Erykah Badu trains to be a midwife
Erykah Badu is working towards becoming a midwide after becoming a birth doula and helping to deliver babies in her spare time.
The Bag Lady singer and mother of three first realised her medical calling in 2001, after helping her best friend have a natural birth.
She tells People magazine: "I've always had a mothering nature. But I didn't plan on becoming a doula. I just wanted to care for my family and friends.
"When I saw the baby, I cried. I knew what I was supposed to do with my life."
Badu began reading up on the job more and has now been offering her service as a support coach for years.
She helps mums-to-be relax and maintain their health by giving them massages and practising stree reduction technique Reiki, while she also helps calm her patients during labour.
The soul icon offers her services for free, has since become a spoksewoman for the Internation Center for Traditional Childbearing and she is now aiming to get her professional certificate so she can open birthing centers in inner cities in the future.
She reveals that her patients call her 'Erykah Badoula' and insists 'nothing gives me more pleasure' than assisting anaesthesia-free briths.
Badu has a 13-year-old son, named Seven, with Outkast star Andre 3000, as well as two daughters - Puma, seven, and Mars, two - from her relationships with rappers The D.O.C. and Jay Electronica, respectively.
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