Latest / MyMaine Birth / 118. MyMaine Birth: Navigating Birth in Rural Maine, Amelia's two Cesarean Stories

Transcript

118. MyMaine Birth: Navigating Birth in Rural Maine, Amelia's two Cesarean Stories · MyMaine Birth

• 0:00
  Amelia: I started to feel the lack of care, like just the lack of support from my community, and I started to have just the thoughts of like what I was going to do about my daughter if I did need to receive care from someone.
• 0:17
  Amelia: I also just felt like I should know.
• 0:19
  Amelia: I should know who is the one who's in charge of seeing all the pregnant women in the county, because it's the only hospital in the county right now and, gosh, it's terrible in my opinion.
• 0:30
  Amelia: I mean, there's people who, there's some people who like the care there, but at the end of the day, every woman I know who's given birth there has felt robbed.
• 0:42
  Angela: I'm Angela and I'm a certified birth photographer, experienced doula, childbirth educator and your host here on the my Maine Birth podcast.
• 0:51
  Angela: This is a space where we share the real life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine, from our state's biggest hospitals to birth center births and home births.
• 1:03
  Angela: Every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated.
• 1:07
  Angela: Whether you're a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you.
• 1:16
  Angela: Welcome back.
• 1:18
  Angela: This is episode 118.
• 1:22
  Angela: Today's birth story guest is Amelia, and she's here to share her two cesarean birth stories with us.
• 1:28
  Angela: The first was at MDI Hospital and the second was at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
• 1:35
  Angela: Amelia shares about the challenges of being pregnant and giving birth while living in an area of Maine with very little options for maternity care, especially for families who don't have the funds to travel often.
• 1:51
  Angela: Amelia was considering a free birth for her second birth, in part because of the lack of options in the rural community of Down East Maine.
• 1:56
  Angela: I had the honor of walking alongside her and her family as they navigated the end of her second pregnancy.
• 2:04
  Angela: At around 42 weeks, amelia decided to head into Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor for more support and we talk about how nobody should be shamed for making that decision.
• 2:14
  Angela: And there are a growing number of women out there in birth communities these days who have taken the popular free birth programs and have essentially been manipulated by leaders in this community to think it's okay to shame other women for seeking support when they're truly wanting or needing more support.
• 2:34
  Angela: And as much as I absolutely fully respect a woman's right to birth however she chooses, I am not cool with shaming women for seeking professional support.
• 2:45
  Angela: I actually have a lot more to come on this topic very soon, but for now let's get into Amelia's story.
• 2:52
  Angela: Hi, amelia, welcome to my Main Birth.
• 2:56
  Angela: Hello.
• 2:57
  Angela: So to get started, will you share a little bit about you and your family?
• 3:09
  Amelia: started.
• 3:09
  Amelia: Will you share a little bit about you and your family?
• 3:10
  Amelia: Yeah, so my name is Amelia and I live in Machias, maine, with my family, with my husband Will and my daughter Serafina and my son Preston, and we've been up in the county for a few years.
• 3:20
  Amelia: I'm originally from California and my husband is from around here in Cutler, and we just bought a house here.
• 3:28
  Angela: So to get into your birth stories, will you share about how you found out you were pregnant for the first time and what were your thoughts in choosing your care?
• 3:39
  Amelia: Yeah, so the first time that I found out I was pregnant was in the fall of 2020, which was a bit of a funny year, as people remember.
• 3:49
  Amelia: I found out I was pregnant and this was four years after an ayahuasca ceremony where I met my daughter.
• 3:57
  Amelia: In the ceremony she came in like the spirit world and she told me her name was Serafina and that she needed to be born.
• 4:05
  Amelia: And I spent four years trying to figure out, all right, how do we get her here?
• 4:09
  Amelia: And it wasn't until 2020 that things really aligned for that and I found out I was pregnant and we were living with our landlady and it was really, you know, not the most comfortable situation, but we kind of we had her blessing.
• 4:24
  Amelia: It was a weird time for everyone and she knew that we were in love, we wanted to have a baby and we were just going to figure it out because the baby wanted to be here and I found out I was pregnant.
• 4:37
  Amelia: I didn't really want to deal with doctors.
• 4:38
  Amelia: I really felt like, all right, if God wanted me to have this baby, then I might not need doctors, kind of how I felt.
• 4:44
  Amelia: But I did miscarry that pregnancy at eight weeks, which was intense for me because I was so convinced that my baby wanted to be here that I had a hard time accepting that.
• 4:56
  Amelia: And I did go to the hospital.
• 5:01
  Amelia: It's kind of where I realized that, while the baby wanted to be here, that we I was dealing with a lot of obstacles and we didn't have a car A neighbor was took me to the hospital and and I and I felt good there it was MDI hospital when they were, when they were taking labor and delivery, and so the miscarriage for me felt like it guided me to be more okay, accepting medical care and just accepting that maybe that was the path that was going to take to get my daughter here.
• 5:32
  Amelia: I did end up getting pregnant again immediately after the miscarriage.
• 5:38
  Amelia: I found out I was pregnant after I had come home from another ayahuasca ceremony in Massachusetts.
• 5:45
  Amelia: I was really heartbroken from the miscarriage.
• 5:48
  Amelia: I felt confused.
• 5:49
  Amelia: I felt like like, uh, just a doubt that my vision was real and that was a real situation for me, because my family didn't really.
• 6:00
  Amelia: They thought I was crazy, like a lot of people thought I was crazy.
• 6:04
  Amelia: I had just graduated from college and it took a lot of work to do that, because part of my path in college was writing a book about that experience, and I had to face a lot of flack from faculty and just people who thought that I was crazy for believing that there was the spirit of a baby that wanted to be born.
• 6:25
  Amelia: So I felt like a lot of confrontation.
• 6:29
  Amelia: I felt like, okay, maybe I'm just crazy.
• 6:31
  Amelia: But so I went back down to my church in Massachusetts and it was a healing ceremony.
• 6:38
  Amelia: It was still during COVID and some of the people were wearing masks and it was a little challenging, but it brought me a lot of peace in my body.
• 6:47
  Amelia: And then the next day I visited my friend just a little bit away from there.
• 6:55
  Amelia: She was on her way home and that's when I started feeling that I was pregnant again.
• 7:02
  Amelia: And it's kind of like in retrospect, I think that my daughter wanted a little bit of ayahuasca in her system at the very start of the pregnancy.
• 7:12
  Amelia: That was good for her because that was part of her origin story too.
• 7:15
  Amelia: So I ended up taking a test at some point when I got home, but I did feel it already and that just confirmed it for me.
• 7:25
  Amelia: We were very excited and we both felt it because I was out of breath again very quickly and you know, a couple of weeks later, the vomiting was soon to follow.
• 7:41
  Angela: Yeah, so how were you feeling throughout her pregnancy?
• 7:43
  Angela: Yeah, so how were?
• 7:45
  Amelia: you feeling throughout her pregnancy.
• 7:46
  Amelia: The first trimester I threw up a lot.
• 7:49
  Amelia: I specifically remember craving boxed ramen and this was for both of my pregnancies.
• 7:57
  Amelia: I hate that nasty boxed package ramen but for some reason in pregnancy is all I wanted.
• 8:04
  Amelia: I think the salt content maybe was really helpful.
• 8:08
  Amelia: But I definitely threw up like every day, almost maybe every other day, and it was hard to keep things down.
• 8:16
  Amelia: There was a lot of emotional turmoil.
• 8:19
  Amelia: We were living out in Southwest Harbor on MDI and we didn't have a car and it was COVID and we were really not sure how things were going to evolve.
• 8:29
  Amelia: My landlady was with us for half of the pregnancy and then she just decided I think she had a son out in Texas and halfway through the pregnancy she was like I'm going on a road trip, I'm going to leave you guys to.
• 8:43
  Amelia: This was like I'm going on a road trip, I'm going to leave you guys to this.
• 8:49
  Amelia: So we luckily it worked out in our favor that we were and she took her like little yappy Yorkie dogs and her parrot, her talking parrot.
• 8:55
  Amelia: So we had a little bit of peace for the end of the pregnancy there.
• 9:02
  Amelia: I don't remember too much about the appointments, just that I went to every one.
• 9:06
  Amelia: I was like just like I think I felt like, okay, if I was going to take medical care, I was just going to do it and do the tests.
