Antepartum Care

Antepartum Doulas have training that relates to assisting women who are pregnant, on bed-rest, who may or may not be high-risk. This doula specializes in assisting women and families; this assistance can include education, physical support such as bed rest assistance, sibling care, errands, meal preparation, home care, and emotional support. Her specific responsibilities are a little bit of everything, including researcher, confidante, childbirth educator, community resource coordinator, organizer, hand-holder, shoulder to cry on, and/or some times… simply an extra pair of hands around the house to help out with life in general.

Informational Support
The Antepartum doula can provide information and resources such as web site support groups, books and magazines. Complete Childbirth Education or a refresher is especially important for those on bed rest. Antepartum Doulas can also provide the family with referrals to professionals who work with expectant mothers.

Physical Support
Teaching high-risk mothers and those on bed rest the art of relaxation can help them tremendously. Step by step these mothers learn techniques such as visual imagery, meditation, progressive relaxation and others. This will aid them in their ability to calm their minds as well as their bodies. Massage, aromatherapy, music therapy and distraction are beneficial also.

Emotional Support
Helping the mother come to terms with the issues she is facing. Whether it’s encouragement to learn how to eat differently for diabetes or helping to ease her transition of being on bed rest. This helps her to focus on her task at hand of creating a healthy baby. One-on-one support at this time can be crucial because this will have an effect on how she views the entire pregnancy and the birth. Encouragement for the mother is a very important issue. As the pregnancy progresses, the continued positive, consistent and empowering support can help the mother have better outlook. By supporting high-risk mothers, the Antepartum doula gives them the encouragement to find things in their pregnancies that are normal, help them plan for the birth and encourage communication with their caregivers.

Practical Support
Sibling care, errand running, light housekeeping, and basic meal preparation are just a few tasks that families can be can be assisted with. When a mother is placed on bed rest, the Antepartum Doula is a great tool to help her create a command center where she’ll be resting. This support can be provided in the hospital setting or in the home. The Antepartum Doula does not perform any clinical care; the role is strictly non-medical.

For the mom and/or family enduring a complicated pregnancy either because of illness or circumstances, the Antepartum Doula can contribute an extra set of hands to help with the daily grind of home, but more importantly, she can help to provide education and support… or what we call the “heart” of the doula.

More info….
Since we know that “high risk” pregnancy can include just about anyone who is having a troubled, complicated, or challenging pregnancy, the needs of the individual pregnant woman are going to differ from pregnancy to pregnancy.

The “High Risk” label is attached to many different women with tremendously varied stories, but low risk with an immobilizing condition can also prove to make pregnancy very difficult.

The Antepartum Doula can really play a huge role in keeping these women current with the latest research, assisting them with reading material from the library, bookstores, or the Internet, and the Antepartum Doula is there to assist with “legwork” for these moms. Likewise, the Antepartum Doula can also provide childbirth education information.

Bedrest may be the way that many women spend their pregnancies, but certainly there is assistance to assure that women and their families do not spend that time alone. Consider an Antepartum Doula to help ease the burden of bedrest.