Latest / MyMaine Birth / 6. Mid-week midwife edition, Kathryn Dewar from Moonstone Sunrise in Kingfield, Maine

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6. Mid-week midwife edition, Kathryn Dewar from Moonstone Sunrise in Kingfield, 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 six of the my Main Birth podcast.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Today's birth story guest is Catherine Duar, and she is a certified professional midwife and lactation consultant.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Her clinic, moonstone Sunrise, is located in Kingfield, maine.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Hi, kate, welcome to my Maine Birth.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So, to get started, can you tell a little bit about you and your family?
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Sure, I grew up in upstate New York and my husband grew up in upstate New York and my husband grew up in Maine, so that's why we live here.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: The beginning of our marriage we lived in an off-grid cabin in New Portland and through life circumstance he was offered a job out in Portland, oregon.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: So we moved out there.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: When I was about 33 weeks pregnant and a lot of the reason why I kind of wanted to move there was because I had the opportunity to give birth in a standalone birth center out in Oregon.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: There was two that I knew about.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: So we moved and about two weeks later I gave birth to my daughter and then, five years later, I gave birth to my son and in the meantime I decided to become a midwife, a home birth midwife.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: At the time when I was in Maine, I was working at a Montessori preschool and I really appreciated the Montessori method of teaching and guiding young children.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: But I felt there was something more.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I had something else to give to the world and I discovered midwifery, kind of through my own pregnancy and learning and birth and then actually experiencing midwifery care.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: When I was out in Oregon just for a very brief time with my daughter, I met my midwife one time before I gave birth.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: But that experience was pivotal for me because when I was living in Maine I traveled about 40, 45 minutes to the maternity center and you know I've the appointments felt very abbreviated and they always asked of course, do you have any questions?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I just didn't know what the questions were.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: So when I went to the birth center to have my first appointment, it was a five minute drive and it lasted about an hour and a half and they brought up all the questions that I had and they're like what do you think about these newborn procedures we're going to do?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I didn't know.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I had a voice in that or I had choices and they could explain all the benefits and risks and alternatives to all the choices and I just didn't know care could be that way and as a you know, privileged, white, educated woman, I was sure there were other people feeling very similarly.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I think another aspect of my care is I also have parents that are family doctors and that did OB work, so they were also a sounding board for me and still pretty lost.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: So I kind of had all the resources a person possibly could have about pregnancy and birth and was still had a lot of questions, but I didn't know how to ask the question or what the question was or that I had the power to ask the question.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: So now we're a family of four and we have a dog, teo.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: We got him two years ago.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: He's a pandemic purchase and we first got chickens when the pandemic started, so we started with 10.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: We ended up with four, but now we have 22.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of how chicken math works and we have two kittens.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: That's our family here in Maine now.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: And you're in the Kingfield area right now, right?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, this was home, new Portland's, about seven miles away, so the cabin that we first lived in is really close.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: We go to the land often, we do a lot of things.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: We had 100 taps out with some our dear friends forever neighbors, we call them so we made a bunch of syrup this spring and we have an apple orchard up there that we pick apples from and lots of walking trails and things like that cross-country skiing so we still go up there a lot that sounds incredible.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: It's been a good year for the maple syrup yeah, it has been a good year.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I'm still.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I have a couple buckets left out and I'm deciding what I want to do with the last bit of sap.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So can you tell me about when you found out you were pregnant and a little bit about the care?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: you chose.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: So I found out I was pregnant on New Year's Eve of 2011.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I'd gone home to upstate New York to spend some time with my family and I noticed, every time I was around, food.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: I felt nauseous.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: So on the way home, ben didn't come with me for some reason, I can't remember.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I think he was working at the mountain at that time, so Sugarloaf Mountain employs a lot of the people in Kingfield are in the surrounding areas and he was an electrician up there, so I think he must have been working during that holiday.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So I went by myself and as I was coming home, I felt really nauseous and I was like something's not right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I've got cancer or I'm pregnant, I don't know which.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I got a pregnancy test on my way home and that night I took it and I was pregnant.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So I was like well, that explains some why I feel so terrible.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Um, it was not not planned, I guess.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Um, so I'll leave it at that.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Um, I chose, uh, standard maternity care because at the time we were living in a cabin, we were off grid, no running water, outhouse situation, which I loved.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I just, and not knowing anything about birth, thought, well, you can't give birth in a place like that Turns out, it's fine, I've learned, since you don't actually need hot water.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Um, that's, it's helpful, sure, but you don't need all those things.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Um, birth is a fairly straightforward process, um, so I chose maternity care.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Just that's what I knew growing up, because my parents were family doctors, so seemed like the thing to do and I just wanted to learn how to be a good pregnant person.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I went and got a physical at the local clinic here in Kingfield and then started going to the Matroni Clinic in Farmington and would see a different provider just about every time.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I did all those standard tests the blood work, the AFP, which looks for signs of downs, and I did an early ultrasound, a dating ultrasound, and I did the 20 week ultrasound.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: So a lot of those tests.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't understand why we were doing them, like the AFP test, and when I remember talking to my mom about it, I remember talking to my mom about it and she said, oh, you just do it, you just you just do those.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, but why?
