If you have read my book, you will know that I performed vaginal exams as a doula, which is considered practicing medicine and illegal. All national training organizations, such as DONA and toLabor (formerly ALACE) strictly prohibit this procedure.
Anyone doing so, could be charged with a felony. I do not encourage anyone else to do what I did, and if I were practicing today, I would no longer do exams. (Thank goodness the statute of limitations for a felony charge is six years, and I am past that now.) So why did I risk it?
The Catalyst: Preventing Accidental Home Births
Catching a baby during childbirth is not a crime, but it is certainly not within a doula’s scope of practice. I believed that my number one job as a birth assistant was to get the laboring person to the place where they would give birth and into the hands of their licensed providers.
Clients wanting a natural, unmedicated birth often hired a doula to help them stay home as long as possible. Balancing those two priorities can be tricky without accurate information.
Once I had a client wait too long to go to the hospital and deliver at home, I decided to learn how to do cervical checks to avoid that scenario again.
Walking a Thin Legal Line
The definition of practicing medicine is, “Assessing, evaluating, or offering treatment for any physical or mental illness, disease, injury, or condition.”
To avoid assessing or evaluating cervical dilation I would show clients how far apart my fingers (in sterile gloves) were in the exam and let them evaluate the need to go.
I’ll admit that is a very thin line between legal and illegal but in the 25 years that I practiced, I never had another accidental home birth again.