Category: Doulas

Birth Coaching in the Age of Coronavirus

Keep Families Together

COVID-19 has changed the world around us; from shelter-in-place and physical distancing measures to one-support person policies in labor and delivery. One thing that has not changed is that I am still here for you and your family.

As we navigate through this uncertain time together, I now offer you and your partner virtual childbirth education and doula services via telehealth video chat platforms like Zoom and Skype.

I am diligently keeping current on public health recommendations and research to understand how to best protect your health, your family’s health, my health and the community’s health and look forward to when we have strategies to reduce or end these shelter-in-place and distance mandates altogether. In the meantime, let’s stay home, wash our hands, avoid touching the face and practice respiratory hygiene, including wearing masks and gloves.

Be safe: Masking on Bernal Hill

Virtual Doula Care includes:

  • 6 hours of prenatal coaching for you and your partner, offered in 3 or 4 sessions via video chat
  • Unlimited phone and/or email consultations to address any of your concerns or questions in pregnancy and birth
  • Help to develop your customized written birth and newborn care plan
  • Postpartum Audit Worksheet to identify community resources for yourself and your baby during the Fourth Trimester
  • Lending library of books and video resources, including delivery to your door
  • On-call service 24 hours a day beginning at your 37th week and up to 2 weeks past your due date or the birth of your baby, whichever comes first
  • Doula toolkit filled with inflatable solar lights, essential oils, massage tools and oil, honey sticks, fan, handouts and snacks
  • Virtual support during labor and birth whether at home and/or hospital or birth center
  • Back-up doula if necessary
  • Facilitating parent/baby skin-to-skin contact and support with breastfeeding initiation
  • Postpartum appointment upon your return home to check on you and baby and offer postnatal resources

Interested in working together? Connect with me here.  Meanwhile, I invite you to experience this Ecotherapeutic Meditation, courtesy of the New York Times. It features scenes and sounds from nature to help your body release the stress of constantly bracing for a disaster.

Come Connect at Doulahood’s Meet & Mingle


Doulas in the ‘hood! Come connect with me and my fellow postpartum doulas this Monday evening at the San Francisco Birth Center. Find out how we nourish and nurture the human being who has become two (or more)! All expectant families are welcome. The event is free and you can RSVP on the Doulahood Facebook page if you like. As a postpartum caregiver, I support you, the birthing parent, the partner and the rest of your family as you navigate the first 6 weeks or so at home with your infant(s).

If you or someone you know seeks doula care, please know that I have both birth and postpartum doula openings this summer, fall and into the New Year. Other opportunities to meet me include the July 13 and August 10 San Francisco Doula Group’s monthly Meet the Doulas gatherings. You may also connect with me via my website contact page.

 

 

The “O” in Doula

OinDoulaWordCloudI was at a birth where the nurse omitted the “o” in the word “doula” on the whiteboard listing the names of the care team. I was listed as the “dula.” It reminded me of my work in public relations where I am careful not to omit the “l” in public! The “o” in doula is vital and powerful. “O” is for:

  • O x y g e n
  • O p e n
  • O p p o r t u n i t y
  • O x y t o c i n
  • O r g a s m
  • O v a l
  • good o u t c o m e s !

Fellow doulas came up with:

"Dula" Sue
“Dula” Sue
  • O o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o (as in moaning)
  • O m (as in meditating)
  • O v a r i e s
  • O p t i m u m
  • “o” r i n g s
  • O p t i m i s t i c
  • O m n i p o t e n t
  • O h B a b y!
  • O u t r a g e o u s l y F A B U L O U S
  • O d d b a l l s ?

What does the “o” in doula mean to you?

UCSF Women’s Hospital to Open on Feast Day of St. Brigid — Patron of Midwives & Mariners

IMG_2710
DoulaSue Shadow Photographer

Mother Nature plays a key role in San Francisco’s new UCSF Mission Bay 36-bed Women’s Hospital, opening February 1.

Maternity room

Natural light pours through the large windows inviting the outdoors inside, adding garden greenery and spacious skies. From a hallway window you can look out to the Pier 70 ship repair yard, San Francisco Bay and the Oakland Hills. Patients can walk outside to the terrace roof gardens designed to reduce storm water runoff and keep pollutants out of the bay.

