International Doula Month What is a doula? Years ago, birth was very different than it is today.  Women were surrounded and supported by other women during their labor.  They brought with them experience, wisdom, and skill. They witnessed birth and knew every laboring mother had her own journey that may be different from another mother’s and even different from her own previous labor journey. In the early 1900’s, medical care began to specialize and the field of Obstetrics was formed.  Birth moved into the medical arena and eventually into the hospital.  With this change, witnessing normal physiologic birth, the belief in birth as a normal process, and woman to woman…