• 9:15
  Amelia: And I worked with two of the OBs in MDI hospital.
• 9:20
  Amelia: It was Dr Gassman and Dr I don't remember her last name, but I know it was Tiana and actually in the beginning I had a different OB in Southwest Harbor and then she left to go do some training in Portland but she ended up being back for the birth, oddly, like by surprise.
• 9:40
  Amelia: So it was a lot of different women involved in my care and I felt good about them.
• 9:48
  Amelia: I did look for a midwife in the beginning.
• 9:50
  Amelia: We interviewed Julie Havner and it just didn't feel like the right fit, I think, with COVID, with how COVID was, I felt more comfortable giving birth in a hospital than feeling like I needed to wear a mask in the house.
• 10:08
  Amelia: And there was the aspect of that time as well where our landlady though she wasn't there at the end of the pregnancy, she had been clear with me that she was not comfortable with a home birth and while it wasn't her body, it was her house and I definitely felt like there was a territorial conflict in my body where it just made me feel nervous to like go behind her back and like do it anyway, and and part of that was because her daughter-in-law had had a stillbirth at 21 weeks just the year before in Texas.
• 10:47
  Amelia: That's the woman who she went to go see, so so it was like there was real trauma that was very fresh in her memory and I yeah, I think in my head I was like well, that's not going to happen to me, but like well, that's not gonna happen to me, but um, but it was real for her and I did respect that um and I took that to heart, yeah.
• 11:11
  Angela: So how were you feeling about your appointments?
• 11:12
  Angela: Um, as things kind of progressed, for my appointments.
• 11:18
  Amelia: I think I just it was like I did well in high school because I was good at following rules and I just felt like I was good at following rules and I just felt like I was good at the appointments too, like I just showed up and I got rides from like random neighbors and people we were making friends with in the area.
• 11:34
  Amelia: I just don't remember a lot.
• 11:38
  Amelia: I remember feeling good about them.
• 11:39
  Amelia: I definitely preferred Tiana to Dr Gassman and I don't exactly remember.
• 11:49
  Amelia: Well, I remember that by the end of the pregnancy, like we did a practice cervical check, which didn't hurt and was fine with Tiana, and then, when it came time for the actual birth, dr Gassman gave me a cervical check.
• 12:09
  Amelia: That was actually the most painful part of the labor and delivery process for me and it was really bewildering for me because I had just had the experience with Tiana where, like it didn't hurt, and so that kind of that was frustrating because I feel like I had an experience where I realized that it didn't have to hurt and I think that there are some OBs that are just way more rough and or not as sensitive to mother's bodies than others, so which gives cervical checks a bad rap, um, when, yeah, obviously they're like they're.
• 12:49
  Angela: I think they're overdone, but um, yeah, so how are the final weeks looking leading up to when your labor started?
• 12:59
  Angela: What was kind of going on for you?
• 13:03
  Amelia: I was really nervous because I had planned with my parents that my parents were going to come and visit after the birth and I was convinced that I was going to go early which.
• 13:14
  Amelia: I think a lot of mothers can, like they agree, they just want to get it out of the way, or like they don't want to deal with, like the waiting, the waiting room of goingdates, or feeling like it's taking forever.
• 13:28
  Amelia: So I had, my mom had, booked a flight from California at 42 weeks, which we had agreed would be like a good time, and I wish I hadn't done that and I wish I hadn't done that.
• 13:47
  Amelia: That was me being a little bit naive, admittedly to that and how that was going to affect my process.
• 13:54
  Amelia: So I remember getting really anxious, around 41 weeks or so, to my guesses, and it was pretty easy to figure out when I had conceived, just because of how the miscarriage had happened, and I was measuring like I believe I think I conceived just like two weeks immediately after the miscarriage.
• 14:14
  Amelia: I believe, from what I tabulated in my head, it was around after I felt like I was going after 40 weeks that I started throwing up again.
• 14:25
  Amelia: I had gotten relief in the second and third trimester and then it was after the fact that I started throwing up again.
• 14:33
  Amelia: It was frustrating because I didn't have a car.
• 14:35
  Amelia: Well, actually, no, by then we did get the car.
• 14:39
  Amelia: We got my grandfather's minivan got.
• 14:42
  Amelia: My dad shipped it out from California for us because we kind of were just, I think, my parents.
• 14:49
  Amelia: They thought I was crazy for having my like ayahuasca vision baby.
• 14:53
  Amelia: But then they were like, all right, we're going to have to take care of this baby.
• 14:57
  Amelia: And we had it was it had been my car and then I had had to give it back to them.
• 15:00
  Amelia: I drove across the country and give it to them and my dad shipped it back to them.
• 15:04
  Amelia: I drove across the country and give it to them and my dad shipped it back years later.
• 15:06
  Amelia: So we did have the car, but I was still nervous about getting to the hospital in time.
• 15:10
  Amelia: Will was like working up to the point where whenever I was going to go into labor, so sometimes he was gone and I just didn't know how things were going to work.
• 15:19
  Amelia: I was dealing with some anxiety from like in the COVID period where I was, uh, I twice passed out, um, which isn't something that's normal for me, but I I definitely felt like I was facing some inner spiritual and psychic turmoil where I like fainted twice that year and I think I was just nervous that something was going to happen and nobody was going to be there.
• 15:49
  Amelia: So after 41 weeks I was driving home from dropping Will off at a painting job and I was trying to get home but I was not able to in time enough before I like vomited all over myself in the car and I cried so hard when I got home, because I felt so disgusting and so out of control and just like tense, really tense.
• 16:22
  Amelia: Just you know, I was in a house where the woman who, like it, was her house, I just felt like there was nowhere I could go and feel safe, like dropping in, and so I told the doctors that I wanted an induction because I just needed the space and the setting to kind of get into the journey of labor, and I do feel like that was the right choice for me.
• 16:48
  Amelia: I think I also felt like I needed to get the baby out before my mom got there, and that was also real, but it did feel like it was time to try and do something because I could tell that my body and the tension was not helping me progress at home, and yeah, so I went in around 41 weeks and that was when I had that cervical check that like just felt like RAPE.
• 17:20
  Angela: Yeah like.
• 17:21
  Amelia: It brought back a lot of memories.
• 17:23
  Amelia: It was really intense.
• 17:24
  Amelia: It was July and I remember watching like on the TV in the hospital all the news about the giant wildfires in California, which is part of why I ended up a lot in that hospital.
• 17:35
  Amelia: But I had the cervical check with that OB and I was just like there was no way my body like really closed up.
• 17:54
  Amelia: So we did like an overnight with Cervidil or something and I wish I hadn't felt like I needed to do that, but I did, but it didn't take.
• 18:04
  Amelia: And after the cervical check I was like I'm going home, I'm leaving Like hello nurses, hello doctors, I'm not progressing, so I'm going to go home.
• 18:16
  Amelia: And nobody fought me on it.
• 18:18
  Amelia: So I did go home.
• 18:19
  Amelia: They felt comfortable with me doing that too.
• 18:22
  Amelia: And I went home for I think it was two or three nights and the OB was like you'll be back like tomorrow because something's going to happen.
• 18:32
  Amelia: And it didn't.
• 18:34
  Amelia: And I was yeah, I was just.
• 18:35
  Amelia: I was definitely in a high stress state where I wasn't comfortable wherever I was.
• 18:39
  Amelia: I felt I really felt like deep down my intuition felt like she wanted to be born out in California, but it was on fire and I was not.
• 18:52
  Amelia: I didn't have a place where I felt comfortable being out there, and that was unfortunate.
• 18:56
  Amelia: I felt like I kind of was in an impossible scenario where my body was not able to be in the place that it wanted to be for the birth and yeah, so I ended up going back in and I we took induction medicine again.
• 19:14
  Amelia: I think it was a Thursday morning, so it was a few days after that first try.
• 19:18
  Amelia: We were getting closer to 42 weeks and and that time it did take and I and I was like I was experiencing contractions and stuff at home, but nothing that was progressing anywhere.
• 19:31
  Amelia: But it took there and and it was, it was really intense.
• 19:35
  Amelia: I remember feeling just like that.
• 19:39
  Amelia: It was the worst pain in my life and that was just the real feeling of what it was.
• 19:45
  Amelia: But I had Will was there, I had support.
• 19:50
  Amelia: I then that day found out that my grandmother had passed away while I was in the hospital in active labor and it felt like this weird cosmic joke.
