Finding support

Just some facts:

I have no idea who will be with me during birth.

I want as natural a birth as possible without posing a risk to my baby or serious injury to myself.

I know that having a strong supporter during the labor process increases your ability to have a natural birth.

So I started researching doulas a few months ago. It began from learning about a program called Operation Special Delivery, where doulas volunteer themselves to pregnant women who give birth while their husband is deployed. This was mostly a dead end. I was matched up with someone that lives in Illinois. I moved on.

Then I met a girl who had recently used the service, so she gave me contact information for her doula. I then contacted her, and we met up for coffee today to discuss the whole process. Turns out OSD is mostly for women who not only give birth when their husbands are deployed, but also cannot afford it. We can afford it, so I'm not going to put on a front just to try to weasel my way into it for free. Honestly, it's not even expensive. Every cent of it would be well worth it though, because my meeting could not have gone any better with her.

She had given me more information about the birthing process than I had managed to learn on my own in the last 6 months. She gave me information about delivering at the naval hospital that I would never have known. She's also well known at the hospital, has access to the best equipment to assist in the process, and knows every nurse and midwife that may be helping me during labor and delivery. Most importantly, she's been doing this for years, and only 1 woman has ever gotten a C-section, and only 2 women have ever gotten epidurals. Did I mention she can also drive me to the hospital? This woman is unbelievable.

There are so many pros to working with this woman that I can't even remember everything that I'm thinking. I'm actually looking forward to the whole process, which is something that I couldn't say before. Noah will be the luckiest baby in the world with this woman on our side.