Being pregnant is a special event that doesn't happen often in your life. Especially if you are becoming a mother for the first time, and maybe even the first in your social circle to become pregnant, help from a woman with more experience can be very helpful. In that case, the doula can offer a helping hand.
What is a Doula
A doula is a woman experienced in assisting pregnant women during pregnancy, childbirth and immediately after birth. The doula helps with emotional and physical issues, such as going through all the emotions that pregnancy can bring up and ways to help your body cope with pregnancy.
In addition, the doula can also provide you with important information, such as where to find the right care during your pregnancy.
The doula is primarily focused on the needs of the mother, where other medical personnel pay particular attention to the health and wishes of the baby. A doula does not provide medical assistance and thus cannot be seen as a doctor or nurse.
Your doula can help you with techniques to be less bothered by pain, though, without the need for medical intervention. Encourage you during labor or other heavy periods during pregnancy or just after delivery and help you with a massage or something similar. She can also help you with communication with medical personnel leading up to labor and during labor.
Doula/ midwife
So a doula is not a midwife, but she does help the mother find a midwife that suits her wishes for childbirth.
Doula experiences
Research (How Do Women with an Intellectual Disability Experience the Support of a Doula During Their Pregnancy, Childbirth and After the Birth of Their Child: 2015, McGarry, A) shows that having a doula during pregnancy is highly valued. Specific research has also been conducted on a doula for people with intellectual disabilities who desire to have children. This research shows that women with intellectual disabilities are happy to have a doula who has more experience which gives them advice during pregnancy for making the decisions, also after pregnancy it helps for them to have a doula.
This study also looked at the point of the doula, who can adapt their work to fit people with intellectual disabilities. The only stressful thing is that there may then also be situations where child protective services also want to keep an eye on them.
Research on low-income pregnant women who were able to use a doula shows that a doula ensures that fewer (health) complications occur during childbirth and that these women have greater access to health care during pregnancy than without a doula.
Hypnosis for the doula
Hypnosis is a technique that the doula can help you with during pregnancy, labor and just after delivery.
Doula guidance during pregnancy with hypnosis
Becoming a mother (and father) is a profound event. You may experience worries and fears during pregnancy about the future and about your own qualities as a parent. If your doula knows hypnosis, she can help you identify and eliminate the source of those fears.
Suppose you yourself have had bad experiences with your own parents and are therefore afraid that you will become a bad parent. Then the doula can remind you with hypnosis that you are not your parents and that you make your own choices.
In the process, hypnotic suggestions and visualizations can cause your doula to give you more confidence in the future and in your qualities of parenting.
Many women know they want to have a happy baby after delivery and be happy themselves, but what that situation looks like is often harder to describe. A doula can help make this goal more tangible by, for example, performing a guided visualization of what a happy baby with a happy mother looks like. Or even how the mother and father are happy with their baby.
Doula guidance during childbirth
During childbirth, the doula can help with relaxation techniques and communication with medical staff.
A great way to relax during labor and be less bothered by pain is hypnosis. Research on alternative ways to be less bothered by pain during childbirth shows that hypnosis is the most effective and safe to use compared to accupuncture and water delivery.
Hypnobirthing experiences
One event that everyone found very special was how Katherine, the Princess of England, looked wonderfully groomed after her third delivery to take photos with the press. People thought this was incredibly odd, but what did it turn out? She had used hypnosis during childbirth to be able to stay calm and not tense up from the pain and anxiety that can be triggered by it.
In the process, this calmness helps your body produce hormones that are good for inducing contractions, which can speed up labor, and endorphins which are good against pain and help make you feel good.
Births with hypnosis are also less likely to have complications and take less time on average. In addition, children are also less likely to need to go to an intensive care unit after birth when hypnosis is used.
Research also shows that hypnosis can be used in cesarean section cases. Among other things, this helps reduce the guilt some mothers feel because they did not give birth naturally.
Mothers of more than 2 children report that hypnosis helps them bond with their child and feel more confident about childbirth and motherhood. In the process, it also helps with breastfeeding.
Mothers also report that hypnosis during labor makes them feel in control of the situation, they are calmer and more relaxed during labor. This also gave them more confidence in the course of childbirth.
During childbirth, self-hypnosis or hypnosis guidance can be used by the doula, or even the medical specialist if trained in it.
Hypnosis by doula after childbirth
Immediately after giving birth, you notice that hypnosis during labor causes your body to recover faster. As a result, you can usually go home sooner after delivery as well.
This faster recovery is also the case with people who undergo other medical surgeries and have used hypnosis in the process.
Even after the birth and at home, the doula is still there to support the mother. Especially if child care and work must be combined, or if, on the contrary, you are alone with your baby all day. Hypnosis can help explain and, if necessary, eliminate certain feelings.
For example, research shows that women from Mediterranean backgrounds find it difficult to combine child care and work. Hypnosis then helps them to be able to talk about this and to find ways to suffer less from guilt and to spend time with the child well before bonding.
A doula's job is primarily to reassure the mother and, more importantly, to indicate that things are proceeding normally. Especially with first-time mothers who are not sure when a child is crying abnormally much, for example, or who are not yet completely sure about the baby's body language, it is important for the doula to provide interpretation of the situation.
The doula also helps for more practical tasks after the birth, for example, by setting up a feeding and sleeping schedule so that as a young mother, you suffer less fatigue and stress. This can make a big difference, especially in the first weeks after birth, in achieving the goal of a happy baby and a happy mother.
Hypnosis for a past history of anxiety and other problems
Becoming a mother is an exciting time for every woman. Have you suffered from depression or other anxieties in the past? If so, hypnosis during childbirth can help you avoid a relapse.
Uncertainties can be dispelled by the doula by talking about experiences with other children and mothers who ran into the same problems.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and other mental techniques and how you can help people with them? Then come to a hypnosis playshop and check out our trainings.
Sources:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jar.12155
"A Doula Can Only Do So Much": Birth Doulas and Stratification in United States Maternity Care, 2015 Wolfe, S.K.
https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/baylor-ir/handle/2104/9711
https://search.proquest.com/openview/9b9f6b1e11b2be85c73b5c36d26c6aca/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/jpc/vol5iss2/JPCvol5iss2.pdf#page=44
