Ok, in my defense I love the Doulas in our area because of the wonderful support they provide to our patients and I'm not against birth plans at all...HOWEVER...I've heard some weirld things, especially recently, and have seen things taken to the point where it is downright dangerous. Some that I haven't quite understood lately have been...
don't put a hat on my baby during his hospital stay. This is a big one coming from our local doulas...some small paper that was not a very good controlled study said something about how no hats make the babies breast feed better and voila, it is doula law.
do not do fundal massage after I deliver to control my bleeding (Yes, she bled excessively. Yes, we did end up doing fundal massage, problem solved).
We've had some come in and refuse uterotonics during/right after 3rd stage and they do always bleed more, this is ok as long as they agree to take something if bleeding become excessive and nipple stim/breast feeding doesn't resolve it but we had one that ended up consenting to blood administration INSTEAD of pitocin, cytotec, methergine, or hemabate after delivery, was just dead set that she would not be receiving meds under any circumstance.
do no dry my baby after birth (Ok, I've heard don't bathe my baby, don't wipe of vernix and that is great, perfecly fine, but don't DRY my baby? that is NRP 101 right there).
I don't like refusals of antibiotics for GBS + because I've SEEN GBS sepsis and it's ugly but when you then are PROM >36hrs and running high temps with fetal tachycardia and foul smelling fluid and STILL refuse antibiotics I will sit at the desk and call you crazy (and yes then, right after delivery, code your limp, septic baby and wisk it off to the NICU where blood cultures are positive only a few hours after being drawn...).
No fetal monitoring. And I mean none. No doppler, no intermittent monitoring, no basline FHR tracing, no fetoscope...nothing. To each their own but...why are you here?
imho lotus birth is gross and so NOT natural...that is rotting flesh you are keeping your baby attached to...even animal moms in nature know that you don't do that.
refusal of blood sugar checks on high risk newborns. I'm not talking that newborn that was cold once, or was a little jittery once I'm talking type 1 diabetics or even GDM with poor control, severe SGA babies...
I'm sure I can think of more if I sit long enough lol