We continue the interview with doula Carolina Cerro We started yesterday. Today we will clarify the skills of the "doulas" and the benefits they bring to women.
How are the professional skills of "doulas" and midwives different?
The midwife is a professional who has studied a career and has passed a very hard test to practice her profession, she is the person responsible for the care of women at all stages of sexuality, although unfortunately, the system does not allow them to work with Women since adolescence, devote the necessary time once you are pregnant and in the puerperium, the reality is that when you leave the hopital, you get home and you are alone.
Can there not be time for deeper attention in the system to have undesirable consequences for moms?
Many women arrive in childbirth with a mountain of fears, myths and insecurities that have not been worked on before, or during pregnancy and in terms of parenting, breastfeeding, child sleep, newborn care and needs, passes the same.
What is the midwife's field of competence?
It is the responsibility of the midwife to attend normal childbirth and it is something that they have been fighting for many years, since the technification, the intervention and the rigidity of protocols also took their place and it is time for us to fight alongside the women. Because they recover their site.
And the one of the "doula"?
The "doula" is next to the mother, in the whole process it is a figure that offers continuity, it is not a new face when changing the turn, it is someone who knows the mother, her desires, her fears, her needs.
The "doulas" must respect the work of professionals and support mothers in everything they need, beyond schedules, shifts, protocols, affinities, etc ...
Can they collaborate and improve the baby's primary health and mother's health?
Of course they can collaborate, not only can, but they must. For the sake of mothers, for the sake of children ... And if we start with respect for each woman and her choice of who she wants as a companion in her pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum, it is a subject that does not deserve debate.
Does "doula" really make a difference?
The studies of Klaus and Kennel (Mothering the Mother, How a Doula Can Help You Have a Shorter, Easier and Healthier Birth (1993)) a doula can provide the following differences:
And what real advantages does a less intervened birth have?
Therefore, if the delivery is less intervened, the baby is less likely to be separated from his mother at birth and more likely to make skin with skin and to start the first breastfeeding, which also helps the mother recover before, protect from postpartum hemorrhages and help establish the bond. Everything directly affects your health and that of your mother, not only present but also future.
What led you to be "doula" and what is your training?
Well, my path as a doula begins with the help of my children, to live in my own flesh the helplessness of the system as it is in this country. I am a trained woman, I worried a lot about preparing for my first birth, I trusted my body and wanted to give my child a normal, physiological, unhurried birth and breastfeed from birth. Reality fell like a slab on me, intervened labor, disrespect in delivery, rush, forceps, episiotomy, immediate separation, feeling as vulnerable as ever before, like a girl ...
It was hard, so you tell us. Was it this experience that made you "doula"?
This together with the loneliness of the puerperium, the difficulties in breastfeeding, the lack of information and attention of the professionals around me, the loneliness in the middle of the night, the tears ... it was very hard and different from what I expected to live but for Lastly, I lived, without thinking ... the transformation of all this into something beautiful like wanting to fight so that no other woman in my environment was alone like me.
Tomorrow we will finish this interview with the "doula" Carolina Cerro, who will tell us about his professional career and the social role his profession has.
