When will doulas get the recognizition they deserve?

Now if only they could recognize that doulas should be able to easily bill insurance, we’d be in good shape.


I’m talking about this article – “Doula becoming a household name.” As part of the healthcare bill, doulas are going to receive $1.5 million for community-run doula programs. I’m honestly not too sure how I feel about this. Oh, it’s certainly great, no doubt about it. I think these programs should receive any assistance they should get, that private organizations and businesses should be funding these all over the place.


I just wish out of all that healthcare legislation that doulas were recognized as an integral part of the birthing process. Granted then midwives would also receive recognition, putting the U.S. in conjunction with developed nations across the world.


Are we ready for it? I hear all the time from women how they “just couldn’t do it.” Couldn’t breastfeed. Couldn’t give birth without epidurals. Without Pitocin to speed things up or get things started. Without being cut open.


It’s not that we can’t do it. We just don’t have the help. In countries where breastfeeding is the norm, there’s naturally more support, more encouragement, more information. Where birth is something women just do, women are strong and know it.


I’m not knocking women who have c-sections and don’t breastfeed. That’s me, honestly. My son was stubbornly breech – I have the rib out of place to prove it – and I wasn’t mentally or emotionally in the place where I felt I could switch providers to attempt a vaginal breech birth.


We attempted breastfeeding, and oh we tried, and never got the latch. After a month of pumping every two hours around the clock, constant engorgement, a bad round of mastitis that was originally dubbed the swine flu separating me from my son for three days, bleeding and bruised nipples, and the beginnings of post-partum depression, I just couldn’t do it anymore.


I regret it every day. I regret my c-section every day. Every time I make a bottle of formula, dog-food smelling stuff, I think that I wouldn’t be doing this to my son if I could have just stuck it out some more. But I couldn’t. I can’t change that.


I can move forward though. I can empower other women to have the births they want, to raise their children the way they want to. This is what I aim to do.


So I guess providing money to community-based doula orgs is a start. It’s certainly better than nothing.


Let’s get this party started…