Doula
Camilla Rye
Camilla has supported a wide range of women and families as a doula since 2017. As a nurse, she has diverse experience from both municipal and specialist healthcare services, including maternity and postpartum wards. The experience of being unable to provide optimal support and care due to the system’s lack of time and understaffing led Camilla to leave nursing and start her own full-time doula practice in August 2023. Relational care is the cornerstone of her work, where time or shift schedules are not determining factors, and where the rights of the birthing woman and her partner—such as autonomy, empowerment, and the right to make informed choices—are strengthened and promoted.
Camilla has completed the two-year part-time education at Doulaskolen in Oslo (2018), is a certified breastfeeding counselor (2018), yoga teacher (2013), and has attended numerous courses and professional seminars, including Anna Verwaal's From Womb to World (2017), Spinning Babies (2018), ABC 25 years (2022), and Healthcare Services for Migrants in Vulnerable Life Situations (2023).
As a doula, one has the privilege in birth of not having medical responsibility. This means that the doula’s focus and attention are solely directed towards the birthing woman and her unique needs throughout the entire labor, whether it lasts 3 or 23 hours. As a birth doula, Camilla accompanies the couple to the hospital as a support person and stays for 1-2 hours after the baby is born, and, of course, offers the same support during home births. Doula services can also be used during pregnancy for tailored physical exercises to prepare for labor, relaxation techniques, meditation, informational work about rights, assistance with birth plans, and postpartum support with birth debriefing, breastfeeding help, tailored care, and an extra pair of hands for practical tasks at home.
Camilla has three children herself: one born in a hospital in 2015, one born at home in 2020, and one born at ABC in 2022. It was due to her first birth experience that she had a near-revelation that she needed to devote her professional life to pregnant, birthing, and postpartum women—something she now considers a lifestyle. Constantly surrounded by loving creation, her goal is to support women in having a good, empowering birth experience in the way the birthing woman herself desires. There are many paths to the same goal; there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way, and doula support is tailored to each individual. A woman’s rights remain the same, regardless of where or how she gives birth, and we all have equal, fundamental, and individual needs for care.