Baton Rouge's Choice For The Most Experienced In Childbirth Education And Doula Services

by Jed Kendall, former client, awesome dad, and wonderful writer


Some folks claim doulas are for women giving birth. I politely disagree. Doulas are for husbands who know better than to think they can get away with hanging out in the waiting room with a box of cigars in hand, waiting for a nurse to tell them everything is fine as they pace back and forth.

Our role, you see, has changed.

Childbirth is a traumatic experience, especially for our delicate masculine constitutions. Sure, we're great if you need someone to wrestle bears, or watch a sad movie without crying. But childbirth? All that screaming? The moaning? The liquids?

No, thanks.

See, if you've got a doula, you get to be right there in the birthing room, hanging out, being supportive, earning brownie points – but anything you take one look at and go, “Uh, no. Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen. Ain't no way, ain't no how,” you simply tap out and pass the baton to the doula. She's seen it all, done it all, and doesn't mind at all.

Which is awesome.

When my wife gave birth to our second kid, I had one job – talking her into letting the poor bugger out. My wife is tightly wound. Very tightly wound. “Letting go” is not her strong suit. So it took all my powers of persuasion to convince her to do precisely that. Now, hanging out at the head of her bed, using my most soothing-yet-convincing voice, that was a lot of work. Maybe not as much as helping her stand so she could sway back and forth, or holding her hair if she felt sick, or running around fetching this, that, and the other thing.

But, still, I stood there. Y'know, and talked. For hours. Very exhausting.

Yet there's some other world where I would've been responsible for all kinds of aid & assistance. Fetching, finding, grabbing, lifting, pulling, moving, swaying, deciding. I'm sure I could've handled plenty of it. Maybe even all of it. Yet here's the thing: I didn't have to. Our doula was there to take care of anything I couldn't do, or just didn't want to do, or maybe didn't even notice I should do.

Now, not every childbirth ends up being difficult. Sometimes those puppies just pop out like ping-pong balls from a spud gun. Similarly, you can travel overseas on your own and have a great time. Nobody says you need a guide. But what if your visit to France turns into a side-trip to Romania?

Do you speak Romanian? No? How about German – are you fluent? Because there aren't signs in English in Romania. And there aren't many English-speaking folks running around in Romania. Trust me. There simply aren't. What happens if your sleeper train doesn't stop in the city where your travel agent said it would, and you end up on some alien platform at ten in the morning with no valid ticket to Sibiu and no good idea of how you'd get there even if you had one?

Clearly, that's a time when having a guide would be handy. And not one of those tour-group guides – I mean a personal guide only interested in helping you. That, in a nutshell, is what having a doula is like for childbirth. A personal guide who speaks the language, knows how to catch the right train to Sibiu, and can speak Romanian like a native-born gypsy.

As a new parent, I'm sure you'll study far more than you ever need or should study to prepare for your childbirth. Then you'll get into that room, meet your first delivery nurse, and collapse inward like the decayed remains of a super-massive star that just exhausted its hydrogen fuel. It's a stressful time. Your new kid is on its way. And here's this professional, and she has different ideas about how this should all go down than you do.

Do you really think all your good intentions will be enough? Mine weren't.

But my doula sure was.