First, the good news. Dana Ericson has great bedside manners. I was hospitalized for three weeks prior to the birth of my twins which I delivered naturally thanks to her guiding visualizations and support. During my hospitalization she was easy to get in touch with and was quite attentive, stopping by frequently.
My situation was unique to her practice, I believe. While she had doulaed vegetarians before I am also hypoglycemic. One pricey supplement she swore by had sugar in it. There were several recommendations she made that had sugar in them. That was a little problematic. She also seriously pushed the protein--quite understandable. However, she suggested that I eat large volumes of nuts and eggs, which I did. Unfortunately, one of my twins is now severely allergic to nuts and eggs, and his allergist told us that research demonstrates that eating lots of nuts and eggs while pregnant can cause allergies to develop in the babies. We wish she had been aware of this research. Not knowing this has caused one of our children to have a life-threatening allergy.
We were also not entirely pleased with the amount she charged us. She was acting as a doula for us not a midwife. She had introduced a sliding scale to us initially, and ultimately charged us the amount at the top of the scale even though we didn't work with her throughout the entire pregnancy and the babies were born at 31 weeks.
