Rerun: How Do Doulas Manage Life While Being On Call?
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Transcript
This I feel like is a classic way to start to wrap up our rerun episodes with episode number 107, which is how do you manage life while being on call? Now, part of how I manage life while being on call is giving myself some of a break in the summertime.
That is why these rerun episodes are even happening. So you're seeing in real time part of my strategy and that if you listen to this episode, it will give you more information about that so that you can start to build up your strategies that make you less susceptible to burnout, which we know is a huge problem in this field.
I'm excited to hear what you think about this episode. And remember that we're just two short episodes away from brand spanking new content and some fun announcements about our plans for the fall. So stay tuned for that.
I cannot wait to tell you. I will see you in the next episode. Welcome to Doula tips and tips. This podcast is a place where we answer one question about DULA work, both to support you and to help you support your clients.
I'm Kaely Harrod. I've been supporting families in this perinatal space since my oldest was born 12 nearly 13 years ago. I am a birth and postpartum DULA childbirth educator, La Leche League leader, and a DULA coach.
I love guiding and supporting doulas as they work out their doula business. It is a tremendous joy to be trusted in this way. Thank you for joining us on this journey. Hello and welcome back. Today we are diving into a question that I heard in a couple different ways over the last couple weeks as I was completing the DULA strategy calls and getting to chat with a bunch of DULAs who are newer and kind of getting their businesses started.
So the question today is how do you manage regular life stuff while being on call? Now there's a couple different layers to this, right? Like on the one hand, we're talking about vacations and time off and you can go back to my episode on burnout around taking time off and that sort of thing.
I'm going to link that in the show notes because there is something to like setting intentional time off nine months in advance, for instance, before anyone is pregnant for that time. But also this plays into like appointments that you have and important meetings that you have.
The masterclass I was teaching, right? Like things like that that you're like, gosh, I really don't want to miss this, but also what if someone goes into labor, right? It also goes into when you have like spontaneous social events or like weddings or, you know, things that you're like, okay, I'm going to be at this thing for maybe like the whole day, right?
And there's a couple of different ways that this can be managed. I'll start by saying when I was a brand new DULA, I remember being pretty nervous about this. Like I would be, I would just constantly be sort of like calibrating, like if I go to that target that's farther away, how long would it take me to get home and then to the hospital?
Part of that was a lack of context for how quickly someone might need me, right? Because I was sort of like, oh, gosh, what if they call and they're like going into fast labor and I have to be there in the next 20 minutes.
The reality is, we don't control things in birth. And so if someone has that fast of a labor, I might not get there on time. Not that I wouldn't like run to try to get there, right? But also, our clients understand that we're doing things like grocery shopping, right?
Like that's on the other side, like things. So let me just finish that part. So I would say some part of it gets easier just because you have some context, right? And so there are times when you're like, oh, okay, amazing, you're in early labor, you're going to need me like tomorrow, right?
Because of how the person sounds or feels or whatever, and sometimes you're wrong, sometimes you're right, depending on the scenario, but you also just generally get less stressed out about the time frame has been my experience.
The other thing is, The reality of life is that there are appointments etc that come up that you did not expect to have. So for instance, I have kids right and sometimes my kids will have like a super important meeting for school or a like very important sort of medical thing that I'm kind of like okay I have to be present for this right.
What I usually do if I know I have someone do, I didn't get nine months warning about this medical appointment for my kid and there's like a chance that this baby could come at that time. I do a few things, one is try to establish like is it something I have to go to or could my partner, her father also go or go instead of me right.
Ideally we're both going or maybe like ideally I'm the person to take her but for instance he hates needles and so he really does not love to do like blood work or vaccinations or things like that with the children but he can do that if he needs to do it if I have someone in labor.
