Hiring a doula

With Littles
We had never heard of doulas until we took our Bradley Method classes. It was our Bradley instructor who introduced us to the concept, and encouraged us to consider one.

I eventually decided that I wanted to look into hiring one. My big thing going into labor was that I wanted to have no regrets. I didn't want to look back and say, "Gee, if only I had hired a doula..." I talked it over with my husband and he was onboard. After all, neither of us had any experience with labor. It couldn't hurt to have someone there who had actually been through this before!

I started my doula search by utilizing a list provided by a local birth resource center. By this point, I think I was around 32 or 33 weeks pregnant, and quite a few of the doulas I contacted had no availability for my due date. Finally, I got in touch with "E," who said she could take me on. We interviewed her and felt very good about her, so we hired her.

A lot of people wonder about the cost of doulas. E's rate was $900. That's definitely on the high side, but this was in northern California (where everything is expensive!) and E also had a lot of experience.

I'll describe in more detail what E did for us in a later post, but for now, I'll just say that she was amazing and played a huge role in making Littles' birth a very positive experience for both of us.

With Noob
I first "met" M early in my pregnancy with baby #2, through a local Yahoo! group for attachment parenting. I don't consider myself to be "fully" AP, but I knew the group was likely full of women interested in low-intervention birth, so I figured they'd be a good group to ask for recommendations on birth providers. And they were. It was M who pointed me towards the fabulous hospital-based midwives who ended up caring for me through my miscarriage of baby #2 and then most of my pregnancy with Noob.

After our wonderful experience with E, we both knew we wanted a doula again, so I also asked the group for doula recommendations. As it turns out, M was a doula, so once I got out of the first trimester with Noob, I gave her a call and set up an interview. Since we were starting our doula search earlier in my pregnancy, we did have a lot more options. We ended up interviewing four doulas.

People often ask me what sorts of questions to ask a doula. Honestly, the biggest thing for me is not asking specific questions, but just talking, and seeing if we "click." This time around, with one birth experience under my belt, I was able to walk through Littles' birth with each candidate, talk about what went well and what I'd like to change this time around, and see how they reacted.

The first doula we interviewed was M, and we both loved her. She has a calm presence and is incredibly knowledgeable without being pushy.

The second was a doula who came recommended by my midwives. She was very knowledgeable, too, but we just didn't "click." I think she might have been good for me as a first-time mom, when I needed a lot more guidance, but on my second time around the block, I had a good idea of what I wanted and needed support more than guidance. The last straw came at the end of the interview, when she went off on a little rant about how she is "absolutely a breastfeeding nazi," thinks formula is inferior, and insists that all of her clients at least try to breastfeed. Now, as it so happens, I breastfed Littles until she was 22 months old, including pumping at work, and fully intended to do the same with Noob. But she didn't know that. And many women don't feel that way. For her to exert such a strong opinion just rubbed me the wrong way, even though I was ultimately in agreement on that particular point. After all, who knew what other things might come up where I'd find I was not in agreement with her? I scratched her off the list immediately.

The third doula was very nice, but again, again, I just didn't "click" with her.

The fourth doula was a certified "hypnodoula" with Hypnobabies, which appealed to me because I planned on doing Hypnobabies. She was super nice and we had a great chat. She was the least experienced of all the doulas, but that wasn't of particular concern to me: A doula isn't a medical professional, so lack of experience isn't necessarily a problem, as long as we're on the same wavelength birthing-wise and she has enough experience to be useful.

There was just one odd moment in the interview. As we went through some of our birth preferences -- wanting to avoid an IV, eat/drink during labor, etc. -- she said, "Are you sure you want to birth in a hospital? Have you considered a birth center at all? There's a great one just down the street from your hospital." This struck me as strange, because we had never indicated any concern or dissatisfaction with our hospital. Indeed, it's well-known for being friendly towards med-free birth, and all the other doulas had spoken very highly of it. We said that yes, we had considered birth centers and still decided on the hospital (which was absolutely true), and she still spent a few minutes encouraging us to take a closer look at them.

She also mentioned that there was a Hypnobabies Yahoo! group, and encouraged me to join. So I did. And did some poking around in the archives. Eventually, I found her own birth story, which she had posted to the group after the birth of her son a year or so earlier. Long story short, she had been under the care of the same midwives at the same hospital as me. She ended up delivering via c-section, and vaguely blamed the midwives for it. She was also less-than-thrilled about some aspects of her postpartum care at the hospital, e.g. being woken up in the middle of the night to check on the baby. She said that she would go to a birth center for her next baby.

Suddenly, it made sense why she was so insistent about us looking at birth centers. I eliminated her immediately. I felt very comfortable with my midwives and hospital, and I didn't need anyone else bringing their personal baggage to my birth.

So, we hired M. I think I was around 20 weeks at the time. Again, I'll go into more details about the role she played in Noob's birth in another post (because this one is far too long already), but the short version is that she was wonderful, and we've hired her again for Q's birth.

On rates: I think M's was $400 for Noob's birth. (She now charges $450, which is still a steal for someone with her experience.) The hypnodoula was $200 -- as I said, she was the least experienced of the group, so that makes sense. The other two were in the $700 range, which is pretty typical for experienced doulas in this area.