Author: Sophie Messager

A couple of days ago, a doula friend published a blog post entitled “When did we become so blooming close minded“. It prompted me to finally write the “twin” post on kindness that I’ve been meaning to write for the last year or so.

I have noticed rather a lot of unkind comments, directed towards parents, on social media recently. This isn’t new. I am reminded of my other dear friend and babywearing consultant trainer Lorette Michallon and her story of a couple walking with a donkey. In the first picture, the woman is riding the donkey and the man is leading it. Two observers comment on how stupid the man is, because he could be riding the donkey himself. In the second picture, the man is riding the donkey, and the two observers remark on how selfish he is, because he could be letting his wife ride it instead. In the third picture, both the man and the woman are riding on the donkey, whilst the two observers moan about how selfish they are hurting this poor donkey. In the fourth picture, neither the man nor the woman are riding the donkey and the two observers comment on how stupid they are, for they have a donkey and are not riding it.

The morale of the story is, I guess, that people will always judge one another, whatever their choices. This is especially true when it comes to parenting. I don’t like it much but I don’t think there is much I can do about it. Or is there?

The most recent social media criticism I witnessed bothered me more than usual, because it involved professional parenting supporters criticising one another in a rather uncalled for, and unkind fashion. A famous babywearing consultant posted a picture of herself wearing her newborn being carried in a new French ergonomical buckle carrier and she was vilified by a large number of babywearing consultants for wearing the “wrong” carrier. The most flabbergasting thing is that she was being criticised vehemently by the people who are supposed to be supporting parents in their journey through parenthood. This doesn’t model good behaviour, and it worries me that if they treat their peers like that, then they are likely to treat parents in the same way, i.e. in a disempowering way, by telling them what “not to do”.

As Sue Gerhard said in her book Why love matters :’There is nothing to be gained in criticising parents’. You simply cannot educate, support and help people by being aggressive and denigrating them. True support, and true education, only comes from a place of kindness. Whilst I find it annoying when parents criticise each other aggressively on social media, I can forgive their ignorance. I cannot however, accept the same behaviour from my peers – from people who work with parents on a daily basis. Whether we are babywearing consultants, doulas, birth workers, antenatal or postnatal teachers, or any other profession supporting the transition to parenthood, we are privileged to support parents at such a vulnerable time. Such a privilege should be treated with the respect, and – dare I say it – sacredness, it deserves. We simply cannot treat people unkindly.

Our role is to serve, to support them to find their own ways as they navigate the exhilarating and scary waters of new parenthood (and not so new parenthood too) and the maze of conflicting advice and judgment.

We have a duty of care, a duty of kindness and compassion, and if what they do seems misguided to us, we need to understand that they are operating from a place of love, and the guiding must be ever so gentle and soft, because just like babies are precious and helpless, new parents hearts too are tender and fragile and deserve the same soft touch as new babies.

I feel very strongly that we pregnancy, birth, and postnatal professionals need to model kindness with one another, especially in the public eye on social media. How on earth are parents going to expect us to treat them with kindness and respect, and trust us to do so, if they witness the fiery wars of opinions which explode daily amongst us online for all to see? Let us have healthy and open debates whilst modelling nurturing, non-judgemental, respectful and kind behaviour. If we are going to change the face of interactions between parents on social media-it needs to start with us.

Yesterday Hannah Fearn wrote an article in the Independent on Doulas. I am usually a calm person but this article made my blood boil because it depicts doulas as money grabbing opportunists.

I have been working as a birth and postnatal doula for a couple of years. To follow this vocation, I left a scientific research career with a salary over 40k, and since I left, I haven’t yet earned enough money to pay tax. Women who choose to become doulas do so because it is a calling, no one does it for the money.

Why on earth would one want to leave a job with regular, predictable hours, and a guaranteed income to become a doula? Not for the convenience or money I can tell you.

When I was a scientist, I worked 9 to 5 four days a week. When my kids where ill I took (paid) days off. My husband knew what time I would leave home and what time I would be back. I was home in the evenings and at the week ends.

Let me tell you what life as a doula looks like:

Right now, I am on call for a birth and I have been for nearly 4 weeks. So for the last 4 weeks, my phone hasn’t left my side (even at night-and I often wake up a couple of times each night to check the phone hasn’t rung and I haven’t missed it), I haven’t been further than 30 min drive from my home (even when my family visited from abroad during the Easter holidays and I would have like to have taken them for longer trips out), I haven’t had an alcoholic drink, I have taken my car everywhere with me (just in case the client calls-instead of using my bike which would mean easier and cheaper parking), I have prepared and packed my doula bag 4 weeks ago (it has been in my car every since), I have had various backup childcare plans in place, various backup teachers too (I teach antenatal classes), and I generally live my life knowing that I might need to drop whatever I am doing at a moment’s notice to go to my client (even in the middle of a rare meal out with my husband, even in the middle of a cinema trip with my kids), which means I never fully relax. Finally, my mind is always on my client which means that my family feels that I am not always fully present to my family.

Do I miss the larger, more predictable income? Do I miss the regular, more predictable working hours? Yes. Do my husband and children find it difficult to cope with my being “somewhere else” in my head when I am on call for a birth? Of course they do. Do they find it difficult when I’m gone for a birth and they don’t know whether I will come back within a few hours or only 3 days later (yes this happens more often than you think!)-yes of course (and I am incredibly grateful for them to put up with it).

Do I regret leaving my scientific career behind? Not in a million years, because the pros of my new job far outweigh the cons. There is nothing quite so special as supporting new parents through the birth or their babies, and through their first few weeks postpartum. It is such a privilege, that I often joke to parents thanking me for my services that it feels to special to support them that I am the one who ought to be paying them. I have cried tears of emotion and joy several times over the last couple of years-something that never happened when I worked in science. It is worth it? YES YES YES! I wouldn’t change it for the world. This is my calling, this is what I’m on this planet for, this is what I am meant to do.

Don’t ever accuse doulas of being opportunistic money grabbers. I haven’t met one doula who is not doing this job tirelessly and selflessly. We are in it for the women, for the new families. We are doing this because we care deeply for them.