Doula Life: What It’s Really Like to Be a Birth Doula

How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights

In this episode of 'How Much Can I Make?', host Miravu Zeri sits down with Mary Riley, a seasoned doula with over 2,500 births under her bel

Key takeaways

Doulas provide emotional, physical, and advocacy support during labor, helping parents make informed decisions and stay connected during high-stress moments.
The role requires deep knowledge of hospital policies, which can change frequently, especially with corporate ownership of healthcare facilities.

Main topics

What a doula does during labor and childbirth
Advocacy and communication strategies in hospital settings

Notable quotes

"You don't want to think far ahead. You don't want to think back. You just have to really be in the moment."

Conclusion

Being a birth doula is more than a career—it's a lifelong commitment to supporting families

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) They have to walk away from this birth looking at each other and hopefully say, look Speaker 2 (0:06) at what we did, and I feel powerful. Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make, the podcast about jobs and careers. I'm your host, Miravu Zeri. Did you ever think what it's like to guide people through the most important moment in their lives? Sometimes even catch a baby in the car seems crazy to me. But today you're going to hear from my friend Mary Riley. who supported more than 2,500 births, what being a doula is all about, and can it be a good side hustle? So let's turn to Mary and see, is it a good career? First of all, Mary, thank you for doing it. Thank you for having me. Let's dive right in and find out, how did you become a doula to begin with? Speaker 1 (0:50) I ended up at seven friends' birth in one summer. They kept asking me to go to births and one after another. And one day I just thought, hmm, I wonder if you can do this for a living. So I investigated, and this was 39 years ago. So I investigated and found out that it's a possibility and went and found a place to get certified and then just began my practice from there. Speaker 2 (1:14) Okay, I want to ask you about all of that. But before I get into that, tell us what does a doula do? Speaker 1 (1:20) Many things. It's a combination of... physical and emotional support, helping people advocate for themselves within hospital situations or home births, whatever is needed, basically. And it's really hard to know. People ask me all the time, like, what are you going to do at my birth? I'm like, I don't know, what are you going to do? And then you just hone your skills around that. I Speaker 2 (1:43) read there is a doula for death, doula for birth. Doula, which one are you? Speaker 1 (1:48) Mostly births, although I spent many years doing death. But it was before it was even known as a death doula. It was just something that I did. Just Speaker 2 (1:57) giving support to whoever. What do you prefer, birth or death? Speaker 1 (2:02) That's a tough one. They're both very different and very similar. But I do right now love birth. How are they similar? There's moments in both where there's no place to go but right there. Speaker 2 (2:15) And Speaker 1 (2:16) you can't... You don't want to think far ahead. You don't want to think back. You just have to really be in the moment. And that experience is so profound to be with other people in these life-changing events and with their families. Speaker 2 (2:30) Amazing. So, okay, you mentioned before you went and got your certificate. What kind of certificate? Do you get to be a doula? Do you have to go to school? How does it work? Speaker 1 (2:40) It's usually more like a weekend workshop, and then you might do one or two of those, and then you have some book learning and then some tests that you take and practice. Nowadays, it's probably a little bit more involved, and sometimes I hear that insurance companies are starting to cover doulas, which never happened before. Speaker 2 (2:57) So Speaker 1 (2:57) that's really exciting. Do you know which insurance company is that? Speaker 2 (3:01) No, not Speaker 1 (3:01) yet. Okay. It's very exciting. They're also bringing doulas into hospitals and training them to be within hospital situations and offering that as a service to some people. So it's really kind of exciting. When I started, there was nothing in this area, in this Hudson Valley area. And that was like 20-some years ago? 39. Speaker 2 (3:20) Oh, sorry, 39 years ago. Oh, my God. Speaker 1 (3:23) How many kids do you help deliver so far? I think it's over 2,500 at this point, but I've stopped counting. Speaker 2 (3:31) But you actually don't do anything with a baby, right? You're just there to support the moms. I Speaker 1 (3:36) also did midwife assisting at a freestanding birth center in Athens years ago. And I have done that at births with home birth midwives. You can get certified for that also. So I do sometimes handle the babies as well as the moms. And Speaker 2 (3:51) do you have to Speaker 1 (3:52) renew their certification every year? Speaker 2 (3:54) Yeah, you're supposed Speaker 1 (3:54) to renew it. Speaker 2 (3:55) You're supposed to renew it. So give me an example. You said... that you give emotional support to the parents or the parents-to-be. Give me an example. What does it mean you give emotional support? And at what time, what stage of the process do you get involved with a couple? Speaker 1 (4:12) We usually have a meeting