Navigation Salon Salon's Mothers
Who Think email print
Arts & Entertainment
Books
Comics
Health & Body
Media
.Mothers Who Think
News
People
Politics2000
Technology
- Free Software Project
Travel & Food
_______
Columnists

 

Current
Wire Stories

Click here to read the latest stories from the wires.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Also Today

For a full list of today's Salon Mothers Who Think stories, go to the Mothers Who Think home page.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon


  
Advanced Search  |  Help

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think


Trapped and torn
Locked in by a chain of protesters, I wanted to kick myself. My kids were at home and I was about to be pummeled for all the wrong reasons.

By Lisa Guide
[12/03/99]


Wild in the streets
What better place to find a hottie than at a riot conveniently taking place in my neighborhood?

By Annie Culver
[12/03/99]


Taking a chance on love
Suddenly, we would be allowed to adopt a baby -- if we could accept the very real possibility that, one day, he would be mentally ill.

By Jane Smith
[12/01/99]


Giving in to Ritalin
I hate it, but my son needs it.

By Karen Shoemaker
[11/30/99]


Till death do us part
Is it a promise of love or a life sentence? Our readers weigh in with advice.

By Jennifer Foote Sweeney and Amy Benfer
[11/29/99]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Mothers Who Think
by e-mail
Sign up here to receive our weekly e-mail newsletter listing recent and upcoming articles and events in Mothers Who Think.

 
Unsubscribe

- - - - - - - - - - - -




Hand holding for moms | page 1, 2

Instead, she earned her description as a "servant" by passing on a ton of information about labor and delivery and running through various scenarios -- including the use of drugs during delivery. Some doulas, I'm sure, can let a subtle anti-drug bias creep in, but Sarah and I never felt that from Maureen.

Over the course of our pre-delivery sessions, we built up trust in Maureen, leading us to ask the sorts of questions we might not have been comfortable throwing out in a group class. It became easier to talk about fears -- including mine. I could admit my absolute lack of confidence, talking through each of my panic scenarios like a paranoid to a shrink.




Also Today


The fainter
I tried acupuncture, strumming my veins and "Shocking Brain Surgery." But nothing could prepare me for witnessing my son's birth.
By Aaron Shure

 

Some couples worry that Dad will be upstaged by the doula on delivery day -- a reasonable fear. I tell prospective Dads that a few hundred bucks is a small price to pay for Knucklehead Insurance. Allowing fathers in the delivery room is a wonderful and well-intentioned gesture, but most of us are rookies as labor coaches, and it's ridiculous to have a rookie in charge of anything, much less his gravid wife's comfort.

"It's almost unreasonable the pressure we put on fathers," says Kennell. "I work with med students who have been training for a year, and when they go into hospital divisions for the first time, it's very common for them to feel faint. [Doulas] are a great psychological benefit to mothers, but also to fathers."

When Sarah went into labor, we found ourselves in a situation Maureen had warned us might occur: She was tied up at another, very difficult birth. She would have to send her backup.

Soon after we made it to the hospital, Allison, a severe Australian, arrived. The three of us had no bond outside of the fact that we all knew Maureen. The first hour didn't go well for me. Fortunately, it went well for Sarah. Allison locked on to Sarah like a lamprey to a rock. She was so competent and assured that I became nothing more than a marveling spectator. Sure, I'd learned about the birthing ball, breathing exercises and the soothing effects of the seated shower, but who knew when the time was right for each? Allison did.

While I wasn't interested in wresting command of the pain-relief detail, I also wasn't doing the most that I could do. I vividly remember standing behind Sarah, watching Allison work, and realizing that I'd drifted out of my wife's sight because of some imaginary inadequacy I felt in comparison to the doula, rather than concentrating on what the hell was happening with my wife.

But no one was telling me to be passive. I gathered my wits and decided to assert myself ever so gently. I moved back in front of Sarah, essentially sharing space with Allison. I started to ask Sarah my own questions when my instinct moved me, cracked a pallid joke or two and basically resumed being myself. This was met with no resistance; Allison was fierce but not a control freak.

With us, at least. There was one charged moment. A nurse had left Sarah hooked to a baby heart monitor. After several minutes, Sarah whimpered, "My belly's cold." I probably would have waited until the nurse returned, assuming that such discomfort was the price of vital information.

