The Ordinary Doula Podcast

E101: Babies Scheduled My Week

• Angie Rosier • Episode 101

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The calendar looks like dropped spaghetti, but every twist tells a story. We walk you through two real weeks of on-call life as a doula and lactation consultant—spontaneous labors that stall and surge, VBAC momentum at 3 a.m., and the quiet, steady work of helping a four-day-old learn to feed. It’s part logistics, part heart, and fully devoted to helping families feel informed, supported, and seen.

We start with a long Monday labor that resets midstream, the kind of day where patience matters more than numbers on a cervix check. From there, text threads turn into a nighttime return and a calm delivery. The next sunrise brings home visits: a determined parent with a fussy latch, prenatal sessions shuffled when membranes start leaking, and a VBAC that takes off after an epidural with only low-dose Pitocin. You’ll hear a candid look at a breech external cephalic version—three careful attempts, no turn, and a doctor who keeps options open. Between hospital corridors and car rides, we dive into real feeding fixes: structured schedules for sleepy newborns, weight checks that guide adjustments, storage plans for oversupply, and practical techniques that protect nipples and confidence.

The pace ramps at the hospital, where a dozen bedside consults and dozens of follow-up calls compress common early hurdles into clear steps: skin-to-skin, responsive feeding, asymmetrical latch, and data you can trust from diapers to grams. Then a curveball: a first-time parent who’s suddenly eight and a half centimeters after a day of apple picking, a long overnight, and a cesarean chosen with care when instruments won’t help. Through it all, life keeps moving—kids’ concerts, workshops, and a 50th anniversary that somehow stays untouched by the pager. The through line is simple: show up, listen well, adapt, and celebrate every small win that moves a family forward.

If you value honest birth stories, evidence-based breastfeeding support, and the human side of hospital care, you’ll feel at home here. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s expecting, and leave a review with the moment that stayed with you most—we read every word and it helps others find the show.

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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_01:

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

SPEAKER_00:

