placed in the small of my back would feel better than any of the fancy massagers I brought!) The doula’s been through this before, and has all sorts of suggestions in her back of tricks.
I’m an OB-GYN nurse (although my job is to keep the critters in, not let them out) and I favor doulas, or birth assistants, for those who would like to have them.
Doulas are not very popularly used in my geographic area, so seeing one is out of the ordinary here which I always found odd as I work at an extremely large women-only center with approximately 8500 births a year. I suspect that the lack of doulas in my center is related to our service specialty and that our nurses are more highly trained than in some places, making the doulas not very necessary.
Check your doulas history and experience and try to get a trusted referral- there a a couple in my area that have little training and seem to simply be ‘birth junkies’ who aren’t really all that helpful.
I have a friend who’s a certified nurse-midwife, and she’s been a doula. We’ve talked about it.
The first thing you need to do is make sure your idea of a doula coincides with your doula’s idea. She says there are three perceptions of a doula:
A) a midwife who actually assists in the delivery
B) a “patient advocate” who consults with the obstetrician and counsels on medical questions
C) a birthing coach who stays with the patient and monitors her condition more closely than the obstetrical team can, but whose main job is to comfort and reassure.
Each of them have their strengths, and there’s certainly some overlap, but the roles are different. If you want someone to tell you that it’s perfectly normal to have that pain in your lower back move to your shoulders while that person is more concerned with your blood pressure, you won’t be happy with the results.
We had a midwife when our first baby was born. She was extremely reluctant to give my wife any Pitocin (to move things along), even after 24+ hours of active labor. I think this is probably typical of midwives - they can’t give meds, and they’re trained to do things “naturally”, so they are going to be biased against medical intervention. After five hours of pushing, our son was born, and we said, “Never again”.
For baby #2 we had a doc - he induced her and she went in six hours, with only about 30 minutes of pushing. For my 50 cents, that’s the way to do it. Unless you enjoy pain, of course.
You know, I hate all things related to childbirth (and baby care for that matter) but I would say: get a doula. Not every husband is the best birthing partner (that’s why I hate all things childbirth!) so why not get an expert. If there is anything you can do to improve your experience, do it. If you are not adverse to pain meds, make sure beforehand the doula you chose isn’t going to try to convince you to do without. If you want to avoid them, make sure she’ll help you try to get through without them.
All my children were born at home and I always tried to hire a Doula. There must be a wider variety of Doula’s than I realized because around here they not only attend the birth, but you have the option of keeping them around for the first few days or even a week to help with the other children, the mother, preparing meals, watering the garden or whatever other details need done.
It was sort of a mini vacation for the wife and I and allowed us to spend lots of really quality bonding time with the whole family without having to worry about details.
A friend of mine just had a baby a few months ago, and she found her doula very helpful. she delivered via the Bradley method, too, and said that the doula kept her husband far calmer than anyone else could have. Also, the doula made sure that the doctors and nurses didn’t perform any procedures that my friend and her husband didn’t want them to.
Although I tried to give my thread a ‘catchy’ title - I’m curious about midwives as well as doulas … The name I was given by a friend is for a doula but she has a partner who is a midwife, so I was trying to kill two questions with one thread.
What I’m looking for is to have someone to consult with before and after the birth, to answer any questions about care, etc. - things that aren’t medical necessarily, because those questions would go to a doctor.
I would like someone to be present during the birth, as I said, who will help me with my needs, emotional and physical, and who will take some of the pressure off of my sweet soon-to-be hubby.
I don’t plan to insist on an all-natural birth by ANY means - although I am interested in learning about pain management and breathing techniques, etc., I KNOW that I don’t deal with pain well and definitely want all the help I can get.
A good doula is there to see that you get what you want. A couple of people have mentioned the Bradley method, which does emphasize natural childbirth and I think many doulas have that tendency. My births, especially the second, were far from natural, though. I was induced both times and had to have an IV antibiotic drip for a strep B infection. I was in a hospital and so forth. What a doula can do is, for example, sweetly suggest to the nurses that you don’t want to be on the fetal monitor every damn second and that, yes, you would like to take a shower or go potty right now. Nurses can get a little focused on their own jobs and the doula can helpfully point out that maybe they could wait until after the contraction to take your blood pressure again.
She will help you fill out a “birth plan.” These tend to focus on what you don’t want, but they don’t have to.
We paid about 4 or 5 hundred, which included prenatal visits, instructional materials, the actual labor and a postnatal visit, plus some help with breastfeeding.
This was about 7 years ago, so it’s probably a bit more now.
I did a little research on this (before I found out the only doula in my area is no longer practicing). Her info basically said she will support whatever your needs are, but that statistically, women were less likely to need pain medication and episiotomies if they had the services of a doula. I have no idea what those stats were now, however.
Anyway, she said that her goal was to comfort and support the woman and be there specifically for her needs. I like that idea because if my husband should want to get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat, I would like to have someone stay with me.
If there was a practicing licensed doula in my city, I would definitely get one. Alas, I guess I don’t have that option. Stainz, you can check for certified doulas in your area at DONA.org. It also has a list of questions to ask potential doulas.
