A Week In The Life of A Doula: Prenatal Visits, Now More Important Than Ever
As I write this post, we’re going through one of the hardest health crises we’ve had as a country… or, rather, we are trying desperately to prevent one of the worst crises (let’s flatten that curve), watching how things have been for other countries around us. And many hospitals, in an abundance of caution, are completely blocking any visitors, including partners and doulas from attending laboring women at their births. This is something to address with hospitals at the local level, but in the meantime, let’s also focus on the great good doulas do even before you go into labor. I thought it was rather fitting that this was the last post I had to write in my Week of a Doula series, actually.
Doulas are about individualized, relationship-centered, whole-person care, and it starts from the beginning. With an in-depth, free phone consultation I give a potential client the chance to see how a relationship with me can work. If this is not a client’s first pregnancy, I invite them to share the story of their first pregnancy and birth. If it is their first time, we discuss how they feel about birth and why they started considering a doula. Very often, this is less of an interview and more of an opportunity to connect and for me to listen to the heart of a client and who they are. I don’t serve statistics. I don’t serve medical records. I serve a woman and her unique, precious, special family.
So. After I’m hired, we set up in-person prenatal visits. We stay in close touch via e-mail and text, too, but these prenatal meetings are crucial for our relationship and helping women feel empowered and connected in their pregnancy. At these prenatal visits, I listen to a woman discuss her goals for labor and the tools she has at her disposal for achieving them (spoiler alert: one of my favorites is to labor at home for a while first!). I find out what her main concerns are, how her appointments with her providers have been going (it is so important to be with providers you trust!), and to talk through the logistics of birth planning.
Why are these prenatal visits so special? Because they are in a client’s home environment, they feel comfortable sharing more of themselves and building a relationship of trust with me. They are more personalized: instead of a group childcare class, they are one-on-one sessions with tailored information. And they allow me to learn about a woman and her needs in ways that will matter after birth, when I’m making postpartum visits too. As I’ve asked before: how many of your hospital providers show up at your house for non-judgmental, personalized care before and after birth? This is such a vital safety net for families!
At prenatal visits, I’ve talked about everything ranging from labor support techniques to packing hospital bags to how to handle an emergent c-section situation to who will be in the delivery room (and how women feel about who will be there), to what child care arrangements are in place for other children, to emotional issues related to birth that are triggering for them, to their priorities…
… and when I get to their house for early labor (or the hospital, or the birthing center…), all of these discussions are the basis for the care I offer as a woman goes through labor and delivery. They are foundational for the postpartum visits we have, too.
That sort of wraps up the week in the life of a doula: we’ve talked about postpartum visits, birth days, the days I serve clients without ever seeing them, and today…. during one phone consultation with someone, after she’d asked some questions about services, she said: “WOW. You provide A LOT.” Why, yes, I do. I don’t take this job lightly and I believe women deserve the best and an excellent return on their investment. So many people imagine us as blips in the night that show up for a birth and then go home. But to really show up for a birth, you have to show up for the process a woman goes through in pregnancy and postpartum healing too. <3