What do doulas do?

A doula is a non-medical, professional child-birth assistant that provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother and the family before, during, and immediately after childbirth.

Ways in which we help navigate the hospital environment is that we give them the information that they need in order to understand what is happening during the birth process...during the labor process, I should say. Labor goes in many stages. There is early labor, there’s active labor, transition, and then the actual birth of the child. Early and active labor are the longest parts of labor and that’s where we, as doulas, do the most amount of work. We allow... we provide the mother with massages, we provide her with comfort measures, pain reduction, pain management, pain relief, as well as stress relief.

A labor doula allows the mother to... is a support system set in place for the mother and the partner, the family, I should say, to help her to navigate through the hospital environment knowing what to expect, what not to expect, as well as managing the physical aspects and emotional aspects of labor and birth.

The point of - a lot of people would hire a doula because they want to avoid unnecessary medical interventions and that is a large part of what we do.

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