My Best Tips for Being a Doula When You Have Babies at Home
Have you ever thought, “I want to be a birth doula, but how the heck can I be on-call when I have my own babies at home?!”
If you’ve been wondering about how to make birthwork your career while you have your own kids to take care of, then get out a pen and paper, this episode is for you!
Things you’ll learn in this episode:
The seven ways to build a birth doula business if you have babies at home…
My best tips for building a sustainable, long-term doula business…
How I navigated having a newborn, being a doula, and growing a six-figure doula business…
… and a whole lot more!
If you're worried about attending births when you have small children at home, I get it. It’s not easy, there is no way around that… but it is possible.
If you want to work on-call as a birth doula when you have children at home, you can, you just need to have a plan.
Let’s walk through 7 ways that this could look for you, your family, and your doula business.
Before we jump into it, I want to remind you that there are PLENTY of ways to work in the birth community without being on call 24/7…
…But if being on-call (and supporting births in-person) is something that you want to do, it can be really scary to leave your baby at home to attend births.
I totally get it. I’ve lived through it.
And that’s why we're talking about 7 different ways that you could make being on-call work for your family (even with small kids at home).
#1: Take your baby to births WITH you.
Doulas take their babies to prenatal appointments and births all the freaking time!!
Now, I have to be honest, I have never taken my daughter to support a birth with me… but she has come to prenatal appointments and postpartum appointments many times.
If you’re thinking about doing this, it’s gotta be 100% case-by-case.
#2: Finding a doula business partner.
The way this is normally done is in 12-hour shifts.
One person would be on call from about 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM, and the other would be on call from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
This would be perfect for you if you can only support birth at night (when your partner's home with the kids)... or maybe you have a breastfeeding, co-sleeping baby, so you want to be at home every night.
Maybe it's easier for you to attend births during the day because it’s easier for you to find a babysitter during the day….Awesome, you can take the day shift!
The best way to figure this out is to get out a piece of paper and just start brainstorming how this could potentially work for your family based on your desired schedule.
What do the logistics look like with a doula business partner?
When you're picking a doula business partner, you have to come up with something that feels good for both of you.
You need to sit down together and hash out questions like:
How will you split the money?
Who goes to the prenatal appointments?
Is there going to be a “lead doula” for each client?
Who will own the business?
Who will post on social media?
Who is going to fund the startup costs?
Who will write the emails?
Who will find the doula clients?
What boundaries are you going to set with each other?
How are you going to end the business when one of you wants to get out of the partnership?
Think of ALLLLL of those things before you even get started.
If you’re curious how you would split the profit based on who actually attends the birth, listen to the episode for a detailed breakdown of the “split the profit into thirds” method.
Then, go find a lawyer (yes, it’ll be expensive, but it’s worth it!) to write up a contract for your partnership.
Another way you can work out this partnership WITHOUT owning the business together – and this is what I would do – I’d hire another doula as a contractor.
You can own 100% of the business, but pay someone to be on call during the 12 hours you want to be OFF call.
You still get to:
Choose your own prices…
Manage your own social media…
Find your own clients...
Build your own website…
Doesn’t that sound amazing!!!???
It’s important to note that hiring a doula on a per-client basis is NOT like having a backup doula.
A backup doula is only needed in rare cases, whereas a doula you hire as a contractor would be on call for EVERY SINGLE CLIENT during their set hours.
How do you pay a per-client doula as a contractor?
They should get a flat fee for being on call plus an hourly rate for any services delivered (aka any time spent supporting the client).
For instance, they would get paid a flat fee of $200 for simply being on call, and on top of that, you’d pay them $25-$100 per hour for prenatal appointments, supporting the birth, and postpartum appointments.
Whatever you decide, make sure it feels good for you AND your doula partner (and always remember that nothing is set in stone)... and that brings us to the third way to be a birth doula if you have small children.
#3: Form a childcare share with other doulas in your area.
Befriend a few other doulas in your area and simply trade off the kids when you're each attending a birth.
How this might work, is that when you're headed to a birth, you can drop your baby off at someone else’s house... and then when she's headed to a birth, she drops her baby off at your house.
Since you’re both birth doulas, you are familiar with the on-call lifestyle and would make a great support system.
A fun way to do this – and to make sure there’s no resentment – is to “gift” her $100 for watching your babies… And then when she goes to support a birth, she “gifts” you that $100 right back.
Essentially you're trading that $100 back and forth, back and forth… and that way, no one resents the other.
