Townes, First Photo, Credit: Dana Nassau
If you are pregnant for the first time, I highly, enthusiastically recommend enlisting the services of a doula. For the uninitiated, a doula is a trained, non-medical childbirth support professional, who attends to the emotional and physical needs of women and their partners during childbirth. If you give birth in a hospital like we did, there is a whole team of people trained to deal with your birth as a medical event. But a doula is there to focus only on your emotional health and making you comfortable. You can argue that this is what a nurse is for, but nurses sometimes have a floor of laboring moms to deal with and may not be able to give you the one-on-one care you need. Also, nurses are often under extreme pressure from the physicians they support. Physicians rely on the nurses to pretty much handle everything right up to the actual birth. Therefore, they are BUSY. Nervous first time mamas will not generally have their hands held by the nursing staff. Your doc will NOT be at the hospital, holding your hand through labor. In fact, your OB/GYN will likely show up and scrub in right about the time everyone starts telling you to push. Whaaat? Yes, sadly that’s true. In fact, my OB/GYN didn’t even make it to our daughter’s birth. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t even left her office when our labor nurse got on the horn. Essentially, Tim and the nurse assigned to us that day delivered Daisy. But I digress. We are talking about the first birth. Our little Townes. This, thankfully, is where a doula comes in.
Now some of you might be saying – “I plan to be wheeled into the hospital and hooked up with my epidural immediately. There isn’t going to be a need for someone to help me through labor.” I would argue that you still need the emotional support. I believe that ultimately no one should tell you how to experience your child’s coming into the world but I do think that a lot of women don’t understand how strong and capable they are at the most natural event imaginable. You put yourself at greater risk for a c-section with every intervention you agree to in a hospital. I believe that you shouldn’t elect to have a surgery unless it is warranted for childbirth. The weeks afterward are challenging enough without a surgery if it can be avoided. And studies have shown that a doula’s presence reduces the incidences of medical interventions such as:
- pain medication
- forceps or vacuum
- oxytocin/pitocin
- cesarean sections
Tim and I enlisted the services of Dana Nassau and she made the process a whole lot less overwhelming for us. We did plan on a completely natural childbirth and thought we might need some support through the process. You can do all the reading in the world (trust me – I did) but when you get in there you forget most of what you read and it helps to have a third party there to keep you grounded and focused. I was also worried that Tim might freak out a little (um, birth is messy and kind of - ahem - full-on for lack of a better word.) It turns out that he was Mr. Cool and completely fine with the messy parts, but for the boredom part (there is a LOT of waiting…way more than you realize for sure going in) Dana was a big help. Knowing that Tim could close his eyes for a few minutes or just go and get a bite to eat and he wasn’t deserting me was a huge help to both of us. That scene in the movies where the laboring wife is snapping expletives at her husband? Well, a doula’s calming influence and gentle coaching for BOTH of us really made that scenario a non-starter. Dana reminded us of our relaxation techniques when one or both of us started to drift, and helped us weed through the medical jargon.
Someday soon I will post Townes and Daisy’s birth stories. But for now, I just want to let readers know I would recommend a doula for all first time moms and dads, regardless of your birth plan or how confident you are when you’re not in active labor (it’s much easier to apply rational thought prior to labor’s onset). There is a doula for every budget. If you don’t have a budget DONA International can even help put you in touch with a free or nearly free doula. Some experienced doulas do some pro bono work, and new doulas or doulas-in-training will attend births to gain professional experience. Choosing a doula is a highly personal decision and I encourage you to meet with a few. Our first interview was a little too much of a sales pitch for us. We met with one of the premier doulas in the Los Angeles area, but she seemed more like a brand ambassador for a whole smorgasbord of products and services we didn’t think were needed. Dana just fit for us. We liked her laid-back style. If you still aren’t sure you need a doula, I recommend watching The Business of Being Born. And for sheer beauty and real-life baby adorableness, everyone should see Babies. This documentary traces the lives of four new babies around the world over the course of their first year. It is fascinating and heart-warming and gorgeous.
