News Roundup

Several friends e-mailed to alert me to this article about doulas in the New York Times. It is a nice complement to their article of a week ago that focused on families in the birth room and a great counterpoint to the infamous Wall Street Journal doula article (both of which I wrote about and linked to here). It also shatters the stereotype of doulas as white, middle-class earth mothers who work for white, upper-middle-class, highly educated women.

Actually the most exciting part of the article for me was seeing that PBS stations nationwide will broadcast "A Doula Story" starting next month. I have been itching to see this since I premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival last winter. Hopefully I'll soon be able to watch it from the comfort of my living room (possibly surrounded by a few friends? Yes?).

I suppose if one looks, there's a story about an unplanned home or car birth every day. They aren't exactly news. However, here are two I wanted to highlight. The first involves a woman who came to the U.S. from Haiti to learn to be a doula. She ended up delivering in the car on the highway in Miami. But read how her doula training kept her calm and enabled her to help kick-start her baby.

I am touched by the fact that a woman from a developing country came here expressly for the purpose of getting doula training to take back home with her. This, too, debunks the doula stereotype.

Finally, I read in our local paper yesterday about another baby, delivered in the family minivan en route to the hospital. I feel badly for the siblings, especially the three-year-old, who were in the car. It sounds as though they might have been pretty shaken up by everything. I got a smile out of this exchange between the father and the 9-1-1 operator:

"There's a baby on the seat next to me!''
"Where'd the baby come from, sir?'' asked the 911 dispatcher.
"It came from my mom. No, I mean my wife!'' Carruthers said.