Hi, my name is Angie, and this is the Ordinary Do La Podcast. We on this podcast like to talk about all things um birth, babies, breastfeeding, labor, birth prep, um, kind of a wide range of topics in that little slice of life. Hopefully, you have some reason to be interested in that slice of life, whether you work in it or you're going through it yourself. Um, it's a pretty poignant time of life. So welcome to our podcast. Um, today I wanted to just kind of share a week in the life of a doula or a lactation consultant or a birth worker. Um, I was thinking about schedules um recently, and I see lots of different calendars in my life and calendaring systems and programs, and um, and you know, I'm familiar with obviously some people's schedules and how they have a nice, tidy little work schedule. They work, you know, nine to five or something, um, or they work on Thursdays or whatever the case may be. And I was thinking about what my calendar were to look like, and it it's kind of crazy, like it's not tidy, it's kind of a hot mess. And I think of like the block, you know, you you can block out time on your calendar, and mine has all kinds of crazy overlap, and then there's also you're on call all the time, which is kind of fun. So I'm gonna grab a random week or two in my calendar of the last couple of months and um kind of just go through that week and and uh walk you through what the the calendar might look like. I think my calendar looks kind of like you if you pick up um a handful of cooked spaghetti and you drop it on a month, that's kind of what my calendar's like, as in it's all over the place. Hard to predict and changes by the week. Some weeks I look at it ahead of time, I'm like, awesome, this is gonna be a pretty chill week, or it's a pretty empty week. And by and large, that week is gonna fill up for sure. So here's a random week in the life of Adula. I'm just grabbing a week from a while ago. Um, okay, Monday. This particular Monday, I had a client who was about three days overdue to have a baby. Um, she had, you know, had an induction date a few days down the road, but it wasn't there yet. And on this particular day, her labor started spontaneously. She was very happy about that. Um, she got to the hospital, um, kept me updated throughout the night, going Sunday into Monday. Um, we texted quite a bit. They were ready for me kind of early in the morning. So I got ready, I went in. It was before traffic happened. I think I got there, oh, I don't know, like at 5:30 in the morning or something. She was laboring, doing well. Um, spent the good part of the day with her. And she had a really patient midwife who wasn't really checking. She goes, Yeah, you're thinking, you know, it looks like you're water broke, we won't check you for what till you're ready to push. And um, which I appreciate that patience, but in my mind, I'm like, oh, I wonder what I wonder what this these are doing. Um, so throughout the whole day, I probably spent, I'm trying to look and remember, probably a good eight hours with them. She was laboring, doing well. Um, her pattern would kind of come and go a little bit. And towards evening, she got checked and she was she was one centimeter when she arrived, and she was now two centimeters. She was very frustrated by that because she thought she was much farther along. Um, so they kind of, you know, if we weren't doing something pretty active, so I wasn't super surprised um by the the you know, going from one to two. Um, if we weren't doing something to keep contractions going, they kind of stopped a little bit. So they decided to just rest for a while, like, okay, we're gonna take a break, we're gonna eat some dinner. Um, and they had me go home, which I hardly ever do. I've maybe done that once or twice in my career, um, like actually leave, you know, without having like a backup come in or anything. But they're like, you know, we're just gonna hang for a while. Um, so I came home. We were planning on a couple hours, but it ended up being like four until they wanted me to come back. So I went back at like 11 p.m. I think. Contractions were much stronger at this point. They had started a little bit of betose about an hour before that, and she got an epidural a couple hours after that. Um, she slept sort of for a while. So now we're into two Monday night, going on to Tuesday morning, wee hours of the morning Tuesday, and that baby was born. I think like 4 30 in the morning. She pushed for about an hour and a half. Um, and yeah, it was super, super awesome. Oh wait, did she push 40 minutes? I I'm mixing them up a little bit. Um, but great birth. So I came home, you know, having been texting Sunday night, out of birth most of Monday, um, up at a birth all Monday night, came home and I slept for like four or five hours. Got up, went to a lactation appointment. So had a lactation appointment with a client who um, and this is a good 40 minutes away. When I go, you know, more than half an hour away from home, I charge a travel fee. And this one is a little bit farther away um than I often go. So I drove 40 minutes, went to this lactation appointment. I'd met with this client before, and her baby, cutest little baby, um, has a personality like I have never seen. And this baby, very particular, she has opinions, um, and the mom makes great milk, but this baby just gets really mad about latching. So we worked on that again, um, tried some different tips and tricks, and it was a