Why Fathers Need Doulas (and they really really do!)

 Be prepared, I am going to generalize here!

Husbands want what is best for their wives.  Husbands want to do everything they can to make sure the birth of their child is a happy one for their wives.  They want to bond and enjoy the birth themselves but their number one priority is to ensure that their wives have a good experience.  What's wrong with that?  Nothing, except what exactly does 'ensuring a good experience' look like?  While for millions of years birthing women have been attended by other women, nowadays it is more common to have a male obstetrician. And men, fathers particularly, are encouraged to play an active role in the birthing process.  Is this a bad thing?  No!  It is a very very good thing and men, fathers particularly, offer something that laboring women desperately need: emotional support.  I always thought of my husband during birth as my rock.  He was always there.  As much as was possible he experienced what I experienced.  His love for me kept him by my side, occasionally talking, but more often just holding me, supporting me, both physically and emotionally.  By staying with me and staying strong, he gave me the freedom to labor and do what I needed to do to bring our child into the world.  So, why is a doula needed?  Because emotional support and love is not enough sometimes.

Birth is an unpredictable and organic process.  Birth can be long and exhausting or short and frightening, painful or exhilarating.  The possibilities are as endless and unique as each woman and her partner are unique.  Because each experience is unique and transformative it is hugely helpful to have an experienced guide along with you on your journey.  The doula is the experienced guide.  She can look at a laboring woman and see more than a loved one in pain; she can see progress.  She can offer suggestions that carry weight simply because she herself has trained and most likely experienced it herself.  She can relieve stress and anxiety from the husband because he no longer has to be everything and know everything for his wife.  A trained doula does not put herself in the husband's place; she knows herself to be merely the guide, encouraging, instructing, and modeling.

Having said that, permit me to sidetrack a bit into marriage itself.  The relationship between husband and wife is complex.  It is a mystery.  Although, nowadays, we have a hard time with gender and as much as possible we try to steer clear of gender stereotypes, there is something to the 'difference of the sexes.'  Again, permit me some generalizing!  For men, the most important aspect of any relationship hinges on respect.  Men need respect.  Without it relationships shrivel and die.  Women, on the other hand need to feel valued.  Even if we don't make sense or there is no scientific proof for what we feel we want to know that the men in our lives value our experience and validate it.  Birth falls into this category.  It is an experience that does not depend on scientific proofs or adherence to a plan.  Regardless of the plan and whether it was followed perfectly or not, a woman may come away from a birth with feelings that are difficult to explain let alone justify.  While the husband may have seen the birth one way, most often based on outcomes, the woman may have experienced something infinitely more uncomfortable, scary even, or empowering, liberating to the point where she feels different.  No explanation.  No correlation to the facts of the birth.  All of this happens on a deeper level.  A spiritual level.  The level where women's intuition and mysticism reside.

The transformation from woman to mother is not a process that should happen alone.  It is an experience that each woman has to undergo herself.  Her husband can't do it for her.  And to do it well, it requires mothering.  I believe we know that instinctively but as our cultures grow more and more modern we try to subdue our instincts in favor of our thinking brain.  So, we say things like, "I should be able to birth with just me and my husband."  "It should be cozy, quiet and peaceful."  Birth can happen that way.  And it can be good.  I am not denying that.  The more babies I have the less people I want there and the more I enjoy just the presence of my husband, but that is not to say that I don't crave, desire, need my mothering from women as well.  I do.  Husbands should not be expected to be everything for their wives.  Men need other men and women need other women.  To be complete, whole and actualized is to respect our differences and embrace how we can support each other while also allowing for the presence of others to support as well.

In summation, the presence of the doula in no way diminishes the role of the husband; it completes it.

How Coping Techniques For Labor Can Alter Your Reality

I have recently faced a situation where I had to be separated from a loved one for a period of time.  This was very difficult, and yet while driving away with tears streaming down my face, I started thinking thoughts that echoed the very thoughts I had while enduring contractions!  With sadness and fear all around me, I kept repeating, "Yes!"  And, I believed it.  "Yes, we are separated.  Yes, I am sad.  Yes, this is a good thing.  Yes, I can stay connected.  Yes, my heart will always be with you."

At some point during my first labor, which was very difficult and traumatic for me at the time, one midwife sat by me, put her hand on the small of my back and said, "Don't say no, say yes."  She most likely has no idea how those words affected me!  Apparently, at the beginning of each contraction I had been saying, "Oh God, no!"  Saying, "yes," wasn't just a way to sound better while laboring; it physically altered my mind and thus my labor.  Words are not just words.  What we say, affects what we feel, and what we feel affects how we act, and how we act affects what happens to our bodies and to all those around us.  A thought is not without consequences!  Somehow, that lesson learned during my first birth, gave me the courage and the mindset to face a completely different life event with grace and acceptance.

Labor is a unique life event where we progress only by releasing control.  I would wager to say that all major life events follow this same pattern, however we often fool ourselves into thinking we still retain control and we use many different avoidance patterns to try to cling to our control.  Death is inevitable.  As is pain, sorrow, difficulties and suffering.  It is our human inheritance.  That does not mean that we are helpless.  This is, I believe, the major lesson of birth.  The harder we fight the more pain and suffering we endure.  Once we let go, physically and mentally, we realize that we are not left alone and helpless.  Rather, we are caught up in the grace of God, and we see, perhaps not in this moment or the next, but we do see that our love is stronger, more resilient, more compassionate.  And, this is what it means to be human.  We take reality as it is handed to us, and we transform it into something bigger, better and more meaningful.  Glory to God!