Description

Certified Doula, Mandy Reimer, explains what Doulas are and the services they provide.

Transcript

What is a Doula Well, doula is a great word and presently means mothering the mother that’s sort of the modern way to use the term doula. It is an encompassing profession. We do a lot of advocacy, emotional support, more importantly physical support. Most people that are seeking a doula are looking for maybe less intervention or maybe not. They're just looking for more education of the things that happened. They really want to be a part of their birth, their pregnancy and their postpartum experience rather than having things kind of done to them. They want to be with it. Midwives and doulas are different as doulas offered no clinical skills. Midwives are trained in normal pregnancy and birth. So, they are doing things like cervical checks, newborn checks, blood pressure, heart tones, all of these things. Doulas provide no clinical skills, so it is strictly an emotional and educational support. I can only speak for myself and then I think I've paved a great relationship for myself in certain care providers. I do tend to work with a lot of the same groups because they do support doulas. And particularly, a couple of hospitals that I worked with and so I can walk in. And the nurses know me. They know what to expect. As a newer doula, it certainly was a little nerve rocking and even now, there are nurses or staff you maybe unfamiliar with my role and understand that I'm not there to take their place. And so they feel a little put off by that but I think once they come into the room and see that I'm there work to with them, they kind of will fall into the flow as well.