Doula Gives Raw Look into Her Overnight Job — and Glimpses at Late Shifts Go Viral (Exclusive)

Chelsea Tate tells PEOPLE about what parents can expect from an overnight doula

Moms today are seeking out the support they need before and after baby arrives.

Speaking with PEOPLE about her services as owner of La Bella Birth and Baby — a full-service doula agency offering pre and postpartum doula services and a host of other options for different phases of early parenthood — Chelsea Tate says that moms are taking advantage of the different wellness options available to them.

"We offer just about every service doulas can offer — from childbirth education to belly binding, birth photography, and more. We also have an international board-certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) who runs her own independent practice but offers her services as part of some of our packages."

Overnight doulas, in particular, have seen a rise in demand, with Tate explaining what those services offer and how that relationship begins.

"One of the most important things I do in the way that I run my business is I like to connect with family before I show up for a shift. Sometimes that can be connecting with them prenatally before they even have their baby, which is ideal because it gives us more time to get to know each other," she tells PEOPLE.

"I also send a questionnaire with questions about what type of support they're looking for and parenting philosophies that are important to them. I like to meet in person because they are inviting me into a very intimate, vulnerable space and I know if the roles were reversed, I would appreciate the opportunity to get to know someone who's going to be caring for my newborn baby while I'm sleeping."

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While those scenarios make developing a care plan easier, Tate says that "very stressed and frazzled emails from mamas at 2:00 a.m., desperate for sleep" also aren't out of the ordinary.

"In those instances, as a doula, it's our job to be able to attune to our clients. I can absolutely show up at someone's house with no notice and not having had the opportunity to get to know them and learn who they are and what they need while I'm with them," she says. "From my experience, I know what questions to ask. I know from being a mom myself how exhausting and stressful it can be those first few weeks. Sleep is a huge priority for new parents and that's usually the main goal of an overnight shift, to maximize parents' sleep."

Aside from helping with parents' sleep, postpartum doulas can also help with baby's sleep. "We do gentle sleep training. Sleep training can be scary to some people because they associate it with letting babies cry until they sleep," she explains.

"We simply helped educate parents on sleep cues and little tips and things you can do to make baby more comfortable and to lengthen the amount of time that they sleep when it is okay to do that because you don't want them sleeping for super long stretches right away since they're growing and need to eat," she notes.

Basic lactation training, feeding schedule tracking, light housekeeping and sibling care are more services that help new parents and the whole family "transition" into their next chapter.

Tate says many clients are taken back not just by the practical support, but the "emotional support" as well.

"Most people reach out, and they're just like, 'I need some sleep. I need somebody who is trained to watch my baby and help me with breastfeeding so that I can sleep.' But I like to call us walking encyclopedias because we can answer pretty much any question about newborn care and postpartum and parenthood in general," she shares. "And we are connected in a community of other perinatal providers to help answer questions where we aren't trained to. I think it sometimes surprises clients, and I get feedback saying they're thankful for that reassurance that they're doing a good job as a parent."

Tate came into life as a doula in 2015 after her first baby turned 6 months old. "It was his birth that inspired me to get into this work. I had kind of a traumatic experience, giving birth to him. I was young, I didn't really know where to look for information, other than Google. I thought that I had done a pretty good job at reading the books that I could find and asking for advice from my community and I wasn't expecting your typical hospital birth experience."

After a traumatizing C-section where she felt doctors were "pretty dismissive of how I was feeling," Tate knew she wanted to learn more about the birthing process, both as a mom and a member of the field.

"With my son, my water broke at 36 weeks, which was weird to me because I already always heard, you know, if you're a first-time mom... usually you go past your due date, or at least make it to your due date."

"They almost forgot to bring my husband in," she reveals. "My son was born and we were both crying and then they rolled the baby out of the OR immediately, which was just their protocol. I didn't know that I could request to have my baby with me. All my family members got to see him and meet him and hold him before I got to even see him."

"The whole experience felt very systemic. I struggled with postpartum depression and anxiety pretty badly after that. And in my research after the fact, knowing I wanted to have more children, I started to learn what a doula was and felt called into this line of work."

She adds, "It really inspired me to turn something that was so negative in my life into something positive. And I have been so honored to be able to support hundreds of families throughout the course of my career and watch them be able to implement their wishes and come out on the other side with a positive experience. So it is really been amazing."

Though there are some tough spots in the work, such as an unpredictable schedule with little downtime, Tate welcomes the opportunity to educate and help others and has found that TikTok is another way to do just that.

"I love TikTok and think it can be a great educational platform. One of the hardest challenges I have as a doula is educating people on the value of the services and creating an understanding of their investment. I thought it would be good to record myself during an overnight post with consent from my client. I get questions all the time about what it actually looks like, so I recorded myself with the baby, just a few clips, put it together and posted it. It absolutely blew up from there."

Tate says many commenters wish that the services were available to them during their pregnancies, while some have also been inspired to check out the line of work themselves.

"It can be really hard to draw the line between work hours and spending time with family, setting those boundaries for myself," the mom of two admits. "But then there's my favorite part of being a doula is seeing parents so empowered by their own capabilities."

"Of course, snuggling babies is so fun to do, too. I've been able to work with just about every type of family you can imagine in my 10 years — I've handled twins, surrogate, postpartum work, everything — and it's been amazing to come in and provide that unbiased and non-judgmental support all types of parents need. It warms my heart to be able to offer that."

Tate says she's very open with her kids — Sophia, 7, and Levi, 9 — about her work and what it entails.

"My kids absolutely love what I do and they're so fascinated by it," Tate shares. "Just the other day, my son was trying to think of the word placenta and he was like, 'Mom, what's that brain-looking thing that you sometimes work with that's really bloody and gross? It's so cool but it's so weird, and that's the baby's house.' "

"My daughter is definitely a little doula in the making. I launched a doula training organization this year and sometimes I become good friends with some of these women, who have kids the same ages as my own. We'll do little play dates and my daughter will always want to see the babies and snuggle the babies and she swaddles them in her own little way."

Tate is proud of the business she's built and hopes to one day grow it into a full-fledged birth center after taking some time to step back from day-to-day doula work to pursue nursing school.

"This is my livelihood. It takes care of my family and pays my bills, but I'm not in it for the money. I believe there's a true need in my community, and in communities everywhere, especially in the US. We have the highest maternal mortality rate of any other developed country in the world. And I really believe that doulas can help lower that number by providing support and helping parents advocate themselves."

"That's why I do the work that I do and that's why I created the training organization that I did as well and made it so affordable so that there can be more doulas that are properly trained," she continues. "I also run an internship program for my newly trained loads who offer low-cost or no-cost services to families in need. That way they can gain experience and also be able to make our services more accessible to people who need them."

"I believe that a doula shouldn't be a luxury, but something accessible to everyone. So this is the way I've figured out to provide for myself and provide work for my doulas, but also provide opportunities for less fortunate families to get to experience these resources."

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