Why I became a doula. (And why I’ll never stop)

Why on earth would a woman (and at the time, a kind of youngish woman) who has no kids and no plans to have kids want to dedicate her time to leaning about labor, birth and postpartum care? What is in it for her?

 

What indeed.

 

First a warning: I am going to use the scariest word you know. It’s a marginalizing word that many young people won’t even use for fear that it will over-define them. In fact, most of them don’t actually know what the word means, not really. It’s the dreaded “F” word. Feminism.

 

I came to doula work from a place of feminism. What?

 

There are many choices a woman must make once she becomes pregnant, including the choice to either continue the pregnancy or not. If she should decide to stay pregnant, there are a host of choices that she still makes, though sadly, in most cases in the US the choices are made for her. She doesn’t know she even has the choice of care provider (OB, family doctor, midwife) or even venue (hospital, birth center, home.) These are relatively known choices but there are many more.

 

I believe that women deserve the right to autonomy over their bodies, in every stage of life, including the right to make the decisions that affect her pregnancy and postpartum care, and the right to know what the likely results of said decisions are. Many (read: most) US hospitals take away these choices, or at least the education, as a matter of “policy.” This policy is often based on disproved or misleading information or worse, on making money and practitioner schedules. Did you know that most babies born in the US are born between 9am and 5pm, M-F? How considerate these babies are of staffing schedules!

 

So obviously I am pro-choice. I trust women and I trust that the choices they make that affect them, their bodies, and their families are right for them. I want to empower them by giving them resources and education so that they can make these decisions for themselves, not coerced by any other policy or agenda. I want to support the choices that they make EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT THE CHOICES THAT I MIGHT MAKE FOR MYSELF. That is why I’m a doula. That is why I’m a feminist. That is why I can’t ever separate the two.