Selects: The Deal With Doulas

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0:31on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. A man with Down syndrome tries the impossible, the grand slam in turkey hunting. Four 53 hits, we're legal shooting right. And he gives us this one last just, and he pitches off. And when he pitches off, he flies right into the gun barrel. I said to the cameraman, do you have him? He said, shoot him. I said, Justin, shoot. You can download this episode and others from Lines and Tines with Spencer Graves on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what's the deal with doulas, everybody? That's my question to you on this wonderful Saturday morning.

1:14This one goes back to December 12th, 2017. Doulas do great work. They're wonderful people and they bring babies into the world. So I hope you enjoy the deal with doulas.

1:30Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:40Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Childbirth edition. Yeah, we are traipsing into more territory. What does that mean? I don't know. I mean, we've done two on, you know, feeding babies. Yeah. Done female puberty. Yeah. This will get into childbirth a little bit. So, yeah, we're not afraid. I don't care. Yeah. I guess is what I'm trying to say. You can be a male doula. You can, although this is the only article I ran across that in. Did you find anything about that anywhere else?

2:22No, I mean, it happens. It's just super rare. It happens. Because, I mean, we'll go ahead and spoil it. But generally, doulas are, well, let's just get into this. Generally, doulas are women who have already had a baby. Yes. Not even just women, but women who have had a baby. So they can really know how to help another lady have a baby. Yeah, yeah. And this is actually, so this is an ancient thing that's kind of come back around full circle. And even the name doula is a Greek term used way back in the classical Greek days when a woman giving birth would have female servants attending to her during birth, helping her with it, probably feeding her some grapes, waving palm fronds on her, that kind of thing.

3:12so doula means female servant or female slave depending on on who you're talking about right and after you know ancient greece fell to rome and the roman empire fell and all of civilization took this weird course throughout it all women were helped by other women while they were giving birth basically up until about the first third first half of the 20th century in the West where hospitals entered and all of a sudden it was just the mom giving birth surrounded by a bunch of nurses and doctors. Is that true? Yeah. Because I could see scenarios where there were women in the birth room helping along.

4:03I think once you started to get into hospitals and the physicians in the hospital starting asserting their authority more and more, um, especially through drugs. Like I saw that, um, when, when hospitals kind of took over the birthing process or took responsibility for it from the family and from midwives and moved it into the hospital, they used to administer a lot of sedatives as part of the birthing process as part of labor. I, you know, you can understand why they would, but then there were all sorts of complications from it, problems from it. So they stopped giving sedatives as much. And about that time, women who were giving birth started to like kind of come out of it and look around and say, whoa, it's just me and you guys in here.

4:51I need some family members in here. Right. And at the time, like if you were a dad, you were not in there. You were not in the delivery room at all. You were out in what was called the stork club, handing out cigars, maybe pacing. And the reason why was because to the doctors involved, it was just another medical procedure, right? So you're not going to have randos who have nothing to do with the actual procedure in the room during a procedure. They treated childbirth the same way. But women started to say, no, I need more than just you people who I've never met before really attending to the birth of my child.

5:27And so dads started to come in and then more family members. And then now doulas have definitely kind of come back like they were originally. That's my understanding of the whole thing. Yeah, so doulas, we haven't even said what that is yet, and that would probably help clear it up if you don't know. Doulas are people, like we said, generally women, but not always, who are childbirth coaches. They coach you through the process. They will, depending on the service they offer, will come on before, obviously, you give birth and kind of prep you for what's going to happen. And this, I mean, it kind of depends on when your doula will come aboard in the process.

6:08But at the very least, they will help you in the delivery room, and they are your advocate to kind of coach you through this whole thing. And that term actually started in an article in 1969 by a woman named Dana Raphael. And then later on in a book in 1973 called The Tender Gift, Breastfeeding. And that's when she brought this term back and said, you know, we're going to start calling these women doulas and it's going to be a real job. Right. And I think at first, what was the name of the woman who brought it back? Dana Raphael. So she had like a pretty good idea that was actually ahead of its time when doulas really started to come into use and come into their own as a profession was in the 80s.

