Erykah Badu has picked up a couple of new skills recently: she’s a certified doula and is studying to become a certified midwife.
In a recent issue of People magazine, Erykah Badu gave details about her new passions, and her connection to them.
For those that don’t know (that is, most of us), a doula is essentially a form of midwife; she provides emotional, mental, and physical support to an expecting mother through counseling and physical therapy. Doulas differ from midwives in that midwives are licensed to provide medical care, where a doula is not. When the big day arrives, the doula is there to help keep the parents-to-be calm during the natural birthing process by also suggesting natural pain relief techniques. After the birth, the doula provides a period of counseling and support to the mother, to hopefully ease the recovery process.
So, in other words, Ms. Badu can help you have your baby…the old school way.
Herself a mother of three, Badu gave birth to all but her oldest child in her Dallas home, so she’s no stranger to the reality of natural childbirth.
Keep in mind, it’s not like anybody can just say that they’re a doula, and then have at it (we’re looking at you, Kate Gosselin!). Erykah Badu had to go through a process of certification and training to get her title as a doula. There’s even an international organization that oversees the process (DONA International) Most doula’s charge a moderate fee, but Badu has done it free of charge for her clients. In fact, one of her earliest experiences involved assisting a friend with a 52-hour child birth(!). According to Badu, “Nothing give me more pleasure than being the welcoming committee for a mother’s new joy”.
When the four-time Grammy-winning artist isn’t on tour, or in the studio, or helping others birthing babies, Badu also uses some of her downtime to be a spokesperson for the International Center for Traditional Childbearing. The ICTC is a Portland, Oregon-based non-profit that focuses on traditional child-birthing and breastfeeding as a means to reduce infant mortality rates in African-American communities, whose infant mortality rate is 2.4 times that of non-Hispanic whites. She also hopes to use her midwife certification to someday open birth centers in inner-city neighborhoods.
Sources:
People Magazine
http://www.ictcmidwives.org/doulatraining.html
http://www.bet.com/news/music/2011/09/04/erykah-badu-moonlights-as-a-doula.html
Dona.org
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