I’m not a great prognosticator but, come on, I’ve had LOADS of experience with the process. I’m a nurse for heaven sake. I’ve experienced the birth and care of hundreds of children, not to mention my own three. So when my daughter announced her pregnancy, I just naturally assumed that I would be the perfect person to act as her guide, advisor and general comforter. Yup, I was all set to be the real deal doula.

For those of you not familiar with the term, a doula is a mother’s helper. Unlike generations past, the women and men having babies now, are often not able to have their parents around as free help. Gone forever are the days when grandma or grandpa routinely lived with their procreating children. Families are scattered around the country and around the world. Very lucky indeed is the family that manages to stay within reasonable geographic distances of one another.

So there are doulas that provide information and help before and after the blessed event. They encourage the mom to get enough rest, eat right, and do those things that make her remember she was a person and a woman before she got pregnant.. Doulas encourage the necessary planning so that the newly forming family can pass through this exciting but exhausting process relatively unscathed. Seems easy enough. No big deal. I got that covered.

So I arrived with the aplomb of Steven Colbert, armed with the following:

• Loads of yarn to make adorable little things for the kid
• Materials to make stimulating wall hangings to encourage his little brain
• Books about baby signing and cognitive development
• Willing hands and an open heart (and gratitude at having been invited)
• Slings, massage oil and lots of ideas and opinions

Thus, I proceeded to be sucked into the domestic vortex.

Sometimes agendas clash. And a good doula is there, after all, to assist. So, instead of playing granny Martha Stewart, I found myself calling on other, less recent skills. Not exactly what I had in mind but productive nonetheless.

My daughter apartment is third-floor walkup in a building that looks like it has been neglected since it was erected in the 1930’s. I watch, appalled, as she hoists her “pregosaurus” form up three flights of stairs. Once in the door, her overwrought beagle, and his housemate, the obese dipsomaniac chocolate lab greet us with unbridled enthusiasm. I can’t help but notice that the exterior wall on the first floor has a two-foot hole through both layers of siding and the studs are showing.

Clearly, a LOT of work has been done recently. The living room, the old parlor, and two bedrooms are freshly painted. The bathroom has half a new floor laid. The kitchen floor is beautiful, having just been stripped and re-finished Still, the kitchen walls are what Joanne refers to as “prosthetic pink” and the bathroom…………well let’s just say that it resembles what a six-year-old might do playing with fractals. I found out quickly that the windows DO have lead paint, but only on the outside.

So David and I begin to paint. But any shiny thing easily distracts old house people. Our particular shiny thing happens to be gorgeous brass and copper pipes that line the exterior of both the kitchen and the bath. I HAVE to chip off the paint. I’ll die if I don’t. He catches the fever and soon, he is tearing the flesh from his knuckles stripping the paint-encrusted hot and cold-water service pipes with a brass chain, one of many great helpful hints supplied by the old boat guy at the hardware store.

We go on to refinish doorplates, knobs, incredible deco doorstops and a cover for the old stove chimney (which, unfortunately, was covering a hole stuffed with asbestos). All this before Joanne puts an end to our fun and insists that we get busy with the original task. But one cannot just paint a wall. Spackle is needed, and new toe molding and a miter saw for cutting the molding and and and and…………..It’s just amazing what can be found in your local hardware store. And how cool would this look? And it’s so inexpensive!

We emerge from the local Home Depot an hour later with brass switch plates, a wireless doorbell, a smoke detector, and various and sundry other goodies. David tells me emphatically that we MAY NOT stop at Burger King for a snack. I pout but accept this since he is probably one of the best cooks on the East Coast. His coping mechanism is to cook elaborate feasts when he is stressed. Luckily for me, he is stressed.

So, shoving aside the buckets crusty with dregs and denatured alcohol, working around the salt and vinegar and the doorknobs and plates, he cooks. He cooks amazing things. But, he doesn’t clean up. Finally I can act in the capacity of the doula. I decide that the dishes are now my job. I actually become so protective of said job that I yell at my daughter if she touches a dirty dish! She is supposed to sit and drink water. I am supposed to do the cleaning!

Seeing her weaken just a bit, I get really bossy and take over the laundry. I re-arrange the baby clothes (so that, later when they need them, they can’t figure out my system. How’s that for being indispensable?) I learn the most effective way to fight with the vacuum cleaner. I’m being a doula all right!

This is about the time that we notice that the neighborhood squirrels are running the Indy 500 of rodents up the walls and between the floors. Calling on my experience with old houses (eighteen years, seven of them sans interior walls) I lay out the dangers of rodents. Not only can they carry diseases, but they can also chew the electrical wires causing fires which is VERY BAD for people who have new babies and live on the third floor with no fire escape. I think I actually said that all in one breath. Mind you my personal experience has been mostly with bats, rats and mice but rodents are, after all, rodents. They chew. That need is what makes them rodents.

Landlord? What landlord? His cell phone has been disconnected and the only way to contact him is to drive over to his house. Every lick of work done on the place has been by David or Joanne. David and I discuss saving dog droppings and paper bags to use terrorizing the man with that old Halloween prank. Joanne, who is more practical, and a law student, trumps that notion by contacting the health department about the hole, the un-shoveled walks, the abandoned stove and bicycles, the un-removed trash and the nonfunctioning smoke detectors and hall lights.

And so the days go by. I decide that it is a bad idea for my very pregnant daughter to be walking up and down the stairs the three or so times a day that is necessary for the dogs can answer nature’s calls. With all the confidence of my vast canine experience (I own a very neurotic German Shepherd) I assume that a little dog walking would be good for them and good for me.

The days go by and I realize that David and Joanne are way too well informed to need much information or support on pregnancy, delivery, or baby care. My best, possibly only advice at this time, was to tell her to ignore all the horror stories about 16-hour labors and difficult deliveries. Hers would be fine. It would be easy. It would be great.

It was 39 hours. It was nearly a C-section. It might be because of this that she began to doubt my “expertise.”

But after the delivery I did get to offer insights into Aidan’s cognitive development. I got to drag out the book on signing with your baby and encourage its use. (This was done by placing the book near the toilet where the proud parents could learn the signs one or two at a time, in their spare time.) I got to present my daughter with countless glasses of water. Best of all, I got to cuddle with and play with little Aidan so that his mom, who took a whole week off from Law School, could do a little reading. Once in a while I actually got to suggest Joanne take a nap and she did.

Mary Halperin has a column on this site that deals very effectively with the development of the mutual respect on matters of childcare between mothers and daughters. She deals very handily with that fine line between helping and intruding. For those of you lucky enough to be invited to participate in this most miraculous of events, Mary offers her experience and developing knowledge as a guide. Her carefully considered advice on giving advice reminds me of the old Shel Silverstein poem:

• Agatha Fry made a pie
• Christopher John helped bake it.
• Christopher John he mowed the lawn
• And Agatha Fry helped rake it.
• Now Zachary Zug took out the rug
• And Jennifer Joy helped shake it.
• And Jennifer Joy she made a toy,
• And Zachary Zug helped break it.
• And some kind of help is the kind of help
• That helping’s all about.
• And some kind of help is the kind of help
• We all can do without.

With that in mind, this is what I learned. There is no single, perfect way to accomplish being a doula. You do what you can when it is necessary. Sometimes those things are not pretty and sometimes they are. What it did for me is to re-establish that fine thread of daily life that connects people. Without that tenuous connection, it is easy to lose the reality of who someone has become. I re-learned my daughter. I re-learned her courage and her strength. I witnessed her sensibility and her patience. The opportunity to do this was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

Perhaps, she re-learned me.