The Ordinary Doula Podcast

E10: Training Doulas to be Super Heroes

• Angie Rosier • Episode 10

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Embark on a transformative journey with us at Birth Learning, as we guide you through the intricate tapestry of Doula training on the Ordinary Doula Podcast. Feel the pulse of an industry that's more than just a calling - it's a life-changing experience for everyone involved. Our conversation takes us down the path of a meticulously crafted curriculum, tailored to combat the high dropout rates and prepare Doulas for the raw realities of childbirth. The curriculum's heartbeat is 30 hours of live virtual instruction, weaving through the rich history of childbirth in the U.S., cultural sensitivities, and tackling the disparities faced by marginalized communities. By the end of this episode, you'll understand the critical elements of prenatal visits, the dance between pelvis dynamics and labor stages, and how to navigate the myriad birth spaces and high-risk scenarios with confidence.

Our trainings are held every year in February / March and September / October with additional dates based on demand. So, whether you're a seasoned Doula or a curious bystander, this episode promises to enrich your perspective and perhaps inspire you to explore this rewarding profession. Stay tuned, as we promise to keep the conversation vibrant, educational, and heartening, diving into the multifaceted world of birth in the episodes that lie ahead.

Visit our website, here: https://birthlearning.com/
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Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Ordinary Dula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy Dula practice helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.

Speaker 2:

Hello, this is Angie Rozier with the Ordinary Dula Podcast, and we are hosted by Birth Learning. So today for our podcast, I want to talk about something I absolutely love. This is a different piece of my work. Our work has a lot of different facets to it and this piece is near and dear to my heart and that is our Dula training. We have been training Dulas since, I think, 2015, and we've had many, many Dulas come through our trainings, which have kind of morphed and changed over the years. But let me tell you a little bit about how this Dula training came about.

Speaker 2:

I had been a Dula for a long time and saw a lot of Dulas come onto the scene and they came out of their trainings and this was many years ago, over 10 years ago and they took a training similar to what I took and they were on fire about this role. They loved what this and what the Dula role could do. They were passionate about physiologic birth and helping every pregnant woman that they could be able to have a positive and empowering birth experience, and I felt that excitement. I have that excitement. I absolutely love that. And then these folks would kind of fade away and I've mentored many of them. I've probably in my career mentored upwards of 80 Dulas and had them join me for pieces of the work whether that's a whole birth experience or client experience or had people follow me for three births or three months or even a year. I had some who followed me for a whole year once. But then I was surprised about how many of these people faded away quickly. And this is tough work, like it is hard work, and as people get into the reality of it, sometimes like oh, wow, I didn't know it was like that, or the on-call lifestyle is difficult. But also I saw people fade because that ideal scenario they were hoping to help people accomplish or achieve or help provide for folks was tough, like it wasn't happening. So over a period of years I started taking notes at the births I would go to and as I met with clients, I'm like what do doulas need to know in order to be adequately prepared for the job, to fulfill the role with sustainability, with accurate preparation, so that they were realistically able to meet the needs of their clients and the demands of the role of a doula and find joy in that? So for a period of years I took notes and I started articulating these and put them into a format and developed a doula training.

Speaker 2:

And this doula training has changed over the years and it's always, I hope, changing for the better. So what we have now, it used to be in person and we'd go to different parts of the country I lived in a different part of the country than one of the other teachers did and so we'd kind of trade back and forth. And then the pandemic caused us, like I did, many people and industries to do some shifting so that we became all virtual. So now our training is all virtual and it's 30 hours of instruction. It's live instruction. So we do meet online and we do it twice a year. It's 30 hours broken up over 10 sessions. So we have 10, 3 hour sessions. Generally, we have 6 weeks in a row on Thursdays and then within that 6 weeks we'll take some time on a couple of the Saturdays and do our sessions there.

Speaker 2:

So let me tell you a little bit about our training and how it's come to be and what we feel is so important to create a well-prepared, realistically prepared, adequately prepared, excited doula who can sustain a career and give quality support and preparation to those she works with. So we talk first off about the history of childbirth in the United States. I think it's vitally important to understand where we are and how we got there, what's happened behind us, who's paved the way, who's created stumbling blocks and how doulas fit into that history. So that's very important. We talk about cultural components of childbirth and the disparities, health disparities that exist for so many people who need doula care. So we definitely talk about the realities of maternal infant health, mortality, morbidity and everything that goes into that, especially for our brown and black moms, and how doulas can fulfill, kind of fill in a gap for that. We're not the answer to everything, but we sure can help with a lot of those disparities. So we definitely talk about that.

Speaker 2:

A lot of times over the years I would get asked can we still do? What do you do in your prenatal visits? How do you prepare your clients? So we have a session for each one of our prenatal visits where we go over how we get to know our clients quickly and deeply and it's all very scripted so that things build upon each other as you build that relationship and connection with clients. We also talk about the education we provide and as doulas take this training, they gain a whole lot of education of their own. So we talk about, of course, labor stages come from majors. That's a doulas specialty. Another doulas specialty is how the pelvis works, like the movement during labor of the mom's body and the pelvis and gosh. We've saved so many C-sections by just knowing how to help a baby move through the pelvis. We have a guest presenter come and talk specifically about that and we're very, very passionate about that topic.

