Doula Services for Expecting Families
Want a personal birth advocate for your pregnancy? Our experienced, compassionate community-based doulas provide peer assistance to expecting parents, ensuring you are seen, heard, and supported from early pregnancy to the months immediately following childbirth.
What Is a Doula?
A Doula's role is non-clinical guidance that provides those who are pregnant with valuable physical, emotional, and informational support.
Our community-based doulas are non-clinical local health workers who work with pregnant and postpartum parents, their families and their baby as they move through the experience of pregnancy, labor, birth and beyond.
During this life-changing process, doulas educate, encourage, and provide support for birthing parents to aid in successful deliveries as well as proper care for newborns in the first three months after birth.
About Our Doula Services
OKBEI’s Community-Based Doula Program (CBDP) improves the health of birthing parents and infants, strengthens families, and establishes support systems for families to ensure their ongoing success. We connect doulas to parents who are of and from their community to provide valuable support and resources during the critical months of pregnancy, birth, and early parenting.
CBDP is a focused, intensive home visiting program in which a local, assigned doula partners with families throughout the pregnancy experience. The program begins early in pregnancy through weekly home visits and continues through labor, during birth, and up to three months of postpartum visits. This promotes better health outcomes for all.
The effectiveness of the program emerges out of the trusting relationship between the community-based doula and the participant, established through the months of pregnancy, birth and early infant care. Consistent, dedicated efforts to center the participant’s experiences and promote their self-advocacy help to ensure happier, healthier, equitable birth experiences for all families in Oklahoma.
What Does the Doula Program Offer?
When you receive doula care through OKBEI, you can count on the following services:
- Regular in-home visits from your assigned community-based doula
- Support during labor and delivery
- Postpartum support for up to 12 months as you learn to care for your infant
- Non-clinical physical, emotional, and educational support
- Guidance for breastfeeding/lactation
- Assistance with developing your birthing plan through evidence-based information regarding pregnancy, birth, and newborn care
Am I Eligible?
To qualify for our doula services, you must:
- Live in Oklahoma
- Be no more than 30 weeks pregnant
- Identify as a person who is Black, Native, Latine, teen, or justice-involved
If you do not fit within the parameters above, please check our independent Community Based Doula Directory.
What Is the Cost?
Our doula services are provided free of charge to those who meet our criteria eligibility. This allows us to effectively support those in need of our services right where they are at, with flexibility and caring throughout their pregnancy.
Testimonials
Doula Services
If you are interested in receiving doula services and meet our eligibility criteria, simply fill out our online application. We will review your application and reach out to you within seven business days. Once your eligibility is confirmed, we will consult with you about your goals, and connect you with your doula.
Doula Services Also By Referral
We work collaboratively with Oklahoma community-based organizations that support families and children. If you are an Oklahoma community-based organization that support families and children and would like to refer clients, please get in touch!