December 10, 2025
Should Doulas Have Hired a Doula Before Becoming One? Podcast Episode #320
Should doulas have hired a doula before becoming one? In this solo episode, host Kristin Revere of Gold Coast Doulas explores whether firsthand experience receiving doula support shapes empathy, perspective, and practice. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on what makes a doula truly great, exploring the combination of lived experience, education, and a willingness to learn.
This episode is brought to you by Ceres Chill, a company that never stops working to make the lives of parents easier!
Welcome to Ask the Doulas! I’m your host, Kristin Revere, and today I’m diving into a question that comes up often in conversation with new and seasoned doulas alike. That question is, should doulas have hired a doula before becoming one? Does having this personal experience make you a better doula, or is it simply one of many paths that lead us to this work?
If you are currently expecting or early parenting and want to know if you should hire a doula or work with a doula, this episode is also for you.
Let’s start with my own personal experience. I hired birth doulas with my second pregnancy. That was one of the first calls that I made, and I valued that experience. I became a birth doula shortly after my son was born, my youngest, and having that personal experience of valuing the support of a doula and receiving that support from a team of two doulas myself – it benefitted me. I didn’t know what doulas were with my daughter’s pregnancy, my first pregnancy. And I did all of the other things that I could think of to build my dream team of experts: taking Lamaze classes and taking a breastfeeding class, hiring a lactation consultant, and doing all of the reading, watching The Business of Being Born. I switched providers, really advocating for myself.
My daughter is now almost 15. Back then, doulas were not as prevalent in my community. And so after my daughter was born, I got into breastfeeding advocacy and met doulas, and those were the doulas that I hired right when I found out I was expecting again. Part of my story is having personally experienced the benefit of having doulas on my team for my birth.
Now, in my community, even with my second, postpartum doulas were not really a thing. There were a few that were certified. They mainly did household tasks during the day. I introduced overnight doula support to our area when Gold Coast launched and really changed some of the dynamics. It wasn’t just birth doulas who did postpartum tasks; it’s postpartum certified doulas. So that has changed a lot. And certainly, neither of my kids were the greatest sleepers, so if I were to get pregnant again, not only would I hire a birth doula again, but I would absolutely hire an overnight postpartum doula or overnight newborn care specialist, 100%, because I value sleep.
I was advanced maternal age with both of my children, so it certainly was even more important to me, having less energy than if I’d had children at a younger age.
So my own personal experience is, absolutely. I think it makes me a better doula, having hired doulas myself. I’ve had the conversation with my husband about him not wanting to be replaced by doulas. I understand what our clients are going through because I’ve personally had that experience of doulas walking through a vulnerable time in my life. While I did not have postpartum doulas supporting me, I did work with a nonprofit that brings helpers into the home, with both of my pregnancies. It’s called Moms Bloom, for those listeners who are in Michigan, and they bring in helpers to hold the baby and allow you to nap. They give resources. They even had some lactation consultant volunteers that would give advice in addition to the work that I did with lactation consultants inside and outside of the hospital. So I had a bit of the help with holding the baby and dishes and household tasks from the volunteers from Moms Bloom with both of my children, and I highly valued that. There are similar nonprofits across the country, too, with the model of Moms Bloom that are grant-driven and free. You get on a waitlist. I ended up giving back to that organization for many, many years, on the steering committee of their fundraisers. And my business has given to Moms Bloom over the years, as well. So although I didn’t hire postpartum doulas because there weren’t many in my community, and certainly there were no overnight doulas, I did experience that type of support through a nonprofit with both of my children, and I valued it. I got on waiting lists, and I advocated.
So this question about if a doula should have hired a doula came to mind, as I get phone calls almost daily from people who want to be doulas, and I often like to ask them about their story. Did they have doulas with their own birth? And very few did. But a lot of them come to me because maybe their birth didn’t go the way they planned, or their postnatal experience didn’t go the way they planned, and they want better for their clients. So that drove them to it. For me, having hired birth doulas and having had postpartum volunteers and a great experience with doula support, I wanted clients to have that experience myself. So it’s a little bit different. But over the years – Gold Coast Doulas has been around over ten years now, I’m proud to say, and we started with four doulas, along with my former business partner and myself, so six of us doing doula work – and now the business has 25-plus doulas between birth and postpartum, and we have educators, and we added sleep consulting partway through the business. We really did become a one-stop shop.
