What Do You Do For Your Clients As A Doula?
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Transcript
Welcome to doula tips and tips. This podcast is a place where we answer one question about doula work, both to support you and to help you support your clients. I'm Kaylee Harrod. I've been supporting families in this perinatal space since my oldest was born, 12, nearly 13 years ago.
I am a birth and postpartum doula childbirth educator, La Leche League leader, and a doula coach. I love guiding and supporting doulas as they work out their doula business. It is a tremendous joy to be trusted in this way.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Welcome back to doula tips and tips. Today we are talking about what do you even do for your clients, right? And I want you to think through the logistics. Like what are the services you provide and how do you provide them?
So I think about this in two ways. One is the tools I use in an actual birth scenario, actual postpartum scenario. The other is how does the package work and how do the clients get benefits from it? So one of the things I like to say in a doula consultation is what happens if you hired me today?
And part of that is kind of like helping them envision what could it be like? What could my support be like from right now? But that also gives them a really clear expectation of what to expect. So I'll say to people like if you hired me today, then you could text me tonight instead of googling a question about your pregnancy.
And that's part of what's included. I'm on call from you from the moment of hire. And I'm available for questions anytime. Now I of course don't answer texts in the middle of the night unless I'm at a birth and that birthing person is sleeping or something.
But I do set the expectation of part of what you have for me prenatally is the ability to text me questions and email me questions and have maybe one more person that's like troubleshooting stuff with you on your team.
I also think that's incredibly beneficial because it builds rapport and rapport is very helpful for the birth time. So the other thing I tell them is, you know, you would expect to have two prenatal visits with me.
The first one is virtual. We talk about birth planning. The second one is in person. At your house, we're working on positions and comfort measures and things like that. And then you have unlimited support from me in the midst of labor.
What does that look like? And then the postpartum time, I see you at least one time. If your package includes postpartum care, then I see you a few times. And so that's just very basically laying out for them what to expect.
And I'll even sometimes say something like, I know I sent this to you, but I just want to talk it through as well. Because it is very helpful in the moment to see if that sparks any questions for them so that there's no confusion about what they're signing up for.
Like if they sign up with me, they know we're seeing her twice. Once is in person. Once is virtual. We have access to email and text. But I don't have the expectation I'm going to see Kaylee once a week or I'm going to like see her every single month or something like that's not there because I already know exactly what to expect from this package before I purchase it.
Right. Now the other thing that I like to go into is, and I do this at different points, sometimes I do this during a consultation, sometimes not, kind of depends on the conversation, is like the types of things that I use as tools in the midst of labor.
And now most of my clients are hiring me for birth or birth and postpartum, but not very many for only postpartum. And so when we're thinking about a consultation, I'm usually doing it with someone who is hiring for birth or birth and postpartum together, but talking about birth quite a bit.
And so I'm talking about things like, you know, position changes, ways to assess the baby's position so that we can help the pregnant person move. So the baby will move things to counter the pressure that they're feeling in their pelvis, ways to open their pelvis and move their pelvis to help the baby navigate, right?
And so I talk about tools that help labor progress, tools that help a vaginal birth work, like the logistics of it, right? And tools that reduce the pain and discomfort that are related with pregnancy and birth.
And I, one of the things I like to say to clients is I have a lot of tools and at any given birth, I only use like a dozen of them, right? Some, some births I use a bunch and some I use like three, depends on the birth, right?
But I'm coming with a bunch of them so that if you need a variety of tools, they're here for you. And then we'll see in the midst of your birth, which ones we need. Things that I use at every single birth is assessing where the heck the baby is so we can help them navigate, right?
Helping with education and advocacy so that you understand what's happening and why it's happening. You can ask good questions and all of that. And then logistical support, like your partner can go to the bathroom, your partner can, you know, eat a snack and all of that.
Like assuming you have a partner, that's what that looks like. So those three things are a part of every single birth I support unless someone doesn't have a partner. But the other tools like hip squeezes and positions and things like that, it kind of depends, right?
Like it depends on what your desires are. It depends on if you're going to use an epidural or not. It depends on what positions you like and what positions work well for you. But I have loads of those tools to use.
