When it comes to labor and delivery, doulas and OB-GYNs are often pitted against each other. But Debra Eluobaju has the rare experience of being on both sides: She worked as a doula before becoming an OB-GYN. “The longer I practice, the more I think many conflicts in maternity care come from a simple misunderstanding: Patients, doulas, and physicians are often responding to different versions of the same birth,” she writes in a First Opinion this week. “A doula may see a frightened patient who feels unheard. A physician may see subtle signs that a mother or baby is becoming increasingly unstable. Both may be right.”
Op-eds that focus on a change in perspective are among the most powerful, I think, and Dr. Eluobaju’s is a great example of that.
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Recommendation of the week: “The Other Valley,” by Scott Alexander Howard, is set in an isolated mountain village. Its neighbor to the east is identical — down to the same people — except 20 years in the future. The village to the west is 20 years in the past, and the chain goes on and on. The village’s most important organization is a council that determines who is allowed to visit the past or the future, and who is allowed to visit from other villages. At first, I thought it might be a little 2010s YA dystopia — the protagonist is a 16-year-old girl — but this trippy, mind-bending novel is much more than that
