Doula and the Chaos of Building a Life

The moral case for recognizing what being pregnant does.

Life requires work.

This is so true that it even is true of the beginning of life. The amount of time and energy that a parent has to put in just to bring you into existence isn't small. Not just what you have to go through in order to create a child, but the process of bringing the kid into existence is so much work. Enough that it's important to have people around you who can help you through it. Ideally it's the person you created it with, usually the father. But even then there are people who should or can be involved. Such as the doctor who makes sure that you're doing everything necessary to have the baby come out with little to no complications. Giving birth is so much effort already that any complications can be so much worse.

For a whole nine months if you're lucky, everything about the experience is incredibly stressful even if you have no complications. Tensions are high and it doesn't really stop until the baby has arrived. Which then opens up a whole new series of complications and stress. But the lead up can be so intense that your relationships with everyone around you can be strained. Your entire life is changing on a daily and sometimes on an hourly or minute by minute basis. It's hard to see how anyone can go through that and not be coming apart at the seams. Thankfully, there are people who are there to help. Some of them dedicate their whole lives to reducing stress and making the process of pregnancy better.

While this is going on, a life is being created. Someone who isn't really having to deal with it all, namely the baby itself. All of the stress and the fights and the figuring out how to bring the kid into the world is about them, and they're not even here yet. Fights you might not even have wanted to have or know why you're having in the moment. Often by the end you're not even sure why you were fighting about them in the first place. It all seems so insignificant compared to what it's all about. Hopefully by the end of it you have what everything was for... the child.

Doula is very much about the building of a life in the face of pregnancy. Deb, as played brilliantly by Troian Bellisario, is pregnant. She hadn't necessarily planned on it but when she found herself pregnant, it felt like the thing to do. She has Silvio, as played beautifully by Aaron Shiver, who in being the father has committed to her and their child. Yet neither of them were entirely prepared for what was to come. Especially when the Doula they had planned to work with dies during the pregnancy. So in the very last moments, they have the change the plan. Naturally, this causes all kinds of stress for everyone involved. But more than anyone for Deb.

The chaos of building a life is a beautiful process and you should check it out as soon as you can.

Doula is available on Amazon.

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