• 20:06
  Amelia: That was not funny.
• 20:09
  Amelia: I mean, she had fallen down the stairs and and died from complications surrounding that injury.
• 20:15
  Amelia: Um, so my parents had planned on coming on that saturday and my dad had to fly out to Chicago to go and figure out the arrangements for her body and then fly back and then fly back to Maine and then fly out to Maine because the airlines couldn't get it together.
• 20:35
  Amelia: Yeah, that was a really significant turning point.
• 20:39
  Amelia: The labor medicine took at the same time that she passed away and I believe I do believe that, like her soul, it was almost like she let go to help my daughter be born in a way that is hard to think about, but, yeah, I believe that.
• 21:00
  Amelia: So we ended up giving her middle name my grandmother's name, loretta.
• 21:05
  Amelia: I was going to give her my middle name and I couldn't.
• 21:09
  Amelia: It was too clear that I needed to honor my grandmother after that and it set everything into an extra heightened emotional state for my parents and myself and just a turbulent time.
• 21:27
  Amelia: I was in labor for a while.
• 21:28
  Amelia: Mdi hospital was really.
• 21:31
  Amelia: They're very patient.
• 21:33
  Amelia: They were very patient and they wanted to make sure that my autonomy was generally honored by then.
• 21:40
  Amelia: It was the OB that I had had in the beginning, I think Dr Price.
• 21:46
  Amelia: Her name was Grace and I liked her.
• 21:49
  Amelia: Tiana completely disappeared, which was sad because I liked her the best, and she disappeared.
• 21:54
  Amelia: She wasn't there the whole time that I was there, but I was more comfortable with Dr Price and I remember that it got to be maybe Saturday morning, so it had been a full week of being in and out of labor and really in some moderate form of labor and I was really tired.
• 22:19
  Amelia: I was so tired and by then I had ended up getting an epidural during certain points of where the pain became too much.
• 22:31
  Amelia: And unfortunately, I remember like the epidural gave me a whole lot of relief and my brain was so scared for it to wear off because at that hospital they weren't trying to keep the epidural pumping.
• 22:46
  Amelia: It was very much like you get to have it for one block and then we'll see which.
• 22:53
  Amelia: I don't know how everybody does it, but I was so nervous because I knew I wasn't going to be able to get it again and I was having a really, really difficult time with the pain and I was having a really really difficult time with the pain.
• 23:03
  Amelia: So I remember that being very stressful for me then and I did end up dilating to 10 by Saturday morning and I remember pushing, feeling like very relieving when I got to the pushing stage.
• 23:19
  Amelia: I felt a lot of relief and comfort in that stage and it was a peaceful place to be in.
• 23:26
  Amelia: But I was pushing for, I think, six hours and they weren't messing with me because her heart rate was good and I remember being on my hands and knees on the hospital bed and that was the only position that was comfortable, but I was not progressing at all.
• 23:47
  Amelia: So it was six hours of pushing.
• 23:49
  Amelia: It felt good like I just couldn't move without feeling pain.
• 23:53
  Amelia: But but if I stayed in that position I was feeling good.
• 23:56
  Amelia: But she wouldn't come down.
• 23:57
  Amelia: And at that point I remember Dr Price coming in and saying that if we couldn't like, she was going to give me more Pitocin and I was so scared of the Pitocin.
• 24:16
  Amelia: The Pitocin is not good, it's not a good thing.
• 24:18
  Amelia: I know that.
• 24:19
  Amelia: I know that it can maybe help people in certain situations, but it was not working for me.
• 24:24
  Amelia: And I looked at her and I said I think we're going to do a C-section, I think we're just going to do it and she's coming right now.
• 24:33
  Amelia: And we did and I definitely was.
• 24:41
  Amelia: I was a male surgeon who we really, we really felt comfortable with and the interesting thing about him I haven't I only saw him that one time but he looked like the twin of the male padrino, the church father of my ayahuasca church, like they looked like twins and that brought so much comfort to me.
• 25:03
  Amelia: I was like, oh, he was like he was from Texas, he was like down from, he was, I think he was.
• 25:09
  Amelia: He had some Mexican ancestry, his name was Jorge and I loved him.
• 25:15
  Amelia: He was so nice, he was very sweet, it was very like holy father, energy, and I felt very safe and protected in His hands.
• 25:25
  Amelia: You know, to the point where my brain was like man.
• 25:28
  Amelia: I should have done this earlier, but the journey was important and she was so puffy.
• 25:36
  Amelia: When she came out she looked huge.
• 25:38
  Amelia: There's a picture where she looks bigger than me.
• 25:41
  Amelia: She was so puffy, yeah and they gave her to Will and he was with her for the first moments of really the first hour or so.
• 25:51
  Amelia: I didn't get to see her, but I was so loopy on the drugs.
• 25:55
  Amelia: I remember just like laughing a lot and making jokes with people and I remember that it felt like it was like this very strange abdominal massage, like it felt good though, which I can't say about my second birth, but it felt like really nice and like we're like in a magical way.
• 26:15
  Amelia: There was a woman who was the anesthesiologist and she was like, yeah, I'm everyone's best friend, but it was.
• 26:24
  Amelia: It was a but.
• 26:25
  Amelia: It was a good experience.
• 26:27
  Amelia: I remember I didn't get her in my arms for at least an hour.
• 26:31
  Amelia: They were wheeling me out of the OR and I remember when they did finally set her on my chest for the first time, that she just immediately jumped on my nipple, like, and I would tell Will, it was like a little baby tiger just jumped on my nipple, like, and I would tell, I told Will, it was like a baby, a little baby tiger just jumped on the nipple and started nursing.
• 26:52
  Amelia: Yeah, I, in light of my c-sections, my nursing journeys have been very smooth.
• 26:57
  Amelia: Um, and that was a reflection of that.
• 27:00
  Amelia: Just, she knew immediately what to do and what she wanted and she got it.
• 27:07
  Angela: Yeah, so how was your postpartum time with her?
• 27:12
  Amelia: Well, my parents arrived the same day that she was born and my mom was so frustrated that she couldn't come and visit in the hospital because of the COVID restrictions and I really needed the space to process everything.
• 27:29
  Amelia: So they got to their little rental and I had, I think well, I think I either had maybe one or two nights there, but my recovery went pretty good.
• 27:41
  Amelia: I remember like there was gas there was a lot of gas there's always gas with the c-section but things were good and neither of my babies had any jaundice issues.
• 27:55
  Amelia: We were always easy to get out.
• 27:57
  Amelia: There was still a lot of shock of like, oh my gosh, that really just happened to me and okay, okay, but the baby's here and it was my whole goal was to just get that spirit baby into my arms and that we would process it all later.
• 28:16
  Amelia: Um, and my parents got there and my mom was so helpful.
• 28:20
  Amelia: She made us a lot of food, bought us a lot of food and was so loving on my daughter and my daughter slept on my dad too.
• 28:31
  Amelia: My dad was processing his mother's death at the same time, so I had compassion for why he was being so quiet, but we did find out a month later after her birth that my dad had been talking to another woman the week he was visiting us, the two weeks he was visiting us and he was in the process of leaving my mom very much by surprise.
• 29:01
  Amelia: And he even told me that month later that he had started talking to this other woman while I was in labor, like while his mom was done, and I I tried to not put condemnation on him right now because I I am learning about where everyone is at on their journey is different from me, but, um, I definitely it was a turbulent time for my family, with great change and things that were kind of going on under the surface that nobody was talking about.
• 29:35
  Amelia: Um, so I think that some pressure from my family definitely influenced my birth.
• 29:42
  Amelia: Um, whether I like that or not, and I I do wish I had done some things differently around that.
• 29:50
  Amelia: I, yeah, it's so hard and I don't know, you know, if that would have like made everything better, you know, but I wish that I had known some things, because I don't think I would have let them into my space had I known that all of that was going on all at once.
• 30:09
  Angela: That's really hard when you have all these external things going on and you're going through all of these really big life changes.
• 30:16
  Amelia: You know in your own personal life yeah, and I think it highlights just like how the birth of a child really can bring out stuff from everybody else.
• 30:27
  Amelia: It shakes things to the surface and, yeah, and you can.
• 30:32
  Amelia: It's hard to ever be really ready for what's going to happen when a baby comes, because it changes things, unfortunately.
