Being a Single Mom Doula

PIN IT

I want to tell you something that does not show up in most doula training brochures.

I started my doula career with a ten day old baby, a partner who was mostly absent and very unkind, zero family nearby, no money, and a weekend training that sent me out into the world with a certificate and absolutely no idea how to get a client.

Well, they did tell me to ‘print business cards’. Y’all, you are not going to get clients by printing business cards.

And the best part, I built a career that supported my daughter and me for years before it became bebo mia inc..

So if you are sitting there wondering whether you can do this as a single mom, or as someone who is basically parenting alone even if there is technically another adult in the house, I need you to hear this from someone who has been exactly where you are.

You can. And in some ways, you are more prepared for this work than you know.

How doula work actually started for me

My passion for birth started in 1988 when my mom had an illegal VBAC home birth with my youngest sister and my eight year old self was right there in the middle of it. I was in there like a dirty shirt, one hand in the bowl with the bloody placenta, the other holding my peanut butter sandwich. It was the best thing ever. Something about that experience planted a seed that never left. 

I spent years heading toward medical school, got as far as finishing my premed and writing my MCATs, and then a cervical health scare in 2006 changed everything. I was told it was now or never to have a baby if I wanted one.

So I became pregnant with very little preparation, planning or a vetting a solid partner. Oh boy, the brain of a 25 year old. And then I became a new parent navigating postpartum depression in an unsafe home environment with no support, no nearby family, and a hefty dose of rage that was my daily fuel.

At four in the morning, 2 weeks after my daughter Gray was born, I was Googling doula training (and not getting a ton of info since search engines were pretty new). A wave of excitement cut through the fog and I momentarily forgot about my chapped nipples and ache from my stitches between my legs. My parents paid for my certification as a birthday gift. It was a weekend training, which was basically all that existed at the time, and I attended it while engorged and leaving my newborn with a sitter. Not ideal. But it was the spark and I was chomping at the bit to jump into my new career.

PIN IT

I came home from my training each night just buzzing. I could not stop. I devoured everything I could find about pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. I would read at the library while Gray slept in my carrier because I could not afford to buy all the books I needed for certification. I handed in a perfect cert pack weeks after finishing my training. I did outstanding care for my first clients who told other people and my business train had left the station. 

Y’all, I loved this work so much and I got to be home with Gray all the time except when I was doing consultations or at a birth. This was such a gift. I did not have to rush out the door M-F, dropping her at daycare, all frantic. I got to wake up naturally with her, snuggle in the morning. Eat all our meals together. Nap with her. Go for walks. I mean, most people would be on mat leave over this time and due to my poor planning and even worse choice in partners, I had to go back to work… but this was the best of both worlds. 

I made great money and got to be with my baby the majority of the time. It would also be enough to hire care for you if you do not have the goal of being with your little one(s) all the time. How you choose to parent and run your world and your business is your business!

Fast forward a couple years and I met my founding business partner and we started bebo mia with twenty-five dollars each and an enormous amount of determination.

What being a single parent taught me about doula work

Here is the thing about parenting mostly alone. It teaches you things that no training can.

It teaches you to read a room fast. To stay calm when everything is not calm. To figure out what someone needs before they have the words for it. To keep going when you are running on empty because you do not have the option of not keeping going. Let me be clear, exhaustion as a badge of honor is tired and such a glaring sign of the patriarchy. Zero out of ten, do not recommend. 

NOTE: And yes, it did make me good at my job. There are better ways to hone these skills without taxing your body and nervous system (even if you are the primary parents) and I teach these in our full spectrum doula training. 

These are not just life skills but these are awesome doula skills.

I knew all the things that I wished I had and I could give them to parents so they did not have to experience that never ending exhaustion. I don’t want parenting to be synonymous with stretched out nervous systems. 

As I taught others how to get it, I started teaching myself and changing the systems, boundaries and asks of my community. I knew how to hold steady for someone else even when I was not steady myself. But I got steady really quick! Also, it is that initial push, then you start making money and can get support for yourself and your family. 

I am not saying single parenting is a prerequisite for good doula work. I am saying that if you have been doing it, you are more equipped than you think.

PIN IT

The practical reality of building a doula business as a single mom

OK, as usual I am going to be real about what made it work because I do not want to paint this as magical or easy.

I was strategic about client timing. I did not take every client who called. Well, correction, I did at first then I quickly learned that working with people that are jerks or not your dream type of client yucks your yum SO much! Like, it never is worth the money and I am saying that as a parent who was super underresourced. 

I also looked at due dates relative to my childcare situation, my energy, what else was happening in our lives. I said no sometimes, which felt terrifying early on and became one of the most important skills I built.

Here is my favourite protip: I did child care swaps with other doulas. We watched each other’s kids so nobody was paying for childcare every time they had a prenatal appointment or attended a birth. This community was everything for me and it is something we now teach explicitly in our training because it changed my life.

I started with postpartum work alongside birth work because postpartum shifts are scheduled. I knew exactly when I was working which meant that I could plan childcare. I was not white knuckling through a week wondering when the phone would ring.

I kept my overhead at almost nothing in the beginning. My birth bag was small. My website was basic. My energy went into client care and community relationships, which is actually how most doula businesses grow, not through fancy marketing but through people talking about you.

The postpartum depression piece and doula life

I want to speak to this because it is part of the story and I think it super matters.

I spent two years with undiagnosed postpartum depression. Two years of doubting everything, of not trusting my own instincts, of feeling like something was fundamentally wrong with me while everyone around me seemed to be managing fine. Was I a bad mom? Why was I so angry? 

Becoming a doula was one of the most important parts of my healing… as was getting a  divorce. I witnessed parents meeting their babies over and over again and I saw every possible reaction, tears, laughter, overwhelm, fear, fatigue, relief, sometimes even grief. All of it. And I understood for the first time that what I had felt was not wrong. It was normal and there is no one way to feel when we meet our children or take on the new identity of ‘mom’. 

I turned my suffering into something. Not because I had to perform a silver lining but because it genuinely became a gift. I understood my clients who were deep in the mucky, yucky dark in a way I would not have without having been there myself.

If you are in that place right now, or coming out of it, please know that this work can be part of how you heal. It was for me. And if you need support first, that matters too.  Check out our mental health support group here.

PIN IT

What I want you to know if you are a single mom considering doula training

You do not need everything in place before you begin. Heck, I definitely did not have anything in place when I began.

You do not need a partner’s buy-in or a perfect schedule or childcare figured out all the way to the horizon. This helps though if you are planning to stay with that partner, even just for a little bit longer. We made a blog here to help you talk to them about your desire to be a doula. You need a good training, a community that has your back, and the willingness to start small and build. Here is a no-fluff checklist to check out. 

The flexibility of doula work is genuinely real. You decide how many clients you take (read this blog to learn how many that is) . You decide whether you focus on birth work, postpartum work, or both. You decide the pace. I built this career around raising my daughter and I am proud of that as much as I am proud of anything else I have built.

bebo mia exists because I was a single mom with $25 and a big dream and nowhere near enough support. I built the training I wish I had. The community I needed. The business education nobody gave me.

If you are where I was, this is for you.

Our full spectrum doula training runs every March and September and it is built for real life, by moms for moms: https://bebomia.com/doulatraining

If you already have a certification and want to transfer it over and fill in what your training missed, that is here: https://bebomia.com/certtransfer/

And if you just want to talk to someone who gets it, book a free doula career strategy session here. We love to chat with y’all!