6:51And the reason why they came into wider use was because hospitals were going to C-sections a lot. C-sections went up from 1970, 4.2 % of live births in the U.S. involved C-sections. 16 years later, in 1986, a quarter of live births in the U.S. involved C-sections. And there were a lot of complications with C-sections. And so you could have your husband in there. You could have your mom in there. You could have friends. But they're just there for you. One of the first services that doulas started offering was to say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Does she really need that C-section? Are you sure about that?

7:34Or are you just doing it because you can charge more money? I think that was overstating exactly the interaction they had, but that was the role they had, was to basically provide a barrier between a doctor who wanted to just give a C-section because he wanted to go home and the mom who really didn't want a C-section. Yeah, and it's not just C-sections. They're your advocate. They're your birth advocate to make sure or at least as best they can to try to ensure that the birth plan that you feel best about is the one that you end up with. Yeah. Things always change, of course. And a doula would never put you in danger by insisting on something.

8:11In fact, they can't. But they are there to speak for you on your behalf, because as a mother in labor, you're going through a lot on your own. So it's nice to have someone that is just there to do that job. Yeah, and is coming from a place of empathy and sympathy and, most importantly, experience. Like you said, most doulas have had children of their own, but they've also, after a while, attended other births too. So they know what they're talking about. They know what to expect, and they can tell you what to expect, which can make the whole process easier, I would imagine, for any mother giving birth.

8:48Yeah, it's definitely gained popularity in the 2000s. I think I tried to find more recent statistics than 2012, but I couldn't. But in 2012, there were 6%. And this is in the United States. It's a it's very much. I know it does happen all over the world some, but it's sort of an American thing. 6 % of people in 2012 used a doula versus 3 % in 2006. And in that same survey, 27 % of people said they would like to use a doula. So, you know, at least they're wishing or hopeful that they can. Yeah, that was question eight. Would you like to use a doula? Yeah. Yeah, 27 % said. And so if you get the impression that like a doctor would not really prefer a doula to be in the labor and delivery room, you've kind of read between the lines there.

9:45Especially at first, the medical community saw doulas as they were starting to really kind of come into use in the 80s as basically meddling busybodies who could potentially put their patient's life in jeopardy, right? But then in 1992, Doulas of North America was founded, DONA. It's like the first doula licensing body, certification and training and licensing body. And they were founded, it was founded by medical professionals, which kind of created a bridge. It bridged the gap or kind of smoothed over the rough feelings between the medical community and the doula community. and it also added a real air of legitimacy to the profession of being a doula.

10:30Yeah, and the impression I get now is that if you have a good doula who is good with people, which is ideally what your doula is, if your doula is not a people person, it's probably not going to be a good thing. But the idea I get is that doctors and nurses like having doulas there now because they can just concentrate on, they don't have to be the ones providing emotional, empathetic support, although they can still do that if they want, they can just concentrate on the medical aspects of it. And they know that they have a trained, hopefully licensed doula, and we'll get into that later, on hand to sort of say, you know what, I don't have to deal with that part of things.

11:10You're in good hands with this doula, and I can just concentrate on the medical parts. Yeah. Now all love doula. That's right. And one of the other reasons or functions that doulas provide you kind of hit on is that they provide a service that hospitals used to provide through nurses, right? Where if you had a nurse in a labor and delivery room, they wouldn't spend as much time or give you as much attention as, say, like your mom would or a friend or your husband even. But they gave you a lot more early on than they did as surveillance of patients moved to electronics, right? To where somebody could just kind of sit at the nurse's station and check on everybody and they didn't have to go into the rooms.

11:58And now you nurses were charged with watching even more people at once, right? So the personal attention dropped dramatically as electronic surveillance of patients increased. And the doulas kind of came in to fill that role as well. Yeah, like they're sitting in the room with you and hanging out. They don't get called in like 20 minutes before you give birth. They're with you, you know, sometimes days and weeks beforehand coaching you on what to expect and how you're going to go about this and what your plan is. And then on the day, like even if dad is in there and the husband is in there providing support, that's great.

