Ask the Doulas Podcast
Welcome to Ask the Doulas! This podcast is tailored to expectant parents and those with newborns or toddlers at home. It is also great for those who are in the early stages of their fertility journeys. Gain insights and guidance from the experts themselves on becoming a parent no matter if this is your first baby or your fifth. The featured doulas offer trusted support, sharing effective self-care and early parenting approaches. Let them be your trusted coaches as you make optimal decisions for your well-being and your children's lives.
Whether you're preparing for the arrival of your first child or seeking to improve upon past pregnancies, this show offers a comprehensive guide to alleviate your anxieties and concerns. Discover strategies for maintaining a nourishing diet, staying hydrated, and navigating the intricacies of maternity leave. When nurturing a new life within, rest assured that these experts have your back with their trusted, evidence-based resources.
This show delves into effectively navigating the post-pregnancy phase. Tune in for insights from doulas who provide guidance on lactation support, newborn care, sleep consulting, and more. A crucial topic addressed is postpartum depression, a challenging period for many mothers. Hear valuable advice from therapists and other experts on managing this situation with grace, empowering you to become an even stronger and more resilient mother.
Kristin Revere, birth doula, newborn care specialist, childbirth educator, and postpartum doula, is the delightful co-host of the podcast. With a fervent dedication to supporting fellow women, Kristin's journey began in 2011 after the birth of her daughter. Immersed in the realm of pregnancies, her exploration propelled her to engage doulas for guidance during her second pregnancy. The profound experience inspired her to establish Gold Coast Doulas, her own company specializing in this invaluable profession. Kristin and her team offer judgment-free support from conception through the first year.
Co-host Alyssa Veneklase is a sleep consultant, bed rest doula, parent educator, and postpartum doula with Gold Coast Doulas. Alyssa expanded her expertise to support expectant mothers during pregnancy and newborn care, teaching them the art of restful sleep even while caring for their precious infants. While she has also ventured into the world of real estate, her passion as a doula continues to burn brightly.
With a collective 21 years of experience as doulas, Kristin and Alyssa boast advanced certifications across various areas of their field. With their unmatched expertise, they bring a wealth of invaluable advice to every mother out there. Guiding each conversation effortlessly, just like friends chatting over coffee, they provide the insights you need in an engaging and entertaining manner. Prepare to be captivated and enlightened!
Pregnancy, maternity, and fertility encompass profound and intricate aspects of a mother's journey. However, no parent has to face these experiences alone. Alongside supportive partners and fellow moms, seeking guidance from doulas is a valuable resource. Kristin and Alyssa are here to share their exceptional expertise and the wisdom of esteemed professionals in this field. Learn from the top experts in the birth and baby industry when you choose Ask the Doulas! Listen to the podcast on your favorite podcast player. Check out their birth and baby prep course at www.thebecomingcourse.com/join/. Read their book "Supported: Your Guide to Birth and Baby at www.supportedbook.com. Supported is available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, or audiobook format.
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Ask the Doulas Podcast
Does Experience Really Matter? with Kristin Revere, CEO of Gold Coast Doulas
In this special solo episode of Ask the Doulas, co-host and Gold Coast Doulas CEO Kristin Revere explores an important question: Does experience really matter when hiring a birth or postpartum doula? Kristin shares her insights on what families should truly consider when choosing doula support—beyond years in the field. Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on training, personality fit, intuition, and the many ways a doula can make a difference in your birth and postpartum journey.
This episode is brought to you by Ceres Chill, a company that never stops working to make the lives of parents easier!
Subscribe to our newsletter, check out Kristin Revere’s birth and baby book, and see more about our doula services & online courses below:
https://linktr.ee/goldcoastdoulas
In this special solo episode of Ask the Doulas, co-host and Gold Coast Doulas CEO Kristin Revere explores an important question: Does experience really matter when hiring a birth or postpartum doula? Kristin shares her insights on what families should truly consider when choosing doula support—beyond years in the field. Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on training, personality fit, intuition, and the many ways a doula can make a difference in your birth and postpartum journey.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin with Ask the Doulas, and I have a special solo episode today brought to you by Ceres Chill, a company that never stops working to make the lives of parents easier. Whether you’re looking for a game-changing breastmilk chiller, color-changing nipple shields, or 100% nontoxic glass bottles, this company has everything you need and want.
So let’s get into our topic today: does experience matter for birth doulas, postpartum doulas, educators? The topic has been coming up in my doula certification organization that I trained and certified through for birth and postpartum and several other certifications, and it has gotten me thinking. At Gold Coast, we’ve kind of handled that objection of inexperience in a different way, and it might be helpful for our listeners when selecting a doula or feeling overwhelmed by the process to understand what exactly goes into a doula’s training, education, background, and ability to support families. Since I matchmake all of our potential clients and students with the perfect doula or educator, and I also interview doulas and other team members and try to make sure that they’re a good fit for the core values of our company, which is professionalism and putting the client and their needs as a priority and continued education and giving back to the community. Those are some of our core values, and I want our doulas to share in those and really focus on caring for clients and giving that professional, unbiased support that I feel is valuable.