Allison snorted. "I'm going to get someone," she said, and stomped out of the birthing room.

Soon an apologetic nurse appeared; she explained that she'd been busy and had forgotten to unhook the monitor.

Some medical professionals resent having to deal with another party in the delivery room, though our OB and nurses apparently did not. Even the nurse who made the error sought us out after the birth to tell us how neat it was to work with the doula. I'm sure it's a relief for professionals working with us amateurs to have a seasoned intermediary to go through. Doulas themselves insist that they defer to the clinicians.

"Doulas say that their place is at the patient's head, not in the physician's way," explains Bonnie Blake, vice president of operations for two Allina hospitals.

That's how it was during the late stages of Ian's birth. Sarah experienced excruciating back labor, but she didn't ask for an epidural. Allison stood behind her head, offering steady suggestions: how to turn, how to breathe -- simple suggestions that I would have been grasping to recall, had a doula not been there. I sat next to Sarah, held her hands, gazed into her eyes and offered reassurance. Meanwhile, the OB and the nurses worked undisturbed. After six and a half hours of labor, Sarah delivered our perfect baby son.

Our doula did not prove herself to be some sort of human ibuprofen, able to miraculously mask the pain. "Childbirth didn't feel like people said it would feel -- it hurt a lot more," Sarah recalls. "But fear makes pain worse. Maybe my pain wasn't any less, but I wasn't afraid. I would have been terrified if Allison hadn't been there to tell me this was normal."

Now that we've become doula acolytes, I'd like to know why health plans are so timid about promoting them. Forget, for a moment, about the emotional advantages. Even in the bloodless financial world of the modern HMO, doulas make sense. Each bypassed epidural saves about $150; a forgone C-section saves around $3,900. If one woman in 10 avoids a Cesarean, the money saved could pay for doulas for all. This, folks, is health maintenance.

Yet even Allina, which documented the benefits of doulas in its own studies, offers a mere $150 toward the expense of hiring a doula, and this incentive is available at only two of its 15 hospitals.

Allina, says Blake, wants to slowly increase the use of doulas, gradually making sure the benefits shown in the 1996 study hold. Still, it's no accident that its hospitals with doula programs also lack nurses' unions. Two Allina officials told me that the nurses' union fears that the doula program is a backdoor attempt to reduce the number of nurses on duty.

Blake insists Allina isn't looking to replace nurses with doulas. She predicts that resistance will drop as more nurses work with patient-provided doulas -- and don't lose their positions because of it. Physicians don't see doulas as a direct threat to their profession, but some still need to see the advantages of doulas for themselves.

Union nurses aren't the only one who distrust Big Medicine. Doulas are thought of as cool and sort of alternative when patients seek them out, as we did, but Blake suggests that mothers might find it more difficult to bond with a labor coach if institutions are the promoters. "We prefer to be a less paternal organization," she says.

I don't know. It is possible that health-care costs might rise in covering the heart attacks people would experience when offered cheap, innovative, human support -- but I say let's take that risk.

Two months ago, Sarah discovered she was pregnant again. Our baby is due in June. Of course, we're going the doula route again, reimbursement or not. This time, Maureen promises us she'll be there.
salon.com | Dec. 7, 1999

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
David Brauer is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Brill's Content, and the Chicago Tribune.

Sound off
Send us a Letter to the Editor

Related Salon stories
The fainter I tried acupuncture, strumming my veins and "Shocking Brain Surgery." But nothing could prepare me for witnessing my son's birth.
By Aaron Shure 12/07/99

Take me to a hospital! What possessed me to think there was something appealing about cleaning up after the birth of my own child?
By Susan Gerhard 08/04/99

Give me drugs! What's so feminist about a painful childbirth?
By Nina Shapiro 08/03/99

Cut me open! I just had my second scheduled Caesarean and, yes, I still consider myself a feminist.
By Jean Hanff Korelitz 08/02/99

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Print this story  Get a printer-friendly version

Email this story  E-mail a friend about this article

Backflip This Story  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon


  
Advanced Search  |  Help

 

Salon | Search | Archives | Contact Us | Table Talk | Ad Info

Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus

Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.