Mommy's Minute and www.ThePregnancyShow.com
Melanie Raposo: Now you mentioned a doula I know some people kind of have a misconception of the difference between a doula and a midwife, can you just explain what the difference is that?
Carolynn Prior: Well, midwives provide care, both the kind of medical care of monitoring the mom and the baby during labor. We also have responsibilities like charting and getting supplies ready and talking to other midwives, keeping them involved and so those things can take us away from being with the woman every minute as much as we may want to. Where a doula's job is simply to be there for the woman. She does not have any kind of co-responsibilities. She is not doing vaginal exams or checking the fetal heart or doing blood pressures. Her job is simply just to provide comfort, advice, advocacy for that woman. I feel very comfortable working with doulas and I have experienced that really switched off. The doulas says I have to go to the bathroom and I'll step in and do the things that she was doing and when she comes back, she will step in and support that women one-on-one. Some woman also wants support right from the get go of early labor and midwives don't attend until labor is considered to be active and that is like, strong contractions that are actually changing the cervix and bringing the baby closer to birth where a woman may have many hours of kind of lead up labor that aren't, we wouldn't be there for when she may want that support of another person there on those early stages.