What is a Doula?

A doula is a non-medical assistant in prenatal care, childbirth and during the postpartum period.

The word doula comes from Greek, and refers to a woman who personally serves another woman. In Greece, the word has some negative connotations, denoting "slave" or "servant of God," as some doulas have inadvertently discovered through their international social networks. For this reason, some women performing professional labour support choose to call themselves labour assistants. Anthropologist Dana Raphael first used this term to refer to experienced mothers who assisted new mothers in breastfeeding and newborn care in the Philippines[citation needed]. Thus the term arose initially with reference to the postpartum context, and is still used in that domain. Medical researchers Marshall Klaus and John Kennell, who conducted the first of several randomised clinical trials on the medical outcomes of doula attended births, adopted the term to refer to labour support as well as prenatal and postpartum support.

Labour support doulas are trained and experienced labour support persons who attend to the emotional and physical comfort needs of labouring women to smooth the labour process. They do not perform clinical tasks such as heart rate checks, or vaginal exams but rather use massage, aromatherapy, positioning suggestions, etc., to help labour progress as well as possible. A labour support doula joins a labouring woman either at her home or in hospital or birth centre and remains with her until a few hours after the birth. In addition to emotional support, doulas work as advocates of their client's wishes and may assist in communicating with medical staff to obtain information for the client to make informed decisions regarding medical procedures.

Postpartum doulas are trained to offer families evidence-based information and support on infant feeding, emotional and physical recovery from childbirth, infant soothing and coping skills for new parents. They may also help with light housework, fix a meal and help incorporate an older child into this new experience.

Definition taken from Wikipedia