Why choose a Doula
Updated: Feb 9, 2021
Benefits of a doula
According to Marshall Klaus, MD Author of Mother-infant bonding - A doula is a caretaker of the mother and in studies of over five thousand women, involving comparisons of outcome with and without doula support, this was our finding. There's a 25 percent drop in length of labor. And there's a 40 percent drop in the amount of augmentation with oxytocin, and a 30 percent drop in pain medicines, with a doula, and a 40 percent drop in forceps. And in one study, we noted a 60 percent drop in requests for epidurals.
Christiane Northrup, MD - Doctors John Kennell and Marshall Klaus wrote a book called Mother-Infant Bonding, later Parent-Infant Bonding, where they put down all of the research that they had done in six different medical centers showing that the presence of a doula--that's literally a woman standing by, continuous labor support--decreased the cesarean section rate by 50% and it also sped up labor significantly so that the average first pregnancy labor was six to eight hours just from having a supportive person standing by loving a woman or mothering the mother.
