I'm 100% certain I want to have a doula, but I'm not sure what i want to do about it. My hospital/midwife practice offers free doula services from (certified) volunteer doulas. The problem is that there are limitations. They're only there at the hospital, so I wouldn't have the help laboring at home. They also don't guarantee anyone will be available, though apparently it's pretty unlikely there wouldn't be? But I'm not sure how they handle it if there are several women in labor at the same time. And most importantly to me, you don't get to meet any of them ahead of time. Oh, and it's dumb, but they wouldn't count as one of my 2 people allowed with me, and I was hoping to use that as my reason why my mom couldn't be there. (To help keep her feelings from being hurt that I don't want her there.)

Do you think it's worth the expense of hiring one privately, rather than risk having someone I don't like or not having one at all (and not have one at home, which I had hoped for because I'd like to labor at home as long as possible)? I *really* want to at least try my best for a non-medicated birth, and a doula would help a lot. DH will balk at the cost though, if there's one for free available, so I need to decide how strongly I feel about it, and get my reasoning straight before we discuss it. Any thoughts are welcome!