Understanding Doulas and Childbirth

Cheryl A. Hunter is Assistant Professor in the department of Educational Foundations and Research at the University of North Dakota, USA. As a sociologist, her research focuses on micro-level analyses: educational interactions that happen between individuals and the different intercultural contexts in which those interactions arise. She considers herself a translational researcher, producing research that reaches the people of which it is intended in a practical way and contributes to improving their life experiences or professional practice.
Abby Hurst is a health care clinician and her research focuses on interprofessional communication between doulas and hospital-based maternity care providers. Through her professional development and academic studies, she has slowly transitioned away from being a clinician based in the medical model, to being a patient advocate focused on the Shared Decision Making model.

This book contextualizes how having a doula, or labor-support woman, present during childbirth results in lower rates of medical interventions.   American women are inundated with views that childbirth is inherently risky, their bodies deficient, and therefore encouraged to accept the medicalized nature of childbirth resulting in high rates of unwarranted interventions that can pose significant risk in a normal pregnancy.   Why is birthing with a doula different? The narratives in this book support the belief that doulas often question the high rates of medical interventions in childbirth, fundamentally lodging a critique about the medicalization of childbirth to the women they serve. These stories share a very different philosophy about childbirth; one where the female body is capable, resilient, and not normally requiring external medical intervention.  Doulas enter into a care-provider relationship that focuses on the experience of the birth as something transformative, to be honored and centered on the woman's body in an active role in the process. Lastly, doulas model to their clients both love and advocacy because doulas believe that modeling these behaviors will translate as women become mothers through the process of childbirth.

1. Childbirth, Women, and Doulas .- 2. Nurses, Families, and Doulas: An Overview of Different Roles in Childbirth .- 3. Birthing with Doulas: The Embodied Birth Experience .- 4. Love and Advocacy in Childbirth .- 5. Conclusion