THE INTERVIEW: Irene Bourquin: The doula putting education at the centre of pregnancy care

Irene Bourquin has spent decades arguing that better education, respectful care and informed choice should put women at the centre of pregnancy and birth.

Irene Bourquin is the honey badger of birth and pregnancy doulas – regarded as fierce, focused and fearless in the doula world. Her rallying cry isn’t the chainsaw rattle of the honey badger but rather the words: “Education, education, education.” Her children, recognising her as an avid researcher, call her Mrs Podcast.

Bourquin is careful not to position herself as anti-medicine. She has “one foot in mainstream obstetric care and the other in physiological birth”; “Modern obstetrics saves lives,” she says.

Her concern is what happens when medical intervention becomes indistinguishable from unnecessary intervention – and when women aren’t given enough information to understand the difference.

The word doula has its roots in ancient Greek, from the word “doule”, meaning a slave or serving girl. Today, a doula provides non-medical physical, emotional and informational support during pregnancy, labour and the postpartum period – someone who, in Bourquin’s words, “mothers the mother”.

A midwife is a trained medical professional who provides clinical care, whereas a doula provides non-medical support and care.

Bourquin is one of the pioneers of doula education in SA. She is a registered nurse and midwife, perinatal and childbirth educator, birth and postpartum doula, author and longtime doula trainer. She has been training doulas since 2002. Currently she is a volunteer at a local state hospital maternity ward, as a birth doula.

She recently published the ninth edition of Practical Pregnancy, Birth & Early Parenting Guide. When she qualified, she looked for South African books on pregnancy and found very few – and those that existed were expensive. So she decided to write one herself: it had to be affordable, accessible and easy to read. She wanted pictures showing women of different races and a book that partners would actually read.

Each edition is different, and what sets this edition apart from previous publications is its readership.

“Science changes for the good,” she says. So she keeps researching through conferences, podcasts, seminars and workshops.

This edition doesn’t just speak to mothers. It also speaks directly to partners and is inclusive of every family: adoptive parents, same-sex parents and those growing a family on their own terms. The book covers planning parenthood, pregnancy week by week, labour and birth, newborn care, feeding, postnatal recovery and the baby’s first year.

She was drawn to nursing while still in her teens, when her father was admitted to ICU after suffering two massive coronary events. What she saw of nursing impressed her.

Bourquin was 17 when she began nursing and remembers an amusing incident on her first day, when she was sent to the children’s ward. Above the ward was a sign saying that no person under the age of 18 was permitted to enter. At 17, she briefly wondered whether she was allowed in.

She initially thought she might specialise in cardiac nursing.