Postpartum doulas: motivations and perceptions of practice.

Objective: To describe the perceptions of a US cohort of experienced birth doulas who were among the first in the country to be trained to provide postpartum support.

Design: A qualitative, longitudinal study using ethnographic methods; participant observation and semi-structured interviews.

Setting: Midwestern, urban, US; postpartum home care over three months.

Contemporary childbirth education models.

Since the 1960s, childbirth education advocates have attempted to persuade pregnant women that educational preparation for labor and birth is an essential component of the transition to motherhood. Initially, pregnant women who were seeking unmedicated births as a refuge from the inhumane childbirth treatments of the mid-20th century embraced this view. However, with the changing childbirth climate, including a growing preference for medicated birth, scheduled inductions, and cesarean sections, attendance has diminished and childbirth education finds itself at a crossroads.

Domains of postpartum doula care and maternal responsiveness and competence.

Objective: To describe the domains of postpartum doula care and illustrate how doulas facilitate development of maternal responsiveness and competence.

Design: Qualitative study using ethnographic method of participant observation.

Setting: Homes of mothers who received postpartum doula care.

Midwifery data collection: options and opportunities.

Most midwives are aware of the need to collect clinical practice data and of its usefulness in supporting the care they provide, which contributes to healthy outcomes for mothers and babies. For the individual midwife, there is more than one easily accessible, standardized data collection instrument from which to choose. However, despite these choices, in an American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Division of Research (DOR) survey on midwifery clinical data collection (N = 263), the majority of member respondents (n = 135; 51%) reported using a self-designed data collection tool, and more than one-third did not know of the ACNM Nurse-Midwifery Clinical Data Sets (NMCDS).