As soon as I started trying to get pregnant, I kept hearing that birth doulas are the most incredible gift to pregnant people on earth. After reading the stats on how they reduce C-section and epidural rates, hearing from Facebook group commenters how invaluable it was to have one, and just feeling like I needed the support of someone who knew what the heck was going on, I decided I really wanted to hire one to attend my birth. After an ultimately bad experience with our doula at the birth of our first child—and an incredibly positive experience at the birth of our second—I’m glad I didn’t give up on doulas.
For our first child’s birth (where I was the pregnant one), my wife and I interviewed a couple of doulas and chose one with 30 years’ experience who was also a lactation consultant. I got a good feeling from the doula, B, at our initial meeting—she made me feel assured someone would be there for me.
After an ultimately bad experience with our doula at the birth of our first child—and an incredibly positive experience at the birth of our second—I’m glad I didn’t give up on doulas.
One morning after breakfast, at 36 and a half weeks pregnant, I began having some cramps. My entire pregnancy had been a nightmare of constant nausea and discomfort, so it initially seemed just par for the course. But as it persisted, I realized that cramping while pregnant was not something to shrug off, so I called my midwives group, who had been providing my prenatal care. They told me to notice if the cramps were coming and going and timing them. Sure enough, those cramps turned out to be early contractions.
I called B and she came right over. She, my midwives, and I decided that I might be in early labor and that I should go to the hospital to get a dilation check. On the ride to the hospital it became very clear that these were real, regular contractions. At midday, I was four centimeters dilated and 100 percent effaced.
It took my wife a couple of hours to get to the hospital from work, so B was all I had. And while going into labor with my first child should have been a memorable experience in many ways, here’s the part that I’ll never forget: My doula spent most of those first two hours in the delivery room on the phone because her car had been towed.
B was not there for me the way I expected a doula to be. She was actually one of the worst parts of my birth experience, and I wish she hadn’t been there at all.
She had told us at our prenatal meeting that she knowingly parks illegally at the hospital to avoid paying for parking. It didn’t raise any alarm bells for me at the time because I never imagined that if her car did get towed that she would bring that into the delivery room. When the natural consequences of her choice played out, she chose to deal with it right then, instead of waiting until she had finished the job we had hired her for.
After a quick but absolutely excruciating five hours of labor at the hospital, my baby was taken to the NICU with my wife by her side, again leaving me with B as my sole support. The Pitocin I’d been given to stop my bleeding was causing painful contractions, and I asked B to stop chatting with the nurse and support me. I hated having to ask.
We both held out hope that birth doulas could be as wonderful as we’d heard, despite our experience with B.
B was not there for me the way I expected a doula to be. She was actually one of the worst parts of my birth experience, and I wish she hadn’t been there at all. We still had her come over a couple weeks later for the postpartum check-in included in our package because we wanted her breastfeeding advice. She ended up leaving me in tears when she told me I would never be able to successfully breastfeed my daughter—which I ended up doing for over a year with the help of a different lactation consultant.
When my wife became pregnant with our second child two years later, I asked if she wanted a doula. She said maybe, if she ended up feeling a good connection with one. We both held out hope that birth doulas could be as wonderful as we’d heard, despite our experience with B. The first one we interviewed seemed great, so we decided to hire her.
It takes a lot of trust to let someone into your labor and delivery, where chances are you could be naked, afraid, in pain, bleeding, crying, and out of control of your own body. Hiring a doula is a leap of faith that that stranger will make the experience more positive, even when you have no idea what kind of labor awaits you. Every doula’s beliefs and practices and chemistry with you will be different, and not everyone is a good match. You never know until you’re in the throes of it whether that match will truly work out.
Thankfully, my wife’s doula, C, did make her labor more positive than it would have been without her. My wife was a complete rock star at handling labor. While I had screamed my head off in panic and pain, my wife looked inward and calmly meditated quietly through 27 hours of contractions. It wasn’t because of C that my wife could do that (that was all her), but C helped in many ways.
First, C explained so much in our prenatal appointment that my wife felt prepared and relaxed ahead of time. She showed us positions and explained stages, and I learned a lot, even as someone who had given birth. (In contrast, B had handed us a workbook to read on our own and then just chatted at our prenatal appointment.)
Hiring a doula is a leap of faith that that stranger will make the experience more positive, even when you have no idea what kind of labor awaits you.
C was also present for us even when she wasn’t physically there. My wife labored from around 6 p.m. Thursday to about 2 p.m. Friday at home with me. C and I were in frequent contact by text during that time, especially the early morning hours. She passed on tips to tell my wife, answered my questions, gave her opinion on what the contraction timing meant, told me I was doing great, and encouraged us to stay home instead of rushing to the hospital. My wife turned so inward she didn’t want me talking or touching her, so C and I kept to text instead of calls since my wife wanted quiet. Communicating with someone through those hours of silence was so helpful for me, especially with someone so experienced in coaching people through this exact situation.
When we went to the hospital Friday afternoon, C met us there and continued her support, respecting my wife’s wishes for minimal talk and touch. She applied cold washcloths to my wife’s neck, brought us both water to drink (and a straw for my wife, which I wouldn’t have thought of), liaised with hospital staff, suggested laboring positions, tended to anything that needed doing, and guarded our space as dark and quiet. We ended up having a wonderful midwife and a wonderful nurse at the hospital, who were also respectful of our preferences, but I’m still glad we had C too.
But the number-one moment that made having C there worth it was when my wife asked for an epidural. C and I knew my wife didn’t want an epidural, but knowing that pain, I wasn’t going to deny her request. C gently suggested that my wife try changing positions first. The position change eased the pain, and my wife didn’t ask for an epidural again. Without C, the nurse would have just given my wife what she asked for, and I wouldn’t have had the expertise to know what to suggest as an alternative. My wife was able to stick to her birth plan because of C.
My wife’s birth brought up memories of my own for me, and I decided to finally leave B an honest review on her Facebook page after three years of never telling her how I felt. Even though she then disabled reviews on her page so mine was no longer visible, I know she read it, and it’s enough that I finally said my piece. I recently learned that while she’s still providing lactation consultation and childbirth education, she is no longer a birth doula.
I’ll always remember how C held me in a warm hug as I cried, overcome with emotion, as my wife was pushing at the end of her labor. C healed me, in a way, by letting me be a part of a positive, supported birth, even though it wasn’t my own.
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