#258 From the Archives: Doulas - From the First Breath to the Last: A Conversation with a Birth Doula and an End-of-Life Doula (Originally aired May 2023) – Gabby Jimenez and Claudia Peñate

And do you think, you know, is the history of some of this, did this role used to be filled by extended family in the household or, you know, people in the community that cared for people at these stages of life? Like why now is this a profession? How have these, how has it moved out of the home and into this professional role that, you know, families have to kind of seek out?

Do you wanna take that or should I?

Well, you know what? If you have a better answer, I'm gonna let you because my brain goes to a whole different place.

Like I'm going to the place of grandmas must have been doulas, right? And our elders must have been doulas.

I look at hospice volunteers and I think of them as doulas.

So was it already there and we've just coined the term because is it a profession? Well, yes, because it's more popular now but this has been going on for a very long time where someone sat and was present for someone who was about to have a baby or about to take their last breath.

Exactly.

I agree with you on that.

I feel like for birth doula, I feel it was mothers and grandmothers and sisters and aunts and really women overall were the ones helping care for the other woman in labor and the husbands and men were all outside.

Like that's how I envision it, right? And the same with death.

I think, and I go back and forth because my role when I worked as a hospice nurse, that was our primary role, was to doula the families, educate the families.

And I do the same thing in birth.

Just like Gabby said, I educate, I normalize, because these are natural processes.

We're born and then we die.

Right, I was just talking the other day to hospice nurse, Julie, who's kind of this, you know, fabulous person.

And she said, you know, the birthing mother, the body knows how to birth and the baby knows how to be born and the dying body knows how to die.

So the less we can complicate that and get in the way, the better.

But, you know, easier said than done, right? And I think education is so, so key.

So what's your role with families?

So my role with families is... to educate and prepare for the labor and childbirth.

And I also let the partners know that I'm there to support them.

I need them to be supported in order for them to support the birthing person.

Same thing goes in the dying process.

We were there to support the families, to help facilitate the death process for the dying person.

Same thing goes here.