• 30:45
  Amelia: I always remember the birth of my daughter coinciding with the divorce of my parents.
• 30:50
  Angela: That's a lot, a lot of process and all of that.
• 30:52
  Angela: Yeah, the divorce of my parents.
• 30:55
  Angela: That's a lot, a lot of process and all of that yeah.
• 30:59
  Amelia: So now, how did you find out you were pregnant for the second time?
• 31:02
  Amelia: Well, with, serafina had just turned two when I found out that we were pregnant with Preston.
• 31:09
  Amelia: We had been open to conceiving for, I think, half a year or so, and it didn't take until after my husband had gotten onto the lobster boat and started lobster fishing.
• 31:19
  Amelia: I think there was like there was this sense that I knew I was having a boy deep down, I knew I had had her and and I had this sense that I was gonna have a boy and name him Preston after my grandfather, my maternal grandfather.
• 31:34
  Amelia: And yeah, Sarah just turned two, conceived just after July I think it must have been August.
• 31:42
  Amelia: I had tests.
• 31:44
  Amelia: I bought like a big bulk pack a while ago and peed on the stink.
• 31:50
  Amelia: But I also knew that I wasn't going to be doing the medical care.
• 31:54
  Amelia: We had moved up from MDI to Washington County, closer to where my husband was from, and the Machias doctor situation did not feel nearly as welcoming to me.
• 32:09
  Amelia: I heard a lot of bad things about Downeast Community Hospital and I also, just from that cervical check experience and the whole birth experience with her, I was just like, well, I know better now.
• 32:23
  Amelia: My parents, like I sabotaged myself in some ways.
• 32:27
  Amelia: I let my family kind of dictate some decisions that I was making subconsciously, and so I felt like, okay, I know better now.
• 32:36
  Amelia: Like I'm not going to deal with all of that, I can do this myself.
• 32:39
  Amelia: So I took the test and then I just dealt with the throwing up.
• 32:44
  Amelia: So I just I went through the whole first trimester and I think I went 20 weeks or so without seeing anybody.
• 32:52
  Amelia: I was throwing up a lot but I was handling it.
• 32:55
  Amelia: I was maybe once every day or so and the best thing for that.
• 33:02
  Amelia: There were some days where I didn't throw up and it was usually the days where I ate moose meat jerky that our friend had hunted and given to us and that was really helpful.
• 33:13
  Amelia: So I'm saying to any Maine moms out there, the moose meat jerky really can keep things down.
• 33:21
  Amelia: At least it did for me.
• 33:23
  Angela: That's really interesting yeah.
• 33:26
  Amelia: And I kept the pregnancy secret from my parents for a while because I was trying, I was still really mad about the divorce and all that.
• 33:39
  Amelia: It had been years, but they were still in the divorce process.
• 33:43
  Amelia: There were a lot of things to do around that and so I just kept things private for a while.
• 33:53
  Amelia: So I just kept things private for a while and but eventually my mom really wanted us to come out to California for Christmas, and we did.
• 34:04
  Amelia: Serafina really wanted to see my mom.
• 34:06
  Amelia: They were in the process of selling my family's home and I wanted Sarah to meet my maternal grandmother, linda, who she's she's in hospice care right now.
• 34:20
  Amelia: So we knew we knew she didn't have too much time and I wanted her to meet my nanny, rosie, who raised me till I was maybe seven.
• 34:30
  Amelia: She was my nanny.
• 34:31
  Amelia: So I I wanted Sarah to see where I had been grown up and even though I had a lot of hard feelings about California and the Bay Area, I was feeling like it was now or never, because the house was going to sell and my mom was going to be downsizing so there wouldn't be room for all of us to come later and then I was going to have another baby.
• 34:53
  Amelia: So I needed to do it then and I'm glad that we did.
• 34:57
  Amelia: Of course, both days I had to go on planes.
• 35:00
  Amelia: I really have been.
• 35:01
  Amelia: I have developed some flight anxiety and I threw up horribly on both days on the plane or on the way home.
• 35:12
  Amelia: I was on the way to the airport.
• 35:14
  Amelia: So it's not something I look forward to doing again soon.
• 35:21
  Amelia: We went to California.
• 35:23
  Amelia: I think I was halfway through the pregnancy and I ended up going to see Jarni maybe a week or two before we went, because I hadn't had any sensations up until then.
• 35:39
  Amelia: And with Sarah, I know, when I was pregnant with her, I felt her at like 12 weeks.
• 35:43
  Amelia: So that was when I got one appointment where I got like an ultrasound.
• 35:50
  Amelia: That was like fairly quick and I wanted to make sure I didn't get on a plane with a dead baby in my belly.
• 35:57
  Amelia: That was really my motivation was like there's no way I'm going out to California not knowing if the baby's alive or dead.
• 36:05
  Amelia: I didn't want to hold the mystery that severely and that's why it was a good experience.
• 36:10
  Amelia: Like Jarni was nice to me and that's why it was a good experience.
• 36:12
  Amelia: Like Johnny was nice to me and she's told me I could have a VBAC if I worked with her.
• 36:20
  Amelia: But I I had already not worked with her for a while with Erin that pregnancy and just didn't quite line up to work with her because she wanted a lot of visits to Ellsworth which I couldn't, I literally couldn't afford.
• 36:35
  Amelia: My husband was on the lobster boat, I didn't have access to the car for huge chunks of time and and I also just didn't feel like I needed it.
• 36:43
  Amelia: I would, it would have strung me out so much.
• 36:45
  Amelia: Um, but you know, I had the ultrasound.
• 36:48
  Amelia: I asked her to just tell me what the sex of the baby was, because I I knew in my heart that it was a boy and she just was like it's a boy and I was like, yeah, I know, so that was it.
• 37:02
  Amelia: I think I went back to her one more time to just like see if care could continue with her and she was really like, well, you need to be going and having these like very frequent appointments and elsewhere.
• 37:17
  Amelia: So I just decided I was not going to do that and planning on birthing at our rental.
• 37:25
  Amelia: We we had moved again.
• 37:27
  Amelia: We we had moved a lot with our daughter.
• 37:31
  Amelia: We were struggling to find sustainable rentals at the time and yeah.
• 37:40
  Amelia: So it was a very hands-off pregnancy and it was good.
• 37:43
  Amelia: I felt healthy during it.
• 37:46
  Amelia: I was looking after my daughter and the puking leveled off like it did with her.
• 37:54
  Angela: So you were choosing self-directed care.
• 37:56
  Amelia: I was choosing self-directed care.
• 37:57
  Amelia: Yeah, I was, and I felt good, engaging as needed, going outside, playing in the snow, going on hikes, and I think I hit 30-something weeks earlier on think I hit 30 something weeks earlier on and then I started feeling like maybe I wanted to introduce myself to an OB at Machias Hospital.
• 38:21
  Amelia: I didn't necessarily feel like things were going wrong, but I started to feel the lack of care, like just the lack of support from my community, and I started to have just the thoughts of like what I was going to do about my daughter if I did need to receive care from someone.
• 38:45
  Amelia: I also just felt like I should know.
• 38:47
  Amelia: I should know who is the one who's in charge of seeing all the pregnant women in the county, because it's the only hospital in the county right now and, gosh, it's terrible in my opinion.
• 38:58
  Amelia: I mean, there's people who, there's some people who like the care there, but at the end of the day, every woman I know who's given birth there has felt robbed and I don't like I don't appreciate that.
• 39:11
  Amelia: So I went I think I was about 34 weeks and I went in to see Dr Christian and he's he's very forthright about what he believes.
• 39:25
  Amelia: I told him I didn't want another ultrasound and that was really frustrating for him.
• 39:30
  Amelia: But I I was like I was 34 weeks, I felt fine, I just wanted to talk and let him know that like I was here being pregnant in Washington County and you know, just in case that he should know who I was and he had like a student with him and I think he was a little extra nitpicky with me because he needed to show the student that I was kind of dumb.
• 39:57
  Amelia: But uh, yeah, I asked him to palpate my belly.
• 40:00
  Amelia: I asked him to like see if he could feel like the, if he could guess like the size or the positioning and and whatnot, and, and he did.
• 40:10
  Amelia: But he did, he, he, he was annoyed, he wanted to use the machine but he did.
• 40:15
  Amelia: And you know what he he could.
• 40:17
  Amelia: He found the head and Preston was breech I, which I hadn't even thought about.