great, great visit. Um, came back from that one, and then I had that evening, I had two postpartum visits. Um, sorry, sorry, prenatal visits. These were prenatal visits for doula clients. Um, came home, I think I made dinner for my family, I don't remember. Um, but had a little bit of time at home before I was headed out the door again to two um prenatal visits with one with it was a second visit for each of them, so I'd already met with them once. Um, and one of them, however, she was like, and she wasn't due for like two weeks. She's like, you know what? I think my fluid's leaking. So I switched the times and we expedited her visit a little bit. I'm like, let's get this visit in. Um, so I switched schedule a little bit with my other client, visited with her and her husband, and wrapped up our second prenatal preparation. Um, then I went to my other appointment, also a second prenatal preparation, awesome couples. Um, and in the meantime, the first couple I met with, she said, I'm gonna go in and get checked out. And she went in and it was amniotic fluid. Um, they decided obviously to keep her. She was a feedback, so they were gonna kind of start low-dose potosa and they started it. It was at two millil, two milliliters. Um, and they kept it at that for a long time. We texted throughout the night, she was quite fine. Um kept in touch throughout that night, you know. So now like uh a third night doing some birth stuff, these babies are all coming. And in the meantime, of all this, I had another client saying, Hey, I'm in process, I think. Like I'm having some pretty steady contractions. So I was hoping it would all work out, and you know what? It did. So I finally joined this couple uh like at three in the morning. Um, she had got an epidural, the pitocin got up to four. Um, baby didn't love that, so they put it back down to two, um, which was kind of interesting. Whereas, you know, some people get need a lot more potatocin to fill much. Um, she ended up, I think she got an epidural as well. Um, and that made her her uh labor really take off. She was very quickly 10 centimeters. So this being a V back was super smooth at this point. Things were going very well, and the baby was two weeks early. She pushed for about 40 minutes, had a baby by that one, it was like 5, 5:36 in the morning. Um, and baby latched great afterwards, just like yeah, super smooth, probably the smoothest V-BAC. You wouldn't know it was a V-BAC if you didn't know it was a V-BAC. Um, super smooth delivery there, and from there I went straight to a scheduled external cephalic version. I had a client who's doing a couple weeks and her baby's breach, and she's been doing a lot of things to try to turn that baby. Um, and one of the things they were gonna attempt was that her 38, 37 week mark was to do a version. So I attended that with her. She requested me to, and that was a good couple of hours. As you know, with versions, maybe you do, maybe you don't. They work about half the time. Um, so it's with her and her partner there while they got set up for this. Um, nurse talked to him through it. Uh, the doctor came in, an amazing, amazing doctor, a maternal fetal medicine doc came in and they did the three attempts. This woman decided not to get any fentanyl for this. Um, they do, of course, give tributylene to soften up the uterus so it doesn't uh um respond. We want it to be kind of loose hold of trying to turn the baby. Um, they usually do about three attempts. They did three attempts, and this baby didn't move, so it was kind of a bummer. So we spent some time discussing that and discussing next steps. Um, the doctor was great, like we can try again. Um, so she's gonna she's gonna continue to work on something. She's very tenacious about it. We'll see where it leads in the next couple of weeks. So um left from there and went to where else did I go? Oh, I went uh to another lactation appointment. And this lactation appointment, um, baby's four days old, super cute couple. Um, they were about half an hour from you know where I had been at the ECB, so I was kind of traveling all over this day. Um, went down and spent a good hour and a half, two hours with them. They had we had a lot of learning to do. Um, baby wasn't gaining weight uh very much at all. Um, so we did some great latches, worked on some some techniques to help, and it's just some scheduling things really. These family, you know, like oh the baby's sleeping, so I let her sleep for four or five hours, and and she's only four days old. So we we talked about a lot of things, had a great, great visit there. Super, super great couple um to work with there. Um, let's see after that, just looking at my calendar here. Came home. My kiddo had a concert, so I took him to his concert. Maybe I made dinner, I don't remember. I got to see part of his concert, the part he was in. Luckily, it was the first um first section of the concert because I had to leave there and go teach a breastfeeding class at a local hospital. Um, so I went and I had a full class um at the hospital, had a great time teaching those um, I think there was eight or nine people in the breastfeeding class. Some had partners, some didn't. So we had you know eight or nine uh pregnant moms, um, some had partners. Came home from that and was really grateful to sleep a full night in my bed. Never know if I'm gonna get to because I still have you know people in the wings. Um next day I woke up and had and there's always there's