Why I became a Postpartum Doula
My desire to be a birth worker grew from high school onward.
How do so many people become interested in birth work? The polarizing documentary: “The Business of Being Born.” I watched this for the first time when it was available on Netflix while I was in high school (I’m about to age myself here, as a youngin’, it was sometime between 2010-2014). I instantly became obsessed with pregnancy, birth, and babies. No, seriously. One year in my art classes I only created work inspired by the pregnant body. Nothing else. It was borderline weird, But it all makes sense now. I think.
Above, I have two pictures from high school. I took a child development class (bc I knew that one of the main projects would be carrying this animatronic baby around and like I said, I was obsessed with babies). I suppose you could say he was my first client, so, meet Leo (named after Leonardo DiCaprio.)
The bottom line: this documentary introduced me to the world of birth work and all it had to offer. I had dreams of becoming a midwife or a labor and delivery nurse. Then, maybe a doula or hospital baby nurse. My motivation for these careers began with the desire to see, hold and interact with babies. The mothers were not even on the radar for me.
I didn’t become a midwife or a nurse of any kind. In fact, I studied education and then switched my major in my junior year of college to linguistics. Why? Who knows. Now, I get to explain that I have a degree in linguistics, and no I don't know every language, and no I don’t use my degree professionally.
After college, with that desire to be a doula still deep in my heart – I took a job as a para-educator at a local school helping students with multiple disabilities one on one in their classrooms and around the school. At this point, I felt unqualified to be a doula because I had never given birth or even been pregnant (I now know this is not true and that anyone whether or not they had been pregnant or given birth can be a doula). My perspective began changing in 2020 when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter.
My experience of being pregnant and giving birth during a pandemic.
I became pregnant in January 2020 with my due date set for September 2020. I don’t need to remind you what happened to the world that year, I’m pretty sure we all vividly remember. Pregnancy was isolating during the pandemic. There were people who I wasn’t yet connected with on social media who didn’t even know I was pregnant. Even now, thinking about this time in my life it brings up a lot of feelings of sadness and loneliness.
I knew before I even got pregnant that I would hire a doula. There was an amazing doula who went to our church that I reached out to as soon as I could. She came over for some prenatal visits and even hosted a few group classes (socially distant) for us to learn about the stages of labor, comfort measures, and breastfeeding.
I planned an unmedicated, low-intervention hospital birth with my first daughter. I hired my doula early because I knew I would need a lot of support. Due to COVID-19, my doula was not allowed in the hospital and that left me feeling uneasy about birth (obviously no fault of hers). My husband had never done this before, I had never done this before, and even with my preparation, I felt out of control the entire time I was in the hospital. My labor was a classic example of the cascade of interventions, thankfully ending in the successful vaginal delivery of my daughter.
Just minutes after Vivian was born.
My first postpartum was a bumpy road.
After my daughter was born though, our support did not increase much. I mean, we were being cautious. It was a very isolating time as a new mom: minimal visitors, minimal outings, and minimal friends with babies. Our parents and friends came for masked visits which felt very dystopic. The people participating in our meal train, which was set up by our church, sometimes would just leave meals on the front porch with maybe a wave through the window. Most days I wouldn't even have an adult conversation until my husband ended his work day.
On top of all that, I began to feel irrelevant. Suddenly, the only thing I ever talked about was my daughter. Of course, I love her and adore talking about her, but it gets old after a while when that's the only thing people ask about, I felt like I had disappeared and been replaced by my infant daughter. People often focused on questions like “How is the baby?” “Is she sleeping well?” and “Does she eat ok?” rather than asking about me or even my husband and how we were doing.
My perspective shifted from baby-focused to mama-focused.
Suddenly, it clicked. I was guilty of the same thing.
I realized that as a young teen and young adult I focused on my friends' babies more than them. And, what a punch in the gut that was having been through it myself now.
My best friend and I frequently talked about becoming doulas together, she also had a daughter similar in age to mine. We wanted to help support women as they gave birth and in their early postpartum. The only thing stopping me was that I just could not live an on-call lifestyle as a birth doula because my husband worked full-time and my one-year-old was basically glued to my hip (or should I say boob).
When my daughter was about a year old, the itch to begin supporting moms grew so strongly and I didn’t know where to turn. I finally discovered what a postpartum doula was after doing some Googling. Having only ever heard of birth doula I had no idea there were other doulas specializing in many different facets of birth work (read more about that here). After doing some research on postpartum doulas, how some of them choose to work, and what they usually charge, I decided to take the leap. I signed up for my first postpartum doula training in the fall of 2021.
My postpartum doula work began slowly with my first client giving birth at the end of May in 2022. Once I started working with postpartum families though, I knew this is what I was supposed to do. Because of my own experience postpartum, my main focus as a postpartum doula has always been on the mother and other family members. Very rarely, would I help take care of the baby.
Above is an assortment of photos from my in-person postpartum support.
For in-person postpartum doula support, my main duties are sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the kitchen, and wiping down surfaces in the bathroom and kitchen. I also often tend to cook breakfast, lunch, or dinner for my clients (this is something I absolutely love to do). Sometimes, I help watch older children while the mom feeds the newborn or takes a nap.
I do a lot of things that other postpartum doulas wouldn't do because I focus on the mother and family over the baby. My desire as her postpartum doula is to ensure she gets the rest and nourishment she needs to heal and bond with her baby.
For virtual doula support, my main goal is to help women plan and prepare for postpartum. I just recently launched a mini-course on this very subject in the hopes that women would be way more prepared than I was. I also have a FREE downloadable PDF that is all about planning for postpartum (click the button below to download). In addition to both of those things, I support moms emotionally through Zoom calls, texts, and emails. I don’t want others to feel the way I did.