Doula Devotion

I spent Tuesday at work frantically attempting to perfect my Prius project, as the press staff scheduled a meeting with me for the afternoon. Due to difficulty in coordinating schedules, though, we actually didn’t meet until Thursday morning.

Early on Tuesday afternoon, one of our legislative assistants interrupted my labors in order to send me off to a briefing by a group she had met with earlier that day. So I weave my way up to the ninth floor, and into a meeting with the Chicago Health Connection nonprofit organization, which has an Indiana presence. They have worked hard since the 1990s to build and expand a program to nurture young, unadvantaged mothers (mostly single teenagers) through pregnancies. They provide free “doulas”, or nurturers, who spend scores of hours with the mothers for months before and after the baby’s birth, teaching them about proper nutrition and health, love and nurturing, and working to enable them to view themselves in a brighter light—boosting self-confidence and encouraging them to take control of their lives and decisions.

Needless to say, I was incredibly impressed. This group refuses to judge the decisions these girls made to get into their situations. Frequently as well, the girls are dispirited victims of abuse. Instead, it accepts the situation “You’re 17, a high school drop out, unemployed, and pregnant,” and then offers unconditional love to help the situation. In the end, the newborn babies are demonstrably and quantifiably healthier than others from the same situation, and have better care in the long-term (85% of mothers from the doula program breastfeed, almost double the average.) Just as critically, the mothers overwhelmingly go on to finish and/or continue their education and pursue quality employment.

After the presentation was over, I talked to the representatives from the Indianapolis and Bloomington branches of this program. The more we conversed, the more impressed I became. For Bloomington in particular, I asked about the demographics of their clients, and if they had partnered at all with the university – or whether lots of upper-middle class white well-educated girls would even be useful as volunteers. The craziest factoid I picked up was that Bloomington Hospital performs about 2400 births a year, and 45% of those are for girls who are either on Medicaid or have no health insurance. I think the University community tends to forget, like one of my professors said last semester, that Bloomington is actually just a Bedford of a Martinsville, that happens to have a university in the middle of it. It’s every bit as much a working class town as a college one.

Another horrifying fact --one branch of the organization, based in Philadelphia, mentioned how it’s current major fight is with prisons. Apparently girls who are in prison, who are also pregnant, receive health care and such (and these doulas works with them) – but it has long been practice that while the girls are actually delivering the baby, to leave then handcuffed or shackled in some way. This utterly fails as a tool for teaching girls love, self-respect, and corrective principles. Abhorring the practice, the organization is working hard to get it changed. I agree completely.

In the end, I was so impressed with the group, that I had this interesting realization. I feel like they are truly acting towards these disadvantaged girls like Christ would act. They love unconditionally, and give completely of themselves in service. They’re not there to judge or to condemn, but to forgive, to instruct, and to enable the girls to understand their divine nature, and become better than they would have been on their own.

Whatever happens, I’m always going to remember the Doula Project, and the good they are doing. I’ll spread word-of-mouth wherever the opportunity arises, and maybe some day, I’ll be able to volunteer with them myself.