Support is more than just holding the baby Babies are cute. There is no getting around the fact that their softness, new baby smell, soft fuzzy heads, sleepy coziness calls out to everyone around them. It creates a desire to protect, hold, and cuddle that is definitely hard to ignore. Just introduce a new baby to a group of adults or children and soon the requests to hold and touch the baby come forth. Even when the baby is fussy, people are quick to offer to take baby out of mom’s arms in their offer to provide relief for mom. But, you will notice that I am not one of those people. I won’t ask to hold your baby. When I am explaining my role as a doula, I often get one of two comments. The first usually comes from the older generations exclaiming how they wished there were doulas available for them when they had their babies. The other comment I get is how nice it would be to hold babies all the time. They are often surprised to hear that I actuall