As a longtime practicing birth doulas, we’ve done countless consults with expecting families. The questions our teams have receive vary wildly, from standard clarifications as to what services we offer to left-field inquiries such as naming a superpower or a weakness.
The most common refrain on these calls is typically an admission along the lines of, “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Unless you’re deeply familiar with birth work, that’s ok!
Every birth doula you meet with offers a variation on prenatal meeting(s), being on call for you before labor, in-person labor support, and postpartum visit(s). You should always ask how much you can expect to see and hear from your doula(s) before, during, and after your labor, and all of these should be laid out in any contract you sign.
We’re here to give you a leg up on what kinds of questions you want to ask to better know your doula(s), why you want to ask them, and what questions actually don’t give you much information!
Q: What is your experience at our birth location and/or with our providers?
Every birth location has a different feel and flow, with differing protocols and resources. Practices themselves, even at the same birth location, can vary wildly in their approaches. Having a doula familiar with your chosen location and/or with your practice can make a huge difference in having context for what options will be available to you, what you can expect of your birth experience, and how your team will be supporting you.
Q: Can you give an example of a time when you had to…
Advocate for your birth clients?
Pivot from the planned birth preferences?
Handle an emergent situation in a birth?
Before interviewing doulas, we urge you to consider any sources of strong feelings you are bringing into your birth experience. Do you feel confident in advocating with your team? Do you have a complex medical history or anxieties around health? Do you have a strong preference for how you want to cope through labor? Asking doulas for concrete examples of how they’ve supported clients in the way you are hoping for support will give you a great sense of what this looks like in action.
Q: What does on call for our due date look like for you in practice?
Every doula offers some iteration of being on call for clients, and the parameters of this should be laid out in any contract you sign. However, on call can function very differently – some doulas will be on call 24/7 from the moment you sign, others for a specific period, such as 37-41 weeks. Ask for how it all works in practice – who is available if your doula is not, ways of contacting your doula during on call, expectation of timing for when they will join you in person during your labor.
Q: How would you describe yourself as a doula, and your reasons for doing this work?
Understanding how and why your doula does their job is the best way to tell if it’s a good fit. What strong feelings, philosophies, or experiences are they bringing into the birthing space with them? What clients do they find they connect with really well? Doulas are people, too, and you want to be as comfortable as possible with your doula when you’re entrusting them with the honor of being in your birth!
Q: How many due dates do you have in the month we’re due?
Timing of due dates is very tricky – it’s honestly a complete estimation! Unless you have a planned cesarean or induction, you can delivery anytime between 37-42 weeks. Having other due dates near yours is not as relevant as how many due dates total your doula has within the same stretch of 4 weeks. Are you overlapping with one, three, five other families? This will also need to be taken in context of the on call parameters.
Now other questions commonly mentioned online might seem like a good idea in theory, but actually don’t tell you too much in practice:
For example, Are you trained or certified with X organization?
Doula organizations are largely run by private businesses – trainings and certifications have no statewide or national oversight or processes. Unless you’re familiar with what the certification process looks like with a specific organization, or you’ve read up on the philosophies of a training business, where your doula trained really doesn’t tell you much unless you ask further questions such as why they chose that business to train with.
Similarly, it seems like a good idea to ask How many births have you attended? But what does that tell you really?
It might seem good to have as high a number as possible, but experience can be very difficult to qualify as a doula. How many years have they been practicing? How many of those births are with families resembling yours – with your practice, birth location, health backgrounds, family structures, birth wishes? Sometimes experienced doulas have very set ways of doing things, whereas newer doulas are more flexible and willing to try new things. A doula might have only 5 births under their belt, but a wide range of experience within those births – high-risk babies, home birth, induction, etc.! No two births are exactly the same, no matter how many deliveries a doula has supported. Asking more qualitative questions than quantitative will give you a better idea of how a doula’s support will feel.
