A wonderful reflective insight into the doula course and what this person got from the experience.
Prior to the course I felt very nervous about it – I felt like the group was quite big and I feared it being online might hinder me from participating and learning the way I would want to. However, I very quickly found my concerns to be baseless. The group dynamic was supportive and welcoming, I felt like everyone was very open and unbiased. At least in my perception we successfully created a safe space in which we could all share our experiences and questions, which I strongly appreciated, as it was one of my favourite aspects of the course.
To hear about everyone’s experiences enhanced my awareness of the individuality of birth and how important it is to encourage and focus on this individuality. Hearing the input from all participants throughout the whole course was a big enrichment for me, but what I found especially remarkable was the welcoming atmosphere towards me. This allowed me to share my opinions and knowledge as well – something I felt quite nervous about before the course, as I was afraid that my age and lack of experience would cause others to not take me serious. However the opposite was the case and the safe space we created was very helpful as I believe it made all of us feel respected and taken serious.
This experience has definitely strengthen my confidence in regard of my current profession as a babysitter as well as a Doula in future. In general, this feeling of creating a safe space and the confidence you can gain out of it is something I will definitely take out of this course and into my future work. I am hoping to create this kind of atmosphere for the mothers I am going to work with and I believe this course as a group experience was very enriching and helpful for that. Of course the group experience wasn’t everything I took from the course though.
What stuck with me every evening after the course was all the content we’ve learned about. There were so many interesting topics – the process of labour, the placenta, interventions, different birthing positions, communication, pain relief and the work of a postnatal doula. There was a lot of new knowledge I gained from it, but it also made me excited to go deeper into certain topics and I feel blessed that this course gave me a good ground knowledge I can build on in my future self-study. For example I learned a lot about all different kinds of pain relief and now I’m looking forward to learning about some in more detail – how exactly can I massage a woman in labour in order help her cope? Which oils are recommended for different kinds of discomforts?
The second day was especially interesting to me, to understand the natural course of labour and how interventions interfere with this seemed very enlightening to me. It is something I’ve heard of before I attended this course, but during this course and generally the more I deal with this topic, I seem to grasp how important the natural progress during labour is. How important a woman’s mental state and her own belief is and how modern medicine doesn’t always consider these things. In particular we watched various videos to help further my insight. It definitely showed me how important the work of a Doula is and definitely made me want to try my best and pay my contribution to not let this happen to women.
I know that my future goal is to become a midwife, but I sincerely feel like this Doula course and hopefully my work experience as a Doula are a great way to start this journey, as it has given me a different view on this than maybe a lot of other midwives have. I’m really thankful for that and hope I will never forget this and stay true to my heart.
If you are interested and what to know more about the doula course, please take a look here!
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