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Helping guide parents through childbirth

Doulas provide physical, spiritual and emotional support during labor

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Brian Lewis⁄The Gazette Three doulas, (from left) Jeanine McGrath, Pat Keating and Louise H. Smith, pose Friday in a birthing room at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring.

Paris isn’t a doctor or nurse, but her job is to make people like Sponberg comfortable during labor. Doctors and nurses may come and go throughout the delivery, but Paris and other doulas are there for the duration, providing physical, spiritual and emotional support.

‘‘We don’t have to worry about other moms that are there,” said Louise Smith of Scaggsville, a childbirth educator and doula at the Silver Spring hospital. ‘‘It’s so phenomenal to be there with them the whole time.”

Holy Cross, which has had a birthing doula program for four years, has about 14 doulas, said Pat Keating, manager of the hospital’s perinatal education and birthing doula program. Holy Cross has about 9,000 births a year. Doulas participate in about 10 to 15 a month.

The service is elective — families pay about $550 to use a doula during labor. However, Keating said, the hospital is working on making the service free for some clinic patients. Many of those women have no one to support them during labor.

Many women learn about doulas through the hospital’s childbirth classes, and Keating said she will recommend them to women who seem particularly anxious about giving birth. Women who have elected to use a doula call the hospital when they are going into labor and a doula meets them there.

Not all doulas have a medical background, Keating said. However, all the women are required to take a certification course — the process takes about a year.

‘‘I felt called to support these women,” said Paris, a mother of three. ‘‘... We listen and say, ‘You know, I know you’re scared, it’s OK to cry,’” Paris said, adding they often tell dads that what’s happening to their wives is normal and they shouldn’t be frightened, either.

‘‘So, many times, it’s giving dad the high five, or crying when the baby’s born with mom and dad,” she said.

Sometimes what doulas do is as simple as shutting the door, turning off lights and putting on music to help women and their families relax, Smith said. They will get coffee for dad, ice chips for mom.

And as the baby is being born, doulas provide support, holding the mother’s hand — or the father’s — or rubbing the mother’s back, Smith said. They want to make the experience positive. Maybe that means chatting to provide a distraction, or maybe just sitting quietly.

‘‘We take a very quick read of what will benefit the family best,” Smith said.

Families provide doulas with a labor coping plan, a list of things they would and wouldn’t like during the birthing experience. Perhaps the mother wants an epidural, or the father wants to be the one to announce the sex of the child, Smith said. Her job is to make sure things follow that plan as closely as possible or, if the parents ask, change that plan.

Many times, things don’t go as planned. Sponberg, who recently gave birth to her first child, had difficulty dilating and doctors thought she might have to have a Cesarean section. Paris met her at the hospital and just talked to Sponberg and her husband, Kelly. She answered their questions, Sponberg said, and helped them relax.

‘‘She was able to convince my husband and I to take a nap and chill out,” Sponberg said, adding as she relaxed, she began to dilate and did not need a Cesarean section. ‘‘She was really good. She was positive without being too much of a cheerleader, which was really good. Basically, she was very calm and answered questions. She also just kind of tried to make us feel comfortable.”

Additionally, Sponberg said, Paris was very helpful for her husband.

‘‘She might have been more of a help to him than to me,” she said. ‘‘It’s hard for a husband seeing the person he loves in a lot of pain.”

Paris made sure Sponberg’s husband took some breaks. He was able to walk around and talk to his brother in the hospital’s waiting room, Sponberg said. ‘‘She was also very reassuring to him.”

After the birth, Paris stayed with Sponberg and talked for a while, and also helped her breastfeed her son, Donovan, for the first time.

After delivery, doulas typically follow up with new mothers and their families, said Jeanine McGrath of Olney, a doula and childbirth educator. ‘‘Often they say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t have done it without you,’” she said. ‘‘And they could have. But you might have said something or done something and that got them through a rough moment.”

‘‘I think every woman deserves her day,” Smith said. ‘‘And I think she deserves as much care as possible for that day.”