I am lucky to be the writer and editor for the Postpartum Counseling Center, an organization I support 110%. I support this organization wholeheartedly because I used to work as a postpartum doula. Once a doula, always a doula. The work still finds it’s way into my life – when I see a mom of three little ones struggling at the grocery store, when (clearly) a girlfriend needs to TALK. The love and appreciation for motherhood and the perinatal period is in me.
I’m going to be honest. The job was hard. The work was demanding. And as we often, here at Psychotherapy & Healing Associates and The Postpartum Counseling Center, RECOMMEND hiring a doula, I wanted to shed some light from the other side of the coin. From the doula’s perspective.
On any given day, walking into a home that was either completely foreign to me or only slightly familiar, I would need to adopt many rolls, depending on the pressing needs of the family. Lactation counselor, marriage therapist, nanny, maid, massage therapist, cheerleader, chef, advocate. Though I was none of these things in credentials, I was ALL of these things DAILY. I needed to be.
I saw everything from the baby blues to severe postpartum anxiety. I shouldered a new mom’s guilt at her extra marital affair. I put aside my own way of raising my babies many, many times. I washed dishes. I felt bored. I felt useful. I felt that I was a mere handmaiden. And I felt that I was a life saver. I saved at least one life due to medical knowledge I acquired during training. I saved at least one life due from cataclysmic emotional trauma. I messed up the laundry more than once. I had occasional uncomfortable discussions with fathers and grandmothers. I got to know the family dog. I accidentally let out the cat. I helped find the cat. I was trusted with a mother’s whole heart – her baby, for crying out loud. I was trusted. I was taken for granted. I was talked down to. I was family. I was adored.
I am out of the field now – as much as I can be – because I am a writer, but also because the work was not the kind I could do forever. Because it was too much – too draining, too raw, too real, too scary, too much in competition with the mothering energy I need to focus on my own kids.
I say this with so much respect for those who doula for a few short years, as I did, and with complete awe of those who do it for a lifetime.
Most of all, as you consider seeking support from a postpartum doula, I want YOU to consider everything I was and everything I saw and everything I did. Think about what that kind of support can do for you.
While this was never something I was planning to do forever, I value the importance of the role and the work very much.