Doulas of the SB

I do not like leaving a bad review about someone’s business but I don’t want Any new parents to go through what my wife and I did. We are new parents to twin boys that are now 7 ½ months old. My wife and I were nervous about having our first child let alone twins so we thought that if we had a doula she would help and teach us the basics of parenthood and help and comfort my wife after having the babies. Little company of Mary hospital in torrance recommended Doulas of the South Bay. I thought I did enough research but I did not. We hired a Doula named Rena Koerner. She has all the paper work and write ups to sound legit and professional, she is even the president of «Doulas of Southern California «, but she is anything but honest and helpful.
Again, I don’t like saying this about a person but my wife and I don’t want any other scared new parents to get taken advantage of like we did. Long story short… $ 35 an hour, makes you sign a contract for minimum of 2 weeks to lock you in. After 2 visit I knew we had been had. She did nothing to comfort my wife, gave us very little knowledge of how to care for a baby. She would come to our house, put the babies to sleep, and just sit there.
$ 35 an hour, 4 hours a day, 4 days a week for three weeks.
She would not let us stop her visits because the contract that she said was just a formality and she was very flexible turned out to be not so flexible. She said she would not come the third week if I paid her cash in full for a day and a half but her not actually come to work. I thought that it was a good option but she knew what what she was doing because it says in her contract that the $ 200 deposit that you have to give her upfront is refunded or deducted from the final week of service. Since there would be no final week of service, there was no deduction. When I realized what had happened I contacted her and she said she felt she deserved to keep the deposit and would not refund it to me. So in total it almost equaled out to the total of her third week of work but she didn’t have to actually come to the house and earn it.
It is obvious that she has done this other times to other new inexperienced parents like us. No guilt or apology, just happily took our money for little to no service at all.
Please, please think twice about getting a Doula. And definitely do more research than I did. I was fooled by all the fake reviews and all her certifications that made her look professional. The only thing she was professional about was how to commit fraud and rob two new parents of over $ 1000+.
We hope this review helps people that are soon to be parents.