Many people become interested in becoming a doula around the time they give birth. If you’ve given birth in the last few years, you might be wondering if you can be doula with young kids. Certainly, not all doulas have kids or have given birth before. However, birth is a common life altering event which can lead to a new direction in life.
If you are wondering if you can be a doula with young kids, the short answer is yes. However, there are many variables that can make it possible to be a doula or make it too difficult for a season.
At the International Doula Institute, we want as many doulas as possible to be able to turn their passion for birth into a new journey. Here is how you can be a doula with young kids:
You Can Be a Doula With Young Kids Through Flexible Training
One of the challenges to becoming a doula when you have young kids is figuring out how to juggle kids and training. The International Doula Institute was founded by an experienced doulas who were also parents.
Knowing the call to become a doula, and the difficulty of juggling that with kids, IDI created a flexible but thorough training.
Through our asynchronous, multimedia online training, students can get comprehensive doula training in a way which fits around their children’s needs.
Our previous student and now Certified Birth Doula, Willow, shared, “Getting your doula certification made easy with self-paced online courses for moms with a busy life! I also loved being able to make payments on my certification. This course was so great to take!”
If you have kids, especially young kids, and you want to become a doula, your first step is choosing a training that works for your schedule. Your next step is registering. Click here to register now.
Start Slow! You Really Can Be a Doula With Young Kids
When you have a passion, it is easy to want to pour your whole self into it. Becoming a birth doula is often a passion and something people pour into. While pouring into something can help succeed, if you do it too much and too fast it can lead to burn out.
When you complete your doula training, start slow when serving as a doula. Considering supporting just one family as a doula per month in the beginning. When you have young kids, if you take on too much it is very easy to burn out. You do not want to burn out as a doula before you really get a chance to start working more.
Once you feel comfortable serving one family, you can try increasing to two or three per month. However, many doulas with young kids stick to only one or two per month to ensure they can balance everything.
Have a Support System and Flexibility
Being on call can be challenging. You never know when you will go to a birth. When that happens, who will be in charge of childcare? Unlike traditional 9-5 hours, doula work often requires evenings, weekends, and even holidays. You also are not sure how long you will be away once called to a birth.
If you have a partner, it is important to take time to figure out how the two of you can juggle childcare at unusual times. If you are called at 2am to attend a birth, they will navigate being with the children, or arranging to get the child to school, daycare, a sitter, etc., if they also need to later go to work.
It is important to have reliable care, and back up, so that no matter when you are called to a birth, your children are covered.
Becoming a doula with young kids has its challenges, but with comprehensive training, time, and planning it is very possible to do it.
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...