When Vicki Bloom became a doula in 2009, hiring one was far from top of mind for most families, especially queer ones. But as their popularity grew, so, too, did interest from all kinds of pregnant people. Queer doulas like Bloom began offering services across the country, which meant queer parents could have someone on their birth team who deeply understood their identities.
A doula can offer support at any point in a pregnancy journey. Some people may want one by their side from the time the stick turns blue, while others don’t bring one into the fold until the last trimester.
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Unlike medical staff, a doula’s main purpose is to offer support and advocacy for the pregnant person and anyone else who is part of their birthing experience. A doula could attend doctors’ appointments, help pick out the items for a registry, and dispense advice about the various issues that come up throughout pregnancy.
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During labor, they are often a pregnant person’s first phone call. They can help determine when to come to the hospital, offer a back massage during a contraction, help you find comfortable and helpful positions, and advocate for your birth plan. For queer people, they can also make sure the obstetrician or nurses at the hospital don’t deadname or assume same-sex partners are siblings.
Research has shown that folks who use doula are less likely to have c-sections, les likely to need Pitocin (which helps move the labor process along), and more likely to rate their childbirth experience positively.
Bloom’s major objective as a doula is to remind the birthing parent that pregnancy doesn’t change who they are as a person in the world. The industries associated with pregnancy and birth are still deeply heteronormative. It can be tough for queer parents to navigate that alone. A doula who knows how to work with queer families makes it easier to shut out some of the noise and make having a child an enjoyable experience.
Bloom was eager to talk about her work and about helping queer parents make an informed decision about hiring a doula of their own.
LGBTQ Nation: What motivated you to take on this work?
Vicki Bloom: I used to work in the food industry, and then my child was born in 2003. So I took a little time off to take care of them. When they were little, I realized I needed to reconnect with the world, and I was not really feeling an urge to go back into the food industry. I was feeling an urge to work with people who are in life transitions. It was suggested that I take a weekend-long doula training just for what the heck. I took this training back in 2009 — it wasn’t nearly as known. And I came out of it thinking, “Why have I not been doing this with my life?”
I really became inspired to start looking at this work. And originally, I was looking at it from the perspective of a business, but then became more of an activist for a while. Then parallel with that, I started building my private practice.
A lot of what ended up being appropriate for me as a private practice was working with marginalized people who shared identities with me as a queer person myself. So I ended up working with a lot of queer folks: a lot of lesbian couples, triads, nonbinary people, or other nontraditional families who were giving birth. I connect with all different kinds of people, but I found that was a group of clients that was drawn to me and that I was drawn to work with. I don’t feel myself as a specialty practice per se, but I am very open about who I am, what my life looks like, and what my family looks like.
What do your services entail, and where do you come into the childbearing/birthing process?
I can come in at any point. I occasionally work with people who are still trying to get pregnant. I have been called anywhere from like, “Hi, I peed on a stick, and now I’m trying to get my team together” to, “Hey, I’m in the hospital, and I didn’t think I’d need support, but I do.” But typically, I’ll hear from people somewhere in their late first or early second trimester.
Typically, we do prenatal meetings — a mix of sort of practical information, some childbirth education, birth planning, taking care of your body during pregnancy. It’s really about sort of understanding some of the choices that might come up and how you feel about them. They may have family members who are not on board with their choices. So they have to know, “Where is my support network?” It might not be the most obvious one. Or they may have people in their world who are not officially on paper family but who are really important. I can make sure that the right kind of access happens. Also, I spend a lot of time getting to know my birthing clients and their families because philosophically, where I come from as a doula is you don’t become a different person just because you’re having a baby. You’re still you.
And it’s very easy, especially if you’re choosing a hospital birth, which is still the majority of births in the U.S., to feel like you’re suddenly this patient, like you’re this compliance-requiring object that has to be treated a standard way. And that’s not what I want for any of my clients, especially with clients who may have identities that are not mainstream for that birthing location. I want them to feel like they can be themselves.
What conversations do you have with queer families about the birthing process, especially considering most of them still give birth in hospitals?
Queer and other marginalized people know how they interact with the medical system. It’s not the first time they’re doing it, so they know where they may have trouble communicating.
Some of it is helping find resources like a childbirth class that’s gender fluid or an OB that’s not going to misgender you all the time. And sometimes that’s possible and sometimes it’s not because of the realities of the medical situation. One big thing is people don’t want to do a 101 with all of their medical professionals. So sometimes, it’s being a professional where they can trust they don’t have to do the 101 with me. And then having some help offloading some of that 101.
I’ll ask my clients sometimes if they want to code switch when someone’s in the room or do they want me to step in every time and be like, “Hey, no, their pronouns are they/them.” A huge amount of it is just feeling like you can still be yourself, even in medicalized situations. It’s seeing where people are, getting to know them, meeting them where they are.
What should someone look for in a doula?
As far as figuring out who to hire, a lot of it is vibe. A doula is a core member of your birth team, and you are choosing that person the same way you’re choosing anyone else. You want a doula who’s gonna work with the other people you’ve chosen.
You want to have somebody where you trust their training, their background, and their style. It’s very individual what you want from a doula, and what you really want is a connection. It’s important to talk to that person, see what they’re like, see what their style of support is like, make sure that they’re comfortable working with what you want to work with and how you want to do things. That doula is going to be there in some of the situations where nobody else is there.
I worked with a triad once where they were a cis woman, a nonbinary person, and a male person. The nonbinary person was the one birthing. But the cis woman wanted to breastfeed. The nonbinary person had had top surgery, was not interested in breastfeeding, but their partner was and did the work to induce lactation and use supplemental nursing stuff to make it happen.
So I was there to say, “No, the parent is not breastfeeding, but the other parent is going to be breastfeeding.” There were a lot of explanations that had to go on, but they were successful with it, which was amazing.
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