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Expert Q&A

	By Kelly Camden Certified Doula

My daughter, 18, wants to become a doula. What sort of education is necessary and what can she expect from this career?

The training for becoming a doula is fairly simple. It involves reading childbirth books, observing childbirth classes, attending a doula workshop, completing some independent study and attending several births. In order to attend births for certification, new doulas often volunteer for the first few births. Then they must ask for evaluations from the mother, nurse and midwife. Once that stage of the training is completed, the new doula sends a portfolio of her work to the certifying organization for evaluation.

Doulas can expect to work sporadically and then work long hours, since they typically stay with a woman throughout active labor, birth and beginning breastfeeding. The pay varies depending upon experience and where a doula is located. Doulas need to be prepared to be available 24/7, as babies will come at any hour, sometimes earlier in the pregnancy than expected and sometimes later. Once you have a steady flow of clients, you wind up being on-call all of the time. Being on-call can make it difficult to go out of town. Some doulas make arrangements to work with a partner so that they have more flexibility about traveling.

Most doulas have some other kind of work that they do, such as teaching childbirth classes. The other work must be flexible enough to accommodate an employee who is on-call for another job. Also, it can be difficult to be on-call for as many births as you might need to attend in order to earn a living.

The number of births a doula attends is up to her. An ideal client load may depend upon how the ability to come home and sleep after a birth, as well as your arrangements with a back-up doula or partner.

The challenge of being on-call includes having to leave at a moment's notice and not knowing when you will be done with your work. Sometimes, just as soon as you fall asleep, the phone rings. Inevitably, you have to catch up on everything once you get home. Dishes, bills and other work – it's all on hold while you spend 30 hours at a birth and come home so exhausted that you must go to sleep.

After you go to a handful of births you begin to see the patterns that take place in the way that labor is "managed." It can be very frustrating to see how women are mistreated in our hospitals. Sometimes there is only so much that a doula can do. Even so, mothers and fathers are always very grateful for doula support and if the babies could talk, I'm sure they would agree!

Despite all of the challenges, doulas have much to gain while serving families during birth. It is a gift to witness the miracle of birth and to assist families in having better birth experiences. On a more concrete level, doula work develops time-management, advocacy and teaching skills, problem solving and communication. Your daughter may even discover that she would like to become a nurse or a midwife, so that she can be more involved in the medical care or have consistent hours.

Many doulas feel that this work is "a calling." Certainly it isn't for everyone. If your daughter feels strongly about becoming a doula, then maybe it is her calling as well.

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