So as far as whether you should hire a doula who’s worked for 15 years or a doula who has attended a handful of births or maybe had their first postpartum client – it’s all up to you. For birth experience, our new birth doulas are always paired with a seasoned birth doula who is at our advanced level and has years and years of experience. And so they have a mentor for the interviews and the postpartum visit, the prenatal visit, and the text support all through pregnancy and virtual support during the labor. If they’ve tried every position or an intervention comes up or they have questions about feeding and just don’t have the personal experience or the full understanding of what to do next, they are guided by a seasoned doula.
When I started Gold Coast, I used to pair two new birth doulas together or would give a family a newer postpartum doula, and they wouldn't often get hired that way because they’d be asked how many births they’d attended in the past, or there were other concerns about inexperience, even with the lower rate that I offer for new doulas versus our experienced doulas in the birth capacity. The more seasoned doulas were getting hired more frequently. And so I changed that and paired a seasoned doula with a new doula. But honestly, when it comes to a training, every training organization is different. So I look at professionalism and comprehensive support. With postpartum doulas, it’s about understanding the focus on not just mothering the mother but newborn care and the aspects of that and how to support with overnight care.
So we tend to hire from select organizations or make sure there are additional trainings, like being a certified lactation consultant to have additional feeding background or a newborn care specialist in addition to a postpartum doula certification if that training does not include newborn care. And so most certifications include auditing a breastfeeding class, auditing a comprehensive childbirth class, getting certified in CPR and first aid for both infants and adults, and of course, doing either virtual or in-person instruction, and those can range from two days to five days, and usually the days are ten-hour days. I know for my first birth doula training, it was four and a half days, and then I went home and took additional classes, like the breastfeeding class, the five-week childbirth class. I audited HypnoBirthing, for example. And so I had additional experience to offer. And I look for that with my doulas.
I also supplement education and bring in trainers that I pay for to give my team options for different experiences. I’ve brought in disability trainers, DEI trainers, a NICU nurse to train us on supporting NICU families. I’ve brought in a trainer to support plus size individuals in both the birth and postpartum phase. So doulas on my team have access to not only taking paid trainings for themselves to develop themselves professionally, but to have that mentoring.
And then our postpartum doulas all have chat groups in a communication platform that we use, as well as all of our birth doulas. So they’re able to reach out to each other if they’re dealing with a colicky baby or a baby with disabilities or how to navigate triplets. They can ask our team for advice, where a brand new solo doula who doesn’t have a network of supportive individuals or a good backup – we have backups in case of illness or emergency for our postpartum doulas, for our birth doulas. So yes, I do feel like experience matters, but having the training that equips doulas to be confident from their first day as a doula versus feeling like they need to hire a mentor and shadow them. I get calls quite frequently from other doulas who don’t work for me that want to shadow our clients in the home or shadow a birth, and that is not something that I believe would be needed with a comprehensive training. But I bring in doulas who have additional background in childcare, as a nanny, if it’s in that newborn focus or have been a childbirth educator for a while. So I look for related experience, and I look for professionalism. I look for reliability. But I also believe that with the right support, a brand new doula can be just as amazing as a doula who’s been with me for eight years, because they have the support. They have the training and the desire to help others. We are in a helping profession.
So it’s totally up to you if you are currently expecting or just had a baby and are looking for the perfect postpartum doula on what you want experience wise. And as I mentioned earlier, some doulas work on a reduced rate until they get experience or while they’re working through certifications. Others charge the same rate all throughout their career. I believe that we should increase rates over time, but again, we have a different rate structure for new doulas, knowing that they’re learning, that they’re getting mentoring, than we do for our most seasoned doulas. So our clients know if they want a doula who has attended a hundred births, that they’re going to pay more for that doula, or who has supported families over 200 hours, then they’re going to be able to select the right doula for them.
Other families just want a great personality fit and know that they have the training and the background that allows them to do a great job. And I say this often, but I still feel like at my first birth I attended or my first postpartum shift, I did as good of a job as I did at my tenth. I’ve certainly learned and experienced different scenarios over the years, but it is so heart-centered, and as long as you are passionate about it, focused, and properly trained, then I think our listeners who are newer doulas and are looking for confidence in mentoring, there are mentors out there that you can pay to get support if you haven’t joined an agency or a collective. There are so many different Facebook groups where doulas are offering paid mentoring or there are some online courses.
And then if you’re a client, again, weigh out the options of budget and personality and the experience that you’re desiring, and ask them questions about what additional trainings they’ve taken, what kind of support they have, if they have a mentor, if you’re unsure of hiring a new doula. It may be that they’ve taken all of these additional trainings that help equip them to better support you.
So good luck in your search, and we will be talking soon in our next episode.
IMPORTANT LINKS
Birth and postpartum support from Gold Coast Doulas
