The Bereavement Doula — Maddy The Doula Lady

When a family loses a baby, the clinical team knows how to manage the medical crisis. Almost no one knows how to manage what comes after.

This book fills that gap. Every framework, protocol, and clinical communication approach was developed in collaboration with morticians, obstetricians, social workers, and labor and delivery and NICU nurses. The result reflects the full reality of pregnancy and infant loss across every setting where it occurs.

This is not a book about what to say. It’s a book about becoming trained well enough that the right response becomes instinct.

For doulas, labor and delivery and NICU nurses, social workers, and anyone called to show up with skill, not just sympathy.

Buy on books.by — $14.99 Workbook — $9.99

Paperback · Approved for 16 ICEA CEUs · Companion workbook available.

Who it’s for

Anyone called to show up with skill, not just sympathy.

Doulas seeking specialty training

Birth workers who want to add bereavement support to their practice. The book moves you from sympathetic-but-uncertain to clinically prepared, with a full set of protocols you’ll actually use.

L&D and NICU nurses

Nurses who hold these families during the worst moments of their lives, often without dedicated training in what comes after the chart is closed. This is the curriculum that closes that gap.

Social workers & chaplains

Hospital staff whose job description is “the family.” The frameworks here translate directly to bedside conversations, family meetings, and follow-up after discharge.

Birth workers seeking CEUs

Approved by the International Childbirth Education Association for 16 Continuing Education Units toward doula recertification. The CEU credit applies the moment you complete the workbook.

What’s inside

Every kind of loss, every kind of room.

Foundations of bereavement support

The grief literature, applied. Anticipatory grief, complicated grief, ambiguous loss. The role of the doula across hospital, birth center, and home settings. The emotional labor and how to sustain it.

Loss across pregnancy

Early pregnancy loss. Mid-trimester loss. Stillbirth. Termination for medical reasons. The clinical reality of each, the family’s experience of each, the doula’s role in each.

Neonatal loss

NICU loss, peripartum loss, sudden infant death. The space between “they were just born” and “they are gone.” Bonding, memory-making, and the rituals families ask for — and the rituals nobody told them they were allowed to ask for.

Clinical communication

Scripts, frameworks, and protocols developed with morticians, OBs, social workers, and labor and delivery and NICU nurses. What to say. What not to say. How to say nothing well.

Aftercare & the long arc

Funeral and memorial planning. Subsequent pregnancy after loss. Anniversary care. The doula’s own grief, and what to do with it.

How it was written

Built with the people who do this work.

Every framework, protocol, and clinical communication approach in this book was developed in collaboration with the people who hold these families: morticians who handle remains, obstetricians who deliver in silence, social workers who walk the families to the door, labor and delivery nurses who count fingers and toes, NICU nurses who watch monitors fade.

The book reflects what they all know to be true and what they all wish someone had taught them. It is the only bereavement doula training resource of its kind because it was the only way to write one honestly.

“You don’t need to be wise. You need to be trained. Wisdom is what training looks like once it has become instinct.”

Approved & complete

Sixteen CEUs. Companion workbook.

ICEA approval

16 Continuing Education Units

Approved by the International Childbirth Education Association for 16 CEUs toward Doula Recertification. The book is the curriculum — complete the workbook to claim the credit.

Companion workbook

The Bereavement Doula Workbook

Reflection prompts, self-assessment, case studies, and the CEU completion documentation. Designed to be worked through alongside the main text.

Get the workbook — $9.99 →

The Bereavement Doula.

Anyone called to show up with skill, not just sympathy.

Every kind of loss, every kind of room.

Built with the people who do this work.

Sixteen CEUs. Companion workbook.

16 Continuing Education Units

The Bereavement Doula Workbook

Skill, not just sympathy.

The other three books.

Anyone called to show up with skill, not just sympathy.

Every kind of loss, every kind of room.

Built with the people who do this work.

Sixteen CEUs. Companion workbook.

16 Continuing Education Units

The Bereavement Doula Workbook

Skill, not just sympathy.

The other three books.

The Data Driven Doula

The EVERYTHING Guide

The Pocket Doula