This was not a word I had even heard of before 2009. I was invited to the birth of one of my friend's firstborn, then her second born, then my sisters first...and I started to realize I was amazed by birth. Each experience caused a deep emotion to rise within me and pour out through tears as I witnessed such a sacred and holy moment. It was sometime after those three births when someone whose hair I was doing at the Aveda Institute informed me about the role of doula, and maybe I should look into it. I did, and sort of shelved it for later. As I attended the birth of my friend's third born daughter, I realized I didn't know much about birth or what was even happening during labor. I had the thoughts of studying birth in the back of my head, and I even attended a different friend's natural birth to shadow a doula in 2011, but it wasn't until my sister became pregnant for the second time in the spring of 2012 that I really considered starting the training to become certified. Another close friend getting pregnant that summer solidified the deal. I started the process in August and became officially certified through the Doulas Of North America (DONA International) in June of 2013.
I have the opportunity to work with mothers from a variety of backgrounds through an organization called Everyday Miracles. They work primarily with women who are at higher risk for poor birth outcomes and I have been overwhelmed with how much joy it is to serve women and their families through their birth experience. I also was able to support my sister through her second (totally natural!) birth as well as a few other friends along the way. Needless to say, becoming a doula has been a totally wonderful part of my life, as well as an unexpected career shift, as I thought I would be doing it just as an on the side gig. I quit my job in the salon at the end of 2012 and here I find myself with 4 mothers due in this month alone!
There are two incredible things I have learned in the past year as a doula, and I would like to share them here.
The first is that I could not be a doula without the counseling I have been seeking the past two years. I have been working, with God's grace, in developing an emotionally healthy spirituality, gaining perspective on myself and how I navigate through relationships, and learning how to love with a healthy, interdependent Christ-like love. It has been a really hard journey-but one that has changed my life and how I am in relationships. Because of this work, I feel like I can give of myself in the doula relationships I have in such a way that is free from my own baggage. I can be fully present during labor, giving out of the well of peace from Christ's love within me, rather than trying to rely on my own feeble efforts. I do believe God has given me skills and talents to work with mothers well during the experience of labor, but because of the freedom I have in Him and the freedom from my own relational damage I feel like I can give in a loving way out of a better place than I could have a few years ago. To me that is a testimony to God's faithfulness in His timing in our lives as we are obedient to Him and follow, often blindly, into unfamiliar territory. I am thankful.
The second thing I have learned is to submit to something larger than myself. I like to say I do this in my relationship with God on a regular basis, but the truth is I have a certain measure of control over my life that I daily choose to submit to God or cling to. ( I usually am doing the latter.) In birth, there is nothing you can do but be present to what is happening in labor and wait. I just wait. I watch. I am there, fully there...with no control but to choose to succumb to the steady, often slow, rhythm of labor. It is truly the only area of my life that I submit fully to patience and have no measure of control. What unfolds is incredible...every birth follows the same pattern somewhat like a song. Each is different, but follows the musical pattern of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge....chorus...maybe a doxology in a hymn. Each birth is different, yet I usually can expect a the steady pattern of early labor, the intensity of contractions as active labor takes over, the peak of emotions and physical motion in the transition stage, and the overwhelming anticipation as the urge to push takes over. And then I know, without a doubt, that after all those hours of patience and the steady beat of a woman in labor, a baby will in fact come out. Just like that.
During a birth this winter I was sitting on a chair in the corner of a dark room, well into the night, watching the monitor steadily go up and down with each contraction as the mother slept deeply with her epidural. The labor had been long and I was coming into the awareness of the lack of control I have in being a doula, and how much patience I was learning in turning off the rest of my life for a time to be present during a birth. I was thinking how I fail so much at doing this in my faith: resting in God's presence and His timing. I know He is unfailing in His love, and He is faithful to His children...so why can't I trust that if I am submitting myself to Him that I can rest in His truth? I always try to make my own way, make my own plans and ask God to come along. In the process of birth, there is something so beautiful and so sacred when the baby comes out....whether it was 35 hours of labor or only 2, I know the labor needed to happen for the gift of life to come. I always am full of joy as I leave the hospital, knowing that the long hours were worth being able to witness the miracle of a little boy or a little girl emerge from a woman. I want to learn that same patience in my life submitted to Christ. His Kingdom is worth it. My prayer is that I can have the strength to surrender to labor in life, to dwell in the moments, and the grace to wait for the joys to come.
