How to make informed collaborative decisions with doula in birth

The most world-renowned doula, International Doula Trainer, Filmmaker (‘Orgasmic Birth: the Bestkept Secret’), Author Debra Pascali-Bonaro gives an interview on ‘The Doulas Role in Facilitating Informed Collaborative Decision Making in Any Settling’.

How and where does Debra work - in a hospital, birthing centre or at home birth? Is she alone or with a birth team? How to make collaborative decisions with a woman in labour, when transferring from home birth to a hospital is needed, or when medical interventions and technologies are needed? Debra gives detailed answers to these and other questions, basing on her experience in supporting births on 5 continents for 30 years.

In this video, the speaker defines such concepts as:

• informed collaborative decision making,
• “magic birth bubble”,
• safety of childbirth,
• intuition in childbirth.

Debra answers to the following questions:

• Do you support Dr. Michel Odent’s message that to have gentle, uncomplicated and not prolonged birth, a woman in birth shouldn’t talk and talk with others, especially with rational language? Verbal speech activates neocortex of a woman in birth and directly influences the birth.
• How do you behave and what do you teach attendants in your seminar and online classes not to switch on the woman’s neocortex as less as possible in birth?
• Did you have in your practice such cases if a midwife suggests transferring to a hospital from homebirth but a woman in labour rejects? How do you mediate as a doula in such a case?
• Did you have such cases in you practice when a woman in labour asked you and/or a midwife to keep your distance until she call you herself: don’t touch her, don’t speak with her, don’t disturb her, only to observe being like a shadow. I’m talking this because when we run our Ukrainian Survey among mothers who gave birth in maternity hospitals, some of mothers expressed such a wish for doctors and midwives!
• How do you speak as a doula with a pregnant woman before the labour concerning the possible change of birth settling? Do you prepare her feminine power in any settling?
• What do you speak you speak about this within your Pleasurable Birth Essentials online class? What is your role in medicaid reimbursement for doulas in NJ?

Interviewing, auding an translation by Svetlana Demianova-Ponomarenko (Ukraine)