Labor Support

The Doula’s Labor Role

“It is an age-old scenario, women helping women give birth. It was intended that way, every woman should have another woman at her side helping her, loving her, and supporting her through labor.” (Mothering the Mother) Doulas are trained to provide continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to you and your partner before, during and after childbirth.

The Feminine Connection during Labor

The doula also offers the "female" connection, a same-sex empathy much like the identification men have with other men in a time of crisis - like soldiers on a battlefield. They assist you during labor with relaxation, breathing, message, verbal encouragement and other comfort measures. They also work with your partner, encouraging his involvement and creating an atmosphere of teamwork and trust.

The feminine connection during labor is powerful, in the words of a natural birth mom, “My husband’s presence was very important to me, but mostly I wanted the women. I was standing at my bedside surrounded by my sister, my aunt, my mom, and my midwife. I snatched brief glimpses of the knowledgeable loving women I had come to love and trust. Mom rubbed my calves. Stephanie stood at my side, and with each contraction I pushed my face against her cheek and rubbed, rubbed, rubbed. Tammy rested her hands on my shoulders, whispering words of encouragement. I pushed standing at the bedside, leaning into the wall of women, sure wherever I flung myself, they would support me.”

This connection between women during labor can leave a husband feeling left out, after all birth is women’s work, and there are times that he feels useless. If he understands that this female connection feeds his wife’s strength to bring their child into the world, he can comfortably watch the incredible intuition of women working together to accomplish a miracle.

Father’s

The Father’s Labor Support Role

The doula does not and can not replace the father in his essential role in the labor and birth of his baby, and the comfort and welfare of his wife. This is most evident in the adverse effects women who labor without the support and loving commitment of the father experience. They are more often inhibited by worries and self-doubt, distraught over being alone, and suffering from a desperation that comes naturally to any woman who faces alone the enormity single parenthood.

The most important thing a father does for the mother is what he does long before she is in labor and long after the work of labor is done. A women who is in a loving committed relationship, who knows that she isn’t going into motherhood alone has nothing holding her back, and is less inhibited and has less fear about becoming a mother. She will feel empowered to reach deep inside herself and open up to release her baby into a secure world.

The father's presence during the labor is also very important. Women are often unable to engage the labor and work through it when they are separated from their husbands. As a married couple, mother and father need to be close during the labor and birth of their child. Labor and birth is unlike any earthly experience that a couple will share, it strengthens the marital bonds in a magical and unique way, and it forges a lasting tie that will aid parents in the nurturing and rearing of their children.

Father's need not feel replaced by a doula or midwife, there just is no possible way a doula can give to the mother the assurance that the father gives his wife year after year as they love, support, and parent together. Father’s just need to understand simply that their wife is in need of many different types of support in labor, and the more loving and experienced support she has the easier her labor and birth will be for both her and the baby; what father does not want that? Instead of turning to drugs for that extra help, your wife may find more wisdom and fulfillment in turning to experienced and reassuring women to help guide her through labor. This is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of wisdom.

Husband Coached Childbirth

The husband coached childbirth movement was a revolution in a time when few fathers where even present for the births of their babies. Dr. Bradley developed his method when at the completion of a birth the mother through her arms around his neck and said, “thank you, thank you, I love you!” He was disturbed by this and realized it would be better for a women to throw her arms around her husband instead of her doctor. He developed a birth education course designed to teach fathers to be “all the labor support their wife would need.”

Though a well meaning idea, and though no education is wasted, we may have done fathers a disservice by convincing them that they could be everything their wives would need to cope with the demands of labor. Many fathers have since described there disappointment and feelings of failure, when their training didn’t pay off, or their natural childbirth goals were thwarted.

The natural role of father, which is primarily a role of provider and protector to his wife, can be the very reason he experiences feelings of failure when the entire labor support role rests on his shoulders. It is not easy for the father to watch his wife in pain as she labors and births their baby. It is his natural instinct and a expression of his deep love and concern to want to end her pain in some way, and often the more he tries to help her the more discouraged he becomes because it seems that his efforts do little to change the fact that she suffers still. To complicate matters husbands instinctively desire to fix what is wrong, to move any obstacles out of the path of his wife that she may comfortable pass by. This protector instinct is at odds with natural birth because no matter how fervent a desire he has to remove her from pain and danger it cannot be done.

What father’s really need to know is that they have already done so much for their wife by committing to her, loving her, supporting her, and trusting her ability to birth their baby. He needs only to stay near her, love her, and trust her. Women in labor have an intense need to feel the presence of the father near them, knowing that he is there is comforting and puts them at peace. If a father understands that what his wife needs most is mothering from a wise and experienced woman, he can comfortably watch the incredible intuition of women working together to accomplish a miracle.

Midwife

The Midwife’s Labor Role

Midwifery is not a new trend in childbirth, long ago in a land far, far away, natural childbirth wasn’t so foreign a concept as it has become, and women wouldn’t have dreamed of being able to have a baby any other way than the one God created. The midwife’s view of birth reflects the natural history of human birth in this world. Midwifery respects birth as a natural process, and midwives are very careful not to intervene with a process that works perfectly 95% of the time.

The Caregiver you choose is very important because that person’s biases, beliefs, habits, attitudes, and training will affect which route your childbirth experience takes. A nurse-midwife if often the perfect choice for a woman who perceives pregnancy as a natural event rather than an illness, and who seek a birth that is allowed to proceed without undo medical intervention.

Midwifery Model for Maternity Care

CNM’s are registered nurses who have experience in labor and delivery as a R.N., and then go on to receive a two-year degree in Nurse Midwifery. In general Nurse Midwife’s have a particular view of Pregnancy and labor that is very different than most doctors. The Midwifery model of maternity care includes ideas such as–

• Women are able to give birth safely in a supportive atmosphere of mutual respect.
• Pregnancy and birth are not generally a serious medical condition but rather a normal and beautiful process,
• Mothers work in a spirit of cooperation with their midwife to accomplish their goals.
• Nurse Midwife’s emphasize preparedness for their patients – through nutrition, exercise, and childbirth education.
• Midwives take more time to listen to a mother’s concerns in prenatal visits, so that women don’t feel they’ve been rushed in and out to accommodate a fifteen-minute time slot.
• Midwives tend to provide more constant labor support compared to doctors who only attend the delivery of the infant.