• 40:25
  Amelia: He was like oh, it's a head up baby.
• 40:28
  Amelia: You had a prior C-section and um, and my last she was kind of big.
• 40:36
  Amelia: She was 9 pounds, 10 ounces.
• 40:39
  Amelia: So check in all the boxes.
• 40:42
  Amelia: I also remember like Dr Christian had access to my records from MDI and there was false information on there.
• 40:50
  Amelia: I don't remember exactly, but I think that they were trying to say that I hadn't given birth to like 44 weeks or 43 weeks.
• 41:02
  Amelia: There was like measurements were off For him.
• 41:06
  Amelia: It gave him more ammo to make me look reckless and that was frustrating for me.
• 41:12
  Amelia: And then I couldn't get my hands on those records.
• 41:14
  Amelia: I tried and like they made it really hard for me to see it myself because I wanted to report it.
• 41:21
  Amelia: It was not correct unfortunately that happens all the time, yeah, and it gives the doctors more reason to just treat you like you don't know what you're doing.
• 41:31
  Amelia: I will say that when I left the office he shook my hand.
• 41:37
  Amelia: He told me that if I needed help, that he was going to be there.
• 41:40
  Amelia: He's not a terrible person.
• 41:46
  Amelia: He just told me.
• 41:47
  Amelia: He trained in the Bronx.
• 41:50
  Amelia: He worked with some of the most nutritionally depleted, financially strapped women in low-income New York City and he was traumatized by experiences that he had in the hospital and that was his direct experience.
• 42:07
  Amelia: So I have respect for him.
• 42:08
  Amelia: I just don't think that he was the best option for a lot of women who maybe don't need to be seen as emergencies waiting to happen.
• 42:19
  Amelia: But I kind of felt like Preston in my belly was just telling me.
• 42:23
  Amelia: I felt like he was playing a joke by being breached because he didn't want to be delivered there and by creating such a dramatic situation.
• 42:33
  Amelia: It was like all right, this is not where we're going.
• 42:35
  Amelia: If we needed to go somewhere, um, it kind of made it very clear that that was not an option for me.
• 42:43
  Amelia: Um, and he he was very clear to me that we were just going to schedule a c-section if, if I was going to go there I was like I just I just came to talk, I didn't come to do anything else.
• 42:55
  Amelia: Also, he had plenty of time to turn and, um, they say that they're v-back friendly hospital, but I I don't think that they are at all, and, and part of that is because it is such a small hospital that they can't keep emergency staff on all the time.
• 43:13
  Amelia: So it's not just me, I don't want to just drag Downey's Community Hospital.
• 43:18
  Amelia: They are serving a rural, low-income area, a lot of people who are on government assistance, and they can't keep like, incredibly, how you got a helicopter out of here, man, if it comes down to it.
• 43:33
  Amelia: So I got a better sense of here, man, if it comes down to it.
• 43:35
  Amelia: So, um, but I got a better sense of like, okay, this hospital really is not necessarily equipped for a free birth gone wrong.
• 43:41
  Amelia: And that did put a pit in my stomach because I it just became clear that I couldn't like mess around if I felt like something was off, that that was something I'd have to think about, and I still felt like I was going to just hammer it out at home and things were going to be fine.
• 44:05
  Amelia: I was listening to positive birth stories and just feeling like I had it in the bag and maybe that was to my detriment.
• 44:17
  Amelia: I found women through the Free Birth Society to talk to and just kind of air out my thoughts about things, katie, and being where but, also my friend's sister out in California.
• 44:33
  Amelia: when I had visited I had gone to a like a free birth mom's group in california and I was talking to her too.
• 44:40
  Amelia: I didn't know her very well but she had said maybe she was gonna come out and like be my birth keeper, and she had said she might come out in may to visit her sister Lucy, who is my friend, and I was like all right, but it was not clear in like what timeline.
• 45:00
  Amelia: And then she wanted to go visit her grandma in New York and I wasn't holding my breath for her to come out.
• 45:05
  Amelia: I didn't know her very well and I wasn't sure how much I wanted to associate with women in the free birth society either.
• 45:13
  Amelia: Because the whole event with that for the free birth group it like it was lovely and it was a little off-putting for me because like it kind of went from just celebrating birthing mothers to like one of the moms was talking about how like she would just die in labor if she had to because it was worth it to live like her ancestors and it got kind of like it was a little disturbing for me because as much as I can respect autonomous birth, I just didn't like feel comfortable with that level of commitment to free birth at all costs, and that's I mean.
• 46:01
  Amelia: That is a personal choice for mothers, obviously, but it did highlight where I felt like my limits were.
• 46:11
  Amelia: Also, when I was in California on that trip halfway through the pregnancy, I took my husband and my daughter to a family-friendly ayahuasca ceremony.
• 46:24
  Amelia: I had been to the church once or twice before and I felt comfortable in there.
• 46:29
  Amelia: But it was a beautiful ceremony and I had kind of forgotten about it throughout my pregnancy because I didn't want to think about the message that I had received, which was I have had some very strong experiences with that medicine and it didn't quite touch me that intensely in that time.
• 46:51
  Amelia: In that time I remember feeling a warm hug from Grandmother Ayahuasca and receiving the message that C-sections were really good, and embracing gratitude for that surgery and just what it can create for women and mothers on this earth.
• 47:20
  Amelia: In this time where there is what I would agree is like a degree of spiritual warfare, where we are dealing with more challenges than meet the eye, and physical challenges and tensions from a lot of attacks that are not always visible, it's something that's hard for me to maybe put into words, but, yeah, I had been processing the birth of my daughter and and not wanting a c-section again.
• 47:59
  Amelia: But but the message like from that master plan was that they were a beautiful thing and that they were okay and there was nothing wrong with it inherently.
• 48:09
  Amelia: It was just about how you get to it.
• 48:13
  Amelia: That matters and that's why I did hold out for myself.
• 48:18
  Amelia: It helped me feel more okay, embracing whatever path.
• 48:27
  Amelia: Ultimately that God took me on.
• 48:31
  Amelia: With the birth of Preston, I just knew that I wasn't going back to Machias because I don't want to have a doctor that wants to cut into me so badly.
• 48:41
  Amelia: Right away.
• 48:44
  Amelia: That's a little too eager and I just didn't have faith that a good job was going to be done.
• 48:49
  Amelia: But by the end of that pregnancy I was very frustrated.
• 48:53
  Amelia: I didn't feel like I had a lot of support.
• 48:55
  Amelia: I didn't end up meeting Katie out in Bangor she was busy with her kids, but I went to a mom and baby group in Machias and that's when I met you.
• 49:06
  Amelia: You weren't there, but it was Alana and Kristen that directed me to you and that's kind of when the gears started turning for that birth, because I was already maybe 37 weeks or so and you came up and did a photo shoot for us and our family and we talked about where I was at, and it helped me move a lot of congested energy out of my system.
• 49:36
  Amelia: I was able to really think about what I wanted, what I was okay with, questioning, how committed I was to staying in our rental which was like a trailer that was not holding heat well, with a landlord that we were not always having the best relationship with.
• 49:55
  Amelia: And I had started having nightmares at that point too, where I was on that land and bad things were happening to me, and so I definitely felt like the spiritual warfare element in that birth zone because it just felt like a puzzle that I couldn't piece together and my body was experiencing a lot of tension and I couldn't let go.
• 50:22
  Amelia: And it was after her birth that I had healed a lot of sexual issues and I was accessing really high and euphoric states with that part of my body, which I am still trying to recover.
• 50:41
  Amelia: After that birth I was in a really good spot, I felt like.
• 50:46
  Amelia: And then the nightmares started coming in and everything started shutting down.
• 50:50
  Amelia: Our cat suddenly died and that made me feel like my protector had been taken from me, which I remember.
• 50:59
  Amelia: I was texting the woman from the Free Birth Society out in California my friend's sister and she got really mad at me about like that I was making up that the cat was why I was having trouble getting into it.
• 51:16
  Amelia: It was telling me I was going to sabotage my birth.
• 51:19
  Amelia: And it was a long drawn out message about how I was sabotaging my birth by feeling these feelings and wanting to go, considering considering going in somewhere and talking to somebody.
• 51:33
  Amelia: And I didn't, you know, because I was thinking about going to Ellsworth and talking to somebody, but they were so booked Like I literally couldn't get in to Ellsworth through Jarni at all.
