If you're reading this, someone you love is having a baby, and somewhere in your mind there's a version of this question: "If she has a doula, what am I there for?"

 

Here's the honest answer: everything I can't be.

You know her.

You're the face she'll search for, the hand she wants, the voice that means home. Nobody can replace that, least of all me.

 

What I bring is different. I've spent hundreds of hours in birth rooms, so nothing that happens will be new to me. I know what's normal when it doesn't look normal, what helps at 3am when nothing seems to, and what questions to ask when decisions start moving quickly.

 

While I hold the knowledge, you're free to just be with her. In practice, that looks like me showing you where to press on her back and when. Telling you what that beeping is so you don't have to wonder. Sending you to eat something, because you fainting is not part of the birth plan. And stepping back, again and again, so the moment belongs to the two of you.

 

Partners often start as the sceptics and end as my biggest advocates. Not because I did anything spectacular, but because they got to experience the birth of their child instead of managing it. Come along to the discovery call. Ask me anything, including the hard ones. This is your journey too.