frequently asked questions
What’s the difference between a doula and a midwife?
This is an excellent question and one that many people ask.
The main difference is that midwives offer clinical care for the mother/baby unit as well as providing the emotional support and education that doulas provide.
A doula will not perform any clinical tasks.
Doula is a distinction that we give to trained professionals these days but it’s a role that has existed from the beginning of time. It’s the work that Aunties and Grandmothers and Sisters have been doing forever. A doula will provide educational, physical, and emotional support to the birthing and/or postpartum family and can also provide support through experiences like miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion. In the postpartum period they might help clean up the house and will essentially encourage and support the family in their new roles.
From the Sisterweb website: “The doula's goal, and role, is to help the client feel safe and comfortable, complementing the role of the healthcare professionals who provide the client's medical care.”
EVERYBODY deserves a doula!! Please do hire one, both for your birth and for your postpartum. You will not regret the expense.
Most midwives started their paths as doulas and will maintain that level of global support of the family while also managing the clinical aspects of the mother/baby. This would include basics like monitoring blood pressure, assessing the growth and wellbeing of the growing baby, catching your baby, suturing vaginal tears, weighing babies postpartum, supporting breastfeeding, and helping manage the layers of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing of the family.
My dearest Sister Midwife, Kelly Murphy of Women Born, writes of midwifery like this… “Midwifery care optimizes physical, emotional, intellectual, and soul wellbeing…With the body’s wisdom and inclination to heal itself held in highest regard, discomforts and deviations from wellness are harmonized with food, supplements, herbs, homeopathics, body work, and somatic inquiry about energetic and emotional reveals.”
What does a postpartum midwife do?
When you hire a postpartum midwife as a person who is birthing in the hospital you get the complete attention, love, and clinical support that folks who choose homebirth midwifery care get from their midwives as part of the standard package.
First I try to see you prenatally at least once to get to know you and your family and set the tone for a relationship of trust and collaboration. We will do a prenatal visit like a homebirth client, which means a nice long juicy visit complete with vital sign checks, questions and answers and a lovely belly/baby assessment to empower your understanding of where the baby is lying and reassure you about what you may be feeling.
My primary goal as your postpartum midwife is to support your transition into parenthood feeling as seen and held as possible. I work to make sure all your questions are answered and your fears are witnessed and addressed.
I also strive to help you stay in bed and snuggled up with your new baby for as long as you can and feel comfortable. My focus is to advocate for your wholeness as a person. One who gets enough rest and has enough support so that you can thrive.
Clinical support includes complete vital sign assessments including blood pressure checks; womb healing assessments and car; wound care and healing recommendations (of yoni or cesarean incision, if necessary); breast/chest and nipple care; bottom healing; bleeding assessments and help understanding what our bleeding is telling us; blood sugar checks and labs if needed; lots and lots of breast/chest feeding support; baby weight checks; tongue and lip tie assessments and recommendations; latch support, tips and tricks; jaundice assessments; voiding and bowel checks for birthing person and babe; sleep and nutrition assessments and support; baby care basics; and much much more.
Besides the clinical care, the midwife’s role is to hold and witness this tender transition into parenthood. My goal is to work myself out of a job so that at 6-8 weeks postpartum, when our clinical relationship comes to an end, you feel valued, educated, skilled, and able to be gentle with yourself as you learn and grow with your ever-changing family.
When should I hire a postpartum midwife?
I prefer to be hired during the pregnancy so that we can have one or two prenatal visits, getting to know one another and helping to develop and support your hopes for the birth. Establishing a relationship is essential for our wellbeing as a team. In order for our work together to be successful and sweet we must trust one another and lean into our mutual knowledge and wisdoms.
That being said, anytime you realize that you’d like another layer of support I am happy to come on board. In fact, I am happy to be hired for one or two individual sessions and also provide sleep consultations (see the Services page).
What kind of postpartum support do I get from my hospital-based providers?
Basically none. As sad as that is.
You will be monitored incessantly for 24-48 hours postpartum while you are in the hospital (you may even get some good lactation support and good advice) but then you will be sent home with your new baby with hardly any follow up.
They will then tell you to stay in bed but then to get dressed again and in the car to come back the next day to have your baby weighed.
Why isn’t this postpartum in-home midwifery care “a thing”?
Seriously. Great question. Well, the truth is that homebirth midwives aren’t usually providing only postpartum care because they offer the entire care package that includes prenatal care and birth support as well as postpartum care. And for most folks who are birthing in the hospital, no one has been honest and real about the fact that after the hard work of the birth is over another layer of challenge and critical work begins and that the hospital system does not provide any of this kind of care.
It’s also a symptom of our capitalist and patriarchal culture that actively disrespects women, mothers, families and children.