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: So even that answer didn't quite answer the questions, and even now I've learned how archaic that test is and it's not very accurate.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: And yeah, so, and I guess I got the ultrasound the 20 week, mostly, um, well, both because I have a history of twins in our family and I was really hoping to not have twins.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: So, um, my husband's a twin, my grandmother was a twin, there's just twin energy twins on both sides.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I really, I think, for my own peace of mind, I wanted to know what to expect and I didn't want to be thinking I was having one and then end up with two or something like that.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Which was Ben's story is he was a surprise twin, yeah.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: So, and then, um, when Ben was offered this job, really, you know, after the second trimester of my pregnancy and I was looking at options, the fact that there was these standalone birth centers out in Oregon was really attractive to me and even though I didn't want to leave my community and my little cabin in the woods and all that, that kind of overruled everything in some ways, because I wanted to give birth how I wanted to give birth and I didn't feel that was an option, even though I had a friend who gave birth right down the street essentially for Maine, you know and she was at home and she gave me a book, the Ina Mia Gaskin, spiritual midwifery, which I read cover to cover, and really a lot of light bulbs went off with that book for me.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: So it took me about 10 days to drive out there.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I was with my mom, who she would only let me drive, you know, eight hours a day.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: We stopped every two hours.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: We did a walk every day, you know, ate well, stayed in hotels, that kind of thing, or stayed with a lot of friends too.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: It's actually kind of fun.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I stayed with a lot of old friends, and her old friends too, as we made our way across the states old friends too, as we made our way across the states.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the joke is that ben went to the birth center that we had essentially hired.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Uh, more times than I did before, we uh he, you know just went and interviewed and just asked all that.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I've made a list of questions for him to ask and we talked about it and, uh, it just wasn't alignment with what I was looking for.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Um, so I got there and I had a.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I actually did have two appointments, but only one was with the midwife who actually attended me in birth.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: So the week I gave birth, my sister had come to visit me and we did a lot of walking, we went to get Thai food, we did all this stuff and she'd been at a rainbow gathering.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you know what a rainbow gathering is, but she had a bit of a stomach or intestinal thing going on when she was visiting me and this becomes relevant in a minute Um, so she left and within 24 hours my water broke and the first thing my midwife asked when I called her was do you think you have an infection?