This agreement would really work well if you and the other doula(s) are attending about the same number of births every month… that way, you're not watching someone else's children 10 days per month when you didn't have any clients… make sense?
A great way to make it easier to manage (without the resentment) is to invite a larger group of doulas to be a part of this childcare share agreement.
#4: Create a community of babysitters.
When I originally started, I picked 3-5 babysitters and I made sure that they could all stay for long periods of time. (A lot of them were college-aged kids and they were honestly down for anything.)
Any time you're called to a birth, you can send out a group text message to the 3-5 babysitters, and then whoever's the first one that's available is the one that comes to your house.
If you can create a community of 5 people, there's a really good chance that one of them is available to leave their house as soon as you send out that group text.
It’s probably safe to assume that at least half of the births you attend are going to be during the night, so instead of the sitter coming to your house ASAP, she would come in the morning as your partner's leaving for work.
#5: Find a trustworthy neighbor for last-minute situations.
At some point, as a birth doula, you’re going to get the call, “YOU NEED TO GET HERE RIGHT NOW!”
It’s gonna happen, trust me! And in situations like these, connecting with a neighbor is always a really good idea for so many reasons…
So, if you ever get an SOS call from the pregnant mom’s partner saying, “OMG I think she's pushing!”... you can run your baby to the neighbor’s house for 30 minutes while your partner's driving home from work.
This works really well if your partner has a flexible job and can leave work faster than you can say, “OH, BABY!”
Do you have any neighbors that have small children too? Yes? Amazing! Can you turn this into a last-minute play-date until your partner breaks free from work?
A lot of neighbors would be totally fine with that, especially if she’s a stay-at-home mom and your children have a friendship.
#6: Work in birth adjacent spaces.
Until childcare is easier to find, or until you’re comfortable with someone watching your children, you can focus on other aspects of birthwork BEYOND supporting birth in person.
Placenta art and encapsulation…
Postpartum support…
Host online workshops or online courses…
Offer virtual services (like private coaching calls)...
Lead mothers circles in your community…
I teach about the logistics of offering these types of birth-adjacent services inside Birthworker Academy, plus I talk all about it in this blog right here.
#7: Make enough money to retire your partner.
Yes, you can literally “retire” your partner so he's home to watch the kids every day.
This is a monumental step for most people, but it’s something that you can consciously work towards as your #1 goal.
Very early on after having my daughters, I knew that if I wanted to attend births, I needed to find a way to make enough money so my partner could quit his job and stay home full time.
So, I hit the ground running at full speed to make that happen.
And guess what? It only took about one year until I replaced both of our incomes.
When it comes down to it, there is no “right way” to be a doula when you have your own babies.
There are many ways to make birthwork fit your lifestyle – whatever you want that to look like – just pick the one that's going to work best for you.
And the most important lesson of all is this: BE READY TO PIVOT…
The most impactful thing that running a business has taught me is that everything changes, grows, and morphs into something else.
If you allow your business structure to change as you yourself change, you’ll be flexible enough to serve your clients in a way that feels good to them, but also feels good to you in the present moment.
Maybe you want to attend four births per month, and that’s great!
Maybe you’d rather support only one birth per month while your kids are little… that’s great too!
Maybe now isn’t the best season of life for being on call, and instead, you want to focus on building your online birth business. Girl, GO FOR IT!
Whatever you do, make sure that you're not so attached to the logistics of how you’re running your business, because that doesn't allow you to be fluid.
Hold on to that fluidity because it's going to make birthwork more fun for you.
And most importantly…
Don’t put off making a birth business until you’re “ready to be on call”.
Trust me when I say that you can start your doula business today, even if you don’t want to attend births right now.
You can build the foundation of your business and work in birth adjacent spaces starting now so that when you’re ready to support births, women are already ready to hire you.
You can make birthwork fit YOUR lifestyle… yes, even if you have a breastfeeding newborn at home.
Got questions?
I know there are a bajillion questions about how I built my birth doula business (The Autonomy Mommy) with a newborn…
So if you have any questions, please come into my DMs over on Instagram, either @theautonomymommy or @birthworkerpodcast… I would love to tell you more about what I did, and then help you do it too!
Too many women don't follow their passion and are scared to branch into birthwork only because they have small kids at home.
But that shouldn’t stop you.
There is a way to make birthwork happen and to make it sustainable for your lifestyle.
So come ask me questions and let’s build the doula business of your dreams!
thank you for listening
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.