12:39But the doula is just that extra step and that extra measure of support that is super knowledgeable about what it's going to be like, where the husband might not exactly, you know, be able to lend the most insightful ear there. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about what to expect when you're expecting to work with a doula.

13:15New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link.

13:49Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now it will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.

14:24This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:08That's my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Starting January 20th. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

15:54All right, so here's a misconception. Some people think that doulas are authorized or trained to give birth. That is not true. They don't deliver babies. They don't perform any sort of medical procedures. They don't put an IV in your arm. They don't work the heart rate monitor. Most times they don't even work for the hospital. You have hired them independently. And, again, they're just there to coach you. They're not even midwives. Midwives can deliver a baby. Right. Yeah, they're not allowed anywhere. near the medical stuff, but they need to know what the medical stuff is so that they can say, well, this is what they're about to do, or this is what they're suggesting right now, and here are your options.

16:45And then also when they're administering the medical stuff, which can be pretty uncomfortable pretty frequently, I would imagine the doula is there to kind of tell the mom what to expect and to comfort her in all sorts of ways. Yeah, and maybe not even offer advice. Like, I think the idea is that a doula will lay it all out there so you can make an informed decision. Right. And not necessarily say, well, if I were you, this is what I would do. Well, yeah, that's a slippery slope right there because then all of a sudden if things go wrong, you can say, well, the doula told me to do that. And the doula is like, I'm toast.

17:23Doulas have to be great listeners. We already talked about the empathy piece. They have to be very empathetic. And they will, like I said, start meeting before birth to answer any kind of questions, come up with that birth plan, and really listen a lot to the wife and the husband so everybody is on the same page. And like I said, on the day, things can change. But going in, you generally want to have a pretty good idea of everything from medications you might want to use, if any, to where you want to have the baby. The doula can come on board and kind of explain if they're knowledgeable, which hopefully they are, about the hospitals around you and maybe even help you pick out where you're going to give birth.

18:09Yeah. And I mean, if you already have an idea of what you want, the doula can kind of tell you how to make that happen. Or if you have no idea what you want, the doula can also tell you some other alternatives that you might not have thought of. I saw a Parents Magazine article about doulas. They laid out basically what you can expect from the average doula for the doula's fees. One to two in-person prenatal visits and then access to the doula for follow-up questions through email or phone calls. Their full attention and presence during your labor. and then sometimes frequently I get the idea, a follow-up visit at your house after the baby comes home.

18:56Typically, if you hire a doula, this is about the average you can expect to them. There's definitely a lot of differences. Some will give you a little more, some will give you a little less. Some will charge more, some will do it for free. It's just all over the place as far as what you're actually going to shell out and what you're going to get from a doula. But for the most part, the doula is going to have met you before you give birth, and then the doula will be there throughout the whole labor and delivery process. Yeah, and it says in this article that there are specialist doulas like antepartum doulas and postpartum doulas and labor doulas that if you want an antepartum doula to be, if you want more than those two meetings, you might want to hire someone who will be with you for several weeks beforehand.

19:48Or if you want someone postpartum to be with you to coach you through breastfeeding or, you know, changing diapers or just any of that kind of coaching, you can hire someone to do that. But I get the sense that doulas generally will sort of work with you on whatever kind of plan you want. It may cost a little extra, but I get the sense that a doula wouldn't say like, nope, you get two meetings and that's it. They might be like, no, I'll come in for a third and fourth meeting. It'll be an extra of this much money. And I can hang with you for a week or two afterward here and there. I found, I think it was through a BuzzFeed article, I stumbled upon a, there's a huge rift in the doula community actually between the typical traditional approach to being a doula, which is, uh, I'll, I'll work with you on a sliding scale for how much you can afford, or this is my fee, but I'll throw in an extra visit just to, you know, make you feel like you're getting your money's worth, or I'll do it for free.

