Latest / MyMaine Birth / 3. MyMaine Birth Sunshine's Mercy Hospital Birth Story, Portland Maine

Transcript

3. MyMaine Birth Sunshine's Mercy Hospital Birth Story, Portland Maine · MyMaine Birth

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm Angela and I'm a certified birth photographer, experienced doula, childbirth educator and your host here on the my Maine Birth podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Whether you're a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode three of the my Main Birth podcast.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Today's birth story guest is Sunshine, and she's going to be sharing her experience of birthing her daughter at Mercy Hospital in Portland.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi, sunshine, welcome to my Main Birth.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Hello, so before we get to your birth story, can you tell me a little bit about?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: you and your family.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: So I have a daughter who's 27 and I have two cats and a dog, and my daughter just got engaged, so I'm very excited about that.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: What area of Maine are you in?
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I'm in Westbrook but I brought her up in the Portland, falmouth, yarmouth area.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about when you found out you were pregnant and the type of care that you chose to receive?
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: were pregnant and the type of care that you chose to receive.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Sure, I found out I had gone to massage school out in New Mexico and then my younger sister wanted to move to Portland.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: So I moved back to Maine with my younger sister and met my daughter's father and got pregnant pretty quickly and I chose Bat Cove Midwives and they work out of of mercy hospital.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: But I really wanted to do a home birth but my partner it was a financial thing and we, you know was main care was going to pay for the hospital birth.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: So I found a midwife who was teaching a class called how to have a home birth like experience in the hospital, and so, um, her name is shylaoh St Laurent and I think she's retired from home birth midwifery now.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: But her class was so empowering and I got to see pictures or videos of women giving birth in different positions and she kind of taught my uh, she taught my partner how to you know he washed his hands first how to check my cervix to see if it was time to go to the hospital.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, luckily it was.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Before they did all this testing, I did do one ultrasound at 20 weeks and found out I was having a girl, which was very lovely news.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: And then they were so busy in their practice that they added a third midwife to the practice, and I only met her once, but she was the one on call for my labor time, which propelled me into the doula world.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so can you tell me about your labor and birth?
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: How did that all go for you?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I do, I don't know second or third week of June, but June 5th I was walking around no, actually June 4th I was walking around at the Old Port Festival and it was a hot day and I was very pregnant and I think I was in labor and I didn't really feel it.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So that night I got into bed and I was reading a book and it was a very long book by Carolyn Shute called Merry Men.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've read that, but it's about a birth.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: And I got to the end of the book and then my water broke and I felt this little pop and I rolled off the bed and I kind of smelled like baby poop a little bit, but it wasn't a dark color.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: So I called the number and the new midwife was saying well, you should go back to bed.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: But I was in pain immediately and so I would squat three each contraction and have my my partner push, push on my back and uh, and I just didn't.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I didn't really think about you know, I was in labor land.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: So I was kind of like like I called her back a few hours later, I think around three in the morning, and she could tell by my voice I was much more progressive.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: She said to go to the hospital and in the meantime my partner had checked my cervix and he's like, wow, I feel the head.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: So we, we got in the car.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: We had planned to walk up the street to the hospital because we were only a quarter mile from Mercy on State Street, but it was very painful to have a contraction in the car.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So we got into the, went into the entrance, into the entrance and, uh, this woman was going to walk me down to the labor and delivery and there was this big, big, wonderful man who was a security guard and I started to have contractions.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: So I went down to squat and the woman got all upset.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, let's get you a, get you a wheelchair or a stretcher.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: And and he said, no, she's doing okay and just having that, like he obviously trusted I was doing what I need to do.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: And then I had the contraction, went down to the and you know they have a system where the midwife doesn't come to the hospital until the nurse is checked and see how far along I was.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: So I got into the room and I must have been in transition.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: At that point.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: I had a really nice, really lovely nurse named Penny, and she was on one side of me and my partner was on the other and I just was like starting to feel like I had to push.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And so the nurse called the midwife who came rushing in.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I just remember her saying my goodness, you're going so fast, I didn't have time to feed my dogs and so my daughter was so far, I think, into the birth canal and they decided that there was some meconium present.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So they told me that when she was born she would go over to the side of the room and get checked by an anesthesiologist to make sure she hadn't inhaled any meconium.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: So then they couldn't hear the heartbeat.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So they she told me to push her out on the next contraction and and that was very painful, but she came out and I had, um, I had a tear up into my urethra which was extremely painful, but I was so excited she, she didn't have any problems with the meconium.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: So she came over to me very quickly and I was very just propelled into motherhood.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was, but I felt like something was missing and I hadn't heard of doulas before and I felt disappointed that the midwives I had grown to trust and love weren't there at the birth.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: The midwife that was there was very nice, but I didn't know her.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So a year later my younger sister had a baby in the Boston area and my other sister and I were her support people and I saw her give birth and I was like, oh, it was amazing, she had a midwife too and she just was allowed to get up and down out of bed.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: She pushed baby out and I I got a.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do anything medical, but I want to support women in birth.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: So then I took the doula training.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: That point my daughter was um, my daughter was four years old in the Ballard House, was operating in Portland, so I took a training there, but it wasn't a certifiable program.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: So then I took a doula training at Birthwise Midwifery School in Bridgeton, and that was in the year 2000.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And I was very lucky because Maine Med had an on-staff doula program at that time.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So I got hired immediately and I got to attend two to three births per month my first two years of being a doula.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: What is the?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: name of your doula business.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: I just call it Sunshine, doula and Massage, and what is the best way for people to?
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: get a hold of you.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Really to call or text me.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I have an email, but calling or texting is the best.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I get hundreds of emails every day and I don't want to miss somebody reaching out.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I mostly do postpartum doula work at this point because I think I did just recently volunteer at a birth at Maine Med with a woman from Africa who I got matched up with the community doula birth program and I mentored a new doula.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: This woman was having her first baby and she her partner isn't in the country, so us two doulas attended the birth and it was.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: It was just wonderful.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: So All right, I will link all of your information in the show notes so anyone who might be looking for a doula can find you.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: That would be awesome.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you want to share with new moms that are planning on?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: birthing in Maine.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Well, I think new moms really need a lot of support and I think we prepare as a society we prepare so much for the birth that we don't think about postpartum.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: So I want to just say to any new moms that to reach out and get postpartum support, that's that's really important to have that.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So back to your own experience.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Can you share about your postpartum time with your daughter?
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: How did that go for you?
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you asked because I I became good friends with the women that I took the childbirth class with and we started to get together once a month to support each other.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: But there was one mom who was having her second baby and we had our baby a few days apart and I would call her in the morning, a mess and crying, and she'd say, come on over sunshine, we'll have coffee.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: And I went to her house almost every day and that really helped.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I was extremely sleep deprived.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I wanted to.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: I was so neurotic about putting a pacifier or anything in my daughter's mouth that I was.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: I was just nursing her all night and finally realized that she could sleep all night without nursing and I was.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: I could have done that at six months, but I went for a whole year of sleeping with it.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: That was the sleep deprivation made me really running on empty.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: So, and and Maine med does have a, a zoom I think it's still on zoom a mother's group for babies six months and younger that meets once a week.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: My good friend, ellen uncle, who's a childbirth educator at Maine med, runs a group for new parents to meet once a week and that's great Ask questions and you can go in your pajamas.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, sunshine, for sharing your birth story today.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye, before you go, I just want to remind you I have a ton of resources for pregnancy and birth If you're pregnant, whether you're a first-time mom or if this is your fifth baby.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: 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 mymainbirth over on Instagram.