The Ways My Doula Training Failed Me (And How I Succeeded Despite it)
Can three-day doula trainings really prepare women for sustainable, lifelong careers in birthwork?
If you’ve been wondering why so many doulas quit birthwork not long after their “training,” then get out a pen and paper, this blog post is for you.
Things you’ll learn in this blog post:
My story of becoming a birthworker (and how it has shaped my programs today)...
All of the crucial missing pieces from mainstream doula training programs…
How to get the support you need to have a successful doula business that you LOVE…
… and a whole lot more!
My story to becoming a doula.
In 2019, I wanted to become a doula. So what did I do? I started searching for doula training programs online… and nothing seemed right for me. I want to note that there are a lot more doula training programs available today that I wish existed when I became a doula. I honestly wish my program Birthworker Academy existed. As I was looking around, I was listening to a podcast about birth, and the woman being interviewed founded a doula training company. I thought to myself, you know what? I really love how this woman sounds. I love what she stands for, (which isn't the case now) so I signed up that very same day.
It was an in-person training in Atlanta. It was something like $1,500, but I also had to fly there because it was in Atlanta and I don't live in Georgia. So with the flight and Airbnb, it wasn't cheap for this 3-day training. It was a full-spectrum doula training that covered fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and even bereavement support. I thought to myself, “I'm going to learn all of that in three days?! Like hell yeah, sign me up. Man, I'm going to be an expert.”
Nowadays, I know you can't truly learn that stuff in 3 short days. You can barely scratch the surface. I have to mention that in most in-person trainings, it’s not three full days of training. Typically you get there in the morning, you spend maybe an hour doing ice breakers where you're meeting the other women in the training, you learn for an hour or two, and then you do an hour lunch break. Then you do another hour or two of training and they end the day with a community-building exercise.
I am all for community building. I think it's phenomenal. The doula training program that I run, Birthworker Academy, is very heavy on the community side. But in a 3-day, in-person training, you're only truly learning for about 5 hours per day, which is only 15 hours of learning total. If a program is covering fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and bereavement in only 15 hours of training, how ready to start a career do you think you could really be?
Something I didn't learn in my doula training was to question the status quo in the birth community.
Looking back, this was a HUGE red flag.
If you're out there searching for a doula training program, find a training program that encourages you to question everything. Find a program that does not say, “I am right, I am the guru of birth. Follow what I say because what I say is fact.” Absolutely not. That's not the kind of mentor or training that anyone needs.
To be a good birthworker, a good human, a good mother, and a good business owner, you have to question everything. Everything that goes in your ears or goes through your eyes needs to go through a filter of: What am I seeing? What am I hearing? Do I believe this? Is this the truth? Do I want to follow this?
The doula training program I took did not prepare me to witness trauma.
They did not prepare me, let alone inform me that trauma happens in birthwork. I did not learn how to cope with witnessing birth trauma, and worse, I did not learn how to help my clients avoid traumatic birth experiences. I'm really disappointed that they didn’t cover this in my training, because trauma is such a huge part of the birth community, no matter the birthing location. Trauma can come from so many different things.
The rate of birth trauma is of course higher when you're giving birth in a medical system. When the intervention rate is higher, the traumatic birth rate is higher. I didn't learn any of that. I did not learn how to support birth outside of the hospital, I learned that through practice. (And now, all of my in-person doula practice is with out-of-hospital births.)
My doula training program fed me the narrative of, “Don't you dare attend a free birth. Not only is that dangerous for the person giving birth, but that's dangerous for you as a doula.” I'm glad I have a good bullshit sensor, because from the get-go, I knew that wasn’t true. That was not something I was willing to be fear mongered into, not supporting free birth or birth outside of the hospital. And of course, that's something I teach inside Birthworker Academy now, because not enough programs are teaching it.
There are actually programs on either side of the spectrum. There are doula training programs, like the one I took, that preach not to attend free birth. Then there are programs out there that say, “Don't you dare attend hospital birth. We're not going to teach you how to support hospital birth.” I wanted to be that sensible person in the middle that's like, “Hey, I don't care what kind of birth you want to support. I just want to make sure that you feel equipped to support your clients in any setting.”
In some ways, I'm grateful I didn’t learn this material in my doula training. It helped me understand the depth of training that the majority of doulas in the birth community today are getting.
My doula training did not teach me how to turn my passion for birth into a sustainable career.
I didn't learn that anything was possible. I did not learn that I could build whatever kind of business I wanted and serve whatever kind of clientele I wanted and be successful at it. They did not plant that seed in me. So thank God I planted it in myself.
After I left the three-day in-person training, I joined the Facebook group for their students. It was mind-blowing to me the way they policed the words that everyone was using, how they encouraged me to switch my offerings to be more like theirs, and convinced me to serve different kinds of people that I didn't necessarily want to serve. There was actually zero community support unless you completely followed their ideals and followed their narrative. That is not community to me.
I learned precisely *zero* about how to run a successful doula business in my doula training program.
Of course, they told me about business cards to pass out to OB offices, which I laugh at now. My doula clients are not even going to OB offices, let alone hiring a doula from seeing their business card on a table. Birth is so much more personal than that, or at least it should be.
