E111: Why I Love Being A Doula

We share an unscripted reflection on why doula work still moves us after thousands of births, from client connection to teamwork with nurses and midwives. The talk traces a path from personal beginnings to professional neutrality, and why value often lives beyond metrics.

• shifting from personal lens to professional neutrality
• building trust with clients across many styles of birth
• supporting partners with practical, tailored involvement
• finding community with doulas and birth workers
• witnessing human strength, fear and triumph in labor
• collaborating with nurses, midwives and physicians
• balancing awe for the body with hard realities
• making sense of value beyond outcomes and fees
• short vs long labors and staying adaptable
• widening purpose from one family to many

Oh, and please make a human connection. Hug someone, handshake someone, text someone, message them, ping them, make a connection with someone else. It is important. We need each other.

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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

Transcript

Welcome And Who This Is For

SPEAKER_00 0:10

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.

An Unscripted Reflection

From Personal To Professional

The Power Of Client Connection

Partners And Their Role

Community With Birth Workers

Witnessing Human Strength

Awe For The Human Body

Teaming With Medical Staff

The Value Of Doula Care

SPEAKER_01 0:55

If you're listening to this, you're probably in a couple of different categories. You might be pregnant, you might be breastfeeding, you might be thinking about being pregnant, you might be a birth worker, you might be a doula, you might be a lactation consultant, you might be what we just affectionately call a birth junkie. But wherever you're coming from, welcome. Welcome to this podcast episode. So today is super unscripted, actually. Usually I do some research and organizing, take some notes, get episodes prepared and ready. And today I'm going totally off the cuff, actually. So um I haven't even thought much about what I want to say in this episode. So we will just see how it goes. Um, but I, as I've been thinking back on my time as a doula and the different chapters of it, I just kind of want to reflect on that and why I love what I do. So that's my really off the cuff um topic for today. Um I, as I think about being a doula, when I first became a doula, I was in the midst of having babies myself. Um I had had three babies and I eventually had two more over the next few years. Um, so it was a very personal thing to me. And I I did what I did for other people. Um, I would imagine, envision myself. I'm like, oh my gosh, her midwife's great. Maybe I'll use that midwife, or oh, I love this um hospital, or um, and so I put myself in those shoes for a long time, actually. And over time that has kind of changed and removed itself. So it's not personal anymore. Um, it's become more professional. I mean, it has always been professional, but um I look back on those times and my investment was um a little bit different, but now it is um so much more unbiased, I guess you could say, because I look at this and have seen in enough situations that we can't impose that type of birth on anyone or everyone for that matter. Um, there are people who want very different kinds of birth than I would ever want for my body. Um and so yeah, it's been kind of interesting looking back, like why I love this. One of the things I absolutely love is the connection with people. Like that is so incredible to me. And I've had oh, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of clients over the years, put into the thousands even. Um, and believe it or not, really, really truly, believe it or not, every single one of them is very important to me. Like it it they kind of make up who I am. Um, and if I were to hear their names or just see their faces or run into them in public, there's gonna be a real connection there. Um, I may not remember a name, actually. Um, I mean, when I see the names, I can remember them and hear a little bit about about their birth story. But these experiences have all impacted me a lot. So making those connections with people um is cool. And not every connection is super easy, not every connection is super warm and friendly. Sometimes there's been a handful of times when I've been glad, you know, that client was done. But I can say a hundred percent, um, I have deeply loved every single person that I've served as a human, right? Just as a human going through something, going through a struggle. Um, and the partners too. Like, I really enjoy connecting with partners and bringing partners into the situation in a way that feels real to them, feels safe, um, feels involved, and everyone's different there too on their involvement levels that they desire or are comfortable with or even want. Um, but I love connecting with partners and making a connection with the with um, usually it's the dads, right? The dads of of the situation are pretty awesome to connect with as well. Another thing I have absolutely loved is making connections with other birth workers, with other doulas. Like that um is awesome. I absolutely love it. And being able to process things um after a hard birth or a great birth, like being able to have somebody just bounce that off is so valuable. It's so awesome. Um, and for years now, some of my closest, dearest friends have, you know, decades actually have been other birth workers and people I have met in this work. And when you meet these people, um if you're a birth worker and you meet other birth workers, there's just this, I don't know, this like a little bit of an electric connection. You're like, oh yeah, we could talk for a while. We could sit down on the park bench for a bit and converse about what it is we love and what we've experienced. And this happens with doulas all over the country and the world, actually. These connections come um regardless of geographic location because we're doing a similar work. And I love the absolute humanity of this, right? Just the absolute humanity that um is happening um every single day as people give birth. Um, so that's some of the things I love about it. Another thing I love about it is seeing, like being able, not seeing, that's not a good enough word, like witnessing, um, partaking. I don't know the best word of that, like um having the absolute honor of being a witness to the human power. And and mostly that's coming from women, like the women who give birth, and their incredible fortitude, their strength, their dedication. Like it is just mind-blowing how strong people and women specifically can