doula training

What is a doula?

"A doula is someone who supports and guides a woman and her family through pregnancy and labor. They provide well rounded, women centered care. Doulas can teach, encourage and give emotional and physical support to mothers and families. Doulas can help in any birth, including c-section births, homebirths, and births in hospitals. Many doulas are trained in massage, birthing positions, and other pain coping methods in order to comfort a woman through the birthing process. Most importantly, doulas believe that birth is a normal process and that every woman is capable of giving birth with confidence and joy!"

- Birth Hands Doula Cooperative



Last night I completed my second Doula training. Two women from Boston who founded and run Birth Hands Doula Cooperative came down to Hyden to plant ideas for a labor assistance community here through a doula training and offering their services to laboring women in the community.

The formal training was last week. We discussed “doula-ism” from every angle:

1.) Philosophically – what is a doula? How do doula’s aid with pregnancy, birth, and post-partum?
2.) Practically – prenatal visits, nutrition, positions, massage, stages of labor, breastfeeding, general education
3.) Business – doula as a profession, finding clients, what you offer, how to get started
4.) Emotionally – intuition, reaction, objectivism

They provided us with the tools to step into the world and offer our assistance to the full range of pregnant women (natural births, medicated, c-sections, water births, hospital, home, and birth center births).

Being at a woman’s birth is one of the greatest gifts - To attend and be involved in this truly transformative process, to support a woman as she goes through difficult moments, to be that encouraging voice and reliever of back pain.

My favorite part of the training was the Questions and Answer follow-up session last night. Twelve women sat around a wooden business table on the top floor of the small town hospital and talked about birth.

We brought attention to the lack of space in our culture to discuss birth, especially positive birthing experiences. With the arrival of the child, women often feel the birthing process has lost it’s relevance and no longer needs to be talked over.
Their focus should be solely on their healthy child, not how they felt during contractions. Or, mother’s with great birthing experiences feel bad sharing their birth story because it could hurt their friends’ feelings or make her sound self-righteous.

On the other hand, progressive young women are encouraged to responsibly take control their reproductive systems. We talk about having sex when you want to, using birth control, giving thought to abortions. Rarely, if ever does the conversation turn to birth - just how WOMAN and what a source of female empowerment (especially natural birth) pregnancy and childbearing is.

As a doula you provide education, advocate for laboring women, support them (and their partners) physically, mentally, and emotionally, and after the birth you give them that space to say as much or as little as they want about their experience.

There are many problems and setbacks in today’s birth culture. Like anything, discussion, the rise of consciousness, is one of the strongest catalyzing forces to increase education and provide women with a full spectrum of birthing possibilities and care.

Last night we emerged from the hospital into the late evening glow. The five of us couriers strolled through town in our khaki and white. As we passed the hardware store and county court, birth and women were running through our minds.

For more information about Birth Hands go to:
www.birthhandsboston.com

amanda