When you become a doula, you will be able to offer the wonderful gifts of love, empathy, and support to new parents this holiday season.
We talk a lot on our blog about the amazing gifts you’ll give to yourself when you become a doula. However, the service you’ll provide as a birth or postpartum doula runs much deeper than that. This season of giving has gotten us thinking here at IDI about how doulas can be a gift to your entire community when you become a doula.
The very foundation of what we do as doulas is to provide love and support. After becoming a doula, the love you have for serving new parents will shine brighter than the lights on Christmas tree or the candles on the menorah. As you help nurture your clients while they bring their new baby into the world, you will, in turn, provide them with a solid foundation of love as they become parents.
Having a new baby can be a chaotic time. Although you’ll doing many things to help your clients – from providing comfort techniques as a birth doula, to perfectly organizing a nursery as a postpartum doula – they may not necessarily remember them all. What they will remember is how you made them feel: safe, validated, and supported.
When you become a doula, your clients will remember how much you loved them.
The families you support will carry this love and empathy with them for a long time. It all starts as a tiny see that you will nurture from the very first time you meet with your clients. As a new mother welcomes her baby into the world, with your gentle guidance, this love will grow and bloom like the petals on a poinsettia.
When you become a doula, you’re giving your clients a gift that will last forever. Having a baby is an emotional time, and by offering new moms and dads the genuine support, empathy, and love that only a doula can offer, you could change the course of their lives.
Author: Aliza Juliette Bancoff
Aliza Juliette Bancoff is a well-known doula and doula trainer who has been providing doula services to families for over a decade. She is the founder of Main Line Doulas, a doula group providing doula support in the great Philadelphia area for the last decade, the International Doula Institute, which provides online doula training and lactation training and certification programs and the International Breastfeeding Institute which provides lactation training and certification. She is the co-founder of United Birth, a company devoted to increasing access to doulas across the country to make the perinatal time safer both physically and emotionally. “Every birthing person deserves access to quality doula support. And we are working to make that a reality across the country. The work we are doing to get doulas to every birthing person will decrease the black infant and maternal mortality rate significantly by 2030.” Says Bancoff. Aliza is known for her compassionate and empowering approach to doula work, and she has been featured in numerous media outlets, including United Nations Maternal Health Report, Parent Magazine, CafeMom, theBump and many more. Aliza's journey into doula work began when she gave birth to her first child and felt a strong calling...