Being a doula can be time consuming and emotionally draining. It's pretty impossible to predict when a woman will go into labor, how long her labor will last, or how each woman's labor will progress. It's impossible to predict how each woman and her partner/family will act, or what decisions they will make mid-labor. Being a doula means phone calls at all hours, false alarms, and having to suddenly leave your own family and cancel your plans in order to be there for someone else. So why do I do it? The average doula fee is not nearly enough compensation. I do it because I love birth and I love being there in the middle of everything. Being a doula is about making a difference in someone's birthing experience. As such it can be very satisfying. But it can also be extremelly frustrating when my beliefs seriously clash with those of my client. I believe that birth is an instinctual process - that the mother's body knows what to do and when. I believe that it is my role as a doula to try to protect the mother from various distractions and interventions through providing informational and emotional support. Doctors expect women to be average. To gain the average 30-35 lbs, to have an average 40 week long pregnancy, the average length of labor, to dialate and efface at an average pace... But each woman is unique. Doctors may wish to use drugs (like pitocin) and other medical interventions to force women to follow the average pattern. I believe that my role as a doula is to help the woman avoid becoming just another statistical average. To me, being a doula is about working to protect birth as a right of passage, an experience that puts the woman in touch with her body in the most primal of ways. Interventions - the often unnecessary intrusions of the medical profession on a natural process - are what I'd like to protect birth from. If you are a healthy woman looking for ways to medicalize your birth and experience as little as possible, I might not be the doula for you.