Fay­ola k J Fras­er

A birth doula is a trained, non-med­ical com­pan­ion who as­sists a woman be­fore, dur­ing, and af­ter child­birth. Gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple as­so­ciate the term “doula” with these pro­fes­sion­als, who have been used for cen­turies to sup­port women dur­ing preg­nan­cy, labour, and ac­tive birth. How­ev­er, they are not the on­ly doulas do­ing im­por­tant work. An “end-of-life doula” or “death doula,”  not as com­mon­ly known as birth doulas, are trained pro­fes­sion­als who act as grief com­pan­ions, as­sist­ing peo­ple be­fore, dur­ing, and af­ter a death, pro­vid­ing emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal sup­port.

Bar­bara King and Melanie Melis­sa Dore (Mel), are two death doulas who, among oth­er things, act as a sup­port sys­tem for women who suf­fer preg­nan­cy loss or women who have lost in­fants and chil­dren.

On Moth­er’s Day, the cel­e­bra­tion of life and the lega­cies of moth­er­hood come nat­u­ral­ly, but it is al­so im­por­tant to up­lift and sup­port moth­ers who have lost chil­dren.

Dore stum­bled on an ac­count on so­cial me­dia dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, fea­tur­ing a cre­ator named “The Death Em­path”, and al­though ini­tial­ly she did not feel ready to delve in­to the some­times heavy sub­ject mat­ter, she had per­son­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced many deaths of rel­a­tives and friends, even tak­ing care of her fa­ther un­til his pass­ing in 2019.

Thus, the idea stuck with her. “Over the next two years, the signs kept get­ting loud­er, un­til I found my­self re­search­ing death doulas and was so sur­prised to find schools all over the world teach­ing how to do this work.” Even­tu­al­ly, she en­rolled in the In­ter­na­tion­al End of Life Doula As­so­ci­a­tion and pur­sued her train­ing to be­come a death doula.

King, orig­i­nal­ly a child ed­u­ca­tor and par­ent ed­u­ca­tor, and a found­ing mem­ber of Par­ent­ingTT, first heard the term “death doula” in a con­ver­sa­tion with friends, and felt im­me­di­ate­ly drawn to it. Con­tend­ing with the ill­ness and po­ten­tial loss of her own moth­er, she re­alised that she had no idea how to deal with the process of death, and when her moth­er made a full re­cov­ery, they sat to­geth­er and be­gan to put things in place for the in­evitable fu­ture. She, like Dore, dis­cov­ered the In­ter­na­tion­al End of Life Doula As­so­ci­a­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, did vir­tu­al train­ing, and be­gan vol­un­teer­ing at an in­sti­tu­tion for the ter­mi­nal­ly ill.

 The two met through Dr Karen Cox, head of the Pal­lia­tive Care Unit at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, af­ter com­plet­ing their doula train­ing, and both re­alised through con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er that the first step to putting their train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion in­to prac­tice was to find a way to nor­malise speak­ing about death in our cul­ture.

The birth of Death Cafe in T&T is an ex­ten­sion to the death cafes that ex­ist in more than 60 coun­tries, and ac­cord­ing to King, al­though “death is a bad word and a taboo sub­ject, it is our on­ly guar­an­tee in life. Be­cause we find it un­com­fort­able to talk about death, we don’t plan for it,” he said

“Par­ents don’t think about and plan for what should hap­pen to their young chil­dren if they die sud­den­ly. We don’t talk about what we want to hap­pen with our bod­ies when we die, so fam­i­lies end up in dis­putes about fu­ner­als. What Mel and I are try­ing to do is bring greater aware­ness and ease to the idea of death.”

At present, the Death Cafe has more than 100 mem­bers and is not a grim space but a live­ly meet­ing place for peo­ple to heal, ex­press their fears, lis­ten, and learn.

Dore and King al­so func­tion to sup­port women through mis­car­riage/preg­nan­cy loss, and sud­den in­fant loss. Ac­cord­ing to Dore, “this type of grief is very spe­cif­ic, and re­quires sup­port from med­ical pro­fes­sion­als as well as doulas, and takes a team of peo­ple and fam­i­ly in that heal­ing process.”

She de­scribed the grief that moth­ers feel as sacro­sanct be­cause chil­dren were formed in­side of women’s bod­ies. King, who had a per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence with her own first preg­nan­cy be­ing spon­ta­neous­ly abort­ed, re­called be­ing an emo­tion­al mess, un­able to talk or en­gage with peo­ple around her.

Re­mem­ber­ing a friend who came to pick her up and sim­ply spent time with her, let­ting her cry, she felt soothed and com­fort­ed by the sim­plic­i­ty and act of care.

In her pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion, she sug­gests to the fam­i­ly and friends of the moth­er “sim­ply deep lis­ten­ing, mean­ing hear­ing them out and lis­ten­ing with the eyes to ob­serve and an­tic­i­pate their needs. Don’t give ad­vice. Speak a lit­tle, lis­ten a lot, and don’t judge. Don’t ex­pect or rush them to “get over it.”

There is al­so val­ue in cre­at­ing rit­u­als and tasks that ac­knowl­edge the loss, cel­e­brate the life, and keep the child’s ex­is­tence alive through pleas­ant mem­o­ries.

For the woman her­self, who has lost a child, there is no easy route to heal­ing. Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, near­ly two mil­lion ba­bies world­wide are still­born. Each year, there are about 3,400 sud­den un­ex­pect­ed in­fant deaths in the Unit­ed States. These deaths oc­cur among in­fants less than one year old and have no im­me­di­ate­ly ob­vi­ous cause.

In T&T, the re­cent sud­den deaths of ba­bies in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit have shak­en moth­ers and fam­i­lies, cre­at­ing a deep well of grief in their lives.

Dore sug­gest­ed that “there is no sim­ple ad­vice to give with this type of loss, but the one thing I would say is to al­low your­self to feel it com­plete­ly.”

King points to Mam­a­to­to Re­source and Birth Cen­tre, which has a sup­port group for peo­ple who have ex­pe­ri­enced this type of loss, as “be­ing with oth­ers who have had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence can be very heal­ing. It helps to put things in per­spec­tive, val­i­date your feel­ings and re­duce iso­la­tion.”

 Whether you’re a mom in mourn­ing for a child or a woman cop­ing with a mis­car­riage it can be very dif­fi­cult. Death doulas Dore and King en­cour­age those women who have lost so deeply to lean on their vil­lage at this time, reach out to pro­fes­sion­als, and ask for help where it is need­ed. As for us all, there is an im­por­tant les­son in hold­ing space for women dur­ing this time.