More signs you might be a doula

When eating out, you wonder why the person at the next table is giving you that look, until you realize you are discussing a placenta a little too loudly.

You frequently have your hands on another woman’s breasts and/or compliment her on her latch-friendly nipple structure.

Your 8-year-old daughter’s favorite video is National Geographic’s “In the Womb.”

After a birth, you get really excited when you realize you can have a beverage with alcohol in it sometime in the next three days, before you go back on call.

You frequently sleep in the back seat of your car (and keep a pillow and blanket in the car at all times for just such an occasion). Or you’ve ever been very thankful to sleep in a hospital bathtub.

Your children knew all their reproductive anatomy, proper names for every part, and where babies come from as soon as they could talk.

You want to have another baby, just so you can go through labor and birth again. You recognize that this is weird to a lot of people.

Your husband talks to his friends about epidurals and midwives.

Every single thing you commit to has a caveat attached to it (“unless someone is in labor…”). The people you make plans with most frequently don’t need to be told this any more. It is a given.

When it comes to birth, you understand that there are those who “get it” and those who don’t. All your closest friends “get it.”

You have really hard moments when you wonder why you do this job and if you are really making any kind of difference, then a client sends you a beautiful thank you card and tells you she couldn’t have done it without you. Then you remember, and you’re good to go again.

Copyright 2014© All Rights Reserved