So that's a scenario where I don't have anyone on backup because I'm like okay well if you have to you can do it even though it's not your favorite thing right but let's say like I've had to do a couple screenings this year for my own health and they've been sort of like oh this blood work thing is off and so we want you to go get an ultrasound like this week and so there's not a lot of there's not a lot of pre -warning right where I can't be like oh hey guess what clients like I have to be off in the month of September or whatever and so there's that kind of stuff I think our clients are very aware that our lives also include those things and hopefully you don't have clients who are jerks and don't don't understand that and aren't aware of that right um I always make sure I have a good support of other doulas and that looks like a few different things sometimes it looks like me saying hey if I have someone going to labor on Friday are you available from four to five or four to six or whatever because I have this ultrasound that I have to go to um I don't think I'll need you but if I do need you could you cover for me right and um sometimes it looks like telling clients like hey listen I have to have a biopsy done it's going to take me out for a whole day and so um I had this scenario actually last year I had to have a thyroid biopsy thankfully it came back fine um but I knew like this between the time of the procedure and the like potential bruising and all of that like maybe I'd be out for a day so I let my client who was due know like hey listen I have this appointment on Monday um I don't think that it will impact your labor but if it does this is what I have set up I have someone on call for you you know etc etc um and they were very understanding they were like amazing okay thank you so much we hope everything's fine right we hope your thyroid um biopsy comes back normal you know and it did thankfully and the baby did not come that day and so it was really a non -issue right but i also then wasn't super stressed when i went to that appointment because i knew if they went into labor i had someone ready to support them you know so um i do think having good support as backups is a super super super important part of this work both logistically and also for your mental health because you will lose your mind a little bit if you feel like you have to be constantly present even if your family has something incredibly important or there's some kind of emergency etc um the other thing is to sort of have a sense of what needs to never be rescheduled and what needs to be rescheduled right so for instance when i have like just a follow -up with my own doctor i can really easily reschedule that so if i have someone in labor my primary care doctor knows that i'm a doula and occasionally i'm like sorry dr b i can't come you know and she's like awesome have a great birth you know and thankfully she's incredibly understanding about that there are other appointments that i need to be at and so i can't cancel them if someone's in labor but i can usually still go to them because typically labor kind of spaces enough to be able to do that um now when we're thinking about like social events right so let's say i have someone in early labor but a friend wants to go to dinner right i had this actually play out at one point i had someone in early labor and a friend wanted to meet me for lunch and i was like okay well my client's in early labor we'll see like you know thankfully it was a friend that was very very understanding about the fact that i might have to eat and run um and so like all the way up to lunchtime i'm texting my client i'm texting with my friend i'm like driving to the hill in dc and my client's like things are kind of picking up and i'm saying to my friend like this might be the fastest lunch we've ever had right and she's laughing like she was just like okay that's fine you know i was gonna have you go shopping with me but never mind you know i guess we'll just eat and you'll run to the hospital um and it was probably halfway through lunch that my client was like okay i think we're ready for you and i was like okay great i'm gonna be there soon like i already had all my stuff with me you know i already knew i was in my clothes to go to the birth i knew i might be running straight over so i knew how long it would take me to get there i didn't go like an hour away for lunch right like i went into the city and she was also giving birth farther into the city so it was like kind of on my way um and so so that like scenario played out where i got this really short but fun lunch with my friend but also like way shorter time than we would have normally spent together because i had to run off to the birth right and on the other side like if that felt really stressful for me one method to handle that is just to not schedule the lunch or to to you know say that i can't go because i have someone in early labor right i really think this is something that we have to give ourselves lots of freedom to sort of troubleshoot a little bit and test it out and feel how we feel about it because the reality is that we all are going to feel a little different at different times like there have been births for me where i'm like i'm not going anywhere because i know you have fast babies and i want to leave for you the second you go into labor right And there are ones that I'm like,
it's fine. We're going to go out to dinner and probably no babies are going to come. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes that's not true. When I know someone's due, I do always have kind of an exit strategy, right?
Like my family, because we live in D .C., we own one car. But we live really close to many bus lines and we can get to the metro pretty easily. And so if we're going somewhere and I'm like, OK, well, I might have to take the car to the hospital.
We have a plan for my family getting back home, right? On the flip side, if we're going somewhere and they're going to need the car, we have a plan for me getting like a lift or something like that to go to my client.
And so sometimes it is reassuring enough to have that sort of backup plan where it's like, OK, well, we'll all go out and do this thing. And in the event that someone goes into labor, I have all my stuff ready.
I'll just grab my stuff and go, this is how we're planning to do that, right? If that feels incredibly stressful to the point that you can't enjoy the social thing, that's OK to also say no. The reality is that sometimes all the babies come and then you're like, oh, I actually have no one due for five or six weeks.
And then you can schedule all kinds of fun social stuff, right? Because you can be like, hey, I'm free, guys, until like the middle of April. Who's free? Like who wants to hang out? You know, and it sort of comes in ebb and it ebbs and flows right in the midst of a business, but also in the midst of being on call.
I do say and I want to reiterate that having sometimes when you are not on call is so incredibly important. And as a person who has run my own business by myself, right? So I'm I'm a team of one at this point.
