I Got Told I Was The Worst Kind of Doula...
How one sold-out pregnancy retreat was an eye-opening opportunity to lean into 'my way' of doing things.
Picture this: it’s the end of a balmy summers day and over a dozen glowing pregnant women are heading home from a pregnancy retreat. They’re feeling calm after a soothing sound bath and a day that nourished the mind and soul. As the host, you log on to your emails to glowing feedback and yet there’s one email sat there that doesn’t look quite so positive.
You scan it briefly and the sentence ‘you confirm everything I hoped wasn’t true about doulas’ is staring back at you… wtf.
Let me take you back…
I’m a big lover of a retreat. The food, the vibes, the people. I’m all over it. So as I was fully in my community event era in 2024, it was a no-brainer to host a pregnancy day retreat in the summer.
I, of course, was going to bring my advocacy and hypnobirthing hat on - and I invited other wonderful practitioners to bring their specialities. From pregnancy yoga, to a pelvic health workshop, to a nourishing lunch and a sound bath. Bliss.
I was pleasantly surprised when the event sold out within the first few days, and it even had a waitlist! I spent the weeks leading up to it choosing all of the special gifts for the personalised goody bags, planning my workshop and deciding on the meals with the caterer.
Fast forward to a warm day in june
The atmosphere on the day was wonderful, so many friendly faces and a low level buzz of excitement for the day ahead. I calmed my nerves and kicked the day off with my workshop.
The focus of my workshop was birth advocacy, so I spoke about the challenges of navigating a health system where we aren’t the priority. I’m not by any means anti-system, but I was clear that in a healthcare system that looks after the general public, there are pitfalls, including:
General guidelines that might not fit your unique experience
A focus on time efficiency (short appointments, pre-booking inductions etc)
Policy and procedures that generalise care, often focused on protecting the staff
A culture that doesn’t focus on your experience as the most important factor
I explained how feeling powerful enough to be curious, and question everything is vital. Not because we need to arm ourselves for battle, but because we should never just offer up our bodies and we should always truly understand all of our choices.
We ended with some hypnobirthing relaxation techniques then swiftly onto the yoga section. A few of the women came up after with really positive feedback, sharing that it had helped them feel confident to ask more in their next appointments.
So, back to the email
It had turned out, that one of the attendees was a (pregnant) midwife. In her email, she berated me for my approach. Her view was that I should be encouraging people to listen to their midwives and other caregivers, and that to encourage them to question things was ‘dangerous’. She explained that her view was that every single midwife she knows would never rush someone, or not listen to them, or pressure them to do something they don’t want to do.
We had some amicable back and forth, but two things became clear:
She felt she saved people from their pregnancy and birth experiences.
She felt birth was dangerous and people should listen to the medical experts, whatever the cost.
She felt that all interventions were aimed at improving outcomes.
Here’s the thing
As a doula, it’s not my job to convince anyone to do anything. Really, it’s not the job of healthcare professionals to do this either, if they’re good at their jobs and following their industry code of conduct.
There’s a whole host of regulatory bodies - from the NMC, to NICE, to The Montgomery Ruling of 2015 that outlines key principles of conduct when it comes to intervention. The basics? Consent must be voluntary, informed, without coercion.
The fact of the matter is coercion doesn’t exist because doulas talk about it. Coercion exists because it’s rife. Following this exchange, a damning report came out - ‘Listen to Mums: Ending the Postcode Lottery on Perinatal Care’.
Those very things that I explained that can - and not always - be an issue: coercion, not feeling listened to, consenting to things out of fear - all well documented in this parliamentary report. In fact, a staggering 1 in 4 people experiencing this.
In the midst of it all, and the thing that keeps that fire in my belly - the people that go on to be parents, living with their experiences for the rest of their lives.
The doula difference.
As an experienced doula, I’m not here to save you from your pregnancy, or your birth! I don’t believe that it’s my job to save you from yourself. I believe that inside every person is a powerful intuition and knowing. That when you’re aware of your autonomy, the decisions are yours, and yours only to make.
I’m also not here to give you medical recommendations, but I can help share information about why those medical recommendations have been made, and the research that sits behind them. I can help you craft questions so that you can get the right answers, on your journey to making informed choices.
Most importantly - I’m not here to encourage you to play nicely and do as you’re told. The culture of white coat syndrome where so many of us feel like we can’t be curious and question things that are offered to us is contributing to this rising pandemic of birth trauma.
So from me to you, I’m quite glad I was classed as ‘the worst kind of doula’, because any kind of doula that encourages you to forgo your autonomy needs to go back to doula school… happy to be here making a difference to the rising awareness of informed choice and how important it is.
Until next time. Find more on the My Pocket Doula App® - available on App Store and Google Play.
Hannah x
