The business end of things

I thought I'd post a little update about my doula business. 

My goal for my business is one due date every month or so.  This works out well without straining our childcare arrangements (aka my wonderful neighbor who takes my kids at the drop of a hat) and without taking too much time out of our evenings or weekends when I do my prenatal/postnatal visits. 

I'm doing pretty well with that.  January, check.  February... not my fault Haf decided to oust the wee ones a mere 40 hours before my arrival.  March/April vacation.  May, check.  June check.  July and August, two potentials awaiting interview...  I'm really, really happy with this volume. 

My website isn't perfect, but it's up and google-able and everything important is in place.

The big news is that I've decided not to affiliate myself with the local doula association, which means I won't have my name and contact information placed on their central website.  The reason for the decision is that they have a policy on pricing for services, and I feel the price they want is too high.  At my price, I seem to get a lot of interest, at their price... not so much.  I'm not an extremist capitalist, and I agree our services are WORTH the price they ask, but a service is really only worth what a client will pay.  At any rate, for me this is about the experience, not the money, and so having a higher volume of clients at a slightly lower price just fits better with my goals. 

Other than that...  I'm working on my photography skills and in six months or so I hope I can start offering birth, baby, and family photography as part of my business.  We'll see...  I must still master fill-flash before I can snatch the grasshopper from the mixed metaphor's hand.  No wait, that's not how it goes....

2 Quotes I like...

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day, I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."  - Mary Jean Iron

We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful, it's that women are strong. - Laura Satvoe Harm

I'm googleable!

Ok- everyone go to google and type in either lausanne doula or doula lausanne... and there I am! 

AND a company wants to send me free cloth diaper samples to show to my clients!

(Now all I need are more clients!) (But I have several feelers out to help me with that already)

Considering how cool I am, I should probably raise my prices! 

My new "baby"

Far from done...
I'd appreciate any cooents/ritiques about the style/colors/look, as well as for the contents of any of the pages that look like they are more or less "done".

www.lausannedoula.com

One last thought: Power

I promise to get back to the regularly scheduled Eliot and Ivy show soon, but I need to get all this out of my system while it's fresh.

A birth is a powerful thing.  I am not a person to toss around words like “energy” and “power” unless I am discussing an assignment in my Physics 112 Electricity and Magnetism course.  I never thought I’d turn into one of “those hippies”.  I’m not one to put much stock in the intangible.   But that intangible element of power and energy are exactly what brought me to this work as a doula.  I am a firm believer that the power of birth should rest in the hands of the mom as much as is possible. 

Power is present in the birth environment in many ways.  The mother herself experiences crushingly strong power… but remains unharmed, in the same way that electricity, strong enough to kill if mishandled, can pass through a conduit with no harm to the vessel.  The mom is the conduit of the energy of birth- she has to find a way to handle the intensity, but she will walk away unburned.

In a physiological birth, there is little reason for a mother’s power to be transferred to a care provider.   A midwife serves as a life guard, occasionally making gentle corrections to the course of the labor so that it stays safe.  A life guard does not attempt to be an Olympic swimmer, though she must know the sport intimately.  She simply watches and waits, ready to step in and seize some degree of power in the event of great need. 

Doula is a Greek word, originally the title of the head female slave in a household.  This slave would accompany the birthing women of the family, giving them whatever they needed during their birthing time.  If a midwife is the life guard, a doula is the woman holding the big fluffy robe and Gatorade for when the swimmer steps out of the water to take a break.  A doula’s role is support only, for the mom and dad. 

For anyone who has an ear open to what is happening in modern obstetrics, there is a huge power struggle going on between medical staff and mothers.  Rikki Lake postulated in her film “Business of Being Born” that doctors and hospitals are motivated by money to over-use life-saving high-risk technology for physiological, low risk women.  And that may well be a part of it.  But here is what I experienced as the other part, and what I think may be a bigger factor:

Power.  It is difficult to stand so closely to such power and not want to reach out and grab it.  I believe most midwives (there are bad ones out there) focus on the mother’s journey to empowerment, rather than their own.  As they say, “A good midwife has two skilled hands and knows how to sit on them.”  What an amazingly useful lesson for a woman about to embark on raising a human being, to know that she has the power to bring life from her body.  She is in a good place, has a good energy, and comes into motherhood with confidence.
And so where do obstetricians fit in?  An obstetrician is a highly trained surgeon, whose job it is to step in and seize power on the rare occasions where it is necessary in order to save lives. I don’t want to attack obstetricians here.  Just as there are bad midwives, there are many, many good obstetricians.  But I do wonder if an unconscious desire to seize some of the amazing waves of power present in a birth environment motivates doctors more strongly than money (as postulated by Rikki Lake) to discourage or even actively prevent physiological birth, over-medicate, over-intervene, and over-cut women who are at the mercy of the Authority.

