Why I do what I do

I have been doing a lot of "possible client" interviews this winter.  And almost all interviews are the same.  I'm starting to feel like a broken record, explaining over and over and over again what a doula does, how it all works when you go into labor and what your postpartum care might look like.  But I've been thinking more and more lately about why I'm a doula.  This is the best part of the interview, I think.  When I get to share more about myself, my approach to doula-ing (not an actual word) and why I like being a doula.

I was talking about suffering with some friends in my community group last week and I was struck by the fact that despite our seemingly cushy American lives, a thread of suffering - deep suffering - seems to run through all of us.  Even those of us who don't recognize it as such.   And this talk of suffering got me to thinking about something I learned in my training to be a doula.  That the day a woman gives birth is one of the most vulnerable days that she and her spouse will ever experience.   And because of that, it is often a day that is fraught with great suffering and deep anxiety, particularly in our culture with its ethos of fear surrounding birth.  A doula, through her attentive care, has the unique opportunity to minimize and alleviate that suffering (maybe some pain, too!) for a woman and her spouse, to make it instead a day of great rejoicing. 

Perhaps in the whole scheme of life this doesn't actually amount to much.  It seems so seldom that we can actually do something practical to alleviate someone else's suffering. I can't, say, give my dear friends who are struggling with infertility a baby, though I so desperately wish that I could.  And I couldn't change the inevitable trajectory of my grandparents' lives this past year.  My beloved grandparents who both died recently and endured countless indignities and much pain in their final days.  It's hard to see such suffering all around and be helpless to allay it.  So I will grasp this chance as a doula, albeit quite small, to alleviate just a little bit.