When the pandemic hit in March 2020 doulas were not allowed in hospitals in Montreal. Most hospitals automatically shut their doors to any extra support people, as a safety precaution. Rightly so, since we didn’t know much about how Covid-19 worked or what the risks were and we needed to keep the hospitals as safe as possible.
However, doulas are now allowed in hospitals. (yay!)
As of mid-June when Quebec went into an Orange Zone (we are currently in a Green Zone, which means further restrictions have been lifted) they began to allow a second support person into Montreal hospitals for women giving birth. This is great news for families expecting new babies and great news for doulas since our work is primarily done in the hospitals!
We are still in the early days of getting back to in-person support but it looks almost the way it used to! Hospitals are admitting patients based on whether they are in active labour, depending on how dilated they are, if their water has broken, etc and partners are allowed in the hospital to support.
Doulas can accompany their clients upon admission to the birthing centre and the group must wait until the patient’s covid test comes back negative in order for any restrictions to loosen.
This means, partners and doulas must wear masks and partners can remove their mask when the test results come in.
We received a flood of inquiries about our doula services once word spread that doulas were allowed back in the hospital. I think a lot of people were waiting to see what kind of support they could have for their birth, and now that we are fully able to support clients in whatever way they need our calendars have been filling up rather quickly!
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