The Doula’s Contribution to Newborn Physiology

by Admin Assistant August 13, 2026

by Gail Tully, Midwife

First publishing 8-13-26

I’m grateful to be invited by Midwifery Today to refresh an article I wrote long ago. Being a CPM, a doula, and doula trainer gave me a wide range of experiences serving families in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. In 1992, I founded The Childbirth Collective, a nonprofit doula networking and outreach group. In 1998, I was honored to lead the 24/7 paid doula program at Hennepin County Medical Center and be a doula trainer for the Turtle Women, Somali, and Connect One doula program.

The Doula community in the Twin Cities is vibrant and diverse. The contributions of doulas in this area are immense, from Susan Lane’s breakthrough Medicaid agreement to include reimbursement for doula services, Ahkmiri Sekhr-Ra’s mentoring of multiple doula initiatives, Midwife Jennie Joseph’s Common Sense Childbirth, Debbie Nelson’s Everyday Miracles, Ninde Doula Program at the Division of Indian Work, The Prison Doula Program, The Queer Doula Project, Sarah Longacre’s Blooma, and so many more. Recently, the neighborly spirit of Minnesotans was put to the test and received national and even world attention. This is the spirit that makes Twin Cities doulas strong.

Doulas and midwives working together is a local value. Snuggle House Foundation is a doula organization with CPM consultation, Birth Centers like The Minnesota Birth Center host The Childbirth Collective, now in its 33^rd year offering evening topics to bring doulas, expectant parents, and a variety of birth workers together. The Midwives at the Minnesota Birth Center even offer a Doula Internship program.

Since 2010, I devote my full time to Spinning Babies®, which enjoyed a strong start in 2001, brought on by the interest of families having and people becoming doulas! Today, we train 10 thousand birth workers annually, including nurses from hundreds of hospitals who hear us speak about the positive contribution doulas. They become aware that in our midwife-created approach to physiological birth has shown to reduce cesarean rates (Funk, 2024) due to more ease in fetal rotation. Spinning Babies® approach: A way to promote fetal head rotation during labor? (Melchionda, 2025)

The Healing of Story

Even as midwives, we can underestimate the long-term positive benefits the presence of a doula has at a mother’s side. This is a curious blind spot in our maternity care. As a homebirth parent and midwife, I came to this realization slowly, even though I was a doula myself! The continual emotional support from a peer enables an opening for more cultural healing of the collective, generational trauma of motherhood and childbirth that’s been carried for millennia. Midwifery does, too, but in a different way. While midwifery heals inner power, the doula affirms the healing of “story.” As women we share our stories by verbalizing our experiences, and the quality of feedback shapes and reshapes our view of ourselves as humans, mothers and our place in the world. The affirmation and perspective of the doula comes to the mother as from a peer. And therein is the gift.

The praise and perspective of a doula gives buoyancy to the mother’s memory of her birth. A doula also increases the respect given to a mother when that doula nurtures emotional connections between hospital staff and family. Many studies show higher rates of self-esteem and lower rates of depression in mothers who were attended by a doula. Doula supported mothers feel their babies are prettier and smarter than what they perceive the “average baby” to be, they make fewer trips to the emergency room and enjoy longer exclusive breastfeeding.

Appropriate Timing

As a midwife, my style is to honor the parents by emphasizing that they have the locus of control, but nevertheless, they look to me as a guide and guardian. I must be conscious of that so that I don’t treat this trust casually.

As midwives, we guard the immediate reuniting of the birthing dyad after birth; skin to skin, quiet and dim, the mother and baby unfold together into the mystery of their united duality. But what about 10 minutes later, 30 minutes, an hour? Is Dad on the phone, are visitors coming in, is the baby in someone else’s arms? These separations can act as an assault on the subtle, yet vital, needs of MotherBaby and, can only be “patched up” and compensated for with the psychological resiliency gained by holding, breastfeeding, physical tenderness and a generally healthy esteem in the home birth family.

Sadly, Americans have lost the sense of the appropriate timing of the first separation of mother and baby. As a midwife and a doula, I am a fanatic about the first two hours after birth. If I relax these standards, they slip away fast. Who will speak up to honor this undisturbed time if we midwives/doulas don’t? As I explain the importance of this time to nurses at hospital births, their willingness to attend to the baby in its mother’s arms increases. I preach these concepts at our doula trainings, which the majority of area doulas take from me or my partner.

Absorbing The Behaviors of Parenting

Pediatrician Marshall Klaus said the mother in labor is in a “Sensitive Period.” Educator Maria Montessori coined a “Sensitive Period” as a time of acute sensitivity during which the person can absorb modeled behavior and information to be expressed in their future behavior. It is a phenomenon that recurs over the life span. The newborn is in a tremendous Sensitive Period indicated by the “quiet alert state” that lasts about two hours after birth. This is when the newborn first learns what level of intimacy or separation one can hope to get from “Mother,” it is this immediate time after birth that every child is introduced to the relative emotional safety of life.

At the same time, birthing mothers or other birthing individuals process the preceding events and feel, perhaps for the first time, the texture of motherhood/parenthood. Do they feel a sense of accomplishment? Do they trust themselves after this experience? How do they now see themselves? As a woman? As a mother? As something else? What affirmations did they hear as they settled into their role during this Sensitive Period? What behaviors were modeled by the hospital staff and others? Does danger or trust fill the room? And how is the baby treated by staff? Is there reverence? Or is baby plopped on them or taken away? Will nurturing become their future, or will raw survival set the tone of parenting?

The doula is not present to tell midwives or nurses what to do. The doula is modeling a balanced, stable nervous system, demonstrating nurturing behaviors and inviting others to support the hormonally-rich physiology present in every birth. Even an induced labor or a cesarean has physiology present. The doula is in relationship to support the birth giver’s access to their own body’s wisdom. It’s on the strength of this relationship that safety arises and, in that safety, the birthing parent is free to find their own strength and ability to establish their unique bond with their newborn.

Such are the concerns of supporting the nurturing bond. A supported birth is not only vital to the mother, but benefits the baby, too. A confident new dyad grows into a family, and that family grows into a community. And that community benefits us all.