JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for June 14, 2013

Good on ya, doula and husband. Last thing a woman in labor needs is random people busting in on her.

yep, good idea, keep a registered nurse away from her???Oh well, her kid, her decision.

I thought Clarence and Charlene were smarter than that. You can have a doula if you must, but someone who knows what they are doing is more important. It’s unlikely that they will be needed, but if they are, you need them bad.

The appropriate medical staff may well be in there—it’s all the extra people that the doula is keeping out. We’ve gone so far from the father reading the paper upside down in the waiting room that now a lot of people feel entitled to be at a birth whether mom wants a crowd scene or not. We need to get back to a healthy medium on that.

If you did some crunches, would you be the abdoula?

We had a doula team of 2 for our first son. Ground rules were that I was there to give my wife everything she needed. They were there to make sure I had everything I needed to do so and to back me up if the nurses weren’t listening to what I was telling them (when my wife was working too hard to be able to speak). This came in especially handy when they were insisting on an epidural to dull her pain when my wife was adamant that she wanted a natural birth unless there was a medical emergency (you know, other than pushing a human being out of her body).

I’m sorry, am I missing something? What’s a Doula is that like an at-home doctor?

I’m sorry, but the dad should be in there too. I’m just saying…

Are they in the hospital or at home? Looks a bit casual to be a hospital setting.

Does she have that Very Expensive Machine that goes “PING” in the room ?- Its a Monty Python Joke.