Full disclosure: you know what was more frightening for me the day my wife went into labor?
If you guessed baby, you were wrong. It was my wife.
From the moment my wife shared with me the news that we were expecting our first child, my mind kicked into dad gear. There weren’t any qualms whatsoever about bring a new human into this world; I literally learned everything about parenting on the fly. I spent time reading zero books, despite my wife raving about this one in particular.
But preparing for the actual delivery and tending to a hormonal, basketball carrying wife…not my forte.
For years leading up to her pregnancy, she’d throw out comments about her biggest fear in life was to “push a baby out of her vagina.” I mean, I get it. I can hardly have my blood taken without turning blue.
Naturally, the conversation about a doula’s participation in our birth plan was subliminally planted throughout the duration of our marriage.
A few years following the birth of my first son, Judah, I was riding in an Uber Pool with a colleague of mine, you know, back when Uber Pool was not a cesspool for COVID.
I was explaining how much I appreciated our doula’s involvement and how she literally saved my life in the final weeks leading up to the delivery, and how she was absolutely on our callback list for baby #2.
Suddenly, some random guy sitting in the front seat, blatantly eavesdropping, turns around to thank me for my insight. His wife was expecting and considering hiring a doula. Admittedly, he had the slightest clue what a doula was or did.
In other words, his wife saw it was cool to have a doula on Instagram and basically told her husband, I need you to shell out more money prior to this kid being born, to add yet another person in the delivery room (at least during non-pandemic times), who is not a doctor, not a spouse, not a family member and not the infant.
David Nurieli