Having a baby can be the most joyful experience in a woman’s life—or the most frightening, if she doesn’t have someone to guide her through it.

Natividad Medical Center is hoping to fund a team of on-call doulas to provide non-medical support for laboring mothers, especially those who arrive at the hospital alone or seem unsure how to get through labor.

“Our goal is to provide a service for moms who have either no support or little support in the birthing rooms,” says Judy Rasmussen, Natividad’s director of women and children’s services. “There are a lot of moms who really need that psychological and emotional support.”

A doula tends to a mother’s physical and mental comfort during labor, and also helps her breastfeed and deal with post-partum depression after delivery.

If Natividad is able to secure the funding through grants and donations, the program’s first phase would provide six certified, on-call doulas for women in need.

In the second phase, those doulas would train “culturally competent” women, particularly those in the indigenous Triqui community, to serve patients struggling with language and cultural barriers.

At Natividad, where about 240 babies are delivered per month and doula services cost about $500 per delivery, $25,000 would probably cover the program’s first year, according to Jennifer Williams of the Natividad Medical Foundation.

The program would also help compensate underpaid doulas. “Many times doulas will volunteer their services,” says Carol Jungwirth, a registered nurse and director of the Community Doula Network. “We envision a program where these doulas are paid for the time that they are there.”

Rasmussen hopes to have the program in place by next spring.