Birth Companions:

What are your experiences working on the birthing team?

During the birth, it is very important that a doula works with the birthing team. Meaning the doctor, the midwives, the nurses, as well as the parents. We are not an adversarial part of the birthing team. We are there to support the mother and support the mother’s wishes, and as well as the family’s wishes. And if that means, working a little bit harder to explain to the doctor or the nurses what exactly the mother would desire in her birth experience, then that’s what we advocate to do.

We emphasize the part that we are working for the mother and her partner, as opposed to working for the hospital or working for the doctor or working for the midwife.

We give full support to the father as well. Um, doulas are often misunderstood, in that the birth partner, whether it be a father, or a birth partner, boyfriend, whatever the case may be, feels that we are replacing them. And that is the absolute… there’s no other way to say,- it’s just not true.

What our job is is to support both parents. How we support the father is that we are able to allow the father to be the husband/boyfriend/birth partner, rather than having to be the go-to person, the gopher, the person who makes sure the nurses do what they’re supposed to do, make sure everybody --- he can just simply be with his loved one and focus on her. And also experience the joy of having a life come into this world without having to worry about the technical things. So, a doula will worry about the technical things. She will get the ice chips or the water or make sure that the nurse comes in when she needs to come in. So that the father can be – can just basically enjoy the birth process…and love his mom. And that’s really important.

We’ve had very—many situations where the father was overjoyed as to how much he was able to be involved because he had this other person who was there who was experienced in birth, experienced in the process, experienced in labor and can guide the father as to what he needs to do during the labor process and support the wife, or his loved one -- his partner.

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