20:50I just want to help you because Dona's, um, mission is that a doula for every, every mother who wants one, like every mother should have a doula basically. Right. And then there's this other group called pro doula, And they can't stand doulas who charge less than a decent amount for their services or do it for free. They actually call doulas who do this for free oxytocin vampires. They're just there to bask in the reflective glow of this amazing experience that the mother just went through, the parents just went through. and they're really kind of kicking other doulas around and they're kind of bullies in a really weird way.

21:39But there's like this big debate over whether doulas are undervalued or underselling themselves. But I mean I definitely get the idea that every woman who wants to have a doula should be able to have a doula regardless of her income, you know? Yeah. That makes sense to me. Like a pro bono for people that don't have as much money? Yeah. On the other hand, I also get that if you are a doula and you're doing your job really well, that, yeah, you should expect to be paid. I think there's a happy medium. I don't think it has to be like, nope, this is the price, and anybody who goes underneath it should be ostracized from the doula community.

22:20Yeah. The other thing about doulas, another misconception a lot of people think, is that it's just some hippy-dippy thing that if you don't want to, if you only want to have like a natural childbirth, then you get the doula in there and they're not there for anything other than that. And that's not the case. They are there to support you in whatever kind of birth you want to have, whether it's a home birth or water birth, or whether or not you want to get an epidural or be loaded up on every pharmaceutical they offer mothers in labor. They're there just to have knowledge of all that stuff. So you know what you're getting into.

22:56Yep. And then so during labor, this is where this is where the doula shines, right? They're there to help with alternatives to pain treatment, right? So again, they can't administer any kind of drugs or anything. I would guess that they could even get in trouble for giving you an Advil. but they can do other things like they can massage you in ways that you had not ever heard of before that helps with labor pain. I came across this one technique where they pull on a couple of toes specific toes and it helps actually move the labor along if you're if you have a slow labor. There's kneading techniques, there's stroking techniques, pressure on the bottom of your feet, There's all sorts of stuff they can do at various times throughout the labor and delivery process that can help alleviate the pain that you're going through.

23:49And that's one of the big roles that they play during labor. Yeah. When my kid was born, I was shocked at how many people were in the room, first of all. How many? Oh, man. Baker's dozen? I mean— Twenty? Emily and I, birth mom, obviously. Our adoption counselor, who was a licensed doula, so she really served that function for the birth mom, which was really a great, great plus. The doctor, I guess the – I'm not even sure what the roles are, what their technical titles are. But the doctor came in when it was go time and basically just checked things out and said, well, I think it's go time. And then he stepped out of the way.

24:37And these two nurses came in there. And 90 seconds later, there was a baby. So it was two nurses. There was probably at least 12 people in that room. Wow. That's a lot of people. It was crowded and fast and surreal and weird and amazing. Uh, even, even weirder, they brought in carrot top to cut the cord, right? No, Emily cut the cord. Okay, cool. Emily actually helped sort of deliver in a way because, you know, they, they like to bring in, uh, I guess, you know, in a, in a regular biological birth, it would be the husband probably, uh, in there saying, hey, do you want to help hold the legs or do whatever?

25:18In this case, it was Emily. and I just took a respectful position by the birth mom's head. Right. Sort of looking down that way. I was like, you know, she was like, you can go wherever you want to go. But I was like, you know, I'll just hang right here. Right. And Emily's like, that's right. Yeah, I just, I wanted to be there. And, you know, I was helping support her as well, holding her hand and patting her on the head and all that nice stuff. That's cool, man. Yeah, it was amazing. Did I ever tell you the story for when my niece Mila was born and my sister-in-law was giving birth and she let everybody in the labor room?

25:58I was surprised. You can have a party in there. Yeah. And when she really was going into she was delivering, I stood back behind this curtain. Right. And the doctor comes in and walks past me and kind of gives me a nod. and I hear him go to the crowd, he's like, you know there's some guy standing behind that curtain, right? They're like, yeah, he's supposed to be there. It was pretty funny. He's the ward creeper. Right, exactly. I'm like, okay, I've heard enough here. I'm going to the next room. All right, well, let's take another break now that we've shared our stories. We'll come back and talk a little bit about how you become a doula right after this.

26:49New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:41from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.