together, myself, the mother, and partner or family, whoever's going to be with them. And once we're on board with each other, then... It begins. And we start advocating sometimes right from there. Like if they go to appointments and they have questions about it or they read things they don't understand, then they can call me anytime. And if I feel like it's something medical that they should be checking in with their midwife or doctor about, then I would steer them in that direction. But there's a lot of advocating that you do well before the birth. So I spend a lot of time. Like what? Give me an example. Speaker 1 (4:46) Sometimes people will say, oh, I just heard this, that you can't do this, you can't do this at the birth, you can do this. And I'm like, okay, so let's go over that. And yes, you can do that here. This is how you approach. This is how you ask the questions within the practice. Because I don't want to set it up for people going into hospitals. Sometimes there's this situation of like, we're going to go in and we're going to fight. And I'm like, that's not really the way to go into a birth. So let's advocate ahead of time to try and get what you want and learn how to speak the language. And never say, like, can I have this or can I do that? Like, never ask that. Just say, this is what I would like. How can you help me make it happen? Right. And put it on them. So Speaker 2 (5:26) you work with many different hospitals and birth centers. You have to know the rules for each one? Speaker 1 (5:31) Yeah, a lot of them you learn when you go in. It's like, what is the rule today? It changes all the time. And especially in this day and age with companies owning the hospitals now. And so every day you go in and I'm like, okay, so what's the rule about the tub today? Can people go in if they're on Pitocin? Can they not go in if they're on Pitocin? Can they do this? Can they do that? So every time you walk in to any hospital, the first thing I try to do is kind of ask the nurses, like, let me hear what's going on now so I can advocate for my client. What is the tub? You mentioned a tub. You can do tub births at a lot of the hospitals. Now, which, yeah, which is great. We do tub births a lot at home. Speaker 2 (6:10) Baby born into water? Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. Doesn't that scare you that the baby will drown or something? Speaker 1 (6:17) No. I mean, you can see films of people having babies in water and the babies like swimming around. Wow. When they come out. I haven't done that with any of the midwives and stuff I work with. I feel like I might have a little heart attack on that one, but maybe, you know, I'm sure it's fine. But we usually bring the babies right up as soon as they come out. The mothers catch them and bring them up to themselves. Speaker 2 (6:37) Wow. Yeah. So usually the partners is there along the way with you. Speaker 1 (6:42) I look at my job as to advocate for them and to help them work together in the way that they want to work. And I'm not there to take over the partner's role or be this one person. I'm there to help them stay connected, and especially in hospital situations where the dad or the partner can start to feel. Like I'm going to go over here and kind of sit in the corner because there's all these people around and doing things. And I'm like, no, no, no. Come on over here. There's a space for you always. And to just try to keep them connected because they have to walk away from this birth looking at each other and hopefully say, look at what we did together. Because we have to parent and raise this child. For the rest of our lives. For the rest of your life. And so I want you to walk away hopefully feeling, and it may not always be the exact birth that you envisioned. because things can change and shift all the time. But hopefully feeling like that, like, look at what we did. And I feel powerful. I was able to make choices. I understood what was going on. I felt supported and cared for. Speaker 2 (7:46) So you mentioned before that some insurance companies started to pay for it. It's a new thing, obviously. Speaker 1 (7:53) But Speaker 2 (7:53) when they don't pay for it, and we'll get into the money very soon. It's a luxury service, right? Speaker 1 (7:59) I guess it's a luxury service, but it's very needed in this day and age. Why? If you go into hospital situations and you have nurses and you have the midwives and the doctors, I am a big fan of midwifery care. So I love working with a lot of the midwifery practices. There's a lot of pretty good doctors also in this area who work with midwives and back midwives up and actually like that. to walk into a hospital as a patient anywhere these days, and it has been for quite a few years. The nurses also have other patients. They have to do all this charting. Now there's computers in the room. They have to be on the computers charting and all of that. And there are some really, really great nurses out there. But it's a lot for them to also stay with a client for 20 hours. They're not going to do that. They go off shift. It changes. You stay with them for 20 hours? 20 hours, 10 hours, 50 hours. Speaker 2 (8:58) Wow. Speaker 1 (8:58) Yeah, it depends on the birth. But I'm usually the person that stays with them. So it's nice to be able to say, I don't know about yesterday at this time, it was not looking like this because I've been with them. And so you're that steady person. And it can actually help with the nurses and the midwives.