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: I was like well, actually it's possible, because my sister was just here with an intestinal bug of some kind.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: But I took my temperature, I told her what the fluid looked like and it was all normal, and she's like OK, well, and she's like well, I really think you should go to a hospital, and I'm like I'm not going to do that.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: She's so she regrouped because I was 35 weeks.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: She's so she regrouped because I was 35 weeks.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: So in Oregon you can uh, the midwives there at that time could go and attend a home birth at 35 weeks.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: I was 35 in a day.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Um, I could not go to the birth center.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: The birth center, you had to be 36 weeks.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Um, so there was a little bit of talk about well, maybe you should just come in for an appointment, but, oops, you'll have a baby.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: But it became very clear that that wasn't really going to happen because I pretty much went into active labor right away because I was like I think we need diapers or something.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: For some reason I was thinking we needed those things too, and you don't.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: You don't really don't need anything to have a baby.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: So he came back and the midwives, you know, started showing up after like three hours maybe of some active labor and then she was born at about one o'clock in the afternoon and I she was fine and I was to breathe, which is great, we like that.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I didn't bleed, which is great, we don't like, we like it when that happens and they decided that we would just transfer to the birth center for the next 48 hours for observation.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So they put us kind of in the smallest room at the birth center where it's like if, unless the birth center is full, then we'll use that room.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: So it was a sweet little room with a tub in it still, little room with a tub in it still.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And so I got some really nice pampered postpartum care while I was at the birth center and I really appreciate really cared for.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: So how did breastfeeding go?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so with a 35 weeker they're sleepy.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So that was in my milk was a little slow to come in for that.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: So that was a that was challenging.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: There was pumping, there were herbs, there was weight loss.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: That was concerning on her end.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: So I was nursing, pumping, giving her the pumped milk, taking herbs, upping my calorie intake a bit stressful at first.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: But they really kept close eye with midwifery care.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Postpartum care is very intensive.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: So you see, well, obviously I was there for 48 hours and then they did a home visit.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I think they did one or two home visits in that first week and then at two weeks I went back to the birth center.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Four weeks, six weeks, and they also had a breastfeeding support group at the birth center that I could attend.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: It wasn't well attended so I didn't do that too much.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: But I felt like it was very easy to access my midwives.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: You weren't going through this whole telephone system.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: If I needed to talk to the midwife, it was really easy to do so, or anybody at the birth center.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: It was really easy, and everybody was very much on the same page, supportive of breastfeeding, making sure I got the breastfeeding help I needed.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Just needed to have education about how to get my supply in and get it to an adequate amount for her kind of on the early end, and how to keep her active at the breast and how often, you know, just the basic breastfeeding education.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: That I hadn't quite received, because I hadn't made it to that point really in my pregnancy.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: As far as getting that education so, um, I had.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: We had taken a one of the crash course uh childbirth ed classes.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: It did not cover breastfeeding very much, so it was definitely a learning as I went.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of times we can be so focused on how the birth is going to go we can forget to think about what comes after.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I I taken that and feel that deeply, uh, as I have moved through being a midwife and a lactation consultant and trying to figure out a way to take that mountain of birth and bringing it down a little bit so people can see over it and see, actually you only spend about a day or two giving birth, but you spend the next 18 years parenting, and certainly in the next year is going to be very intensive, and how can I show you how to actually spend more time preparing for that than this one day event, which is very important and it's very empowering, and how you birth and who you birth with will affect you for the rest of your life.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And also having the tools set up ahead of postpartum is maybe more important, often overlooked.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: So can you tell me now about your pregnancy and birth with your son and how that was different for you the second time around?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so by the time I had my son, I had three years of midwifery school under my belt and I'd spent about two of that in a private practice with the midwife who attended me for my daughter.