What Is a Doula Anyway?



Posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2008

by
Absolutely Kneaded Massage Therapy

The word doula comes from a Greek word basically meaning "woman's servant." Used today the word doula refers to a woman, usually one who has children of her own, who attends the labor of another woman. In recent years, this has become a foreign concept, but decades ago, women routinely gave birth with another woman present. This woman was often a relative, friend, neighbor, etc. These women were there for moral support, physical support, and sometimes delivered the babies. But today there are many reasons for a woman to choose to have a doula attend her birth as well. Doulas provide emotional support not just for the laboring mothering but for the entire family-to-be. Often times, doulas have suggestions or ideas to offer to the mother of ways to keep her labor going or to speed things along. These days when hospitals births are the most common place to give birth, a woman can need an advocate to stand up for what she wants from her delivery.

Labor and delivery is one of the most memorable events of a woman's life. It can be exciting, terrifying, invigorating, all at once. Women often have doulas attend their births to offer them emotional support. The last thing a woman wants is to remember her birth experience as terrifying. Having another experienced woman there to reassure you, to comfort you, to inform you makes a world of difference. A doula is there for the entire labor. Studies have shown that women who have the continual support that a doula can provide have a much lower c-section rate, a decreased rate in requests for epidurals, and a healthier outcome for mom and baby. I have many couples ask, isn't all of this what the dad is there for. Yes, dad is there to offer emotional support, but often times, he needs emotional support himself. Try as hard as they may, a man can never fully grasp the birth experience from the mother's point of view. And many times, dads are scared and confused as well. Having an experienced woman tell you that you are doing great and labor is progressing as it should gives a mother a bit more reassurance than it does coming from dad who hasn't been educated about or experienced birth himself.

Doulas are not only usually mothers themselves but are very well versed and educated in the birth process. There is no textbook birth. Sometimes labors slow down, contractions get too hard, or the baby won't come down. These are the times when an educated assistant can be of great help to mom and dad. It is hard to remember all you studied and learned during the pregnancy while in the heat of the moment of labor. A detached third party may be able to think more clearly. Here is where the doula steps in to offer physical support. There are certain positions and massage methods that make contractions easier to handle. A good doula will know several techniques and help you find the one that suits you best. Sometimes a woman's labor will slow down, meaning she is making little progress or the contractions are getting farther apart. There are techniques and suggestions that are natural and worth trying to see if we can get mom's labor to increase again. Position changes are another benefit to having an educated doula as part of your support team. A position that helps to alleviate pain for one woman may not do so for the next, so it's good to have a great number of ideas to be able to try. Some positions are to keep labor going and some are to help get gravity on your side to help the baby drop into position. That is a lot of knowledge to remember through contraction pain.

Most books and websites a mother-to-be reads will tell her to write her birth plan and will give a long list of suggestions of things she should think about beforehand. All of this would be the mother's ideal birth experience. That may be natural childbirth or it may include pain medication. Usually there is discussion about c-sections, episiotomies, IVs and many things that have been considered normal for birthing mothers over the last several years. Women today have options and more hospitals are beginning to take mom's opinion into consideration. Many doctors and nurses will read a birth plan and try to help stay with it as long as mom and baby are doing well. However, there is still a tendency to fall back to the old ways and not paying so much attention to what the parents would like. It is a doulas job in this situation to give the parents all the knowledge she has to allow them to make an educated decision about how to proceed. Again, as long as neither mother nor baby are in distress. Here a doula acts as an advocate by providing information to the parents and sometimes passing their decisions along to medical staff to see what can be done. It is never a doula's position to make decisions for the parents or to advise the parents to go against their doctors orders.

Doulas can be a wonderful asset to any birth. The continual support they provide just cannot be provided by nursing staff or doctors in today's society. Usually, nurses have several patients at once and can't remain with one birthing mother to offer the reassurance she needs that everything is progressing well. Having a doula allows the nurses to handle the medical care of the mother while the doula provides the emotional support. In this situation, everyone wins.

For more information, visit Doulas of North America www.dona.org.

Cathy Lafever is a Licensed Massage Therapist in the State of South Carolina since 2003.  She is Nationally Certified by the NCBTMB and is a member of the American Massage Therapy Association.  Cathy is the owner of Absolutely Kneaded Massage Therapy in Spartanburg, SC.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Ben Jones
 3 years 316 days ago.
71 fans.
Hi Cathy, thanks for an interesting article about a topic I wasn't very familiar with. Just one suggestion, your paragraphs tend to be quite long and online this can make it hard to keep a readers attention. It's better if you format them as sharp snappy paragraphs and if you have a lot of information to provide either break it up in to multiple articles with links to each other or use titles throughout your article.
» left by 3 years 316 days ago.
Thank you for the helpful tips, I'll keep that in mind for my next article!
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