Celebrities Who Love Doulas

I saw this article on parents.com about celebrities who have hired doulas to support them through labour and/or postpartumThis article was a fun read for me, and then it got me thinking. Why does it matter if a celebrity had a doula? Does it change anything for the “ordinary” women who make the same choice to invest in professional, personal support at their births? Of course not! Certainly I am a fan of raising the profile of doula support, because the more women hear about doulas, the more women will hire doulas, and that is good for me! I am also so eager for us as women to change the story our culture tells about birth, and I believe an empowering experience of this rite of passage is good not only for each woman who lives it, but for society as a whole.

For some women, perhaps, hearing that a certain movie star or TV actress had a doula will make them more inclined to want one, to get with the trend. However, having given birth and attended birth, I can say there is much more to the story than a trend. For me as a doula, supporting the birth process is not a bandwagon to jump on, it is a meaningful calling, and reading through these short blurbs, what is so clear to me is that these famous women did not hire doulas to fit in with a trend; they hired doulas because they cared about their experience of birth and invested in making it as positive as possible.

Women who birth without doulas are not less-than by any means, and hiring a doula is not a guarantee that you will love your birth story either. However, the next time you hear about a birthing trend in the celebrity world, remember these women are so much more than trend-setters; they are women and mothers, and their life stories go so much deeper than their fame. Doulas are not for the elite, they are for the extraordinary, and every woman who brings a child into the world is extraordinary!