Speaker 2:

We also talk about birth spaces and places, the many places you may find yourself working. If you're drawn to out-of-hospital birth or if you're drawn to, you know what's around you, what are the needs of your community around you and what facilities are nearby and how the duela role might change in those different places. We talk about high risk and complications. You do not have to be a duela very long before a high risk scenario comes across your awareness and complications arise. Maybe we have a little lead time on those, maybe they don't. You know we don't have any lead time and complications. Surprise everyone on the team and how our role shifts during that time and stays the same, and what a duela's responsibility is. We talk about a lot of the common risks. We go over different things. We've seen a ton of things. We've kind of have specialized over the time in high risk pregnancies on a lot of different fronts. So that's something that we are passionate about.

Speaker 2:

I know a lot of, as I watched a lot of these duelas kind of fade from the work years ago. They were taught about perfect, amazing, powerful physiologic birth, which is incredible, right, like that's everyone's goal, maybe, probably, hopefully that's what duelas love the most, midwives too, probably docs too, when they see it, you know, but the reality that happening, we go into the facilities and with our induction rates and epidural rates and augment like there's a lot of things that come into play that kind of are barriers to normal physiologic birth. So we have to be able to work within and around that. So we talk a whole lot about that. We also talk about the postpartum visit. What we do in a postpartum visit, what are important things to look for and kind of screen for with your clients, how do you wrap up your services, how do you kind of put a bow on it and end your services, and how important postpartum follow-up is.

Speaker 2:

We talk about birth stories. To us, stories are important. Stories are people's lives and we want them to have positive stories. We want their stories to be heard and felt in their lives as much as they need them to. So we do talk a good bit about birth stories. One of my favorite sessions is hearing the birth stories of the folks in our training and we pull lessons from each person's birth story because each story is so amazing. So we talk about the story of birth and how we can have, of course, hopefully write write like we don't always, we're not in control of writing it, but we influence the story and then how we provide concrete facts to about that story.

Speaker 2:

We talk about trauma-informed care. Lots of folks have some trauma in their background, whether that's physical, emotional, mental, maybe sexual trauma, medical trauma. So we talk about when that comes up and when it doesn't and there's signs of it and how, as a doula, how you can handle that, how you go about looking for that, how you go about sensing that and then what steps you can take when that comes up, because also guarantee that will come up in your work and for yourself. Doulas can experience secondary trauma as we are over and over in these highly emotionally charged situations with folks, how you can best take care of yourself. We go over postpartum mood disorders so we understand the postpartum period more. We have a whole session on breastfeeding. It's really great facts about breastfeeding, some up-to-date, evidence-based information about breastfeeding and doulas roles in that, for both preparing for that, supporting that, referring when folks need help, additional help on breastfeeding so we cover that.

Speaker 2:

We also cover the business aspect. Laudula is run-alone business so we we dedicate a session to what that looks like to market yourself and what it looks like to own and run and set up a business. When we find that when you take care of your business early on in your business, we'll take care of you. And we do a whole lot more. We do a lot of getting to know each other and we have some fun, calm check-ins every time where we get to know our people. And one thing I will say I love conducting our doula training because I love the material. I love seeing what other folks bring to the work, the strengths that they can bring, and I love the doulas that we train. We get to follow with people over and over and over again all over the country and that's absolute joy and pleasure for us.

Speaker 2:

We also, each time we meet, we will cover a real-life case study that applies to the topic of the day or night and we'll go over all the details of one of our clients, whether it's a high-risk situation or maybe it's a postpartum situation, or we have some really incredible life-changing births, really healing births or V-backs. You know lots of different things. We can draw from there with our case studies and then we watch a birth video together. With every single one of our sessions we view a birth video together. We start pretty mild and we work up to some pretty tough stuff and our practice is to see what doulas' roles are as we observe, and if you were the doula, what you would do, what the doula could do, what could be done said. You know how things can move, like whether we're moving people or bodies or emotions, and how doulas can can be involved and impact the experience as we watch a variety of birth stories.

Speaker 2:

We do have an optional certification like this is a training. You know it's 30 hours of training. You get a completion, a certificate of completion at the end. But we also have an accredited certification that's held through at Midwifery College. So we go over. You know you have about a year afterwards to certify, which requires a little bit extra work and an additional extra fee to certify, but that's available as well. So that's kind of in a nutshell what our birth doula training looks like.

Speaker 2:

We also are getting ready to launch a postpartum doula. Training has some of these same components and then a whole lot more about postpartum care, because we have a lot of our doulas are doing postpartum work as well and we do tons of that too Lactation support, overnight support, daytime support for people in that postpartum period. So hop on over to birthlearningcom. You can see when our next training is. We usually do a February, march and a September, october time of every year, happy to hold more. If more folks want to jump in, we can do additional trainings throughout the year, but we absolutely love this piece of our work as well. Thanks for being here today with the Ordinary Dula podcast hosted by Angie Rozier, we hope that you have an awesome day and that you can go out and do something that brings you joy and inspires you and touches the lives of others. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Dula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.