I have worked with agencies. I've, you know, worked in like different group kind of settings. But at this point, I am a solopreneur, right? Like I work by myself. Now, I have an amazing V .A. who recently joined my team and I'm thrilled to have her.
But but she's not doing doula work, of course, you know. And so one of the things I think is super, super, super important is to know sometimes that you could not get called in. And when I was first starting out, I remember being like, how could I possibly do that?
Because I need this business to bring in a certain amount of money. I live in D .C. The cost of living is super expensive. I have three kids that eat like grown ups, you know, like they want to eat food all the time.
And so we have all these different expenses, right? And I remember just thinking there's no way I'll get to a point of having the financial stability of being able to take time off. And the truth is, last year I took off the month of July for being like, well, for on call work.
And financially, it was tough, you know, but also mental health wise, physical health wise, sleep wise. It was glorious. So from since then until now, so I'm recording this in March, I have basically had in my in my planner, like I will be off in July.
How am I going to make that happen? Right now? It's not that I don't do any work ever in July. It's that I don't have birth clients because I don't want to be running to a due date during July. And so so this year I'm being a little bit more strategic about how to make sure financially it doesn't have the same impact on my business.
But I know that I have to have it in part because of how awesome it was last year to have an entire 30 days to know that not one single baby was due. Right. So truly, I cannot emphasize enough the need for that time off for your mental capacity, for your emotional capacity, for your physical capacity, like all of those things.
And also, I completely understand that sometimes that feels really financially. big financial leap, right? Like really financially out of reach. But I would take that conversation back to, are you charging enough in your business to be able to build in time off, right?
Because if you're not, you're also on a path to faster burnout. I'll just be frank with you, right? Like that is the reality of not building that into your business. And in the same way that you want to build in being able to pay for parking or tolls or food while you're at a birth and all of that kind of stuff, you need to build in the ability to be off call so that you get a break.
And you can, I mean, for me, right? I'm like, what appointments should I have in July? Because I'm not gonna have anybody do. And so I am gonna logistically kind of use some of that time, right? But we also plan to visit family.
And that's something wonderful, because they don't live in this area, my family does not live here. And so being able to be actually out of town is huge as well. So that's a part of why we're taking that time.
So I hope this was helpful. I would love to hear from you what your biggest struggle is in terms of timing and having people on call, etc. This question also came straight from one of my doula coaching strategy calls.
And so Shana, I appreciate that this is the question that you asked when we were emailing back and forth. And I would love to have a question from you on the podcast. So please do go ahead and send me your questions.
And I'm happy to fit them into this year's schedule so that you get those answered, because it would benefit you and the other doulas that are listening. So I hope that you enjoyed the last three episodes that were all about my first group of coaching clients.
My new coaching cohort that opens March 28 has started to fill. And I am so pumped about it, guys. I'm super excited, because this work is just awesome. I really love it. So there's more information about that in the show notes.
If you want to be in that, if you want some info about that, book a quick call with me and I'd be happy to talk about it more. Alright, I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula tips and tits podcast.
If you learned something today or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at hara doula so we can celebrate alongside you. If you found this podcast helpful, we would so appreciate you taking a second to leave a rating and a review on your favorite podcast app that helps other doulas find us as we do this work together.
This podcast is intended as educational and entertainment. It is not medical advice or business advice. Please consult your own medical or legal team for your own needs around your health and your business.
We'll see you again soon.
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Managing being on-call constantly can be a challenge. From missed plans to scheduling important appointments, etc. I used to really struggle with this, but this episode dives into how to be a doula with a better balance of work and life. From taking vacations to having months with no one due, and saying no when needed, this episode is a gold mine of info!
Quote from the show:
“This I feel like is a classic way to start to wrap up our rerun episodes with episode number 107, which is how do you manage life while being on call? Now, part of how I manage life while being on call is giving myself some of a break in the summertime…. So the question today is how do you manage regular life stuff while being on call? Now there's a couple different layers to this, right? Like on the one hand, we're talking about vacations and time off and you can go back to my episode on burnout around taking time off and that sort of thing. ”
I mention the ability to book coaching calls with me. Those can be found below:
30 Minute Coaching:
https://calendly.com/harroddoula/doula-coaching-30-minutes?preview_source=et_card&month=2024-06
60 Minute Coaching:
https://calendly.com/harroddoula/doula-coaching-one-off?month=2024-06
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
https://www.instagram.com/Harroddoula/
If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @harroddoula
Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
