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YOUR SPACE: Doula-Man to the rescue
Keith Roberts is a fairy godfather for women in labor.
He brings a calming presence and a Crock-Pot.
Between contractions, he puts hot towels on the woman’s lower back.
He is a doula, a non-medical birth assistant — a job usually performed by a woman.
“This is the most important tool, this crock pot. It’s a towel heater,” he says. “It has been to 149 hospital births in the last 14 years.”
The soft-spoken, silver-haired 66-year-old tends to the laboring woman’s pain to free up her partner to pile on the emotional TLC. His massaging hands and hot towels lessen the need for drugs.
“I can’t take all the pain away,” he says, “but enough so it’s OK.”
It almost sounds too good to be true. Are you thinking what I’m thinking: “Where was this guy when I needed him?”
He was a teacher in Colorado Springs School District 11 for 31 years, dealing with adolescents.
“In the sixth grade they are experimenting with swear words,” he says. “I’m surprised by what some mothers in labor say. I’ve heard mothers swearing fluently."
Doula work isn’t exactly a job men line up to do. There might be other male doulas in the United States, but not many.
That could change — or not — when Vince Vaughn’s movie “Male Doula” hits theaters. The comedy, which isn’t based on Roberts, currently is in development.
Roberts started as a massage therapist, which led to prenatal massage. Women kept inviting him into the labor room, so he got certified as a doula.
“Being a male,” he says, “has not been a barrier.”
His gender was a barrier when his daughters were born in 1967 and 1970. He watched through a plate-glass window as his wife, Jane, gave birth. He made up for it when he was a doula at his two grandchildren’s births.
The west side home that he designed and built in his 20s and shares with Jane, a jewelry artist, is done up in prenatal décor. It’s his studio to photograph pregnant women in their birthday suits using black-and-white film. He also makes plaster belly casts, a process where the nude mom-to-be is coated in Vaseline and gauze-wrapped, much like when a broken limb is fitted. The belly casts are painted for display, sort of like bronze baby shoes.
Roberts says doula work is his calling. He’s in it for the long haul when laboring moms call.
“I stay until the baby is born,” he says. “You get acquainted with what it is to be sleep-deprived. The longest labor was 45 hours.”
The next day he rides his Harley to visit the new baby. He leaves the Crock-Pot at home.
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