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: So she was my midwife for Kenan and I did my prenatals in the car with her.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Our visits we went and did home visits on Tuesdays visits we went and did home visits on Tuesdays and I love those Tuesdays because we would drive together to the appointments and as a private practice midwife there's a lot of driving.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: So we covered some miles for sure, and we grew pretty close when just spending time in the car together and so every once in a while I'd be like maybe you should do a blood pressure.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: I did an ultrasound with him.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I did NIPT, so non-invasive pregnancy testing or screening, which is a much more advanced way of looking for the trisomies and other genetic anomalies in fetuses.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: It uses placental DNA.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: It's what I use now with my clients because the accuracy is almost 99%.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: It's above and beyond all the technology that was offered to me in my pregnancy with my daughter and it was, yeah, I think everything was just much more laid back because I knew so much I could.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: I had a Doppler on hand at my house.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: I had a anterior placenta so I didn't feel him moving quite as much as I had felt my daughter.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: So sometimes if I was curious, I would just check in with my Doppler, listen to him.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: When I went into labor again, my water broke first.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: So I just was like, well, I'm just going to eat something and see if contractions start.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: And they did so.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Once they started I called my midwife and said hey, I don't think it's urgent right now, but just letting you know this, my water broke at this time.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: The color was clear, there was no odor, it was this amount and fetal hard cones.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Are this contractions?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Are this part of our part?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: So I told her all the information she needed to know and then I was like bye, you should probably start heading over.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: So she got there and I had him about 45 minutes later.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: It was a three hour water breaking to a baby in my arms.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Labor Very much more painful.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I don't wish fast labors like that on anybody.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I could still recall the pain years later.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: It just is.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: It's a pain that you can't get on top of.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: So I very much empathize with people who have precipitous labors and feel like just shell shocked because it's just out of your control.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Not that labor is something that's necessarily in your control, but usually with a gradual buildup, you have mechanisms of getting things on board and there's the cascade of hormones that help you and things like that.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: So when you don't have that opportunity it feels jarring, and I had a lot of after pains.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: After him my husband did not have time off after he was born, so he went back to work three days later.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: That felt hard, but at the time I had more community built up at that point A lot of midwifery friends, and so one came over and gave me abdominal massage, one held him while I did that and took him to the grocery store and got stuff for lunch and they made me lunch and one just checked in a lot and we went for walks and so I was able to do kind of be out more.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: So having community was really helpful with the second one, whereas I did not have community with my first, and luckily I was able to build that fairly quickly with a peer support with a mama group that I met and was invited into and which really saved me.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I'm very grateful that I had that, and that's another thing I've been trying to start here in Kingfield as a support group and it hasn't, you know, not any participants really.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I just keep trying to make that time available for it to hopefully start and morph into something that was meaningful like that for me, as it was in Oregon, because peer support was really.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: It kind of gets you through those early weeks and months of parenthood because it is all new and you don't know if you're doing it right and everybody has different experiences and it's helpful to be around people who have also been up since 4 30 AM and maybe we're woken up multiple times and, instead of having judgment, having empathy and like here's some coffee, talk about it, you know.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So that was my second experience, so it was definitely faster, faster baby.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: He had a bit a challenge with him was he was a bit tight in his jaw, so he really caused some nipple damage which I had never experienced, and so now I have a whole host of empathy for anybody whose nipples are damaged from breastfeeding.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Um, I got a lot of cranial sacral support for him, uh, and that helped a lot, um, and improved things.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: But, um, when you're having that kind of challenge with your newborn, it's feels like a crisis in some ways.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Luckily it was just one side, so when it is one sided, it's usually a pretty clear picture that there's some tightness in his body that needed to get resolved in order for him to comfortably feel the nurse on that side.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: So we got that figured out over some time.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So about how long did that take and what did that support look like for you?
