Christian Doulas

Please share with us how God led you to become a doula, or how you are called to be a doula, if you aren't one yet.

The reasons I am a Christian doula are rooted deep in the faith that my clients and I have been given by God. Because we are a community that believes the Word of God has been revealed in Holy Scriptures, the impact Bible verses have on us is immense. Imagine a person who understands that One Being not only created the world, but has complete control over that world, that this One Being has chosen a people to be His own and has given them His inspired Word to guide their life and light their path. Now imagine that this Being brings sorrow and joy to individual lives, always with the purpose of purifying and sanctifying His people. He "resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble," (I Peter 5:5) so that every time a believer suffers, he is assured that it is not in vain. Suffering brings us low, and God delights in raising us up when we are brought low. Now you can imagine how powerful the impact of hearing this Being’s words would be on a laboring mother, or a couple preparing for their child’s entrance into this world.

The very fact of pregnancy and birth speaks to the nature of God’s sovereignty and grace: In Jeremiah 1:5 God tells us that "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart." And David addresses God in Psalm 139:13: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." (an interesting aside: these are the fundamental reasons why so many who call Jesus their King abhor abortion. It is an affront to the sovereignty of God and a measure of how uncivilized we are as a nation that we would without conscience slaughter our weakest and most helpless citizens on an altar of convenience and self determination).

So, when meeting with my couples, or writing them email messages, or attending their labors and deliveries, I use Holy Scripture to encourage them. So much of the world around us prizes self-sufficiency and self-glorification and self-assurance, but God prices God-dependency, God-glorification, and God-trust. When a believing woman is in labor, she is very much comforted by the fact that she is not self-sufficient, but that her hope lies in the Lord of the Universe, who created her body to give birth. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul says that when he asked God to remove a physical affliction of his own, the Lord said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul then said, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." Boasting in our weaknesses is just one of many weird marks of the follower of Jesus Christ. When can a woman boast more of her need, of her participating in the perfecting of God’s power, than when she is laboring? Perhaps this is why Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2:15 that "women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

The most lovely thing about being brought low and feeling your deep need of God’s help is that He is absolutely, without fail, 100% of the time faithful in meeting you in your need. In Matthew 11:28 Jesus said to those who would follow Him, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

In Psalm 121 the help the Lord extends to us needy creatures is shown:

"I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber."

And, finally, women of faith are often comforted by this verse in Isaiah 40:11, one that indicates that God has a special dispensation of grace for childbearing and nursing women:

Like a shepherd He will tend His flock,
In His arm He will gather the lambs
And carry them in His bosom;
He will gently lead the nursing ewes.

Psalm 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want) shows us how God is a tender shepherd who tends to all of His flock, but this verse from Isaiah shows that there is something particularly gentle about His care of women who bear children and suckle them at their breasts.

In addition to using Holy Scripture to encourage my clients, I pray for them and with them. We are told that we should come boldly before the throne of grace, bringing to God all of our prayers and supplications (Hebrews 4:16), and that the prayers of the saints are received by God as sweet smelling perfume (Revelation 8:3). When I take on a client, I commit to praying for her throughout her pregnancy, though I am not as faithful in this area as love would demand and I would like (God have mercy on me). God is pleased for His people to bring to them their requests, and it is our privilege and delight to do so.

I am fully committed to the idea that people who call Jesus Christ Lord, Master and Friend, will have a more beautiful, God-glorifying birth when they have a Christian doula to be with them as their female servant. Servanthood is not very acclaimed these days, but I am so delighted to be called a "female servant," for in being one I both help women I love and proclaim the goodness of the ultimate servant, Jesus Christ, "who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:6-11)

I felt led by the holy spirit to become a doula, to replace the negative (devil) views of birth to a more positive experience. And to get women to trust their bodies, the way they did in biblical days! I love birth, i love helping women bring life into this world. And the Lord set it in my heart that being a doula and eventually a midwife is all for me!

Nellita,  You are so right, God is glorified in birth because He designed it and He is pleased to use it to reveal to us some of His glory.  I am so glad the Holy Spirit has called you to this work.

I have wanted to be a doula and eventually a midwife, since 1995. I attended births with friends and aquaitences, read a lot of books, became a LLL leader. Even with all the effort, attending a training was always just out of reach. One time in 1997, I paid for a training, but could not attend because I was placed on bedrest with my 4th pregnancy. After that, I realized that God wanted me to wait. I ended up having 9 pregnancies. The 8th ended in a miscarriage and the 9th ended in the stillbirth of my precious baby girl. At the same time I suffered from a myriad of health problems and gyn issues. I ended up having a hysterectomy at the age of 31, four months after losing my daughter.

I was heartbroken, but I knew God had a plan for all of my suffering. Still, I could not see anything to do with pregnancy. I gave away a box of very good books, everything that i had.  I cried every time I saw a pregnant woman. I felt strongly that I could never again work with pregnant women or babies. I put my dreams aside and felt that I had been wrong in feeling that I was called to the birth community. This was 2005.

Then, one day this past fall, a friend of ours called. He was going to be deployed to Iraq, his wife was 5 months pregnant.  We were of coursed offering all the help we could. Then, he said, Bettie will you be her doula? Yes, of course came flying out of my mouth! I was astonished because I couldn't believe I was feeling so great about it. I still worried that I would fall apart during her labor. I prayed that God would give me strength. Then, I asked my husband if it would be okay for me to pursure certification. He agreed.

 Amazingly, I never became emotional during her lovely birth. I was so grateful to God. I am also being blessed to be able to pursue midwifery schooling. As a look back I can see how good the plan was that God had. Most of my children are older and can help out so that I have the ability to do this without the family suffering for it. The difficult experiences that I had have given me a sense of humility and an understanding that sometimes things don't go as planned. I feel I am a better doula for those experiences.

I believe that birth should be sacred and beautiful because all things come from God, and attending a birth allows you to be present during such a holy time. It is always my goal to bring that beauty to the birth in everything that I do, with God's help. What an honor and pleasure it is to serve this way.

This was interesting to read thanks for sharing.   I became a doula by God's grace!   I didn't really intend to but I work at our local pregnancy & resource centre and one of my clients had her mother for her first child and she yelled at her during labour and told her to stop being a baby.   Her hubby told her in no way would her mother be allowed in with this pregnancy.   So she asked me as I was seeing her for a Bible Study anyways.   I said "Of course".   It went so well and I just loved it.   Then I sort of looked at the doula training but didn't think much of it.  Then my cousin became pregnant and she was not married and her mom won't go into hospitals asked if I would come in with her.   Then I thought I should really take the training so I did.   I LOVED it.  I took the DONA training in May and attended my cousins labour in July which also went amazing.   I knew that God had already prepared me for that experience long before I could even imagine it.   I was very thankful that God knew what he was doing.   Now I've got the bug and I'm excited to come alongside many women and their partners to try and acheive more peaceful births here in Canada!

What a lovely testimony of how God leads us to do His work! Praise Him for your willingness to be used in this ministry.  I hope you find this site a blessing. Love, Barbara