• 51:45
  Amelia: They were too busy and I didn't want to just go see whoever was on call there.
• 51:50
  Amelia: I didn't feel like that was the right move for me.
• 51:52
  Amelia: So I had met you and then we had the photo shoot and you went back home, and that was the right move for me.
• 51:55
  Amelia: So I had met you and then we had the photo shoot and you went back home, and it was the day after that I went into a very strange zone of labor.
• 52:06
  Amelia: I had taken my daughter out somewhere, I do not remember where, and I remember that I was so hungry from being out that I ate a can of sardines that had like some kind of seed oil in them it was like canola oil or something which like normally if I have a little bit of it.
• 52:25
  Amelia: Like I needed to be curled up in child's pose or I was in such pain that I was going to pass out again.
• 52:43
  Amelia: It just it happened very suddenly.
• 52:45
  Amelia: I remember being on the porch in child's pose and trying to call my husband and telling him he needed to get here because I was losing control of my body and I had no help, because I was losing control of my body and I had no help and I was calm.
• 53:00
  Amelia: I was really trying to sink into the calmness but by the end of the evening I started throwing up excessively and experiencing really, really intense pain in my scar, in my cesarean scar, to the point where I really felt like I needed help and I did not know where to go.
• 53:19
  Amelia: I did not want to go to Machias.
• 53:21
  Amelia: We had Will's mom come over and be with my daughter while he held me through all of that.
• 53:28
  Amelia: I was awake pretty much the whole night, throwing up and feeling all of this pain and really trying to move through it and let go.
• 53:38
  Amelia: You know I had read Yolanda's book.
• 53:40
  Amelia: I was trying to like get into the zone, but I couldn't deny what was coming up for me in my body and I remember that morning.
• 53:53
  Amelia: We got through the morning.
• 53:55
  Amelia: I think I was able to sleep for two or three hours and we got up in the morning and I tried to call MDI hospital because that's where I had birthed before.
• 54:06
  Amelia: I knew some of the people.
• 54:08
  Amelia: I tried to call there and see if they would take me and it was a no, which was was fun, and I ended up going all the way to Bangor that day because I I definitely felt like something was wrong.
• 54:21
  Amelia: The level of pain in the scar area specifically was concerning for me.
• 54:27
  Amelia: So we, we all drove down with Will's mother and my daughter because we just didn't know what was going to happen or if they were going to like want to do anything right away or what was going to progress.
• 54:41
  Amelia: By the morning the pain had leveled out a bit.
• 54:44
  Amelia: I remember just craving coconut water and telling you I needed coconut water, which we were eventually able to get before we had it down.
• 54:53
  Amelia: So I was 37 weeks.
• 54:55
  Amelia: We were at the Bangor Northern Lights Hospital I was never been there before um for myself and they monitored me.
• 55:06
  Amelia: They I got, I did get.
• 55:08
  Amelia: I remember I think I had a cervical check twice and they didn't.
• 55:12
  Amelia: They didn't hurt.
• 55:13
  Amelia: I really uh, I really seems to depend on who is trying to give those things.
• 55:22
  Amelia: We stayed there overnight to monitor me because it was unclear.
• 55:29
  Amelia: I think we were kind of thinking well, maybe if we overnighted that my body would go into it.
• 55:33
  Amelia: Maybe if we overnighted that my body would go into it.
• 55:37
  Amelia: But the policy they couldn't offer induction because I was 37 weeks.
• 55:40
  Amelia: They said I could come back in like three days and then they would do it.
• 55:44
  Amelia: And that was kind of a relief for me because I didn't want to make that decision by coercion when I was already in the hospital.
• 55:54
  Amelia: We stayed the night, the pain went away, things kind of leveled out and we went home and I remember being frustrated because I just had I wanted my body to just up and do the thing at that point because it was a scare.
• 56:11
  Amelia: It was scary and it was kind of scary to go back to Washington County where it feels like the options are so limited, after having had that experience happen so suddenly to me, because I just felt the reality of the lack of maternal care in this area very, very starkly, because it's it's a drive to get to Bangor.
• 56:36
  Angela: It's really it's like 86 miles.
• 56:38
  Amelia: It's yeah, it's very far away, yeah for, like for for what happens in labor and what can happen so quickly in labor.
• 56:46
  Amelia: It just um, it was concerning um, but I definitely we kind of all agreed that going to Bangor for that first time it it kind of felt like, you know, in the sense of like all of us being one, like the idea of oneness of all beings, like it was like we were troubleshooting what needed to happen to get the baby here and I was able to allow myself to look at Bangor and I felt comfortable there.
• 57:20
  Amelia: I met a midwife who had done like she had helped a woman do like four VBACs after five C-sections or something crazy like that.
• 57:31
  Amelia: Like there were women there that knew that things were possible in the right circumstances, that you could trust um body and birth to unfold perfectly and and so that was comforting for me, that that, um, it wasn't just people trying to convince me to do this or that.
• 57:54
  Amelia: There was a lot of openness.
• 57:56
  Amelia: Even though I had never been there before and I was there 37 weeks.
• 57:59
  Amelia: Everybody was really nice to me.
• 58:01
  Amelia: You can't just go do weekly or biweekly appointments if you live three hours away, have one car and already have a child.
• 58:11
  Amelia: None of that works or makes sense.
• 58:13
  Amelia: So they were very, very welcoming, and I think they could understand that I was putting a lot of care into my pregnancy.
• 58:21
  Amelia: You know, I got home, though, and I was getting like near daily calls from them where it was like hey, are you coming back?
• 58:28
  Amelia: We want you to come back.
• 58:30
  Amelia: We couldn't induce you two days ago, but now we can.
• 58:34
  Amelia: We couldn't induce you two days ago, but now, but now we can.
• 58:39
  Amelia: Eventually they stopped, and, honestly, in my heart, when I was back home, I really like I wanted to go back.
• 58:42
  Amelia: I wanted to go back.
• 58:44
  Amelia: I felt like I wanted an induction, I wanted to just do it, but in my gut, in my spirit, was, and my baby was saying no, my baby wanted to just stay longer.
• 58:57
  Amelia: I felt that very clearly, but I felt that he guided me there, because eventually, I might need to go back.
• 59:05
  Amelia: So we kind of let that sit in our systems.
• 59:09
  Amelia: My husband and I and we were working with trying to if I was not going to deliver in the rental that my we were going to need to find care for my daughter, and so I kind of forced everything into high gear for organizing and navigating that.
• 59:28
  Amelia: Um and and that was helpful ultimately, I think.
• 59:38
  Amelia: I remember I just I was frustrated, I wanted to go back and I couldn't let myself because I felt like everything was fine but I was chugging like a liter of coconut water every day and I was making sure like I needed to be hydrated.
• 59:54
  Amelia: I felt very fragile but I also felt like I wasn't ready to go back and I was trying to let baby decide and we were in dialogue with each other.
• 1:00:04
  Amelia: We named him after my maternal grandfather and he did a lot of architecture work, I believe he.
• 1:00:16
  Amelia: The joke is that I knew that ultimately he wanted to be born in a hospital because he was a civilized man and my car it was his car that I inherited and I felt like I really had to let his spirit kind of help navigate the birth process for baby Preston Jr, and I remember that he helped with the design and building of a hospital for Native Americans out in New Mexico.
• 1:00:58
  Amelia: It was important for him to give rural communities and communities with no emergency type of medical care that access to care and it felt like it was reflecting in my experience up here of just seeing the importance of that when it is needed.
• 1:01:18
  Amelia: Um, yeah, yeah, I think with with the free birth movement, there's so much disrespect to medical care in general that, um, you know, if people keep that attitude that it's like it's going to be hard to keep the medical care feeling ready and able to even help.
• 1:01:38
  Amelia: It just creates this battle, which I don't think is helpful.
• 1:01:41
  Amelia: And naturally there's good and evil operating in the hospitals and that's part of what the problem is is being able to get what you need through the hospital.
• 1:01:57
  Amelia: So I remember I think through my calculations, I got around to 42 weeks and I was gardening, I was setting up our herb garden and going to the community garden.
• 1:02:11
  Amelia: I was really just trying to immerse myself in the springtime and enjoy what I had of May to get things planted.
