Doula FAQs
What is virtual doula care?
All the expert support and loving care of a qualified and experienced doula delivered virtually: through weekly video visits and anytime texting. Virtual postpartum care is especially valuable if you want plenty of access to unbiased, evidence-based, personalized postpartum support for yourself and your baby through your fourth trimester.
2. How do virtual doula visits work?
We book your virtual visits online and meet for about an hour on Zoom once a week. This video meeting allows us to have a face-to-face connection even from afar. Plus you don’t have to change out of your PJs, clear a space for me on the sofa, or offer me anything to drink. It is the ultimate in postpartum convenience!
3. What can we talk about during our virtual visits?
Our virtual visits are a great time to unpack the last few days with your baby. You can share about an appointment you had with a doctor or lactation specialist, describe how feeding and sleep have been going, and explore helpful strategies for stressful times in your day. They’re also a great time to show off how the baby is growing, get help with your baby equipment, or try out different soothing techniques together.
4. Will you support me through my birth?
Your Fearless Fourth package includes 2 prenatal visits and 8 postpartum visits, along with anytime text support. During the prenatal visits, we can talk about how to prepare for your upcoming birth along with what to expect, coping strategies during labor, and how to include your partner.
And while I don’t have any specialized training to supporting families during birth, I can offer some basic support and all my enthusiastic encouragement through our anytime text support. If the hands-on support of a birth doula is important to you, I strongly recommend reaching out to your local doula community.
5. How does anytime text support work?
It is important to me that you feel you have all the support you need through the early weeks and months with your baby, especially since babies grow and change so much in the first twelve weeks. That’s why I’ve included anytime access to me as part of the Fearless Fourth package.
Send me a message with your favorite app anytime, and you can usually expect a response within an hour during the day, and first thing in the morning if you send a message in the night. Anytime text support starts on the day of our first prenatal visit and lasts through the end of your fourth trimester.
6. How can you help us get more sleep?
Full virtual sleep support is built in to the Fearless Fourth doula care package! This means that we will spend our postpartum time together watching your baby and learning their rhythms, preferences, and needs.
Then, at the end of your fourth trimester, we can start to gently put a plan into action to support your baby’s growing sleep skills that will allow all of you to start getting more sleep, whether you want to finally establish a nap routine for your family, or just want some longer stretches of sleep at night.
If you’re past your fourth trimester and need some personalized help getting your baby sleeping more, working out a routine, or setting some fresh boundaries around sleep, let’s make a sleep plan through Virtual Sleep Support!
7. How do you feel about bedsharing? Cloth diapers? Essential oils? Vaccines? #BLM?
I consider myself moderately crunchy - I bedshared with my first baby for the first few months, and cloth diapered both my babies. I haven’t found oils to be very useful for my family. I love my baby carriers and still sometimes wear my preschooler on long hikes. I also sleep trained both my babies but with different approaches, because they were very different babies.
I trust the science on vaccines, and we’ve been pretty cautious when out and about since March, 2020. I firmly believe Black lives matter, and trans lives too! I am committed to growing, learning, and affecting change so that all families can thrive together.
~ Patricia ❤️