What Do You Want Your Doula to Do?

Lactation support, visits after birth, availability after birth for questions via phone

Alot of communication, even it something occurs at the middle of the night, you would be a phone call away.

Provide me with a little recap of the delivery. I really have no idea of the times or how things progressed while in labor and wish I new. I asked upon our follow-up meeting as was disappointed to find out that she didn't know when we went to the hospital or when certain things were happening.

It would be nice, and very extra, touch to have a list of helpful post-delivery things you would recommend. (ex: suggested to see chiropractor or acupuncturists, would be nice to have a list with contact info of recommended ones.)

Just that you are thinking of this is super nice, and shows how caring you are. Good luck.

I did not have a professional doula but I did have my mom, a CNM, act as my doula. What I wanted was: labor support, contact ahead of time and matched expectations about how the child's birth will go (ie I wanted an intervention-free VBAC). some education about what to expect if necessary. During the birth itself she helped by giving me another point of view with options and suggestions either made by her or a doctor or nurse. (e.g. changing positions, what the pros/cons of a particular choice I had were, etc). The key thing that my mom did was that she reminded me and my birth attendants of key things in my birth plan as they became relevant. For example, I wanted to catch my own baby, but would not have remembered this as I was busy pushing. But about a minute before my baby's head emerged, my mom said, "K., do you still want to catch your baby?". This meant that everything happened exactly like I wanted. I tihnk esp. in the case where mom is being pushed to have an intervention that she isn't sure she wants, a doula can suggest that she ask for 30 minutes or an hour to think about it and give mom and her family some room to make an informed versus impulse/coerced decision.