• 1:02:21
  Amelia: Eventually I just really felt like I was hitting a point where I needed to make a choice, because I had already been feeling like we were probably going to bank war to have the baby and at a certain point, around 42 weeks, I started just feeling this murky kind of stagnant, stuck energy down in my belly, feel confident staying at our little old dinghy trailer to give birth with my daughter present.
• 1:03:00
  Amelia: I talked to my aunt who you know, had her two beautiful home births out in Oregon, and I remember talking to you about it all too, and try to find my way through it.
• 1:03:14
  Amelia: And try to find my way through it.
• 1:03:19
  Amelia: My home birthing aunt also warned me about the Free Birth Society and told me that it works until it doesn't, and then it's a catastrophic situation that you've got to deal with and you've got to do what you feel like you need to do.
• 1:03:35
  Amelia: And I remember talking to my baby Preston, because I called up Bangor and I told him I was going to come back and that I was going to have that baby, because I was over 42 weeks and you know, I knew that if I got there, that that's what we were going to do.
• 1:03:51
  Amelia: I think I deep down felt like that was kind of what was going to happen, but I still felt stubborn and hopeful also, just that things were still going to work out and that I could manage to have the baby at home.
• 1:04:07
  Amelia: I was trying to stay open to however things were going to unfold and I was listening to my body.
• 1:04:14
  Amelia: And during that month that we were at home, my husband ended up going to the emergency room because he had, like a digestive crisis, medical crisis.
• 1:04:25
  Amelia: He had a medical crisis and he needed to see a doctor and it was a week long of acute symptoms and it just made it feel very clear that our ship was not strong, that we were sailing on and that we were going to need extra help.
• 1:04:44
  Amelia: Luckily his symptoms did pass in time for baby's delivery.
• 1:04:49
  Amelia: But it made it clear that he was not going to be going back on that lobster boat that summer as he wanted to, which was helpful ultimately for having a newborn and helpful for my peace of mind, because there's too many men that are dying on those boats right now.
• 1:05:05
  Amelia: I don't know if you saw the recent news.
• 1:05:08
  Amelia: The Washington County, I think, has lost three men, all fathers, to the ocean this winter.
• 1:05:18
  Amelia: And so it was calming to my peace of mind that he had a medical crisis and he was not going back on that boat.
• 1:05:28
  Amelia: So I had gone to the ER, he had gone to the ER we were all having emergencies to the ER.
• 1:05:39
  Amelia: We were all having emergencies, so I felt like it was of my best interest to plan to go and have the baby.
• 1:05:42
  Amelia: It's a two and a half, I think two hour drive from here to Bangor.
• 1:05:45
  Amelia: I was kind of still hoping that I was going to go into labor.
• 1:05:49
  Amelia: On the drive there I was like maybe, like I kept talking to him, I'm like, come on, let's do it, let's make this happen.
• 1:05:56
  Amelia: We had arranged for my daughter to be with her grandmother and that was helpful.
• 1:06:02
  Angela: You called them ahead of time and told them you were coming in.
• 1:06:04
  Angela: I did.
• 1:06:05
  Amelia: Yeah, I said that we were coming in.
• 1:06:07
  Amelia: I was hoping I was going to go into labor and I didn't and that was okay.
• 1:06:11
  Amelia: Really, I felt like I was kind of seeing everything that was going to unfold before it did and I was at peace with it.
• 1:06:19
  Amelia: I felt like my baby was trying to lead the process and I was okay with that too.
• 1:06:25
  Amelia: I remember that the doctors were offering to induce stel.
• 1:06:32
  Amelia: My tests were showing that I was not in serious stress, which was probably true, but I think I let them do an ultrasound on the baby and they claimed that they saw meconium in the waters, which I didn't get confirmation on.
• 1:06:52
  Amelia: I believe I was far enough along that that was likely and I felt like you know people like to joke that like, oh, the baby was just so happy in there that he didn't want to come out.
• 1:07:03
  Amelia: But I think also it's a reality that, like, some babies might feel too stressed out to come out and that's what I felt was going on, because I felt like that stagnant, murky energy and I I felt like he was stressed out and I felt like he needed some help and I my week-long induction process.
• 1:07:26
  Amelia: I was not prepared to leave my daughter at home for that length of time for an induction process that might not even take.
• 1:07:33
  Amelia: That had caused significant stress on my body the last time I had tried it.
• 1:07:38
  Angela: Back into it, this time with a lot more autonomy and knowledge.
• 1:07:42
  Amelia: Yeah, and just acceptance that the C-section was going to be the right move.
• 1:07:48
  Amelia: But it wasn't really for sure until we just got there.
• 1:07:53
  Amelia: And then I got a text from Will's mom that my daughter had stuck something up her nose and she was in the emergency room up in Magias and she was in the emergency room up in Magias.
• 1:08:07
  Amelia: So all members of our family had emergencies within the same month.
• 1:08:11
  Amelia: It was really kind of comedic in some ways.
• 1:08:17
  Amelia: She was fine, but I could tell that she was stressed out, that I was not there and that had caused her to do something that she normally would not do and that I needed to get home as quickly as I could.
• 1:08:29
  Amelia: So that was really what made me feel like, okay, we're just going to do the C-section right now.
• 1:08:35
  Amelia: They had asked me if I wanted to do it that night or the next day.
• 1:08:37
  Amelia: Like in my heart I was like, oh, I want to have my son on 515 because she was born 717.
• 1:08:45
  Amelia: And it was still 5-14.
• 1:08:46
  Amelia: And I was a little upset.
• 1:08:48
  Amelia: But I knew like, okay, I got to get this baby out right now so I can start healing, so I can get back to my daughter, who's freaking out, whether she knows it or not, they were like.
• 1:08:59
  Amelia: You can come back tomorrow.
• 1:09:03
  Amelia: They said I couldn't stay the night there.
• 1:09:04
  Amelia: I think they just wanted me to get it done that night and you know what I did.
• 1:09:08
  Amelia: And just another comment on like how I know people get frustrated with elective C-sections because it's like not God's timing, it's like you need to let God choose the timing of your birth.
• 1:09:22
  Amelia: And ultimately I chose the timing of my son's birth.
• 1:09:28
  Amelia: You know I had a little bit of pressure from the hospital but I went in and said that this was happening and um, but it just.
• 1:09:37
  Amelia: It ended up turning out that my one of my good friends down in Ellsworth I knew that, we vaguely knew that she was pregnant.
• 1:09:45
  Amelia: We don't see each other too often.
• 1:09:46
  Amelia: I knew she was pregnant too and we had our babies.
• 1:09:50
  Amelia: She was at MDI and I was in Bangor, but we had our babies on the same day, both boys same day, same hour, same within the same hour, on that night of 514.
• 1:10:05
  Amelia: 5, 14 and um and I've been donating so much milk to him for the last 10 months um, so our boys were born, which feels like divine, like god orchestrated, absolutely so.
• 1:10:18
  Amelia: I think there's nuance in like when the babies want to be born and how they make that clear, because it's not always just that labor is initiated and that's how the babies choose to come out.
• 1:10:34
  Amelia: I think that babies do all kinds of things to come out and sometimes they might do things that are not just initiating labor in the straightforward way.
• 1:10:44
  Amelia: Just initiating labor in the straightforward way.
• 1:10:50
  Amelia: I felt like in that 37 week weird labor zone that I was in, it felt like a warning and a way that my son was protecting me by helping me see that I had more options than I felt like I had, because I really just felt like free birth or what like go to Machias, and I really didn't want to do that.
• 1:11:12
  Amelia: So I was glad that I was able to broaden my scope of what was possible, because Bangor felt too far away before then.
• 1:11:14
  Amelia: Yeah, and then I was right near you and we had just got you on board to be my doula, so it was easy for you to come and help deliver me non-hospital food and help me keep my placenta on ice, which was awesome because we really wanted to keep that.
• 1:11:32
  Amelia: And, yeah, and the hospital honored the desire to keep the placenta, which I know at MDI, my emergency C-section with Sarah, they took it away, even though it was on my plan, that I wanted it.
• 1:11:46
  Amelia: I think it was just kind of because it was an emergency.
• 1:11:49
  Amelia: It just nothing went right and I had so many different doctors that no one was keeping track, still messed up.
• 1:11:57
  Amelia: But I was able to keep it in vigor and so to back up just a little bit how was your birth?
• 1:12:05
  Amelia: I had another wonderful surgeon up just a little bit.
