bradley method birth

Doula doula whata? That was me, five months pregnant with SuperBoy. My childhood girlfriend (Hi, Andrea!) happened to hang out with me and catch up after a few years apart and mentioned a mutual childhood friend (Hi, Emily!) was a doula. Oh. That’s nice. A what? Her description sealed the deal for me: “a woman who helps you through labor.” Sealed as in, no thanks. I got this. My husband is smart and very sweet. He’s got this. We will just roll on into the hospital and have this baby, just like in the movies. Why would I want an old friend there? That’s just weird. It wasn’t until a little later in pregnancy that we chatted with other friends who had . . . wait for it . . . done Bradley Method classes and wait again . . . a midwife! I was again, so surprised and confident that we didn’t need methods or classes. We were signed up for the hospital classes. They’d tell us everything, right? Wrong again. Fast forward. Doulas at every birth. Bradley Method self-taught. Huge pushers of the Bradley Book and the Big Book of Birth. We’re like evangelizers for natural childbirth. Natural as in, no interventions or only as needed. Woe to those pregnant friends who were lured to our house for dinner. They always leave with a few books, a few enthusiastic chats about vaginas and cervixes and doulas. Poor friends. I wrote about our changing perspective and conversion on this…