Chris and I met with two doulas this morning, Mavis and Liz from Gentle Care Doula Service, to get to know them and learn a little bit more about what they offer. Wondering what a doula is? There’s a really great article in the Chronogram, a local magazine, and even more details can be found on DONA International, but essentially:
“A doula builds a relationship with her client (and partner or other relevant family members) as pregnancy progresses to understand the particular wishes of the woman and family for the birthing experience. Once labor begins, the doula stays with the mother at home, a birthing center, or a hospital (and helps her move among these as needed), offering physical and emotional support both to the mother and also as needed among other family or friends in attendance. A doula also visits the family after the birth to ease the transition to life with a newborn (“postpartum doulas” specialize in this).” –from the Chronogram, linked above.
We really enjoyed meeting with Mavis and Liz, and definitely know that we would like have a doula if we can work out the financial details, so now I have homework for this week: trying to convince our insurance company to preauthorize. I’m sure that will be tons of fun…so keep your fingers crossed!
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In the meantime to keep myself busy, I’m working on creating the “must-have” list for before baby gets here, which means doing lots and lots of research.
According to Babies”R”Us, we need at least 100 things, but Chris and I aren’t falling for that. One thing we realized after the wedding was not to add tons of stuff to the registry, because inevitably you get the random stuff rather than the really useful, need-type stuff. So, as time goes on and we talk to more parents about baby stuff, we’re deleting things from the registry and figuring out how much of what’s left we actually need for August (as opposed to later down the road) and how much we just want.
So far the must-have list includes:
- Car seat
- Cloth diapers, diaper covers, and wipes (I’m going to try and get some off of freecycle, otherwise we’ll go to Waddle n Swaddle)
- Cheaper cloth diapers for burping, etc.
- Pack n Play (that’s where baby will sleep in our room rather than in a bassinet. We thought there might be more long-term functionality)
- Bathtub (although we could probably get away with using the kitchen sink…)
- Sling (of some sort, yet to be determined; this is kind of a want, rather than a need but a very strong want!)
Leave us a comment if you have any other thoughts on stuff that we really need. We appreciate every suggestion we get – whether we take it or not! ๐
Shari