Backup Doulas Are Essential
KC Doulas
When you hire a doula it is such a personal thing! Finding someone who is just the right fit for your birth team can take some time, so the idea of having her not be at your birth would be very hard. Believe me, as your doula I feel the exact same way. I want nothing more than to be there for the families who have chosen me as their doula. However, I have learned that the only thing predictable about birth is that it is unpredictable!!!
Making sure that I have professional, caring, reliable backups who have similar core values and ideas about birth that I have is essential.
I do everything in my power to be at your birth… seriously I do! Once I have a client who is full-term, I take a separate car when I go anywhere with my family. I don’t have that mimosa when I go to brunch with my girlfriends. If I need to make a Costco run, I do it in my husband’s car so that if I am called to a birth I can switch cars and he can unload the groceries while I hurry off to your birth. I am never more than an hour from your hospital without alerting my backups. Believe me when I tell you that when your doula says she is on-call for you she is making adjustments in her daily life so that she can get to you quickly if you need her (at least the doulas on my team do).
When might a backup doula be needed?
With all of these precautions and adjustments in my daily life being made, you might think it would be excessive to have backups in place. But that could not be farther from the truth. The longer you have been doing birth work the more you realize that you have to be willing to adapt to change. Babies come when they want to. I could schedule my clients a month apart and they could deliver on the same day, or I could have two clients share the same due date and have their babies a month apart. Or what if I have a first-time mom delivering at North Kansas City Hospital and my twin mom goes into labor and is delivering at Overland Park Regional a few weeks early on the very same day? These things don’t happen often but the truth is it COULD happen, and I would never leave a mother unsupported and feeling abandoned at her birth. I take an average of 4 clients per month to insure that I am able to offer my full support to all of my clients, but sometimes life happens. I would never show up to your birth sick and full of germs, and what if there was an emergency or accident with my family? I need to know that no matter what, my clients are always cared for! So I have backups… really GOOD backups.
Always ask about your doulas backups!
When choosing the right doula to add to your birth team I think it is important to know about their backups. Do they have just one or several doulas they work with? Do their backups have similar styles, and core beliefs as they do? Can you meet your backup doulas? When would a backup be needed? How often do they have to actually call their backups in, and who handles the payment if they do? I am always happy to answer your questions about my personal backup policies, so please feel free to ask!