community

I am ready to stop typing and run to my phone if it rings. It may be a call from the doula I’m shadowing. There is a woman who will give birth any day now, and when this woman (the client/patient/mother-to-be*) needs birth support, I will go (with the doula) to be with her at her home, or maybe straight to the hospital.

Besides my own, the only birth I’ve attended was that of my little sister, and I was a 5 year-old, and it was late at night. This makes me a minority among the 16 women in my Level 1 doula training course with the Montreal Birth Companions, because I am not a mother.

You don’t have to be a mother to be a doula. You just have to be there. In the last few months of this course, I’ve learned a lot about birth: anatomy, pain-alleviation techniques, how it progresses and why it might stall, affirmations, visualizations, and what to pack in my birth bag. This is all important, but the most important role that a doula plays is of being present, and being loving.