Doula Services: Hospital Labor Support

Helping to advocate for friendly mother/baby care & increasing your satisfaction with your birth experience. A doula provides a mother with physical and emotional assistance before, during and after childbirth.

Our doula services include three prenatal visits, assistance throughout labor and birth, assistance with breastfeeding and one postpartum home visits. Doula services are performed by a licensed midwife and CPM.

As well as homebirth, Family Midwifery Service provides hospital labor support. This service is designed for families who wish to birth in the hospital but still want a midwife’s support and expertise with natural pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. Studies have shown that having professional labor support affects labor in many positive ways and reduces the chances of complications.

Why choose professional labor support?

The evidence that overwhelmingly supports the use of professional labor support comes from six randomized, controlled studies: two in Guatemala, one in Houston, Texas, one from Johannesburg, South Africa, one from Helsinki, Finland, and one done in Canada. In each of these studies the participating women were expecting their first baby, were healthy, and had an uneventful pregnancy. These studies have been analyzed by precise statistical methods; separately published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the Journal of the American Medical Association; and subjected to the usual process of rigorous scientific review. These studies show that women who have professional labor support continuously during their labor and delivery gain the following important benefits...

• The rate of natural vaginal birth increases
• The use of interventions is greatly reduced
• The length of labor is shortened dramatically
• The use of medications is greatly reduced

The benefits of professional labor support extend beyond birth...

Mothers who have continuous labor support report less pain at 24 hours following birth. These mothers also have lower blood pressure and less anxiety. Fewer doula supported mothers considered the labor and delivery to have been difficult, and more believed they had coped well during their labor and birthing experience.

Women with labor support in general spend less time away from their infants and according to these studies appear to have increased interest in their newborns.

Women who have labor support show a significantly greater incidence of breastfeeding and feeding the baby on demand.

The incidence of feeding problems is also markedly reduced.

It also appears that women who have professional labor support have increased satisfaction with their partners.

Doula services you will receive:

• Three prenatal consultations
• Forming an appropriate birth plan
• Midwife labor support at home
• Midwife labor support at the hospital
• One postpartum visit to help with breastfeeding

Our Service Area

Family Midwifery Services is based out of Tehachapi, California and are available throughout most of Kern County and north Los Angeles County. Cities include Bakersfield, Lake Isabella, Palmdale, Lancaster, Pearblossom and Ridgecrest. Not sure if you are within our service area... contact us today.