• 1:12:09
  Amelia: How was your birth?
• 1:12:10
  Amelia: I had another wonderful surgeon.
• 1:12:11
  Amelia: She was like this older italian woman named dr rinaldi and I liked her.
• 1:12:15
  Amelia: I liked her vibe, she I I remember I was just hanging out on the whenever they would bring in the people like the anesthesiologist came in and the surgeon came in and I I would ask them if they knew what they were doing.
• 1:12:29
  Amelia: I asked everybody I'm like are you good at your job?
• 1:12:31
  Amelia: Because you better be.
• 1:12:33
  Amelia: And then I really thought it was funny.
• 1:12:36
  Amelia: I remember the anesthesiologist told me that he was trained by YouTube University and laughed and I was like, all right, I didn't have quite the same level of an awesome abdominal massage during the C-section, but I remember that Dr Rinaldi was telling me that she was going to make sure I could have many more babies.
• 1:13:01
  Amelia: That is what she said.
• 1:13:02
  Amelia: I did have an easier time walking around afterwards and I know she also told me.
• 1:13:10
  Amelia: She told me that she was going to treat me as if I were her own daughter, and she was.
• 1:13:16
  Amelia: She was very comforting for me, she was very sweet.
• 1:13:20
  Amelia: She wore like she had these beautiful pearl earrings on.
• 1:13:24
  Amelia: I remember that she was.
• 1:13:26
  Amelia: She was small and you know I it's very likely that other people have had bad experiences with her, who knows but in that moment it felt very aligned and I felt connected with her in a positive way, just appreciating that I have had surgeons that have been so kind to me and speaking with me throughout the surgeries instead of to each other about nonsense.
• 1:13:52
  Amelia: So I feel like I have experienced two very beautiful surgeries and I understand where the ayahuasca was trying to show me that all of it can be beautiful if it's, if it's done right and um, and to just have respect for, like, medical advancements that we have been able to achieve and in our world, like we, those things would be so different if we didn't have the capacity to do those kinds of surgeries.
• 1:14:26
  Angela: So so, yeah, and then the and you were also received very positively.
• 1:14:30
  Angela: Yeah, everyone was understanding For the most part.
• 1:14:34
  Amelia: There was one woman I didn't really like, but she didn't stick around for the surgery.
• 1:14:38
  Amelia: I don't think.
• 1:14:38
  Amelia: Yeah, we had some issues with postpartum because we were in a rush to get back to my daughter and they wanted to make sure things were okay, because we were in a rush to get back to my daughter and they wanted to make sure things were okay.
• 1:14:48
  Amelia: I remember having to sign a waiver because I was using the hospital bed to bed share with my son.
• 1:14:52
  Amelia: I wasn't taking Oxycontins, I was feeling comfortable sleeping with him.
• 1:14:57
  Amelia: He did not want to sleep in the receiving basket that they had or whatever.
• 1:15:03
  Angela: So they made you sign a waiver.
• 1:15:04
  Amelia: I had to sign a waiver that, like my son, could pass away because I was choosing to bed share at the hospital, which I respectfully understand.
• 1:15:14
  Amelia: They deal with a lot of all kinds of people and that's just how things are right now with liability issues.
• 1:15:21
  Angela: It's interesting though that they're like just sign this paper and then okay, fine.
• 1:15:24
  Amelia: Yeah, yeah, exactly, which was kind of cool.
• 1:15:27
  Amelia: I also remember that when it was time for us to go, some guy came in and talked to us about some things and made sure we didn't want to circumcise him, you know.
• 1:15:38
  Amelia: But when we said no, he also was very sure that he assured us that it was a cosmetic procedure and that it didn't actually make a difference in in any way, shape or form for hygiene risks, as long as you're cleaning that thing well.
• 1:16:00
  Amelia: So I just felt like there was some good progressive signs that things were operating better there than horror stories I've heard from other women.
• 1:16:11
  Amelia: Yeah, I think while I had a better short-term recovery with him, longer term it has been a little bit more challenging.
• 1:16:20
  Amelia: I think part of that's just because I have two kids and no significant family support to help in, the every day, every week type of sense.
• 1:16:31
  Amelia: Um, so it's maybe to be expected, but nothing, nothing has been too hard and I've been, you know, donating milk, I, I, I think that women need to feel less caught up in the fear of C-sections, like destroying your chance of breastfeeding, and I think that the thought that that will happen might make it happen more perhaps.
• 1:16:56
  Amelia: But everyone really is different and on their own journey, and I see that more and more because I nursed Sarah for two and a half years and this is looking like it's going to be similar.
• 1:17:11
  Amelia: As long as you're okay not taking really heavy pain drugs, you can do whatever you want postpartum, with nursing the baby.
• 1:17:22
  Angela: As a final question if you were to give advice to someone who's expecting, or even new parents, what's the biggest thing you'd want to share?
• 1:17:32
  Amelia: The biggest thing that I want every mom to feel like she can do is to find her inner voice and listen to it, because nobody is going to give you the answers more than you can.
• 1:17:50
  Amelia: There are professionals who can help you see your choices, but at the end of the day, it's really important for women to learn how to listen to their bodies and take care of themselves.
• 1:18:03
  Amelia: I remember when I was getting the ultrasound with Preston, they were trying to tell me he was going to be 11 pounds and that he was going to be so big and all this stuff.
• 1:18:15
  Amelia: And I didn't listen to it.
• 1:18:16
  Amelia: I just I laughed and I said I think he's going to be smaller than my daughter was.
• 1:18:21
  Amelia: And he was, and one of the OBs was was.
• 1:18:24
  Amelia: He looked at me and he told me that like the the more he does this line of work, the more he realizes that the mothers are are often more right than uh, than the machines, and so I think you you got to have like appreciation for what the machines can do and what the medicine can do.
• 1:18:43
  Amelia: But um, but at the core of it, our maternal instinct is the strongest compass for navigating birth and like, it's okay if you don't want to seek out care throughout the whole pregnancy like there are.
• 1:18:59
  Amelia: There are doctors who can help meet you halfway.
• 1:19:02
  Amelia: I think it's can be helpful to build a relationship with somebody throughout the care.
• 1:19:08
  Amelia: But we're all different.
• 1:19:10
  Amelia: We got to find what works for us and if something is just feeling not in alignment, that there's no reason to try and force it because there's got to be something better out there.
• 1:19:22
  Amelia: And you know, I, I feel like I do grieve my birth experiences too.
• 1:19:28
  Amelia: I really, I, I want birth to be easy for me and I wish I could have 20 kids.
• 1:19:35
  Amelia: I do, I really do.
• 1:19:36
  Amelia: But uh, we live in a world with occasional restrictions, so you just gotta do what you gotta do.
• 1:19:45
  Amelia: And, and you know now, I, I, I, I read, I hear and I read stories like, listen to everyone's stories and and don't limit yourself to what you think is possible.
• 1:19:56
  Amelia: I know I've had two c-sections now and I'm up in washington county and I don't plan on having another baby anytime soon, but I know that there are plenty of women who have VBACs after two C-sections or more.
• 1:20:10
  Amelia: And just the capacity to stay open to what you and your body and your baby are doing and feeling in the moment is important.
• 1:20:22
  Angela: Yeah, just tune into what is best for you and your baby, and even that could change with each pregnancy right, like so much absolutely well.
• 1:20:33
  Angela: Thank you so much, amelia, for sharing your amazing birth stories with us today.
• 1:20:39
  Angela: It's been such an honor hearing them and chatting with you.
• 1:20:43
  Amelia: Thank you so much too.
• 1:20:46
  Angela: Before you go, I just want to remind you I have a ton of resources for pregnancy and birth.
• 1:20:52
  Angela: If you're pregnant, whether you're a first time mom or if this is your fifth baby, I want you to check out the show notes, because I have some free trainings and free downloads that you can sign up for, as well as the link to access my labor of love, a comprehensive, self-paced online childbirth education course.
• 1:21:10
  Angela: I created this course specifically for moms who don't want to be told what to do, regardless of where you're birthing or who you're birthing with, and I'd honestly love to teach you everything that I know so that you can prepare for an autonomous birth experience and prepare to step into your role as the leader of your birth journey.
• 1:21:29
  Angela: So click to the show notes, check out all of those links and, if you ever have any questions, feel free to DM me at my main birth over on Instagram.