But when I am hiring doulas or talking to potential doulas who want to know how to get into the work, many of them have not hired doulas themselves. I’d say maybe a quarter of all of the doulas who have worked for me had hired a birth or postpartum doula themselves. And then as doulas stay on with Gold Coast, some have hired our team for birth and postpartum support themselves, and it’s so lovely to walk with them in that way. And even more of our team has hired our sleep consultants for sleep support. When they transition back to work, they want excellently sleeping babies, to be able to offer postpartum or birth support or both.
And so I will absolutely hire a doula who has not chosen to or not been able to necessarily afford to hire doulas. But if I find a doula who valued the service herself and hired doulas, that makes me more excited as an agency owner about bringing that doula on. We’ve even had past clients of Gold Coast decide that they want to be a doula later on, and I love that even more because the past clients had that lens of a client, valued the support, saved for it, and then understand it from a unique model of not only having worked with a doula, but having worked with our agency. So I also love that.
But so many interested doulas or new doulas call me and want to shadow first, which we do not. Doulas who have been trained by a credible birth or postpartum doula organization should feel confident and have the skills to go into a birth. It’s a very intimate and vulnerable time, whether it’s birth or postpartum, and our clients don’t want doulas shadowing. This is not an apprentice type of career the way midwifery or even lactation consultants would be. I do offer mentoring at Gold Coast. I believe that everyone needs support, and we support our team. Even experienced doulas have in-house mentoring options. I bring in trainings for our team. We’re always learning and growing. So we do offer that. I also do some paid mentoring for other doulas or doula agency owners who reach out to me who may not live in my area or may want to work solo and not with an agency, so that’s certainly an option.
So I feel like there are benefits to having hired a doula before becoming a doula, but it certainly would not be a negative. It’s the same as you don’t have to have had children yourself to be a doula or have experienced an unmedicated birth or a surgical birth or parented or fed your baby a certain way. Some doulas have never breastfed and they have children, and that doesn’t mean that you can’t support others with that training and taking additional breastfeeding classes, especially breastfeeding classes for doulas or becoming a certified lactation consultant or an IBCLC. I hire doulas who are child-free, and I hire doulas who are parents. I hire doulas who have worked with doulas, and also doulas who have chosen not to, even if it’s their third or fourth baby and they’re still a doula with us. We don’t require our doulas to hire doulas, although I do give a generous discount for any of our team members who want to hire a birth or a postpartum doula.
And let’s look at the downside to having a doula who worked with doulas. Maybe it’s a different type of bias. It’s easy to assume that every client will want what we wanted, and the support that felt right for me may not be right for my client. So that is one way to look at it. You have a bit of, I wanted the doula to give me hip squeezes, or I wanted the doula to tidy up my kitchen and hold my baby so I could take a shower postpartum. That doesn’t mean that that is what the client wants for their experience, and for me, having two unmedicated births, I wanted the doula for more of the physical support during labor. I wanted the doulas for resources and information and certainly having had a NICU baby with the first and preeclampsia, I wanted to avoid having preeclampsia, which I did. I wanted to have a listening ear and a friend and a different kind of support from my husband, who was amazing at both of my births. I just value professional expertise.
So not everyone needs to have the same vision for their birth that maybe a doula who hired a doula did. And holding space for someone else’s story can be much different than holding space for your own birth or early parenting or postpartum recovery story. So I feel like this could honestly go either way. I know some doulas had a hard time affording paying for a doula, and so that could have been a barrier, that they valued the support but it didn’t work in their family budget. It could have been that at the time their benefits plan or HAS or FSA did not cover doulas. Or maybe their partner wasn’t on board with that support. So again, it is judgment-free for me when I bring on doulas. Judgment-free for supporting families, and I think there is certainly so many different ways that you can look at that question, but I would say no, you don’t have to have hired a doula before becoming one. But there is a strong case for having experienced something yourself and valuing it and saving for it, that you would have a different lens than someone who had never hired a doula, never plans to with future children, but feels like it is important to serve the community, serve their clients, as a doula.
So again, same goes for child-free doulas or maybe doulas who have never chosen to breastfeed and formula-fed from the start. We can still support people, especially with professional training and continued development without having experienced something like childbirth or like having pumped themselves, to be able to offer pumping support to a postpartum mom.
So I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. If you are listening and are a doula, did you hire a doula yourself? If you are expecting and currently interviewing doulas or pre-conception and planning – is it important to you to have a doula who also hired birth or postpartum doulas?
I believe that even doulas need doulas, personally, and I would never have a baby without a birth or postpartum doula, but that’s just me. We all come to this work from different places. But our shared purpose is the same, and that is to help families feel seen, supported, and empowered.
Thanks for tuning in to Ask the Doulas, and if this episode resonated with you, please share it with another birth worker or parent.
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