Reflecting on my doula training as I am recruiting students to the new program of October 2010

  It is the end of July, and I have two more months before I open my new birth doula training for the year of 2010-2011. This year I plan to teach two programs, one in the Bay area and one in Los-Angeles California. The Bay Area program runs from October 2010 to May 2011, which means I get to spend about 8 months with my students, teaching  and coaching them. The time of recruiting students always stress me out a little bit as I am never sure who will join the training and what will this training look like.

For me, the training is more than delivering the knowledge my students need to acquire in order to support a birthing mother.  To become a doula  takes more than the understanding of the physiology and the anatomy of birth, and more than practicing the birth tools. It is also about becoming a care giver, it is about leading and pacing, it is about understanding the relationship between the mother and her partner and making sure we are not in the way of it.  It is about understanding what is under the scope of the doula practice and what is not,  and it is about making sure you are not stepping into a territory which is not yours- might be the partner's territory or the nurse/doctor territory.  And there is so much more, like trying to teach them every birth tools and coping technique I acquire in the 14 years of practicing the doula profession and in two countries- Israel and the USA.  With that much experience I also know that every birth is so different than the other, and I am trying to not forget every little trick or tip I have learned through my years of practice, to make sure they are the most knowledgeable doulas, the most sensitive caregivers, and the most empowering women leaders.  Because this is what it takes to be a birth doula.

Because I believe that becoming a doula is a process, my training consists on 80 hours of theory, hands-on practice, videos, guest speakers, case studies, and close supervision. I can't believe women will take the popular DONA doula training and then will attend a birth. It is just a weekend of training, and there is hardly any hands-on practice. Needless to say there is no supervision process nor referrals, so women who graduate this training do not know anything about where and how to find clients.  When I was certified as a birth doula I went through a full year of studying, which includes theoretical lessons, hands-on practice and then 100 hours of supervision in Labor and Delivery , taking shifts and assisting one birthing mother after the other while being coached and supervised by midwives.  to be honest, even after such an extensive training, as I went to my first ten birth, I was so stressed and overwhelmed :)\

The first doula training I opened at  mama center was created in order to train Israeli women in my community, living in the Bay Area, to become professional doulas.  All women, just like animals, need to be safe in order to have a healthy birth. One of the aspects of feeling safe is speaking and communicating in your language at your birth. Having  to process information and communicate your needs in a second language means you will need to activate your thinking brain, which will result in departing from the primitive brain.
The last is the one you would like to rely on while you give birth, since it is the primitive brain which releases the hormone called oxytocin that contract our uterus in birth.
  As one of my students was attending her first supervised birth, a nurse in L&D approached her and asked her about the training she took.  My student was given the most positive feedback from the nurse, telling her that she has never seen a doula working with so many tools and techniques. Then the nurse asked her for my contact information, and she ended up forming a group of nurses who came to learn with me. What a great honor it was! Since then I trained two more groups of doulas. 

In the training I invest time acknowledging and teaching the challenges of the doula profession , like being on-call 24/7, or having to schedule every vacation so many months before so that we wont miss any birth. Juggling our career with family life when it is so unpredictable when will the birth takes place and will we ended up missing our own child's birthday party.  Then there are the challenges of marketing yourself - not everyone feels comfortable in this field. Meeting with potential clients and then ended up supporting only a few of them, and there are more.  I think that women who become doulas are doing it with great passion, not so much for the fiscal aspects or career rewards, but more for the fulfillment and for the passion of supporting healthy and empowering birth experiences on earth.

I am respecting and loving all my past students, for the last three years, for being strong and passionate women, dedicated to enable healthy and safe births, and I am hoping to recruit another two groups of very special women for this coming training.