always clerical stuff to do, right? Like emails to answer, birth stories to write, things to schedule, uh, you know, there's always some homework to there's charting type stuff. So I did a bunch of work in the morning. Um, yeah, I usually get up, you know, start the day pretty early to get some stuff done before I'm out the door. Had a dentist appointment, was able to squeeze that in. Went to a lactation appointment of a baby who is about three and a half months old. I've seen him a few times, doing really well. He's on the small side, but growing well, but his parents notice a couple things are a little bit off. Um, like not developmentally, he's doing really well, but his weight seems he's not gaining um super well. So we checked on that. His weight gains are trending down a little bit, but he's also getting to the age where babies kind of drop their daily gains in half. Um, so we kind of did a little detective work there, talked about some ways to kind of get his weight back up. They've been traveling a little bit with holidays that some other travel coming up, so kind of put some strategies in place for that. Um, and it was so fun. It's so fun. I don't get to see babies that old all the time, and when they're that old, they definitely notice when you're there and they're breastfeeding, so I had to kind of step back a little bit and watch from afar. Um, but did a good weighted feed and um baby took a good five ounces and in a pretty quick time, but it was great to see see that that client again, see that couple and their cute growing little guy. And then went straight from there to a um lactation shift at the hospital. I do work at a couple different hospitals in lactation. This particular one um I work once a week, yeah, some weekends out as well. Went there and it was a busy day, like it was a busy day. Got to see probably 12 patients. Um, and I did about 35 phone calls at that hospital. I call out and talk to everybody who's had a baby within the last couple of weeks, checked in on them, had some great phone conversations. Um, usually get out of there by like 7, 7.30, but I didn't leave until 845 today because it was pretty busy. Um next day I worked at the other hospital that I work at, um, also pretty busy. So that was kind of a hop and day. Um, usually at that one I go in pretty early, like at 7.30 in the morning, and I work with another consultant that day. And so she usually takes care of NICU. We kind of um while I take care of the floor while she focuses on NICU and does some NICU meetings and also do some NICU visits too if it's pretty busy there. Um, but that was a Monday through a Friday on a random week. I'm gonna flip to another random week. Let me see if I can remember this week. Um, all right, this one's starting on a Sunday, not a Monday. I worked at the hospital on this particular Sunday. Um, it looks like I also had right after that nearby, I had in the afternoon a um lactation visit in somebody's home. If this is a client who has a massive oversupply, and so we struggle there with uh like this was all about storing milk, how to cycle through and store milk um and and what to do with extra supply. So kind of sketched out a plan for this particular um client. Um, I think I came home and slept in my own bed the next night, which was great. Um, looks like the next day I had a second prenatal interview with a couple. Um, super awesome couple. They live actually three or four hours away, but in a really remote part um of the country. And so they come in. Her mom lives closer to town, so they'll come in and do visits. So they came in for a visit, and I got to meet with them at a cute little library, had a great visit there, probably drove about a half an hour north, met with another, had another prenatal visit, a first prenatal visit this time with um a couple, a woman and her wife having a baby, met with them. Let's see what else happened here. Oh, I had then I had a looks like I had a virtual um call. I don't know if it was an interview, looks like it was um an interview for um being a doula. I worked for a company through that covers insurance or covers doula services through insurance, so I had an interview there, and then it looks like I did an overnight. Um this is a looks like a nine or ten hour overnight, kind of a longer one for a couple. I was there at birth doula, um, and they needed some there's a couple weeks where they needed some overnights. So that was that day. We're going on a Tuesday now. Looks like I had a lactation visit, lactation visit, lactation visit, lactation visit, four in a row. So um looks like we started pretty early. Well, I have a 10:30, 12:30, 2:30, 4:30. So got to see three different people. One of them, wow, she did so much dedicated work towards getting back to breastfeeding. Um, her nipples were probably torn up worse than I've ever seen any client's nipples. Um, the next mom I saw that day, um, but by the way, she's in great shape now and phenomenal. Like she's so tenacious. Uh, she's come such a long way. I'm incredibly impressed with her. Um, next mom I met with, kind of interesting, she had a what she determines a pretty traumatic birth experience. Um, and breastfeeding didn't start out great either. And I met with her a few times and pretty quickly got breastfeeding on track for her. And she, this is kind of cool. I don't I love to hear this, I don't hear it all the time. She said, you know what? This is um helping with my birth experience. If