Why I Chose to not Certify as a Doula

Many people are surprised to learn that doulas don’t have to be certified. But here’s the truth: a certificate doesn’t walk into your birth with you — your doula’s presence, commitment, and love does. What matters most is trust, experience, and connection. That is what shapes your birth story. A certificate may look nice on the wall, but it’s the listening, the hands, and the presence beside you that actually matter when you give birth.

Birth Has Always Been Tended by Women, Not Paperwork

I say this all as someone who went through a doula certification course, learned next to nothing, and chose not to get certified on principle because as far as I was concerned, a monkey could pass the course I did. I took it to learn and to be challenged and in the end, the only real thing I learned from the course was that free birth existed which led me onto the path of traditional birth.

For me, the path of a doula isn’t about checking a box or paying a fee to an organization. It’s about sitting at the feet of women who came before us, learning from real births, apprenticing, listening, tending, and building knowledge that is alive not institutional.

Certification often asks doulas to prioritize policies, modules, and paperwork. But birth doesn’t happen on paper. Birth happens in bodies, in rooms filled with emotion, in the tension between fear and trust. No certificate can hold space when a woman doubts her strength. No module can wipe a mother’s tears. Only presence can.

How Do You Know If a Doula Is the Right Fit?

If certification isn’t the benchmark, then how do you know if your doula has relevant knowledge or experience?

Ask about their path. Training, apprenticeship, mentorship, personal experience. Every doula’s journey looks a little different and how many births they have attended or who they are certified through is only a part of their story.

Notice how they make you feel. Do you feel safe talking to them? Do you feel heard and respected? That’s the most important sign.

Talk through birth philosophy. Make sure they support the kind of experience you want whether that’s unmedicated, highly medical, or somewhere in between.

Ask about ongoing learning. A great doula is always growing through books, workshops, traditional birth knowledge, or lived experience.

Bringing Birth Back to Women

If we really want to honor birth, we need to remember what women have always known: birth is not managed by paperwork. It’s carried by trust, by presence, by the circle of hands and hearts that surround a mother in her most powerful threshold.

So I’ll ask you:

If you are a doula, are you certified? Why or why not?

If you are a mama, would you hire an uncertified doula? Why or why not?

The conversation matters because together, we get to reimagine what “qualified” really means.