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: So in Portland Oregon again, there's just so much support and birth workers and postpartum workers.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: So everybody came to my house.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: The first session was probably about an hour and a half and she was able to do a lot of release and it definitely improved right after the first treatment.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: And then I had a friend who had just taken the course.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Carol Gray is the guru out in Portland Oregon.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I would love to take one of her courses.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: That's sort of on my to-do list is to do something like that and she just wanted some practice, some hands-on practice.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: So she came over probably a handful of times and so I'd say over about a month, month and a half, things really kept getting better, even after the first one.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: The fact that it got better, I knew I was on the right track, that, yes, this is clearly, I think, the issue did some position changes and that kind of thing.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: But, um, I, knowing that you're resolving the cause of the damage is, you know, really helpful moving forward, whereas if that didn't help, then I would have had to do more investigating, maybe think about tongue tie or something like that, which maybe he did have a little bit of that, but it wasn't enough to warrant a fix.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: As I was going through the midwifery program, they did offer a lactation program and we did take lactation classes with the midwifery program.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: I knew another woman in my cohort who was going to practice out in Eastern Oregon, which is also very rural, and she kind of talked me into like Kate, if that's your plan, this might be a good idea to have the lactation credential as well.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: And it was just a few more courses.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Really the coursework was not a barrier, it's the clinicals.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: The clinicals are hard to get, even in a city.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: It's 300 hours of pretty much in-person clinicals, which doesn't seem so hard, but each visit is about two hours and if you don't have a space where you're just seeing four clients in a day or something, then it's just very piecemeal so sometimes.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: So I worked with different lactation consultants in the city.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: I did a lactation class with the IBCLC who worked at the birth center that had been connected to for my daughter, and later on I did clinicals there as a midwife student.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: So that was one way I got some hours.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: I did parent support groups where we offered lactation education mostly and we had a scale.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: So if people wanted to weigh their babies, see where their baby's at and we would keep a log of baby's weight gain over time.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: For people we would do pre and post feed weights, if people wanted to do that, at these parent support groups.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: So I did a few of those in the city.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And then I worked with a lactation group who did more clinical work.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: We had a warm line so people could call this warm line and we could either just give them education over the phone or triage and see if no, I think you really need to see somebody, your baby should probably see somebody and then set up a visit with whichever lactation consultant was on for the day that they need to be seen, and we could go with lactation consultant to these visits and get hours that way too.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: So it was very kind of time intensive to get these hours, but it was worth it.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I learned a lot and I'm glad.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: I did it.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: All right, so your midwifery business is Moonstone Sunrise.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me more about that?
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: So Moonstone, sunrise is a.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Uh, when I was trying to come up with a name for my business, um, I kind of was pondering lots of names.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Words are very important to me.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I have an English literature background and have a very deep appreciation for poetry and just wordcraft.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: So Moonstone is my daughter, sunrise is my son, moonstone is I know it's not the birthstone for July, but Moonstone's kept coming into my life when I was pregnant with her and so it felt very much her stone to me.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: And then sunrise is the meaning of my son's name and he was born at sunrise.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: And as a midwife you spend a lot of time.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: You're in day and night and night and day and time doesn't really mean anything and but you notice too.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: So it felt very fitting to this work.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: So I have clinic space in Kingfield, which changes things for me.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: In Vermont when I was practicing there I learned my limit.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: An hour and a half was really far, but at the time I was only doing home visits, I didn't have a clinic space, so at the time I was like only an hour.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: But now that I'm at the space I would consider an hour and a half distance based on history, the individual's needs that kind of thing.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: If I felt like I could make it to their birth in time, basically if they have a history of really fast births, I might feel a little less comfortable being that far away from somebody.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I think, pretty in line with what most rural midwives cover is about an hour Hours.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Ideal I would go as far as an hour and a half as an assist.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I would go even further If the primary midwife was closer and it was a two-hour drive for me.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: That would be okay with me as long as I knew they were closer and they could call me in as they needed.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And I think most midwives in Maine sort of feel pretty similarly, based on however heavy their client load is.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: And that's for midwifery clients, for lactation clients.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I always go to them.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: I don't want people driving around with a newborn, unless it's an older baby and we're just doing some other, like we're doing some weight checks or just sort of little things to ensure we're on the right track or something like that.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: But certainly people with a newborn I do not want them driving around, so I go to them.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll link all of your information in the show notes so people can find you.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that I do do doula work too on occasion.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: It's not my passion, but I do feel strongly people should be able to birth in whatever location they feel safest.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I understand completely how that may not be a home or a birth center and a hospital is the best place for them and I have a lot of empathy and compassion for that.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: And I'm happy to work with people who are planning a hospital birth and being the advocate for them.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: As I'm building my midwifery practice, I do really just am passionate about working with families and making sure they have the information they need to make educated choices about their care and that they know they can make choices about their care.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you, kate, for sharing your birth stories and chatting about the different services you offer to Maine parents.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you, angela, for having me.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 31:53
  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.
• 32:06
  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.
• 32:26
  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 my main birth over on Instagram.