It takes a strong woman to look at pain and choose to accept it as her route to follow.  I’ve accepted an epidural when one was pushed on me, and I don’t blame other women for it.  But if birth culture is going to change to something that is mother-centered as it should be, and always has been until very recently, it will require women to start talking about birth again.  Not as a horrific trial that we survive and endure, but as an incredible, empowering miracle that we orchestrate.  Let us find a way to once again make women want to birth, and not be delivered of, their babies.  We can all be strong women.   
* Addendum: As I was eating dinner tonight, it suddenly occurred to me that I might not have clearly connected two thoughts in this post... so here you go:  If I, as a doula, was sorely tempted to use every trick I'd ever learned or studied in order to "help" more in the birth, and, let's face it, in order to feel powerful by proxy, implicating myself more than necessary in the birth process, than I can understand the temptation for a doctor, who, again, knows life-saving techniques beyond the competencies of a midwife (instrumental delivery and c-sections) to also take this power.  It is hard to let someone find their own way, when we feel we can help.  And all I can offer is massage and kind words.  A doctor can literally "deliver" a baby.  Luckily, I have self restraint.  Luckily most midwives have self-restraint, and their very training reinforces the empowerment of the mother.  Unfortunately, doctors in general are not taught this- they are taught to see pathology, and take control.  How hard it becomes, for a god to let a mere mortal determine her own path. 

Birth of a doula

My client gave birth at home, in a birthing pool, with a midwife, exactly as planned, after about 14 hours of early labor, and 3 hours of active labor.  Throughout the entire process, she was relaxed, calm, and confident, trusting in her body to bring her son into the world.  It was an honor to witness such a beautiful birth. 

I spent about 12 hours in my client’s home.  I worked with her on her relaxation techniques, learned through the hypnobabies program, I massaged her back and shoulders, I encouraged her during moments of frustration, and got her sips of water when she asked.  Mostly, I just stared in awe at her ability to work with her body and bring life into the world. 

Studies have shown that women, when in the company of a laboring woman, tend to mirror her hormonal changes.  A woman in labor releases oxytocin.  Oxytocin has a reputation in labor- it is the hormone that causes the uterus to contract- something most women experience as pain or intense pressure.  However, it has a lesser known and much more important role- oxytocin is the love hormone.  It primes the mother (and the baby, who receives its dose via the placenta) for love at first sight.  And for a woman accompanying the laboring mother, it creates the instinctive desire to “tend and befriend”.  (Men tend to get dosed with adrenalin when confronted with labor, stimulating the “fight or flight” instinct).  I most definitely was overcome with the “tend and befriend” instinct, and had to restrain myself from curling up on the couch around my client and cradling her in my arms and just marveling in her amazingness.  I know that sounds crazy, especially from me.

I have never considered myself to be a particularly nurturing person, although anyone who has seen me with my own kids would probably disagree.  I knew, going into my work as a doula, that this might be a challenge.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the desire to “mother the mother” was the most natural thing in the world for me. 

I came away from this experience with one major impression- that birth is normal.  Now, I know that not every birth is normal; I know there are reasons for hospitals, c-sections, and the like, don’t misunderstand me.  But birth, most of the time, for most women, is simply ordinary.  There seemed to be nothing more natural than hanging out at my client’s house, helping as a member of the “team”, matching our work to the changing needs of the mom, and finally, witnessing the birth of a new person.  How fitting that such an amazing event can, and should, take place in such ordinary surroundings. 

Birthing at home maintains the sacredness of the moment of birth itself.  Everyone present is known to the mother.  She knows every inch of the terrain on which she is birthing.  She makes decisions every step of the way- staying at home allows her to avoid interventions which can change a normal physiological process into something quite different… and dangerous.  I watched first hand, and saw that this woman gave birth to her child- she was not delivered of it by someone else. 

I was worried that some part of my desire to be a doula was related to my love of newborns.  Not so.  I didn’t give that (adorably cute) baby a second thought, aside from wanting to know he was healthy.  My priorities were my client and her first steps into motherhood.  The bonds that were made and shaped between her, her child, and her husband.  I’ll admit I was almost a bit happy that she had leg cramps and needed more massage after the birth, because it allowed me to be a part of this ordinary, extraordinary event for just a little bit longer.     

