My Journey to Becoming A Birth Doula

You might have thought that The Fashionable Housewife was just a stylish, pretty face with a big interest in fashion trend, beauty products and stylish chich outfits, but there is a lot more to this woman than meets the eye and I’m hoping to start sharing a bit of my personal life and personality with you in the coming weeks and months.

First and foremost, I am training to become a Certified Birth Doula!!!!!!!!!

It’s something I’ve known for over 15 years that I’ve wanted to do, but life kept getting in the way. I’m now making time to reach for my dreams and can’t wait to embark on this amazing journey to becoming a Birth Doula.

What is a doula?

The word “doula” (pronounced ‘doo-lah’) is a Greek word for “woman’s servant.” A Birth Doula is a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after birth. Some doula’s provides emotional and practical support during the postpartum period as well. Studies have shown that when doulas attend a birth that the labors are shorter, have fewer complications, less likelihood of a cesarean section, babies are healthier, bond better with the mother and breastfeed more easily.

Part of the process of becoming a certified birth doula involves reading a lot of books (see picture below) and doing a lot of studying and extensive research.

Source: distilleryimage1.s3.amazonaws.com via The Fashionable Housewife on Pinterest

 

I am so happy and thankful that I recently got a Acer Iconia W51Windows 8 Intel Tablet! I have quickly become addicted to several Windows 8 apps that I downloaded in the “store” which have made my personal and work life a lot easier. Honestly, I think the app I have used the most is the Kindle App which I use to read my school books.

One of the books I just finished reading on my tablet is Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta by Ina May Gaskin.

Renowned for her practice’s exemplary results and low intervention rates, Ina May Gaskin has gained international notoriety for promoting natural birth. She is a much-beloved leader of a movement that seeks to stop the hyper-medicalization of birth—which has lead to nearly a third of hospital births in America to be cesarean sections—and renew confidence in a woman’s natural ability to birth.

Upbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women’s rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctually human. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species.

I’ve studied birth extensively in the past 6 years and honestly, this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I think EVERY pregnant woman should read this book. I found it empowering, enlightening and even brought tears of joy to my eyes several times while reading it. I purchased the kindle version but I’m going to buy the paperback version because I loved this book so much, I want to be able to loan it out to my pregnant friends so that they can have the chance to read it to. SO GOOD!

Besides the Kindle App, I like having Evernote on the tablet, on my laptop and on my desktop PC so all my notes and bookmarks are synced. At first, I didn’t think I would like Windows 8 since I wasn’t too impressed when I used it on a Windows Phone, but after a couple of weeks using Windows 8 on this touch screen tablet, I can’t imagine my life without it. All of the research I do online, I can bookmark into Evernote and then excess it from any of my computers.

I didn’t realize that Windows had built in Speech Recognition Software until I got this tablet… Yes, you can laugh at me now. But seriously, how did I not know this?! I trained it in less than 15 minutes and can’t believe how handy it is! I say “Launch Wordpad” and it opens WordPad. Then I just start talking and it types it! I can only imagine how much easier blogging could be if I had known about this earlier… At least it will be easier to write up reports etc for my Doula studies.

ANYWAY! I am definitely getting the most use out of the Kindle App because I have a ton of books left to read for my Doula training. I’m going to start reading “The Birth Partner” next.

It’s been hard to concentrate on writing good “Fashion posts” since my head is someplace else. Who would have ever guessed that a die hard fashionista would turn out to have such a passion for labor and birth. Well it goes to show, you never know! You really can’t tell everything about a person just from what you see on their blog or Facebook, etc. We always tend to put our “best foot forward” in these public domains and you really can never tell what’s going on in another person’s life… or their head. Don’t always assume you know what another person is thinking! This is a great example, because I bet none of you had any idea I was passionate about natural birth and similar subjects. Not that I was trying to hide it from anyone, it’s just there is a time and place for everything and I felt like now was the time to get a little more personal with my readers and let you know a bit about my personal life rather just always dishing out awesome fashion advice. hehe ;-)

I obviously have lots more to say on the subject of becoming a Doula but I will save that for another day!