Becoming a Doula: Intro

Shortly before becoming pregnant, I read Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent."  A beautifully imagined retelling of the Biblical story of Dinah, as told from Dinah's perspective, it transported me to the world of birth as it was before hospitals.  Before fear ruled the delivery room.  Before women were excluded from their own experiences.  It painted traditional rituals I already knew from textbooks in vivid, emotional strokes.  More than that, it offered up a glimpse into a world of women's community.  One where pregnancy brought women together instead of dividing them, and where birth was a transformative process, rather than the hidden, almost shameful thing media has made it today.

While pregnant, I watched Ricki Lake's "The Business of Being Born."  In it, the filmmakers explore today's birth world, as expressed by the average person on the street.  Then they take the viewer into the world of the midwife.  Oh, the difference between them!  I sobbed through most of it.  A part of me decided then and there that becoming a midwife would be a noble choice.  But I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to homebirths forever.  I like medicine, too, and decided if I were to go that route, I'd have to become a nurse midwife.  Nursing school seemed like an awfully long process, so I pushed the idea to the back of my mind and prepared to have my baby.

And then, near the end, I read Ina May Gaskin's "Ina May's Guide to Childbirth" on the recommendation from a friend.  She was a major hippie.  She founded a commune.  She was a huge activist of the sort I tend to shy away from because I don't like forceful positions.  But all of it allowed her to bring together a community of birth, one that celebrated women, insisted upon the strength built into our own bodies, and defied the sterile, anti-emotional setting of modern delivery rooms.  I sobbed through it, too.

When my delivery went so far off course of the natural, empowered, beautiful experience I wanted, I lost myself.  In grief, in guilt, in fear, in a consuming rage I couldn't control.  For months, I struggled with making sense of what happened to me.  To me, because I felt powerless in the forceful press of medical authority.  Because I felt my choices had been stripped from me, and in the process so had my strength, determination, and much of my worth as a woman.

It had occurred to me at some point before delivering that I could be a doula.  Afterward, full of determination to keep what happened to me from happening to others, I researched my options.  But I didn't believe I could do it.  I didn't believe I was strong enough, or that anyone would trust me to be there for them in that most intimate of moments.  And then a strange, surreal set of circumstances transpired to bring me back into contact with an old friend, now pregnant with her first.  She had the birth I wanted so much, and allowed me to share in the warm glow of the aftermath.  Just getting to be peripherally involved, across town, healed some small part of me and gave me hope.  I had already committed to helping my friends feel happier, stronger, and safer in pregnancy, but I became doubly so in wanting to make their birth experiences into transformations.  A few months later, that friend told me I'd make a great doula, and how much she'd loved hers.  It planted the seed of confidence, though I didn't think about it.

That was in August.  I took a class that semester about women's spirituality, which happened to have three doulas among my classmates.  What I learned there, and even more so what I worked through there, within myself, about myself, took that seed and made it grow.  One of the doulas introduced me to the International Cesarean Awareness Network for no other reason than that she wanted to help (which of course made me promptly sob all over myself).  Her random act of kindness gave me more hope, and helped me release a lot of my guilt over failing myself, failing my husband, and failing my baby.  Still, I didn't really connect any dots.

Then suddenly it was the new year, and I found myself filled with a calm determination to make change. My friend and I had spent three months purposely changing within, seeking the people we wanted to be. Without any conscious effort, I arrived at a precipice and jumped.  Within three days, I made my decision, chose an organization, committed myself financially, and had in place all of the necessary pieces that would lead me to becoming a doula.  I never once questioned it, despite that being my common practice.  I felt it.  Knew it was the right course.  It wasn't even a course, really; it was more what I was meant to do, and I had finally found the way to become who I am.

I've been telling people the easy answer when they ask why I want to be a doula.  "I want to save women from having the experience I did."  And I do.  But that's not the real answer, just the easy one.  The real answer is this:  I am a doula because I want to change our birth culture.  I want to bring back the community that once bonded all women simply because they were women.  Our world is so individualized, so distant and cold and sterile.  It moves so quickly and we separate ourselves from each other for so many reasons.  Pregnancy should be a time to slow down, reconnect, and be in the moment. Birth should be an act of celebration, both of life and of a woman's strength.  I want to be a doula because I want to help women find and embrace that celebration.

Funnily enough, I've been practicing for doula work my whole life.  Not only are many of my esoteric interests included in the work, but it utilizes all those "weaknesses" I've been most at war with.  The compassion that makes me appear clingy; the need to mother everyone around me that tends to alienate me; the anxiety that drives me to understand interpersonal and health situations from the ground up; even the fear, guilt, and other overwhelming emotions following the birth of my son allow me to be a better doula.  In the act of becoming a doula to show other women their own power, I have "accidentally" empowered myself.

Beauty.  Strength.  Determination.  All women have them.  I aim to help women reclaim them through the transcendent experience of birth, one baby at a time.