I think the next step for me will be midwifery.  But I also think I’d like to design my own childbirth preparation course, using a variety of different ideas from books I’ve read recently, this experience with hypnobabies, and my own.  I can see why birth work can become addicting.  There is a point after the birth, and many times during the labor, where my “job” was to disappear for a bit and allow the mom and her husband to find their own path.  And that was hard.  And then there were times where I was a part of the calm, relaxed work of the mom, supporting her as best I could.  And that was amazing.  But ultimately, my final step is a step away, leaving the new family… and where better to step, than into another birth? 

I look forward to the day when I can offer competent medical care as a midwife, while maintaining the emotional role of a doula. 

Dueling Doulas

I'm pasting below a post I put on my doula forum, in response to another post, which was a slam against DHA enhanced formula, but which contained no factual evidence for the opinion.  The reason I'm posting it to this blog is because I think it helps delineate my views on my job, and because, I still have not decided if I want to start a blog specifically about my work, or continue to post my doula stuff on my "family" blog.  In the mean time, I don't want to lose my ideas, so they are getting shuffled into this blog until further notice. 

I agree with what has already been said.  As doulas, educators, and counselors trained through CBI, our job is to provide information so that mothers (and fathers) can make informed decisions about the way they choose to birth and feed their babies.  Using capital letters implies yelling in any internet correspondence, and this is part of the reason why your post was seen as inflammatory. 

As we have learned in our coursework (and as anyone who has studied statistics understands) anecdotal “evidence” is an oxymoron and essentially useless.  In the same way our own birth experience is irrelevant to our client’s experience, so one (or even several) babies getting sick from any particular type of formula is meaningless.  I am sure that better evidence is available than one nurse’s opinion.  Otherwise, we should always specify that our information source is only anecdotal.  “No studies have been done yet, but several hospitals have recommended against this formula because they have seen sick babies from it”.  This is a neutral statement, giving the information necessary, with no opinion thrown in.  At that point, a mother has the information she needs to decide. 

Every woman participating in this forum knows that breast is best.  Every woman here knows that formula industry has acted and will continue to act unethically in its marketing if not controlled.  You are preaching to the choir here.  And so I know for me personally, I come to this forum to read the following:

-          Personal accounts and appeals for advice from doulas/educators/counselors, which allows us all to benefit and share experience

-          Summaries and links to new information that someone has found relevant to our work

It seems unnecessary to vent about the horrors of formula, c-sections, etc, when we are all of the same basic opinion on these matters. 

As for DHA enhanced formula, of course it is a gimmick to sell more formula.  HOWEVER, the formula industry’s attempts to match formula more closely to human milk, whatever their motivation, is a GOOD THING for babies.  There will always be babies who are formula fed, whether by mother’s choice, or because mom had no choice.  The closer artificial formula comes to mother’s milk, the better off the baby will be.  Perhaps the current formula with DHA is not the right one, but finding a way to add DHA to formula is a good idea in and of itself, and when the formula is perfected, it will be beneficial to artificially fed babies that DHA has been added.

My most recent realization about being a doula and breastfeeding consultant is that it is totally unnecessary for me to understand my client’s decisions and choices.  My job is to present evidence based information, encourage moms to use it when making decisions, and even to give gentle nudges when a mom is wavering on a decision.  After that, it is my job to stand back and be supportive and compassionate.  I would never attempt to discriminate my clientele based on whether or not she has the same beliefs on these issues as I do, though it is every doula’s prerogative to choose her clientele.  I do prefer working with clients who are on the same wavelength as me, but I learn much more from those who are not. 

Great info on babywearing... and some information on me

First, the link: Dr Sears on Babywearing

And how does this relate to me? Well, it's a segway into some information about my doula-ing business so far. I have completed all of my non hands-on training for both doula and breastfeeding counselor training. I am now anxiously awaiting the arrivals of SIX babies! January, February, March, May, and June! Pretty fantastic, if you ask me! Most of these women have also expressed an interest in some breastfeeding help, so I should be able to kill two birds with one baby. Errr... stone. I hope to cover babywearing in my post-natal visits with all of these families as well!

I meant, and totally forgot, to put up a video of me getting Ivy into a back carry with a wrap. Maybe I'll bring my wrap to CA and do it there where I have someone to actually record it.