The other day was my doula-versary. No, I didn’t actually bake a cake for the event, it just happens to come a few days before my birthday! Here how it all happened. How a doula was born…
I was really nervous. I had never actually seen a birth before… I mean I had given birth to two children, but for one of them I had been unconscious, and for the second it all happened so quickly that it was clearly not the average birth experience.
I was at the end of the second level of my doula training, when a message went up for the collective that I was volunteering with. A single mom had requested a doula for her induction in a few days. The only hitch; she was Francophone and the only experienced doula available didn’t speak French. I volunteered to translate and be the shadow.
As with most inductions, it was scheduled for bright and early in the morning. Being November, it was dark and very chilly as I hurried into the hospital for our 6am meeting. The other doula had to drop her child off at an activity and would be joining us at 9, which gave me a few hours to hang out and get to know M. In general, I don’t usually get to the hospital so early for an induction- there can be hours of waiting before the birthing person is even assigned a room, let alone given the medication- but considering that we were complete strangers meeting for the first time and I was going to be her birth partner, getting to know each other seemed like a good plan.
We bonded over stories of our children and our birth experiences. I remember feeling like a complete imposter, realizing that this woman had already birthed 4 children and likely knew far more about birth than I did!
The other doula came as M was being given the first dose of pitocin. Her contractions were still quite light and so we continued to talk and the other doula told us of her birth experience and we spoke of love and life and more about our kids.
My partner texted. Would I be back for lunch?
As M’s contractions became more intense, we helped her stay active, walking around the room and bouncing on the birth ball.
I was naive. I expected that at any moment, the other doula would open up some sort of magical Mary Poppins-like doula bag and all sorts of creative doula tricks would come into play, with scented oils, colourful porcupine-like massage balls, and many more exciting things I could only imagine.
But it didn’t really happen like that. The massage oil was unscented, plain almond oil, and it did the job very nicely. We took turns massaging M’s back as her contractions became closer together, and we showed her breathing techniques to get through each contraction as it came. We reminded her to let out all her breath and relax completely between contractions so that she wasn’t holding tension unnecessarily.
I ran her a nice warm bath and sat beside her holding her hand as the water soothed her contractions. As the water got cold and M decided she wanted to lie down, I helped her out, dried her off and adjusted the bed so that she was comfortable. She told us that of her 4 children, she had taken the epidural for one of them and felt it had been “a total waste of time”. Nevertheless, as her contractions became more intense from the pitocin, the nurse kept repeatedly suggesting that she consider an epidural. I remember being shocked and pleasantly surprised when M said to the nurse politely but directly, “I feel like I am talking, but you are not listening to me. I have told you at least five times that I am not interested, now please stop pestering me, I am busy!”
My partner texted. Would I be back for dinner? (Did I mention that my second was born so fast my partner didn’t even have time to hop in a cab and get to the hospital 15 minutes away to be with me for the birth?)
Things started to intensify. M went through transition and it was rough for her. She was tired, mentally and physically. She kept asking the nurse to “take the baby out” and telling her that she was done being there and wanted to go home. Having never seen anyone go through transition, I found this somewhat alarming, but when I translated what she said for the other doula, she told me that this was pretty normal transition behaviour.
M also started to feel nauseous, and the other doula gave me what I consider one of the best tips of my whole doula training…or at least the most practical in terms of avoiding emergency wardrobe changes: when someone is going to throw up, quickly get them the small garbage from the bathroom. Don’t try to get them to the bathroom (you will never get there in time) and don’t use the minuscule kidney-shaped bowl that the nurse offers (think vomit tsunami).
After throwing up a few times, M suddenly announced that she felt a strong urge to poop. The other doula and the nurse perked up considerably and seemed really excited. I was still a bit in the dark as to why the news was greeted with such joy, but the other doula told me that a strong urge to poop is often what marks the start of the pushing phase, and sure enough, when the nurse checked, M was dilated to 10 cm.
My partner texted. Was I ever coming home?
Pushing began, but was in no way the quick and easy endeavour that I had imagined from wherever one gets information about pushing (my own birth? movies?). The baby was discovered to be in the OP (occiput posterior) position, or “sunny-side up,” meaning that baby was facing the abdomen rather than the back. Practically speaking, it meant more time pushing and a more difficult descent down the birth canal. I was surprised by the way that the head would come down the birth canal with each push, but then go back up in between pushes. Never the less, progress was being made and eventually after an hour and a half of intense pushing, baby was out!
It was both an exhilarating and humbling experience. I realized that while I still had a ton of experience to gain, a lot of what a birthing person needed was someone who could anticipate some of their needs and find ways to help, one contraction at a time. There is no rulebook, no fancy “doula moves”. It is often about you being there anytime, day or night, normalizing the experience, calming the partner (and sometimes hinting at them to give the birthing person a foot rub) and holding space for the birthing person and their choices.