Last week, Julie Satow expressed her disappointing experience with doulas during her first two births. This week, Avital offers a different perspective.

When I was six months pregnant with my son, my husband and I ended up moving to another state. We moved for a variety of reasons, and despite looking forward to our new location, it meant that we were now further away from both sets of parents as well as countless friends.

Our move shook up my plans for a homebirth. We didn’t have a support network in the area built up yet, and I couldn’t imagine we would get there in the three months left before my son was to be born. I wasn’t sure if we could pull one off without one. In retrospect, I had a very uneventful labor and birth that would have been perfectly suited for a homebirth, but ah… hindsight. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: birth, doula, home birth, labor

Forgive me a few minutes to vent about doulas, those crunchier-than-thou pregnancy helpers that are as necessary now to the Park Slope set as a baby sling or Babycook steamer.

But I’m pulling the Boppy pillow from under those mommy helpers. In my house, they are don’tulas.

I have hired two doulas in my life–one for each pregnancy. But for all their talk of the beauty of birth and the exhilaration of labor (not to mention their $1500 fees), neither was present for the birth of my children.

Let me explain: Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: birth story, delivery, doula, labor, rant