A Postpartum
Doula offers a wide range of skills to her clients: guidance
in newborn care, emotional support, breastfeeding assistance,
looking after the baby while the parents sleep, running errands,
cooking, and light housework. As a Doula, it was a delightful
adventure not knowing how I would spend my time that day. I
could find myself shopping at Trader Joe's and stocking my client's
fridge for the week, holding her baby while she napped, doing
laundry and washing dishes, giving a swaddling lesson or baby's
first bath, or helping them to interpret baby's cues.
As I gained
confidence in my own knowledge and skills over the years, I
realized that my focus had been on developing my own abilities
to step in and support my clients, and I had enjoyed being able
to be the person that "got them through" that initial
tough postpartum period. What I discovered was that if I only
focused on my own skills, that didn't necessarily support them
in finding their own identity and confidence as parents. I became
less interested in taking their baby into my arms and doing
it myself, and focused instead on encouraging them to learn
the skills themselves. With this shift came a wonderful knowledge
that when I left for the day, my clients felt stronger and more
empowered as parents, and more confident in caring for and comforting
their baby.
I spent less
and less time in other aspects of Postpartum Doula care like
housework and errands, and clients soon began requesting specific
times for consultation around the issues that they found most
helpful to process with me, often around sleep, or feeding challenges,
or learning the nuances of their baby's communications.
So
in January of 2008,
I decided to honor the path that my work was taking, and to
redefine who I was as a practitioner. Taking services like cleaning
and shopping off the table meant that we could focus on that
which they found most helpful, which allowed them to need fewer
visits and to feel more empowered, because we were addressing
the issues that created so much of the need for support in the
first place. In acknowledgement of this transition, I began
to call my work exactly what it is: Postpartum Consultation.