This year, World Doula Week begins in a landscape unlike any other since I attended my first doula birth in January 1987. While doula work has often been misunderstood—and at times, even undervalued—this is the first time its very essence [...]
The Ironic Tragedy Of “One Visitor Plus Doula” Hospital Labor And Delivery Policies When I first heard about hospitals making exceptions for doulas and not considering them as a “visitor”, I was thrilled. It meant we were being [...]
When the Doula Screws Up Recent press has spotlighted the tragedy of more Black women and babies dying than Whites in the United States. It has amplified the voices of Black women and allowed more people to hear their [...]
Why The Doula Research We Need Doesn’t Exist: Part II – Medical Politics and Practices As a young woman, I naively thought that the evidence was so overwhelming that we’d steadily see doula research in major medical journals. [...]
Why Don’t We Have The Doula Research We Need? Part I of IV The Cochrane Collaboration updated their doula research review this year. They added four, only FOUR new studies – and none of them advanced our research [...]
“To Heal and Protect”: Attending Birth Doula Trainings for Personal Reasons A small but influential group of people attend birth doula trainings not to become doulas, nurses or midwives, nor to positively influence births in other jobs, but [...]
Birthrape And The Doula “At many births, while I have my hand on a woman’s arm reminding her to breathe, someone has their hand in her vagina digging around, her eyes are wide, she’s trying to get away, [...]
Doulaing For Friend’s Births It’s so thrilling to imagine being a doula for your friend’s pregnancy and birth! For some doulas this is what draws them to the work from the beginning. They want to make sure family [...]
When Midwives Don’t Recommend Doulas So your local midwife told a prospective client of yours that she didn’t need a doula. You feel surprised, even betrayed, at her lack of support. What’s going on? First, the midwife is [...]
Doulaing At Midlife “When my 60 year old mother insisted she was middle aged and I wasn’t, I replied, “Mom, how many 120 year old women do you know?” -paraphrased from Postcards From The Edge by Carrie Fisher I [...]
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