To Doula or Not to Doula?

I pick up the book "Motherless Mothers" from time to time and always close the cover thinking about whether or not a doula might be a good investment for my first childbirth experience. The author, Hope Edelman, seems to advocate for the highly trained birth partners, particularly for women who don't have mothers themselves.

Alex is a little bit on the resistant, anti-doula, we-can-do-this-on-our-own end of the continuum. He at first tried to hold his tongue, taking the safer route of "I just want you to be happy, babe. It's your choice." Not that I let him get away with that for long. I knew he had an opinion. Or some feelings at least. Turns out, he admitted he felt a bit threatened by the presence of another individual at such an intimate event in our life. He explained it to me this way:

"It's a bit like going out to a fancy, romantic dinner. The nurses and doctors are like the waiters and waitresses, they're more or less invisible. If they are good, you don't really even notice them. But a doula, a doula is more like the sommelier. The sommelier that we seek out to recommend the best bottle of wine for our chosen entrees, and then we ask to sit down to join our meal. I'm not sure I want the sommelier to join us while we eat."

Pretty descriptive analogy. Point made.

But in my head, a doula is more like a mountain guide. We know we are planning to climb this very big, possibly treacherous, mountain. It's not like hiking the South Sister, a peak with little risk by way of weather, and one that requires no technical climbing. However, this mountain is more like Hood, or Adams, or Rainier. Sure, it's a bit familiar to us. We know other people who have climbed to the peak. We get to see it on sunny days. But I'm not about to go and summit one of the big guns without a guide. Yeah, Alex knows his way around the outdoors. But he's not exactly well-versed in technical climbing. Or the specific weather patterns. Or the various routes. He's great for encouraging me to keep on climbing. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Kissing me during water breaks or giving me a pat on the butt when I think I can't walk any further. But when it comes down to it, he's never seen the top of Rainier either, so he has no expertise to fall back on. Are we really almost there? Or is that the false summit? Is the weather bad enough to turn around? Or is it just a passing cloud, one we seek shelter from for just 10 minutes? And then who's going to take our picture when we get to the top? What about the way down, should we take the steeper, shorter route, or go the same way we came up?

All that being said, I think we (me) are opting to go ahead and hire the doula, Melissa. She seemed very nice, well-informed, and above all else, at our (my) service. Doula, after all, is a Greek word meaning "woman's servant." In the end, there's very little risk in having someone whose main concern is mama (me), and if we don't need her every second of every hour, then we can ask her to give us some solo time. I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time. But if she's not there to begin with, then we (I) have little to fall back on by way of support, both physical and emotional. 800 bucks seems like a paltry price to pay to increase our chances of having a natural birth, to reduce our likelihood of having a Cesarean, and to overall report a more positive childbirth experience. Some research shows that a doula's presence can decrease the rate of a C-section by 50%, the length of labor by 25%, and the request for an epidural by 60% (according to the American Pregnancy Association). Nonetheless, proof or placebo, I'm sold. I want my husband as my right hand, and a doula as my left.