Doula company’s sessions help moms
Events demonstrate comfort exercises, calm approach to labor.
Doula April Blackmore immediately puts the three moms-to-be at ease as she leads a centering session on finding comfort during labor. They are gathered in the living room-like area of Stork Maternity Consulting.
Blackmore walks them through each stage of labor, talks about what they might feel physically and emotionally, re-enacts how that might sound and shows some of the techniques she might use to help them get through contractions.
The women — Tracy Herzik, Nicole Chapman and Trisha Drury — are all due in June and considering natural childbirth. They have been taking the five-week prenatal centering sessions at Stork as well as meeting individually with Blackmore, who is their doula.
Blackmore demonstrates with Drury how she will use a rebozo — a large Mexican shawl — in the early parts of labor to help support Drury’s body as Drury rests her head on an exercise ball. Drury immediately feels the pressure lift off her third-trimester belly. Blackmore shows the women how they can use this comfort measure now. “‘What do I have at my house?’ You have a husband and a bed sheet,” Blackmore says.
Later, she demonstrates what the transition will sound like and how she and husband will work together to hold mom and sway with her to get through the worst contractions of labor. It is loud and uncomfortable to hear, but then it is over. “I would not be a good doula,” Herzik says. “All I thought was, ‘Oh, make it go away.’”
The session ends as the labor experience ends — with a theoretical baby being born. Blackmore invites the women to let her know which techniques they would like her to try with them and which ones were unappealing. Then she opens the session to questions. One question leads to another and another.
Blackmore is reassuring as the women worry about screaming too much or “doing it wrong.” “There is nothing you can do that would make anyone in the room say, ‘Whoa, what’s wrong with her?’ “Blackmore says.
This discussion after the session is what inspired Stork owners Leah Frederick and Janae Dunn to create the centering sessions.
Clients spend a lot of time preparing for birth one-on-one with their doulas, but they were missing the group discussion that comes with prenatal classes.
Stork keeps the ses- sions small, with three to six moms and an expert. “We want it to feel like a group of girls getting together,” Frederick says. About 60 percent of the women who have signed up for the sessions are Stork clients. The rest are friends of clients or have heard about them elsewhere.
In addition to the prenatal sessions, Stork also offers both preconcep- tion sessions and postpartum sessions for new moms.
The centering sessions “normalize what they have been feeling,” Dunn says. “This lets them take the guilt out of motherhood.”
They call them centering sessions because “it’s not a class,” Dunn says.
“A class sounds boring; it sounds like something you have to go to,” Fred- erick says.
“It’s centering. Women coming together and talking about what you are experiencing. ... You’re not too weird,” Dunn says.
Dunn and Frederick also want to do something similar for dads, but they are still working out how to entice them to come.