Why I became a doula

I think I first starting thinking about being a doula or some kind of birth worker after the birth of my first child. My labour was long and very medicalised - I did not actually have to have any interventions but it was in a hospital in the States where they took very little notice of my desire for a natural birth and after 10 hours of intense back to back contractions, the nurse (no midwives!) changed shift and what I can only describe as an angel walked in! She understood that lying on a bed hooked up to machines with wires all over me was not what I wanted and scooped me up and we went and hid in the bathroom. Long story short, my baby girl was born about half an hour later and it was incredible. I was blown away by what a difference a supportive, kind person made in that moment and I wanted to give more women that.

Then as things went on I had more children, and for the most part I enjoyed it but I had an overwhelming sense of how mad it was that we were all in our little houses parenting on our own for the most part, especially as I was far from family and moved around a lot, but even those with family nearby were often brining up children and caring for elderly parents in isolation. The ‘it takes a village’ cliché now seemed incredibly real to me. We need people around us to help us birth our babies and to help us raise them, this was never something we were meant to be doing alone. In the olden days we would have lived close to aunties and grandmothers and sisters and cousins, we would have seen several births before we had our own and would have people all around us to help us bring up those children. I hope that by being a doula I can help fill the gap we have created.