And that's part of what we're figuring out is which ones would work well for you and your birth. We're working on that some prenatally but a lot post, I mean a lot during the actual birth because we don't know everything about how it's going to go until it's actually happening, right?
So those are the things I want you to think about. Like what do you actually do for your clients? Now that's kind of a synopsis of what I do for birth clients. For postpartum clients, I kind of put it in two camps.
One is, and this with the caveat that I only do daytime care. So I don't do overnights which is a different, I do explain that to clients because I have doulas on my team who do overnights. But For daytime care, there's kind of two camps.
One camp is you want all the education, you have all the questions, and therefore the majority of our shift is spent us together asking questions, answering questions and learning things. So maybe we're like trying out the baby carrier, maybe we're giving the baby a bath, maybe we're like I'm watching you change diapers to see if you're doing it well or something like that.
We're definitely doing a feeding at some point so we can see how that's going. So that's like the educational piece, right? And then there's the other side, it's just again logistical, like you can shower and eat and take a nap because someone else that you trust is taking care of the baby.
And so I talk about how, you know, it depends a lot on what your day has been like and what your week has been like, what you're needing the most today, but all of those things are options in the midst of a postpartum shift.
And that again gives them an understanding of what to expect, like what are the things that they would anticipate potentially having from you in the midst of this postpartum time when you're coming to work with them, okay?
So what I want you to think about is what are the things that you do? And if you do things that I don't do, like maybe you encapsulate placentas, maybe you work with nutrition, maybe you do photography, maybe you do any number of things that I do not do, then what are those things so that you can very clearly articulate them to your clients and to your potential clients in the midst of a doula consultation.
Now, as a reminder, if you have not yet signed up for that consultation workshop, it is on September 19th at 1 p .m. I want you to go sign up for that right now. The reason for that is that you are gonna learn how to put the last three podcasts worth of information together.
So how do you put the boundaries piece together with the why do you do what you're doing piece together with the what do you do for your client's piece and communicate that incredibly clearly so that someone knows what you do, why you do it, how you do it and can then decide if you're a good fit for them pretty quickly.
Most clients that are a good fit know that by the time the consultation is over and that is what I want for you. I want people saying yes to you before the day is up, right? That's the speed that I want someone to hire you at.
I don't want it to be where you have to wait for weeks and weeks to get hired by someone and to find out if they really like you or not, okay? So what is your next step? Go sign up for that workshop, September 19th, 1 p .m.
Eastern virtual. It will be recorded so if a baby comes or something like that, you can access the recording later but you won't have access to that if you haven't signed up. So go sign up for that and then I will see you in the next Friday episode.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Dula Tips and Tits podcast. If you learned something today or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at hiradula so we can celebrate alongside you.
If you found this podcast helpful, we would so appreciate you taking a second to leave a rating and a review on your favorite podcast app. That helps other Dulas find us as we do this work together. This podcast is intended as educational and entertainment.
It is not medical advice or business advice. Please consult your own medical or legal team for your own needs around your health and your business. We'll see you again soon.
Don’t miss the FREE Doula Consultation Workshop: 3 Proven techniques to increase client conversions. This 1 hour workshop will teach you how to show up with confidence and ultimately get more “HELL YES” responses! Sign up today!
https://harroddoulaservices.thrivecart.com/doula-consultations-workshop-pod/
Knowing how you show up for clients and being able to really clearly articulate that to them in a consultation is vital to your business growth and success as a Doula!
Quote from the show:
“Today we are talking about what you even do for your clients, right? And I want you to think through the logistics. Like what are the services you provide and how do you provide them? So I think about this in two ways. One is the tools I use in an actual birth scenario, actual postpartum scenario. The other is how does the package work and how do the clients get benefits from it? So one of the things I like to say in a doula consultation is what happens if you hired me today? And part of that is kind of like helping them envision what it could be like? What could my support be like right now? But that also gives them a really clear expectation of what to expect. So I'll say to people like ‘if you hired me today, then you could text me tonight instead of googling a question about your pregnancy.’”
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
https://www.instagram.com/Harroddoula/
If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @harroddoula
Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
