Fighting for bilingual doula services for new migrants

With racial disparities for doula service access continuing to exist throughout the city, one organization has dedicated itself to providing doula services to pregnant and postpartum Spanish-speaking migrant women: Doulas en Español. The organization was founded in 2019 by a group of five women – Maya Hernandez, Paz Guzman, Natalie Zuniga, Puri Carvajal, and Maria Dangond – who came together after realizing the need for more Spanish-speaking doulas. In response to the influx of migrants and demand for services, Doulas en Español launched a GoFundMe campaign in March 2024, which has now raised over $11,000 to fund the organization’s monthly “Mamita” events, a full-day event where Spanish-speaking mothers and expecting mothers come together for food, receive free baby and postpartum items and participate in informational circles led by a physician. 

New York Nonprofit Media spoke to Maya Hernandez, one of the founders of Doulas en Español, about the organization's founding, the mental health of the community, and what she envisions for the future of the organization and the doula profession. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your journey to becoming a doula and why you decided to become a doula.

It was a calling. My background is in finance. I used to work in Wall Street when I first found out what a doula was. I went to an acupuncture appointment, I asked my acupuncturist how her weekend was, and she said, “It was great, I had a birth.” And then I asked, “What do you mean you had a birth?” And she responded, “Yes, I'm a doula.” I had never heard what a doula was before, and I remember vividly that that was a Wednesday, and by that weekend, I had signed myself up for the (doula) course. I never really thought that I was going to have a practice. I just thought that as a woman, this was information that I should know about my body and the process and that one day in the distant future, I would make use of it. Several months passed, and one of the women who was studying with me called me up and asked if I wanted to be her doula. She was pregnant, and I said that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I'm never going to get to do this again. That was my first-ever doula client, and there was something about the experience and being there during the birth that opened up a whole new world for me. 

Tell me about the journey to finding Doulas in Español. 

The idea first began when people would try to hire me and they wanted a doula who spoke Spanish. They would always comment on how difficult it had been to get to a doula who spoke Spanish. And I immediately would think, “But that's impossible, there are so many of us who are bilingual in the city.” I realized that we had never marketed ourselves as bilingual doulas. Even on my website, there was no way that someone who found me on my website could know that I spoke Spanish because I didn't mention it anywhere. So I started getting together some of the doulas that I knew best, and the idea was first to start a directory, and the first thing that everyone had in common was meeting in community with other Spanish-speaking doulas, and giving back to the community. 

All of us had done some volunteer work. We had worked with city programs at the beginning of our careers, but it was not sustainable, because oftentimes it (doula work) was just volunteer-based. The four of us started the initial group, we're all highly experienced. We've been doulas anywhere between 15 to 25 years. And we decided that Doulas en Español should have a dual mission. The mission for us is to be able to share our expertise in our professional services with the Hispanic community that often doesn't even know that the programs and services exist, but also create sustainability among Hispanic doulas. A very big part of our mission is that all of our work be funded. We believe that this is important work. We believe that it's work that needs to be recognized. And we dream of having more people like us being able to offer the services because they can pay their rent from it. 

A report by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that doula usage across Brooklyn and Manhattan is increasing, but racial disparities still exist. What is your reaction to that? And what do you think it's going to take to see equity in terms of doula usage for the communities?

Funding is very important. We're growing because the need is there. I'm lucky to come with the support of a wonderful group of doulas who care to do this work and will take the (financial) cut so they will get less money to work with communities of color because that's our mission. That's what we believe in because we want to bridge that gap. But there are many other ways in which we don't have support. In order for organizations like us to be able to make a big difference on the scale we need more support. Right now, we're not there. 

I do see that since we started Doulas en Español, there has been more attention on maternal outcomes for people of color. That was something that started a conversation that took place during the pandemic. I do see that there are a lot of really wonderful organizations and people who have jumped on the cause. And that's important because we need more voices. We need more trained people. We need more celebrities putting their names behind this so that we can keep bridging that gap. But it's still very new. I think this conversation before the pandemic was almost very abstract and only for BIPOC people. It wasn't like a conversation we were having on social media or even in policy papers. So I do see progress, and that makes me feel hopeful. 

The initiative to have doulas be paid by Medicaid, structure-wise, is important. But if you look at the fees, we're still underpaying a lot. And for doulas, for example, I often think, “I wish I could just spend my time doing Doulas en Español.” Living in New York City, I wouldn't be able to pay my bills from that. So we also need, not just the structure of that initiative in Medicaid to be approved and concrete, but also the pay scale needs to be in line with doula support as a profession right now. It shouldn't be a luxury. It’s a profession, and so we should be able to live off of this. And this is how it will eventually change. That's the next step. We're seeing some insurance companies being interested in starting to cover doula services, but again, like any other industry, it needs to be paid well. 

How does Doulas en Español respond to the pressure on the community’s mental health?

That's a great question. Some people would say that's out of our scope. We don't think so. One of the things that we found from the first event we did with “Mamitas” is that our participants wanted to be heard. They wanted to share their stories. They wanted to talk to someone about how to get a permit to stay or how to stay in the shelter. Those are the conversations happening all the time. They wanted to talk to someone about their pregnancy. The way that one mom described it to us was, “I often feel like just a number in this country. I stand in lines for a long time to get things, there's paperwork and paperwork, and I get letters and it all has a number, and no one even cares how I'm doing.” Over time, the trust builds so that if they have anything they need to get off their chest, we are a safe place for them to do so. They know that we care about them. They know that we're going to guard their trust. 

What do you envision for the future of Doulas en Español?

What I envision is an organization that has a bigger structure. We have better sources of funding. We're running programs that are sustainable over the long course. I see ourselves as a model for other organizations across the country that will also start to promote bilingual and, in our case, Spanish-speaking services. But it can be any other language. I envision that doulas are treated as professionals. I envision that anyone who is pregnant, as they're thinking about their diaper bag and what strollers to get, they're also thinking about what doula they want.