Doulas are Worth Their Weight in Krispy Kream Dougnuts

One of the events of the weekend was to meet with a new doula, Sam, who I really liked and think we will have good relationship. Wait, if you are interviewing a NEW one what happened to the one we used during Ben's birth.

Actually the reason for the switch was trifold. 1. My first doula really doesn't serve the new hospital I am delivering at due to over an hour commute. 2. A good friend used Sam with great success 3. As much as I really loved Robin she also asked if her back up partner could come and thinking the more the merrier became too many at the party.

At some point I need to post Ben's entire birthday story on 6/9/2006 at 12:36 am, but needless to say using a doula was one of the best decisions for his birth. For one we wanted an intimate birht with no family (not like they offered to come anyway, but still if they had we would have asked them not to be there for labor). We also wanted to avoid c-section if at all possible as again we didn't have family coming in to help in the weeks after. We knew it going to be the 2 of us learning to be parents and as Bill was working an insane amount of hours that summer I didn't want to be healing up alone with a newborn.

So... the plan was to go natural as long a possible. In the end it was a good decision to be unmediated and totally focused and kept me from an emergency c-section that almost happened due to the double cord prolapse in the last mins of labor. Scary stuff that when he was born, Ben's apgar score was 3 due to lack of oxygen. Little did I know until it was over how scary those last mins of pushing were.

Another reason for using a doula was being an advocate for me with my dr who wanted to push about every intervention possible. When I was told I needed an internal monitor Robin intervened and I was able to wait a bit longer with intermittent monitoring, that was until I was laboring AND holding the belt on and gave in and agreed.

Bill also said later that it took the pressure off of him to know how to help when I had to add pitocin and the contractions took hold very quickly. At some point of the night the doulas told him to take a walk to get out of the room as Bill's comments about the contractions were not helping. I later found out later by the receipt in his car that he was really eating Krispy Kream Doughnuts in the cafeteria. He said when he returned on a sugar high that he could hear me from outside the wing doors and was seriously scared of what was going down.

As with everything about birth, feeding, diapering, ect it's YOUR call and no one should stand in judgement of what works for your family. I am hoping for round two to once again go as long as I can without interventions. In the long run I felt my recovery was so much easier for pushing it out (literally) and doing it without the meds. Plus having a one-on-one coach the entire time takes the pressure off your partner to process all that is going on, their fears, and frankly if eating doughnuts makes YOUR labor easier, then it was $$$ well spent.