And the tour continues! Next up is Yale University on Wednesday.
I’m particularly excited to be at Yale because I blogged about the feminist campus community’s response to the antics of a Yale fraternity during rush.
As always, if you’re interested in bringing me to your campus or community I’m still booking events for the spring. Get in touch!
Another request for a doula. See below and respond directly to her if you might be a good fit.
I’m a 36 year-old African-American woman, 29 weeks pregnant, due April 1, 2011. My partner and I are interested in finding a doula, perhaps a woman of color, who has real perspective on how pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering interact with race/ethnicity/class/culture. In other words, I feel like there is a particular legacy and experience around black womanhood and black motherhood, and I want to work with someone who has some knowledge and sensitivity around this. And, preferably we’d find someone with experience working with survivors. We are open to both well-established doulas as well as doulas-in-training. Thank you!
Contact: dannettesharpley@yahoo.com
I got a request for a doula in Chicago via email recently. I often get these emails from folks looking for a doula with particular politics/background/values and hope to help them find the right doula. Here is the info:
My boyfriend and I are searching for an experienced, Spanish speaking doula in the Chicago area to prepare for the birth of our new baby boy – due April 7th. We really would like to work with an Latina doula but a doula who is fluent in Spanish is fine also. Ideally, I would like someone to help me try to have this baby without drugs and without tearing, which are my biggest fears. While my boyfriend and I are fluent in both English and Spanish, my mother, who is a Spanish speaker will be in the delivery room and she is a nervous nelly, the doula would almost be as much for her as for me. So if you are an experienced Latina or Spanish speaking doula in Chicago, or have the contact information of one, please email me at mdiaz@sanchezdh.com. Thx!
Contact her directly.
Next week I’ll be heading to Oklahoma for a mini speaking tour. I’m excited to visit a state I’ve never been to, as well as engage with activists dealing with progressive politics in a decidedly red state.
The first event, on January 21st, is a symposium hosted by Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. I’ll be speaking on a panel in the afternoon called Birthing Rights and the New Eugenics, alongside Lynn Paltrow and Andrea Smith. I’m very excited to speak alongside those two incredible folks, and especially Lynn, who gets serious credit for inspiring me to start this blog. I’ll be talking about abortion doula work and the full-spectrum doula movement.
Then on Monday I’ll be visiting the University of Oklahoma in Norman. There I’ll be giving my talk, Feminism’s Identity Crisis. The cool flyer that Stephanie at the Center for Social Justice made is below. In case you are in Oklahoma, the event is on January 24th, from 1:30-3:30pm in OMU, Regents Room.
I’ll be spending the weekend in the OKC/Norman area, so if you know of cool things to do or places to visit I’m open to suggestions!
Thanks to OSU and OU for inviting me. These two events are the start of my spring speaking gig. I’m still booking new events, so if you’re interested in bringing me to your campus or community, get in touch.
I often get asked how I got into doula work. This is the answer:
It’s kind of cliche. I was always interested in women’s health. Had aspirations of being an ob/gyn. Then I went to college and took organic chemistry. It was a bad scene, and I promptly said goodbye to the idea of medical school.
Then I took a class called The Anthropology of Reproduction at a nearby women’s college. We watched this video, and I walked out of class knowing my life had just changed forever.
I was so fired up by the film, Born in the USA, and the screwed-up culture of birth it documented. It became my big issue. I was only a sophomore in college, but I talked to everyone I could about how wrong we were about birth, and how badly we were treating mothers and babies in hospitals. Within a year I had become a doula. I wrote my thesis on my time spent in as a volunteer doula in a public maternity ward in North Carolina.
I was obsessed. Seriously.
Ask my college roommate.
The rest is history, as they say.
I think Ricki Lake’s film The Business of Being Born serves a similar role to the film I saw and it’s much more widely available.
I arrive at the hospital around 9am, head up to the right floor, showing my volunteer ID badge to the security guard as I head toward the elevators.
I round the corner and enter the floor, delicately labeled Women’s Choices where the procedures will take place. I walk into the makeshift office/empty procedure room where the Residents/Doctors who will be performing the procedures sit debriefing the morning’s cases. I’m greeted by the Doula Project coordinator/Counselor at the hospital, and she debriefs with me about the folks on tap for the morning. While everyone is in for a first trimester abortion, the stories are different. Some are elective procedures, some are wanted pregnancies with medical issues–ectopic, fetal demise, etc.
I walk into the waiting room where the women are already wearing hospital gowns and socks, sitting nervously, quietly, waiting their turn. They are asked to arrive really early–7am–with the hope that it means most will be there by 9. I offer blankets, sometimes speaking in English and Spanish, sometimes using hand motions to communicate with patients who speak another language.
Everyone has been fasting since the night before, adding to the discomfort, tinging the air with acridity from hungry breaths. I sit, introduce myself to the patients, make polite conversation. Everyone responds differently, some want to talk, some want to sit quietly. Mostly I listen, try to remain attuned to the signals they send about whether they want company or silence.
Radical Doula 