Throughout your pregnancy, you daydream about life with your baby. You start researching items for your registry and plan for childbirth. After struggling for hours of labor, you might experience physical and psychological exhaustion. However, a postpartum doula offers support during the delicate time after delivery.

Postpartum Doula: Who is it?

Whether it is your first or second child, the postpartum period is a crucial time for transition for you, your body, and your family. Although a mother receives support during labor and birth, a postpartum doula offers non-medical support during the crucial period following delivery.

A doula receives training to help women and their families after childbirth, whether vaginally or by C-section. In the United States, the cesarean surgery rate alone is approximately 33 percent. It indicates that every one in three women gives birth through major surgery. In some cases, the doctors plan the surgery. However, in others, doctors decide the labor on either an emergent or a non-emergent basis.

How do Doulas Help a Mother after Her Childbirth through C-Section?

Doulas offer expert care, skills, and knowledge to birth and parenting experiences. Here is how the doulas in Philadelphia support the mothers undergoing cesarean childbirth.

Serves as an evidence-based resource

During pregnancy, doulas support you by navigating the questions and concerns that might arise, processing anything coming for you, and offering additional resources. They often go through the processes and communicate with other experts. Your doula draws evidence-based resources and focuses on the best ways to support you during childbirth and parenting.

Serves as support before planned Cesarean

Even with scheduled plans, pregnant women often experience spontaneous labor. When you have a labor doula, you have access to the support that something unplanned might happen. Although your doctor is the primary medical support, doulas in Philadelphia offer physical and emotional support during the birth experience.

Invaluable assistant at the hospital

Doulas strive to be with you during the preparations for the surgery. Your doula explains the procedures, helps you get questions answered, and helps work on relaxation techniques before heading to the operating room. Your doula sticks with your family members to offer support during and after the surgery. If the hospital allows a doula to enter the operating room, your doula will help facilitate early skin-to-skin contact with you and your baby.

Resource during the early days of recovery and parenting

Even during your hospital stay, a labor doula continues to support you. A postpartum doula offers care to you and your family. Your doula will answer the questions, liaise with the staff on your behalf, offer helpful tips and help you with the experience as you look forward to returning home.

Continuous support through the postpartum period

Your labor doula will perform one postpartum visit once you return home, giving you a chance to continue to connect and receive their support. Postpartum doulas offer in-depth and ongoing support for the family. Whether it tends to your physical and emotional needs as a new parent, supporting your connection and bonding with the new baby, offering a meal, or doing the laundry, your doula is a resource for various things while you welcome home your new baby.

Successful breastfeeding

A study focused on a community volunteer postpartum doula program and its impact on breastfeeding with favorable results. Another study states that women receiving doula intervention before childbirth and during the postpartum period breastfed their infants initially. Studies conducted state that mothers who have postpartum doulas have higher satisfaction with breastfeeding and continue the nursing relationship longer.

Psychological health

Postpartum depression is prevalent in new mothers. Every one out of eight new moms develops postpartum depression. Risk factors include:

• A history of depression or postpartum depression

• Experiencing stress in life

• Lack of support network

• Difficulty with breastfeeding

• Having multiple babies or giving birth to a baby with special needs

The idea of taking the help of a doula for cesarean childbirth is usual. Many couples benefitted from the supportive and informative services with these extra sets of hands during surgical birth.