By Michelle Every
When people connect with me, as they look into training to be a doula, I often hear the same theme coming up
“How do I make sure I know enough?”
“Will clients expect me to know everything about birth or the early days with a newborn?”
“I am worried that the client will ask me something that I do not know the answer to”
“I am scared of looking silly or letting my client down with my lack of knowledge”
Do you have these thoughts and questions, too? Are you worried about whether you know enough to be a doula?
Let’s start by asking a really important question:
As a doula, what do we need to know?
Personally, I am someone who does not naturally and easily retain information. I can remember people’s stories really well, but factual information seems to disappear from my brain’s filing cabinet. Some other doulas have a natural ability to remember anything they have read; many are somewhere in between.
We are all different, as doulas and as human beings, and the brilliant news is that being a doula is all about being ourselves. We are called to be authentic and unique. However, what we don’t need to be is a walking encyclopaedia of everything there is to know about pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period!
If I don’t need to know loads of facts to be a doula, what do I need?
The role of the doula is to support the client to make informed decisions. Part of this may be to help them to find factual information they are searching for. This is why signposting is our friend!
Our training courses teach you about evaluating information, so that you can feel confident to signpost your clients, whether that’s to the Nurturing Birth blogs and manual or elsewhere. Once you’ve completed a Nurturing Birth doula course you may choose to follow one of our CPD (continuous professional development) programs, such as our Expansive Course modules from Specialist Contributors or our Membership programme (due to launch early 2022).
However, it’s really important to stress that one of our vital doula skills is to be able to be honest enough to say that we do not know all the answers but that we are committed to helping our clients to find what they need.
Using reflective and open questions often helps the doula client to connect to their own power and inner knowledge. These types of questions provide them invaluable space to explore what exactly they are looking for. This can be one of the most precious and powerful parts of the doula journey. Really being heard, really being given the space to set out our feelings, thoughts, worries, aspirations and desires; this is not something that many of us have the privilege of experiencing in our day to day lives. As doulas, we can be the person to gift this to our clients. We can also gift it to ourselves through our doula mentors.
Doulas have the freedom to walk alongside the client and signpost rather than educate, lead or overpower them. We don’t need to have the clinical knowledge of a doctor or midwife, and we don’t need to have all of the answers for all of the babies. In fact, we can never have all of this. We don’t need to. A doula’s skill and value lies in helping our clients to navigate through it all, to find their own answers. Nurturing Birth is here to help you to be the doula who can do this.
Are you ready to find out more? Take a look at the training courses that are available to you now. We can’t wait to see you there!
