Birth Matters

Scharisse felt like she was getting lackluster care in her pregnancy at a hospital under Medicaid but thought she just had to deal. She was being told she should just schedule a cesarean because of her age and being overweight, and it didn’t sit right with her. Then one day, when she was around 30 weeks pregnant, she encountered a doula who encouraged her that she deserves to have respectful care and a great birth. This empowered her to switch to giving birth at home -- something she never thought someone on Medicaid could do, thanks to some flexibility on the part of her midwives and a community birth fund. She shares today about the radically better, deeply respectful care she received when she switched to working with homebirth midwives and doulas and details specific ways in which she felt heard and safe.

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Actor-singer Aimée discovers she’s pregnant right after her and her husband’s honeymoon, which they returned from just before the pandemic shutdown and experiences both a healthy pregnancy but also sadness of not being seen by friends or family throughout her pregnancy. Today Aimée will share her baby's birth story in which she intentionally labors at home for a good, long time and then gives birth in a Manhattan hospital with the support of her husband and doula and without pain medications. Despite the fact that she had a great birth, you’ll hear how she began experiencing postpartum anxiety & depression around 4 weeks out from birth, how the anxiety skyrocketed around 6 weeks when her son became colicky and began having long crying spells, and how critically helpful it was when she sought out a therapist at the Motherhood Center who specializes in the perinatal period.

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Sasha planned to give birth with a midwife and developed a birth plan for a peaceful, unmedicated birth. Some of her plans necessarily go out the window when, at 37 weeks Sasha is diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and has to immediately come to the hospital in the snow to be induced for the safety of her and her daughter. This story will help expectant parents think through their choices in care providers both in pregnancy as well as for baby, and also drives home the value of hiring a doula.

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Today Emily shares her two pregnancy stories and a birth story. First, she describes experiencing pregnancy loss at 11 weeks. It surprises her when the grief was longer-lasting and more complex than she expected, but shares the essential support she discovered to help her through the journey of loss. Then Emily tells the story of conceiving her rainbow baby shortly after the Covid-19 shutdown and the many ways she and Scott prepared for giving birth, including hiring a team of 2 virtual doulas. She provides detailed strategies that helped her have the kind of birth she had hoped for (an unmedicated vaginal birth), including not only support from her husband, virtual doulas and nurses, but also laboring at home for most of labor, experimenting with a variety of positions, music, hydrotherapy, and more.

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So it was a very stressful situation to be sent to the hospital and be told if you can't get your blood pressure down, you're being induced today. It's sort of the worst thing you could tell somebody who's trying to -- but what I found was I would put my headphones on, I would lie down on my left side and I would start to listen to my Hypnobirthing  tape and I would just really focus on the relaxation and my breathing. And my blood pressure numbers would just drop. And they would come in and sort of shake their heads and say, "Okay, I've never seen this work before, but I guess you can go home." And this actually happened a couple of times. It was really instructive to me to see how that kind of relaxation and breathing could affect my body in these really significant ways. And honestly it gave me a lot more practice too, for the hypnobirthing techniques.

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What happens when you grow your family from an only child to two children? Today Danuta & Jacek share two birth stories -- one hospital birth with an obstetrician and one birthing center birth with a midwife, both so fast they barely make it to the birthplace in time. They compare and contrast the two birthing environments and care provider models, which will be helpful for anyone trying to make these choices before or during pregnancy. You’ll note that last week’s and this week’s episode titles both center on grief. Grief is a necessary process in any life change, and all kinds of grief can be challenging. Last week you heard about grief of losing a parent whereas this week you’ll hear a mother describe the surprising sadness she experienced toward the end of her second pregnancy as well as into postpartum in the transition from having just one child to focus on to having to divide attention between two. You’ll hear how important support was for Danuta as she expresses gratitude for the ways in which her doula and fellow moms normalized and validated her feelings of grief along the way.

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Today Sarah & Steve share their daughter Molly’s birth story as a special way to celebrate and honor her on her 13th birthday, which is the day this story is airing. It’s a story of an unmedicated vaginal birth at home with a homebirth midwife in Brooklyn. Interesting, perhaps, to note that Molly has recently become interested in becoming a midwife and has listened to every single episode of this podcast! Sarah shares how giving birth and becoming a mother stirred up a new wave of grief over the loss of her mother, which was about 7 years before she became a mother. This sharing was also a special way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of losing her mother as it was recorded the day after it. She’ll mention a couple of things that happened during pregnancy that seemed like messages sent from her mother. As a professional in literacy as well as an anti-racist educator, Sarah provides a number of great book recommendations, including the recommendation to expose little ones to diversity and representation in books that you read to them as early as possible.

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Today Simone Toomer joins us again to share her second baby’s birth story. Simone is a Black perinatal professional who serves birthing folks and families in a number of capacities, but at this point in time is mostly focusing on supporting nursing parents. In today’s story she shares how she again chose a Black support team and how her decision to give birth at home was a very logical choice following attending many births as a doula in various birth settings after her first baby’s birth. Simone had a quick first birth, and this one is even shorter, lasting only a couple of hours from her noticing the first labor contraction to meeting her son. She then shares being surprised by some of the breastfeeding challenges she experienced with her 2nd, since her first experience had been much easier. She explains how taking her son for bodywork and then getting his tongue tie released made all the difference. Simone also details some of how the challenges she experienced inform the professional lactation support she provides now, and talks again about the nursing support groups she’s doing for nursing parents who identify as Black through Chocolate Milk Cafe as well as for all nursing parents with La Leche League.

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What happens when you’ve planned a peaceful, undisturbed birthing center birth but are diagnosed at 37 weeks with a rare form of preeclampsia called HELLP Syndrome? Jennifer shares how this unexpected news threw her for a loop but how she calmly drove herself to the hospital to check in for an induction in which she had the pressure of needing to give birth within a few limited hours or else a cesarean would be necessary. Tune in to hear how uncharacteristically efficient Jennifer’s labor was and how ready for giving birth her body and baby were. She also shares the number of ways she prepared for giving birth in light of her background as a clinical nutritionist, postpartum chef and yoga teacher with training as a doula.

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 In this last episode in our fertility journey series, we share a fertility journey story (2, actually), that may be particularly useful for folks who identify as queer and who are on the TTC path. Trigger alert: pregnancy loss is mentioned in this episode.

Ashley tells her and her wife’s story of overlapping pregnancies via IVF using 1 anonymous sperm donor for both of them so their children could be genetically half-siblings. Ashley’s pregnancy followed enduring 6 failed IUI’s, a 7th IUI that resulted in an ectopic pregnancy as well as one IVF transfer that resulted in an early miscarriage at 5 weeks. Her wife conceived via IVF on the first try following 6 failed IUIs and in Ashley’s 3rd trimester of pregnancy. Ashley details some the research she needed to do in order to advocate for herself, the benefits of acupuncture, and the valuable community she discovered as well as family support she and her wife had. She also reflects on aspects of the emotional journey & mindset shifts she needed to make for this journey to meet their daughter, Ava, to feel like a successful and positive one. 

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