WGS 353: Helping Hands: The Science of Doulas is an undergraduate practicum class taught by Cynthia Gabriel, Lecturer IV in Women’s and Gender Studies. The class offers a look into the role of doulas in many life transitions: labor, birth, postpartum, loss, and end of life. This year, the class worked with community members to put on a play: The Doula Diaries.
Below is an interview with Dr. Gabriel about the play, its creation, and its impact:
Q: What is the course you teach, WGS 353?
Gabriel: WGS 353 is a discussion-based practicum class that provides a deep dive into the profound impact that doulas have on the experiences of people going through specific life transitions: labor and birth, early postpartum, pregnancy loss, and end of life. Students must work in the community, outside the U-M bubble, for 25 hours during the semester.
In western culture, these life events are usually handled as medical events, so often the social and emotional needs of people are not fully met. In birth and the postpartum period, this matters for health outcomes. With our deeper understanding of how hormones and emotions impact health, we can now measure and understand much better how strong social support impacts not just the experience but the health outcomes. Doulas decrease the use of cesareans in birth by 39%, for example, and help catch and prevent postpartum mood disorders.
Humans have probably always relied on witnessing, touch, and attention to emotional states aspart of healing practices, but science is finally able to quantify and explain some of thetherapeutic effects of these practices. In addition, new research is connecting doula work with reduced healthcare spending.
Q: Could you describe the play that you organized and how it was connected to the class?
Gabriel: As part of the class, I’ve always required students to conduct interviews because this is a great way for students to connect to real people who are not academics about doula work. This year, students interviewed birth doulas and collected stories from them that, as a class, we turned into monologues. With the help of two student organizations (the American Women in Medicine Association and the Lunar Doula Support Network) and Lori Thompson, a professional theater director from Flint, Michigan, we were able to turn those monologues into a real play, performed by eight actors, three of whom were students in WGS 353 and co-authors of the play. They rehearsed for about a month, and we put the play on on April 12th for a public audience. Students from the class came to see their play come to life, but we also had many, many practicing doulas from the community, friends and family of the cast members, and other community members who were drawn to the subject matter.
After the play, we had a Talk Back with the audience, and we got to hear many stories from audience members that echoed stories told in the play. I personally sat behind a woman who cried during a monologue about miscarriage, and later shared about her own experience with miscarriage. The themes are very alive for people, and theater has a way of helping people see they are not alone in their experiences.
Q: What was your inspiration?
Gabriel: As a teacher, I am always looking for ways for undergraduate work to have a larger public impact. There is nothing worse than assigning a final paper that students pour hours of time and energy into but then only gets read by one person: me! I’ve had students work on Wikipedia editing projects, podcasts, poster presentations, and Op-eds as ways to engage more with the public, but this play allowed for more interaction and more levels of contact and collaboration. Doula work is so much about stories, so this felt like a fitting way to highlight doula contributions to our community.
Q: What do you think students gained from their involvement in this project, and what might the audience have learned from watching?
Gabriel: I think that students gained the opportunity to see how powerful storytelling is. These stories really brought home how important it is to be attentive to people’s experiences during ALL medical encounters, but particularly labor and delivery. People are far more than a number on a blood pressure cuff or a few lines on a chart. The play told sad stories about loss and about being treated badly by a medical provider, triumphant stories of giving birth vaginally after a cesarean or making sure a patient was heard, and funny stories about the quirky, unexpected ways people behave during labor and delivery (like biting their partner’s thumb).
I think the audience learned what doulas do – and gained empathy for birthing people and for doulas. Probably most people don’t think about what it’s like to be the one caught between a client’s desires and medical provider’s recommendations, trying to guide the client to make the best decision for themselves. Medical providers definitely see a lot of difficult things, but they may not take it on as their job to provide emotional support to patients – so that can be a very big job for doulas. It’s not all happiness and rainbows.
Finally, it was very clear from the Audience Talk Back that many attendees saw themselves in the play. The stories resonated with many people who have also had the experiences we depicted: VBACs, traumatic births, miscarriages, long-wanted pregnancies that were hard to achieve. I was especially touched by the conversation around miscarriage, because some of the women, who were in their 50s or 60s, recounted grieving alone since everyone around them just told them, “You’ll get pregnant again soon!” They did not have a doula to support them in their raw feelings as it was happening.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to highlight about this project?
Gabriel: One of the best things about this play, from my point of view, was what the eight actors and the director got out of it. Three of them were undergraduate students from the class, one is a community member who is a WGS graduate, and the rest were community members with an interest in theater. One of the actors is a local doula. For almost four weeks, they got to have in-depth conversations about labor, birth, miscarriage, cesareans, and doula work, and that was deeply educational for everyone involved. I think the three students got to be both experts and novices: experts about doulas and the content of the play and novice theater performers who learned from their peers about how to act.
