What Does a Doula Do?

A Visit With Babu

What does a doula do, and what are the benefits of working with a Doula? Doulas provide both emotional and physical support during your pregnancy.

Myla Flores is a Doula with Babu. Babu offers specialized services for families from the time of conception to their first play date. Myla has been in the birth field over 12 years, supporting over 300 babies. Her passion is working with families to help them navigate the environment of childbirth.

Benefits of Working With a Doula

• Help with options in choosing a provider
• Resources to childbirth education classes, an acupuncturist, and others – supporting the range of what you face in pregnancy
• Having someone alongside you, on your journey, to navigate the experience
• Providing emotional support
• Creating an environment to have as calm a birth as possible
• Physical support in labor

People get very limited knowledge on childbirth depending on the culture they’re from, exposure and simply experiencing so many “firsts” in pregnancy. It’s really important to be supported with some basic knowledge on how the body works. It’s also important to understand the stages of labor…the emotional signposts of labor. It’s great to have the nuances involved in this education that can permit you to have the variety of what’s normal. Childbirth is not a cookie-cutter thing. Childbirth is something that can range and it’s important that people get a sense of what that is, so that they can better prepare for it…for the actual big day of labor and birth.

Positions, Tools and Exercises During Pregnancy

Maternal positions invite to the baby to get in its optimal fetal position. Getting the mom in good balanced positions really helps the baby navigate its environment. A lot of times labor is very hyper-focused on what the cervix is doing – how low the baby is in the pelvis. But we need to shift that and think about the journey that the baby needs to go on. Having the knowledge about what you can do to the maternal body is important so that it can positively influence the baby.

There are wonderful things that you should participate in while pregnant that will support balance in the body. It’s important to integrate some positions and exercises into the lifestyle of pregnancy to ultimately promote good fetal positioning.

• Local prenatal yoga classes
• The Daily Essentials on the Spinning Babies website
• Walk daily.
• Three Sisters of Balance
• Rebozo Sifting

Yes, childbirth can be uncomfortable. It can be challenging. So it’s important to find ways to move through that challenge, and use tools that can help you adapt through this wonderful experience, to facilitate the birth of your baby. It’s just a little something about what Doula’s do.

Find Myla Flores, LCCE, CD(DONA), CLC and other experts at Babu: Babu is a diverse community of curated service providers, supporting new and expecting parents with everything they need, from conception to the first play date. www.babuvillage.com