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Here's what doulas do, and how they're fighting for Black maternal health [bostonglobe.com]

 

By Dasia Moore, The Boston Globe, October 13, 2021

When Felicia Love found out she was expecting her second child, she knew she needed a care provider who would make her feel safe. Love was in her early 30s, but the news transported her back to her teenage years, when she first became a mother. “It was a really scary experience for me. I felt really unsupported. I had so many questions that went unanswered,” she recalls. Love’s children are now 24 and 8, raised in her home state of Rhode Island. “When I became pregnant as an adult, I just knew I wanted a different experience.”

But Love didn’t know what “different” might entail. She took to social media to share her fears and to ask for doctor recommendations. One friend suggested that Love seek another type of provider in addition to an obstetrician — a doula.

This bit of advice would transform Love’s experience with pregnancy and change the course of her life. Now, she thinks care from doulas could be one answer to a national crisis, where pregnancy in the United States is riskier than in any other wealthy country in the world, and especially deadly for Black women like her. Love would go on to become a certified doula herself, as well as a key advocate behind a Rhode Island doula bill that passed the state Legislature this year, improving access to doula care. But initially, Love had no way of knowing any of that — she had no idea what a doula was.

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