Pregnant women and partners looking for prenatal yoga will be pleased to know that Giggling Lotus Yoga, where I teach on Saturdays at 1 p.m.  is only 5 blocks away in the Dogpatch. I believe UCSF is the only SF hospital that does not offer prenatal yoga. So come join us!

View of ship yard, bay and Oakland Hills
View of gardens, shipyard and the Oakland Hills

February 1 should be an auspicious opening because it falls on the same day as the Gaelic festival Imbolc which celebrates the coming of spring. Derived from the Old Irish word, “I m bolg,” it means “in the belly” and refers to the pregnancy of ewes. Originally associated with the pagan fire and fertility goddess Brigid, the Imbolc festival later came to honor the Christian St. Brigid, who in Ireland represents the aspect of divine femininity in her role as patron of:

babies; blacksmiths; boatmen; cattle farmers; children whose parents are not married; children whose mothers are mistreated by the children’s fathers; Clan Douglas; dairymaids; dairy workers; fugitives; infants; Ireland; Leinster, mariners; midwives; milkmaids; nuns; poets; the poor; poultry farmers; poultry raisers; printing presses; sailors; scholars; travelers and watermen.

Isn’t that perfect considering the history of Potrero Hill and Mission Bay?

IMG_2690Laboring women will enjoy the deep bath tubs and probably be indifferent to the huge “media wall” which, our community tour guide said, offers patients access to education videos, medical records, entertainment, food service and environmental controls. To me it seems like more opportunity for partners and family members to ignore a laboring woman’s emotional and physical needs. Don’t forget that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children younger than 2 not watch any TV or be exposed to screens (smart phones, tablets, etc.)

IMG_2679 copy copy The media wall could work great for playing music, sound recordings of nature, guided relaxations and birth affirmations to help moms relax during labor. The rooms also have a sleeper sofa for family, refrigerator, rocking chair, and wireless Internet. A volunteer doula program will support low-income women in labor. Just like at the Parnassus campus birthing center, nitrous oxide, “a lower-tech alternative to epidural for pain control” is available. Let’s hope they leave behind the photos of Indira Gandhi and Margy Thatcher!

MORE FACTS:

PDF Map of the entire UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay

UCSF Betty Irene Moore Women’s Hospital, 1855 4th Street between 16th and Mariposa.

I could not figure how they count 36 beds for the birthing center. According to the floor plan (see below) there are 12 antepartum rooms, 9 labor & delivery rooms, 9 triage rooms plus 24 postpartum beds. Let me know if you can figure it out.

IMG_2701 copyThe adjacent Children’s Hospital houses the Emergency Room and serves all patients young and old, pregnant or not:

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, 1975 4th Street at the corner of Mariposa. IMG_2772

 

Please share any information you have about the new hospital in the comments box below. May UCSF and the mothers who will be birthing during Imbolc have an easy and smooth transition as they birth themselves into being. Wishing you all of the best. Many blessings from St. Brigid!

What a laboring woman sees when entering the hospital!
What a laboring woman in transition probably sees upon arriving 🙂

Doula Care and World AIDS Day

To mark World AIDS Day I want to spotlight the innovative role that doulas can play in patient care and prevention. Doulas function as community health workers who can join with families, doctors, nurses, advocacy groups, researchers and policymakers to help achieve an AIDS-free generation.

Today, HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence because of improved medical treatments.

Presenting my research at the 2013 Lamaze International Conference in New Orleans
Presenting my research at the 2013 Lamaze International Conference in New Orleans

People living with the virus can have children without transmitting it to their infants. According to the CDC, the number of women with HIV giving birth in the United States has increased by 30%. Women who take antiretroviral medication during pregnancy can reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to their babies to less than 1%.

For my public health graduate school culminating experience, I researched evidence-based HIV education methods used by allied health professionals to inform the development of an HIV training curriculum for doulas.

Doulas who receive training in HIV care would be well placed to enhance service delivery to expectant women living with HIV. The continual skilled social, emotional and informational support provided by doulas could greatly optimize the health and well being of expectant women with HIV and their newborns over their life course and help contribute to the elimination of health disparities across generations. Most doula training organizations, however, do not incorporate HIV education into their standard or continuing education curricula.

As professional caregivers, doulas can help increase the mother’s knowledge and understanding of the illness, provide social support, foster trust, and improve retention in care and adherence to treatment.

To learn more, see my project abstract, poster and Power Point presentation.