Doulas Of The Roundtable

In honor of Cesarean Awareness Month, we discuss the ways to support clients through cesarean birth. We sit down with Christi Banks to discuss all the different ways we can support our clients through planned, unplanned, and emergent cesarean births. We still have a place on the birth team and there is still support to be had.

It's World Doula Week 2020!  Join us in our discussion of how we plan to celebrate World Doula Week while we navigate unchartered territory that is COVID-19. 

In the rapidly evolving landscape that is life in March of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic as our reality, doulas across the globe are facing many hard choices. Come join us in this special episode as we discuss navigating our home and business lives amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Supporting Loss: Join us as we welcome guest Annie Willems to discuss the tender topic of supporting clients through loss. In this episode, we discuss supporting families through expected and unexpected loss. As doulas it is important to identify our biases and triggers well before we are called to support our clients through the loss of their baby. Trigger warning: Due to the sensitive nature of this episode, it may be difficult to listen to. Make sure you take care of yourself and step away if needed. 

Black maternal health is a hot and important topic in the birth community today. Join us and our guest, Samantha Griffin, as we discuss serving black clients, epigenetics, allostatic load and how it's entirely possible that doula care may not result in the outcomes that are hoped for. 

We sit down with Aisha Fanning to discuss how to navigate parenting and doula work. The question of how one navigates their own children and their responsibilities of doula work is one of the questions that gets asked quite a bit. We asked Aisha to be on so that we could shed a bit of light on it can be done. 

In this episode, we focus on two questions, "When will I make money?" and "How soon can I leave my other job?"  We dive into both of these questions and peel back what it looks like to make money from our passion. 

Welcome to Season 2!  We kick the new season off with talking about shadowing and mentorship. When you are first starting out it's very easy to want to watch someone else do the work for jumping in yourself or have someone there to help guide you as you get hands-on.  In the doula world that can be a little tricky and not always the best for the client. In this episode, we discuss the pros and cons of shadowing and mentorships and some of the alternatives that exist. 

As we come to the end of 2019, we also come to the end of Season 1! In this episode, we look back on the episodes we have recorded, the impact we have seen, and then we shift our focus to Season 2 and 2020. 

In this episode, we talk about writing birth stories and giving gifts. Why doulas do this, how it helps or hurts, and is it necessary to our success with our clients. It's a topic that comes up now and again and we wanted to chat about why doulas do this. 

In this episode we discuss inductions. How our support can look, the feelings around inductions, and how to navigate medical professionals as well. 

In this episode, we talk about Virtual Doulas. Someone who provides emotional and education doula support but are not physically present. We explore how virtual doulas fit into the doula world and the impact they have with clients. 

As doulas, our role is to support. We support physically, emotionally, and educationally. Sometimes it can be tough to determine if the pain your client is feeling is emotional or physical. In this episode, we talk that through. We discuss the importance of keeping track of both of these types of pains and how to navigate them. 

Doula Philosophies. What does that mean? Do you have one? Do you allow them to dictate which clients you support? In this episode, we talk about some of the philosophies that we know doulas subscribe to and the reasons why. We try to unpack the reasons why doulas support some clients vs. others.  

Interventions. We all know about them and we all have clients that use them everyday. In this episode, we explore the pros and cons of intervention use. We talk about why our clients get them, how one doesn't always lead to the other, and how we, as doulas, sometimes allow our biases to cloud the support we provide. 

Business structures! Do you become an agency, an independent contractor, or do you strike out on your own and go solo? In this episode, we weigh the pros and cons of all of those options. 

This is a Doula Byte do you do not want to miss! CAN SOMEONE WHO LACKS EMPOWERMENT IN THEIR OWN LIFE EMPOWER ANOTHER? We recognize that birth as an individual's sacred moment. An experience that lasts and lifetime. A powerful experience where there are no do-overs. It's a story that they will tell again and again. Yet when a birth worker is carrying trauma from their own experience they can't effectively help another have an empowering experience of their own. If you are dealing with your own past experience, you can't be fully present for the client that you are serving. THERE IS A TENDENCY AMONG BIRTH WORKERS TO NOT OWN OUR POWER AND KNOW OUR WORTH, AND ULTIMATELY WE LEAD LIVES THAT WE DON'T INTEND TO LEAD. There are two things that the majority of birth workers have in common: We want to contribute to the empowerment of women/birthing people. We want to leave birth better than we found it. 

In this special episode we had an opportunity to sit down with ProDoula's CEO Randy Patterson and discuss what we were taught and how we use that in our careers. How can we grow from the knowledge we were given and improve upon it? We were very excited to sit down with her and have this discussion. We hope you enjoy it too!

Insurance for clients, insurance for doulas. We talk about it all in this episode. Can clients use insurance to cover the cost for doula services? Will it ever be a widely accepted? How about insurance for you as a doula? What ae the pros and cons of having insurance as a birth worker?