I can make this work, um, this is very important to me. So she also got into a really great place. Um my third visit that day I was with a mom who's doing pretty well. She's in the medical world herself, she's a nurse practitioner. Breasting is going pretty well. Um, we adjusted a couple little things, checked on some weights, and then um my fourth visit of the day, this mom, um, awesome client, she had a very, very caboose baby, and she's pretty mad about it, honestly. Um, so she had this little baby, and I often don't go into a home like this, but I went to a home and there was like all these teenagers and a brand new baby. Um, and this little baby is was just really slow on the growth. So we talked about some ways to to help with that, um, help milk supply. Looks like I did another overnight that night. Um, do I have oh, yep, there's a birth later on that week. I'm like, yep, there's a due date that week. Of course, babies like to come, whatever. Um, next day, looks like I had a lactation visit, lactation visit, uh, doula visit, and then I taught a pelvis workshop in the evening and another overnight. Um, that was another full day. The next day, it looks like oh, I went to a funeral. Um and then I went to the hospital, did a lactation shift to the hospital. Uh on the way home from that, I did a lactation visit. Looks like two of them, honestly. That's funny. So kind of went later into the evening with that. Next day I worked at the other hospital I work at. This is on a Friday. Usually I go in, like I said, 7 30, got done by like 12. Oh, looks like I did some apple picking. Oh, yes, I remember this birth. Um, it was a client, it was a first baby. Um, and she kind of let us know, like, hey, I'm in labor, I'm gonna get into the hospital. So we said, great, keep in touch with us. Um, and I had been apple picking with my kids. So I'm like wearing jeans and a t-shirt and tennis shoes, and you know, not not uh super dressed up by any means. And this this is a rare afternoon off. Um, and I planned actually to go to some haunted houses. This was in October with my kids that night. Um, wherein this mom called and said, Okay, we're at the hospital and I'm at like eight and a half centimeters. And we're like, what? And she was like, What? So she was totally shocked. I was shocked. So I did not go to the haunted houses. I had my kids actually just drop me right off at this birth um because this first-time mom had she had no idea she was that far progressed, and neither did we. So I got there in my t-shirt, tennis shoes, and jeans, which is not usually what I wear to a birth. Um, it was not fast after that, so we thought it'd be super fast. Um, I was honestly five minutes away um when she called, so ran right over there, and I think I was with them for a good 12 or 13 hours so overnight that Friday on to Saturday. It was still dark, actually. I remember when I left. So it was before sun, before sunrise, but um things kind of slowed down. She did end up having a C-section, she got to 10 centimeters. No, no, or did she quite get to 10 centimeters? I can't remember. Um, she ended up having a cesarean, however. Oh, yeah, she did. She was pushing and everything. Um, and the doctor didn't feel a doctor I really like working with, he didn't feel that forceps or vacuum would do any kind of changing to the position that the baby was in. So, um, for someone who progressed. So fast she did end up with a cesarean after everything that we tried. So kind of a bummer. I know I came home. Actually, this, I remember this because I didn't have a car at the hospital. So I texted my husband and said, Hey, can you come get me? Um, and I just started walking towards home. So I got I love walking actually. So I got a couple miles in before he, I was pretty tired. They were kind of probably swervy miles. Um, came home and slept um a good deal of that morning. Um and it looks like that evening, oh, I do remember this was so much fun. We had a 50th wedding anniversary party for my mom and dad that evening, and it was a miracle that that didn't get touched on by anything else throughout the week. So that's another random week um in the life of a doula lactation consultant. So as you can see, like there's some unpredictability to these schedules, which is kind of fun um as births come up. Um, but I love it. I absolutely love it, and it's a great day, a great day when I can help other people and um just feel so fortunate to meet some incredible people. Um, gosh, all my clients hold a pretty special place in my heart, and I don't know if they know that or not, but for years and years after I've worked and served with them, then I um still have really fun memories of them. So I got to just experience going through that like uh just now too, and and remembering a lot of those awesome people. And it's so impressive to see how hard people work and how dedicated they are to um what's important to them. Thanks for hanging with me too for two of my crazy random weeks. Um we sure appreciate you being here with here with us on the Ordinary Do Lo podcast. Hopefully you can make a human connection with someone you know or someone you don't, but reach out and um those relationships we have are incredibly important. Hang on to them, treasure them, value them, and take good care of them. Hope to see you again next time. Have a good one.

SPEAKER_01:

Episode credits will be in the show notes. Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.