be. Um, I've seen heartbreak, right? Like absolute heartbreak and absolute triumph, all the emotions, the fear, the um confidence, the and it can, you know, these emotions that are on two different sides of the spectrum as well, how they exist in the same place. Like it is pretty, pretty humbling and such an honor to have a front row seat to that bit of humanity. So that's taught me a lot too, a whole lot, um, which I appreciate. I it's such an honor to be able to support people in this time of life. Um, another thing I absolutely love is the human body. It is phenomenal. Um, who was I talking to recently? Uh, it was a dad. I can't remember if he was in a hospital or a birth client, but he's like, man, this, oh yeah, yeah. I didn't know him very well. He wasn't a client, he was just somebody I was helping in the hospital with lactation. And as we were talking about that, he was blown away. You can tell for about the 12th time that day. He's like, wow, that is incredible what the human body can do. And it really is. Like, I um every time a baby's born, I kind of pinch myself. I'm like, I cannot believe I get to witness this miracle again and again and again. Um, it is pretty incredible. So the emotions I've I've enjoyed, the ride of emotions, and there's some hard ones, I won't lie about that. Um, there's also some pretty incredible ones. One of my favorite things, however, is being hopefully being able, um, this is my goal anyway, is to leave people better than I found them. Um, and to witness again, to to have the honor of seeing people find their own strength, their inner strength, um, dig deep within themselves and do things they might not have ever thought possible. That has been an incredible honor of my life, too. Also great to work alongside medical staff in hospitals and birth centers, and that includes nurses, um, doctors, midwives, like even hospital administrators who strive and want the best for for patients. Some nurses, you know, maybe no, not they might be a little more condescending, but most are very compassionate um and want the best for their patients. And it's fun to be on that team, to like join that team with them and be able to offer the kind of support um to clients that we can do and we do as a team, which is pretty awesome. So those are some of the reasons that I absolutely love being a doula. Um yeah, it's cool. And I've I've been able to witness friends give birth, um, neighbors, people in my community, my immediate community, people in my family, um, that be, you know, sisters-in-law, cousins, um, and again, what an absolute honor that is to be able to be a part of that. And I'm excited about it. It's I'm actually probably headed to a birth tonight, um, which will be awesome. I've been in contact with this client all day, and they're kind of getting ready for um a little more extra labor support. So um again, I'm excited every time I'm at a birth, every single time, I'm like, wow, this is awesome. I love it. I love being here. This is where I need to be. And it's um exhausting and energizing all at the same time. So hopefully, hopefully some of that might speak to you um about doula work and and the support that that that can lend to those who are seeking it. It is a valuable in so many ways service. Um, I was actually just reading an article um about are doulas worth it? Like, is it worth the money we pay to get a doula? And some things it's sometimes it's hard to measure worth of as far as like monetary value, as far as the cost of a doula goes, it's hard to measure the actual outcome worth of that. Um, but if we leave people better than we find them, if we help people be empowered, if we help people help people have positive birth experiences and safe birth experiences, um if we help partners, you know, start parenthood out on the right foot, if we help moms start out confidently and feeling surrounded by love and support by getting whatever birth it is she wants, then yeah, that's incredibly valuable. And then we can look at other values, like we, you know, if we can um prevent cesareans, if we can prevent NICU stays, there's value there as well. I've had many, many people, I'm sure other dealers have had the same experience. People say, man, like you don't get paid enough. Um, or you know, gosh, I wish we could triple, double, triple your fee, and it still wouldn't be enough. Um, so yeah, there's some there's some value in it as well. Sometimes births are incredibly short. A couple times lately I've been at incredibly short births where I was there like an hour before the baby was born. Like, I'm not gonna lie, that's kind of cool. Um, we didn't get to do all the stuff I wanted to do. One of my clients who had a very quick delivery, um, she got to the hospital just in the nick of time. Labor picked up quite a bit after she got there. Um, I got there right after that, um, directly after her, and um the baby was born about an hour later, and she was bummed. She's like, oh, we didn't get to try all the things and um do the coping mechanisms. I was really looking forward to spending more time working on labor through labor, but birth was bigger and it just um did its own thing. Um but I I I won't complain about a short birth because the long births sure make up for it. I might be a long one tonight. Um, so hopefully you find um if you're a birth worker, you find and continue to find and always find joy in your work um and have your own reasons for loving this work. There might be some common threads there. Um, there might be some things that you love about your work that uh would be really impressive to me. And and I feel incredibly fortunate and blessed to have um a work that I can be passionate about for decades and decades and something that I um love. I know a lot of people have jobs or have work in their life that they don't absolutely love. Um, and I'm I feel fortunate that I do love what I do, and it gives me a lot of purpose. And as I've grown older and done this longer, my purpose um kind of has shifted more globally a little bit to help help more people rather than just one at a time. So anyway, thanks for hearing my rambles about why I love what I do. Um it's that this was the most unorganized episode I think I've ever done, and we squeezed about 12 minutes out of it. So thanks for hanging with us here today. Um, hope you can join us next time on the Ordinary Doula podcast. This is Angie Rosier, your host, signing off for now. Oh, and please make a human connection. Hug someone, handshake someone, text someone, message them, ping them, um, make a connection with someone else. It is important. We need each other. Talk to you next time.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.