I also didn't learn about websites. I didn't learn about writing copy. I didn't learn about social media strategies. I didn't learn that as a doula, I didn't need to limit myself to only making money from attending births in person. That's something that I learned on my own from different mentors.
If you know me in any capacity, you know that my magic is teaching doulas that you don't have to limit yourself to only supporting women in person. You can expand your impact way beyond that. You can take your impact globally if you want. That, in turn, increases your income too, which just means that you'll be able to do this work for a lot longer. You'll be able to jump in full-time and support your family while you're also supporting your clients.
After I took the training program to become a doula, I actually sat on my butt for a very long time and didn’t make any money. I didn't know how to be a doula. I didn't know what to do to find clients and build a community. I didn't know how to lead a consultation or how to onboard those clients if they did end up hiring me. It was a mess. I had such high hopes for my business, but I just felt clueless. To be honest, that's an unfortunate place that most women are at after attending these three-day, cram-style doula trainings.
It didn't fully hit me just how unhelpful the doula training program that I took was until I was actually creating my own doula training program.
As I was mapping out all of the things I wanted to teach new and aspiring doulas, the list wouldn’t stop growing longer and longer. Once I finally finished and looked over this enormous list of all the things that I wanted to cover, that's when I became truly disappointed in the training I took.
With this huge list in hand, I knew right away that three days was not enough. Three days is not enough time to teach doulas damn near anything. It’s not enough time to make a real change in their clients' lives, and definitely not enough time to teach them how to grow a business. My first idea was to make Birthworker Academy a 12-week program. As I kept creating content, I even realized that 12 weeks is not enough.
The first couple of times I ran the Birthworker Academy as a big cohort-style program where we had 150 students for 15 weeks. Even 15 weeks was not enough. It became so apparent that it was not enough that Birthworker Academy has now evolved into a six-month container of learning, implementing, and most importantly, mentorship. And since we have the flexibility of being an online program, we are actually able to cover the topics that you would never be able to cover in just a few days. We are able to take these new and aspiring doulas and help them build impactful and truly sustainable careers in the birth community.
Inside Birthworker Academy, that all starts with who you are as a person, how you show up, and what's going on in your own life so you can understand how to support women as your best self without bringing your baggage into their birth room. So whether you decide to support births in person, support families postpartum, maybe you just want to offer services like placenta encapsulation, or even grow an online coaching and consulting business for birth, it doesn't matter. You need the foundation of self-awareness to be able to hold space for others. Since Birthworker Academy is not your average doula training program, we actually have the time to dive into understanding how to be a truly conscious leader in the birth community.
What I mean by a conscious leader is to truly have an understanding of the influence doulas have over somebody's birth experience. We help our doulas be able to show up in a non-triggered and non-reactive way so they're not bringing their own baggage to their client's experiences.
This isn’t something you’ll learn in mainstream doula training programs taught by some big organization that pumps out tons of “certified doulas” after a few days of training.
None of the other “doula stuff” matters if you have not developed this level of self-awareness and understanding. It doesn't matter if you have all the birth knowledge in the world, if you are still showing up to births triggered, then I do not think you are a good doula. (Of course that's subjective, I'm not here to decide what a good doula is for everyone.)
Inside Birthworker Academy, once our students have the self-mastery down, only then do we add in the birth theory. When we talk about birth theory, we are teaching them how to understand the hormonal blueprint of birth, pelvic dynamics, how to look at research with a critical eye, how to spot research researcher bias, and the legality of informed consent. Of course, this is all super important when it comes to truly supporting someone to give birth, but I just want to remind you that if you have this knowledge of birth theory without the self-mastery foundation, then forget it.
Knowledge alone does not make you a good birthworker.
Once my students have the self-awareness and birth theory down, that's when we add in the practicality of actually supporting birth. If you trained with a typical big doula training organization, this is some of the only stuff you'd learn. You wouldn’t even learn everything I teach either, because we cover supporting birth at every location, and even supporting emergencies. Most organizations would not touch that information with a 10-foot pole!
This is where we start teaching our students to understand the intricate balance of when to sit on your hands and shut your mouth and when to use your hands and offer support and advice. We shouldn't go into any birth thinking that our clients want hands-on support. It's a balance. This is where I teach my students to understand when it's time to go support someone. How to help someone have the birth that they're hoping for, not the birth that you’re assuming they're hoping for. This is where we teach students how to center their clients as the authority of their birth so they're not easily coerced, how to help clients avoid unnecessary cesareans, how to help them avoid medical pain relief, and what it looks like to support someone all the way from prenatal appointments to their birth and through postpartum. Even things like how to use herbal tinctures, acupressure, essential oils, and homeopathy are covered in this section as tools you can put in your doula toolkit.
In this practical birth support section, we answer the question, “What do I actually do to support my clients?” This is such a huge part of my doula training program because this question is missed by nearly every single other doula training program out there. 99.99% of doulas are just thrown out onto the street and told, "You'll figure it out." That’s why it's so important to learn the practicality of being a doula beyond just what to pack in your doula bag. (And don’t worry, we cover that too.) We even dive into how to recognize urgent situations, and how to navigate emergencies and hospital transfers.
