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A Partner in Birth
The Single Mother's Guide to Choosing a Birthing Coach
By Kelly Burgess
In Andrea Engber's case, her closest relatives were half a continent away, so that wasn't an option. Instead, Engber, of Charlotte, N.C., asked her boss and his wife, who she was very close to, to be her coaches. It worked well for her.
"They argued so much during the delivery that it distracted me from my pain," says Engber, of Charlotte, N.C.
While it's great that Engber was distracted, this is not necessarily the approach that Simkin recommends. She prefers that a birthing coach work with the woman's natural rhythms and try to avoid distracting her.
"A birthing coach doesn't need to know medical stuff," says Simkin. "They don't need to know about membranes or monitors or anything else that the doctors and nurses are there for. What they need to know is how to provide emotional support. They need to understand the emotional stages of labor so they're not asking questions at inappropriate times or distracting the mother when she's working to find a place inside herself to get through the process. Your job is to just make sure that place is calm."
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