Written by Client Kate – Silver Spring
It was 3 a.m. on our first night home from the hospital when I dialed Metropolitan Doulas, crying and desperate for help.
Our daughter, Piper, had been inconsolable for hours. We had tried everything – the (not-yet-recalled) Rock n’ Play, swaddling, white noise, rocking, shushing, bouncing, just holding her, a pacifier even though the lactation consultants had told us not to use one yet, placing her gently in the bassinet. I had nursed her on and off for hours; she would detach from my breast, screaming, red-faced. I had been anxious before we left the hospital and everything felt even scarier in the middle of the night, like we were the only people awake on the planet, walking back and forth on the parquet floor in our living room with one screaming baby while her twin brother slept, fitfully, off and on. We had no help, no family in town, no one to call. Blearily, I remembered a free postpartum class we had taken with Metropolitan Doulas; I remembered their kindness, their description of their work: taking care of the parents in the wake of birth. I looked up their number and called, pacing in front of the stairs. No one answered, so I left a tearful message, explaining that we had just come home from the hospital that day. I was scared and we needed help.
At 4 a.m. we finally fed Piper, via syringe, 3 ounces of formula. The four of us then collapsed into a fitful sleep on the sofa. At 7 a.m. my phone rang. It was Metropolitan Doulas; they’d gotten my message. Tearfully, I recapped our night. It felt to me like we had gone through a war, though I am
sure it didn’t seem that dramatic to anyone else. But the woman on the phone did not belittle my description.
“You called the right place,” she said calmly. “I’m going to send someone to help you.”
An hour later, Jennifer arrived. I didn’t know anything about her and we hadn’t met before. When I answered the door I was still crying, clad in the wrinkled outfit I’d worn home from the hospital the previous afternoon and never got around to changing. I greeted her by saying, “I don’t think I can do this,” and instead of shaking my hand, she hugged me.
When we came inside she fussed over our babies, telling us how beautiful they were. She asked if we had eaten (we hadn’t, not since lunch the previous day), then made us breakfast and let us talk about how scared and tired we were while she put together the baby swing we had abandoned, half-assembled, on the floor the night before. She held both of our babies, helping me latch my son for a morning feeding and showing my husband how to more easily syringe-feed my daughter. She tidied our apartment and assured us that we would be OK. She stayed for four hours and I was ready to ask her to move in before she left. I told her I was scared to be alone with my babies (not because I thought I would hurt them but because I literally did not think I could do it), and she gave me her cell phone number and told me to text her anytime. She hugged us both on her way out. I booked her for another four hours the next day.
My husband and I had been prepared for the arrival of our twins, as much as any first-time parents can be. We had taken a full slate of prenatal classes. We had prepped our
apartment. I had washed all of the baby clothes and linens weeks before, using unscented detergent, and then folded them all carefully and organi zed them by size. We had sterilized the bottles and the pacifiers and stocked our freezer with ready-made meals.
But there were things we didn’t plan for because we couldn’t have—we had no idea. Both of our babies were born with tongue and lip ties, which made breastfeeding difficult (we would learn later that Piper was simply starving that first night; despite my constant nursing, she wasn’t getting enough milk. I still feel guilt about this). I was grappling with recovery from an unplanned C-section and was struggling with the baby blues and massive postpartum anxiety, which only got worse after that long first night. Our families lived far away and were excited to come help, but we had told them we didn’t want visitors for the first few weeks because we wanted time to become a family on our own. We felt isolated and alone, in over our heads, completely overwhelmed. Knowing that Jennifer was coming back was a balm on my heart.
That is, simply, what doulas do: they come and just make everything better. They help with baby care, yes, and we needed that desperately, but we also needed to be taken care of, to have space to breathe, to eat food we didn’t have to prepare, to sleep for an hour when we hadn’t slept in a day. Jennifer did all of this. She cooked for us—I didn’t have much of an appetite in those early days but I ate whatever she
put in front of me, and she somehow materialized healthy meals out of our somewhat bare refrigerator—and she tidied our apartment. She did baby laundry and washed and sterilized bottles and the parts of my breast pump, which felt like an unimaginable luxury. She did all of this without being asked, and watching her tackle those herculean-seeming tasks made me feel like I, too, might be able to tackle them one day, once I felt better, once I got the hang of things. Most importantly, she made me feel like I might actually be able to get the hang of things.
By the end of my 12-week maternity leave, thanks in large part to the help I got from Metropolitan Doulas, I was doing much better. I figured out how to pump and nurse and how to do both while caring for two squirmy babies who needed my attention. I learned what my babies needed and I tackled spending time alone with them, first in small chunks, then in larger stretches of time. I still felt anxious, but I was able to deal with it. Slowly, it started to get fun. Eventually, I felt more confident, and finally, I stopped needing help there to get through the day—an outcome I don’t know how I would have reached if I had never called the doulas in the first place.
There is so much emphasis on taking care of the baby after birth and very little emphasis on taking care of yourself. Having a calming presence in your home who is simply there to help, without judgment, is an unimaginable gift. Jennifer saw me at my most vulnerable from the moment we met and only ever helped me, made me more confident, and taught me so much about the very basics of baby care.
My twins are 11 months old now. They are pure sunshine and joy. They will turn one in November; both Jennifer and Nikki, the agency’s owner and co-founder, are on the invite list for their first birthday. My babies may not remember them but I will happily hand them over, whispering in their ears first, “They were here from the very beginning of you, and the very beginning of you and me.” Those first few months are a sacred space and doulas enter that space and they make it so much better. I can’t recommend them enough. I am eternally grateful.