I teach my students how to hold space for grief, how to support loss, how to support a miscarriage, and how to support a stillbirth. This is also where I teach my students about birth trauma. What causes birth trauma, and what can a doula do to help prevent it? We will also chat about how to support assault survivors. There's a good percentage of women out there who are assault survivors and it’s really important to learn how not to contribute to their trauma.
These are all things you shouldn't have to figure out on your own as a new doula.
Yes, I've learned a lot on my own, but if you're learning on your own, you're learning through trial and error. There are things in the birth community that you should not be guessing at, and one of them is supporting an assault survivor.
At this point, my students are at a point where they're 100% confident in their ability to hold space for birth and help women navigate their options, so next, we dive into how to grow a doula practice. How do I find clients? How do I network? How do I do all the backend stuff like keep track of my contracts? How do I send invoices? How do I put together my packages and pricing? When I was starting as a doula, I didn't have anyone to teach me these things. There's no way that you can learn the intricacy of these things in a weekend doula training program. I had to figure it out on my own. And that's not okay.
Why is that normal? Why have we normalized that organizations are sending doulas out into the world after they have paid thousands of dollars, yet these new doulas still don't even know how to put together a contract, how to send an invoice, or how to onboard a client? The number of times I've seen doulas post on Facebook groups about these things blows my mind.
When I was putting together Birthworker Academy, I knew I could not skip this part. I teach absolutely everything I use in my in-person doula practice. How to make your doula packages, how to offer photography services, how to host mother circles, how to create virtual support groups, how to offer one-on-one coaching, how to work for a doula agency, how to start your own doula agency, how to sell tangible products, how to offer scholarships, how to find a backup doula, and in general, how to be a birthworker when you have small kids at home and you don't necessarily want to be on call 24/7 for the rest of your life.
If you don't know how to offer your services and offer your passion to the world, then again, it doesn't matter if you're the best doula in the world. Nobody can find you unless you know basic business strategies. Honestly, you're not going to continue to be a doula and share your passion unless you can find clients and pay your bills, which starts with basic business education.
At this point, you might be reading this blog and thinking “Wow, it sounds like Birthworker Academy has everything,” but we're not stopping there. I did not want to create a doula training program that limits my students to only offering in-person doula services. So the cherry on top is where I teach my students how to grow sustainable online businesses, how to grow their audiences, and how to grow their bank accounts while they're sleeping so they can attend births when they choose to. You can attend births when it's fun for you and when the client is 100% aligned, but you don't have to be on call to support your family financially. You don't have to say yes when you wish you could say no because you have bills you have to pay.
Growing sustainable online businesses is where my students go from being the amazing doula in their local town to becoming a go-to leader in the birth community. I teach my students practical business skills, like growing a social media, building an email list, creating a website, writing copy, how to manage your finances, and how to organize the backend of your business so you never feel like a cluttered mess.
So those are all five pillars of Birthworker Academy, self-mastery, birth theory, practical doula support, growing an in-person practice, and growing an online business. This should be the global industry standard for all doulas entering this career. This is so much more than your average three-day doula certification program where you show up and get to leave with a pretty certificate.
Birthworker Academy is never going to be something where I tell you what to do. This is you learning how to do whatever it is that you want to do in birthwork. The training I took was geared towards molding me into a doula that serves people the way that the organization deemed appropriate. F*ck that.
My goal is to help you build a doula career that you love, to serve the women you want to serve, to create a doula business that you want to wake up every day and work on, whatever capacity that looks like to you.
My goal will always be that you are making birthwork fit your lifestyle, not the other way around. I don't want you conforming to what you think a doula should do or say. If you want to build an authentic business, come join us. Birthworker Academy is perfect for you. If you want to be on call, amazing. If you never want to be on call and you just want to lead community circles or support groups or online workshops, amazing. It's still perfect for you. If you are passionate about birth and want to turn your passion into a sustainable career, Birthworker Academy is for you.
What I know about growing an impactful and profitable business is that you're going to need support. You're going to need mentorship, and that's why mentorship is the heart of Birthworker Academy. Six entire months of mentorship and showing up in a community of women with goals just like you. Goals to make a living, follow their passion, stay home with their kids, and actually impact women's lives.
If you've been reading this blog and thinking in the back of your head that you want a career like this, that you want to combine in-person support, online coaching, and maybe even create some passive offers, if that's you, then Birthworker Academy is the place for you, and I have a spot with your name on it.
This program is application-only, and we only invite 10 women per month to join us. We want to keep our community small to make sure we only have women who are 100% ready to go all in and ready to give it their all. If you want to learn more about Birthworker Academy, click the link or shoot me a DM on Instagram and let's chat about what success might look like for you with the help that you will get inside Birthworker Academy.
Until then, I want to wish you all of the success in the world. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for dedicating your life to serving moms through their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journeys. So cheers to you, cheers to the women that you serve and the women that you will serve over the next several decades, and cheers to the massive success that I know you are capable of as you build your dream doula business.
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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.