-Emilie!
-OK, I’m here.
How far is the hospital from here?
-Thirty minutes.
-My name is Emilie, I’m her doula.
She went from sporadic contractions to pushing.
[screaming]
-Micheal. Um, yeah, call an ambulance.
[moaning]
-Do you wanna go to the waterfall?
-No, no— Oh, yeah, I do!
-Yes?
I have been a doula for almost two years now, and I’ve attended 20 births.
Doulas are there for the moms: they’re there to help them labor and prepare for the birth.
Where sometimes in the medical field, we see the moms forgotten.
We all grow up, I feel like, in America not having great birth education.
So, when we think about birth, there's a lot of fear.
I have a two-year-old son named Elijah. Helping a mom, I think
it really helps to have been there before.
Wow! [laughing]
This is my calling,
and this is what I’m suppose to be doing and I’ll be doing this forever.
-We are 39 weeks and expecting our second child.
I’m, at this point, working full time still.
Exhausting, I think, is the best way to describe it,
um, since, you know, there’s less rest and more running around
since we have a soon-to-be three-year-old.
I think that it’s hard when you’re, like, being a full-time mom.
Full-time wife, full-time daughter, full-time sister, full-time employee.
Trying to be really good at a lot of different things, all at the same time.
-Mommy, look.
-Oh, what am I making?
I’m making tofu, yes, and rice and green beans? Okay.
So, we had a doula during our first pregnancy.
We think it like ensured that we had the birth that we wanted and that we had planned for.
Our first doula ended up going to school, so the second time around, we had to find someone.
We decided to go with Emilie, because she is someone who we trusted,
and we thought that she would help to make sure that our second baby got here safely.
Who's this for? 40 00:02:31,752 --> 00:00:00,000 -Mommy. -For mommy?
-The biggest fear that I had, has to be the first child, and how much attention he gets.
Hopefully, we’re able to balance them.
Beso para brother? [kissing sound]
Crocs off! What about socks?
-No!
Socks on?
-Sup, dude.
-Who you calling, dude? Me... A dude?
-Yes.
-Where did you learn that?
Are you tired? I’m tired, too.
In preparation for Jacob’s arrival, Emilie hosted a blessingway.
-A blessingway is an ancient ceremony.
Different in essence from a babyshower, which is more focused on the baby.
This tradition is centered around the woman.
This is Christie’s village; we are here to make her feel loved and nurtured for her upcoming birth.
-I think it’s really powerful for me to be with women of color,
in solidarity with women of color, to have a doula who identifies as a woman of color,
and, like, what does it mean for our communities.
That it’s not a thing that’s just for upper-class white women.
- My job is revolutionary.
We grow up as women, we’re terrified.
Everything that’s in the media, in Hollywood is like this image of a mom in a wheelchair,
you know, screaming, and there’s blood everywhere.
That’s not what it looks like, at all. I have my clients watch births.
When we start changing this frame that we have,
we start thinking about birth differently.
-So if anything, was in the way of this baby getting here,
it was my own insecurity and my own fear about doing this a second time,
and I think to know I had the support of like all of these people I loved,
I think gave me the courage.
-I think she needed to see her community in action and to really release onto us,
in order for her body to, like, say it’s okay to give birth.
-I think we left there and everybody was like, ”Oh, this baby’s coming this week.”
-Mama!
-I know, bubby. Mommy’s gonna go to work.
I got the call from Michael, who said that her water broke.
When I walked in, I noticed that she was on the couch holding a lot of tension in her body.
And, so I wanted to see a couple contractions first and see how she was coping with them.
Good job.
You're in between, right?
-Mhm
-You’re not feeling one right now? -Mhm. -You are? OK.
You wanna relax as much as possible, let all that go.
It starts getting into a pattern, like regularly 10 minutes for an hour.
Regularly nine minutes for an hour. You know, down to two minutes apart, umm,
or one minute apart, and that’s when you’re fully dilated.
So, as soon as the pattern is established we go to the hospital.
-I was on the couch, like breathing through contractions, and Emilie’s like,
“Are you comfortable here?” And I was like,
“Oh, maybe I’ll lay on the bed a little while longer and see if I can just get some more rest
before, like, you know, we had to go…”
-The thought was, if I put her on the bed and have her,
like, you know, take it down a little, the contractions will slow down.
She can get a little shut eye, in between.
[screaming]
-Okay. Take a deep breath and go really low.
[breathing sounds]
-And a couple contractions into it, I noticed that she started making pushing sounds…
and that’s when I was like “Um, Christie, what are you doing?”
And she was like, “I’m pushing.” And I was like, “Don’t do that.”
-Don’t push. Alright, mama.
-I can’t help it.
-OK.
-Oh, shoot. -OK, OK, OK.
[moaning] Oh, no.
-Ok, take it.
-Oh, oh, my god.
-The bag’s ready and the car’s ready?
-Yes.
-OK. How far is the hospital from here?
-Thirty minutes.
-I was definitely scared because I had to decide, like, should I call 911?
And knowing Christie goes fast, I knew we weren't gonna make it.
And she doesn't have an elevator. All those things were going through my head —
like, I don’t wanna have a baby in the stairs, I don’t wanna have a baby in the car.
-Um, yeah, call an ambulance.
[moaning]
EMS was there, very fast. Walked in to kind of assess the situation—
they had never been to a birth before.
- You’re doing good, baby, OK.
-And she’s pushing already, so if we can wait—
-If we could deliver it here?
-Well, I think that’s what she—
[moaning]
-Well, do you have experience delivering babies?
-Even though they had this amazing training, they didn’t necessarily know what to do
other than if something went wrong. At that point, as a doula,
yes, we don’t do anything medical, but sometimes we’re the most qualified person in the room.
-I wasn’t scared at any point of this process.
Saying it out loud sounds a bit odd to be like, “You’re not scared?” But I wasn’t scared.
I was a little shocked, that it was happening so fast.
-Her sister is here now, and she’s a doctor.
-You got it, Christie, you got it.
[moaning]
- Breathe when you’re ready. You got this honey, you got this.
-I just knew there was a lot of people in the room,
’cause I, like, could sense that there was a lot of people.
My eyes were closed most of the time... I was very much centered on the fact that, like,
this baby was coming.
People think somebody delivered your baby, and I don’t think anybody’s delivering my baby.
But somebody’s catching my baby — I’m delivering my baby.
-OK.
-Good, mama.
-Good, strong, deep, deep.
-There you go, mama.
That’s it, there you go.
Shoulder one! Come on! One more push... there we go!
Yes!
[laughing]
[baby crying]
You know, this is what OBs must feel like when they catch babies everyday.
It’s that surge of adrenaline.
I definitely have a special place in my heart for all the babies
that I’ve helped get ”earth-side,” as we say. But, Jacob holds a special place.
Aww, Michael. Come here, I could be your doula, come here.
Honestly, I feel like it should be a right that all women
should be able to have doulas present, because that support is really necessary whatever that looks like.
And it looks different for every birth.
-Whoever delivered you, they did a good job, you’re fine.
-We were talking earlier about like,
second-time moms maybe not feeling like doulas are as important as they are
, like, the first time.
And clearly, in our case, we would’ve been like totally, like, lost.
-We’re all entitled to having women support women.
It’s literally giving us an opportunity to feel encouraged to use the power that we have.
That, to me, is what doulas are about. It’s not like anybody’s giving you your power
— power belongs to us.