Latest / MyMaine Birth / 7. MyMaine Birth Chesari’s St. Mary's Birth Stories, Lewiston, Maine

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7. MyMaine Birth Chesari’s St. Mary's Birth Stories, Lewiston, 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 7 of the my Main Birth podcast.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Today's birth story guest is Cesare, and she is here to share all about her experiences birthing her children with the care of midwives at St Mary's Regional Medical Center in Lewiston.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Hi, cesare, welcome to my Maine Birth.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Hello.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: So, to get started, will you share a little bit about you and your family?
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and your family.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so my name is Chadrae.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I live in Minot, maine, with my two kids, liam and Liv, and my husband Brian, and we sort of live on a homestead.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We've got some chickens and ducks and sheep and goats and I've been homeschooling them for the past few years and working with, basically alongside, other homeschool families, so that's sort of my other gig.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, a lot of a lot of the way I've been spending my time has been influenced by having kids.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: You know, both in terms of how I spend my days with, with my kids, raising my kids, and also how that's affected me as a woman.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: So yeah, all right.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Can you tell me about when you found out you were pregnant and a little bit about the care you chose?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my gosh.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: So I can't believe my son is turning so.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Liam is turning 10 on August 6th, so I can't believe it's been 10 years, but yeah.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: So when I remember finding out I was pregnant, it was just after Thanksgiving, um, the year that I was pregnant with him, and it was um a surprise pregnancy, um, and we were really excited.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: I it was kind of a wild year, to be honest, because I just that fall had um started a one year master's degree program in social work, and so I distinctly remember this entire pregnancy just being a very tiring one, because I was definitely in a very intense clinical program, working, doing an internship, and so trying to prioritize self-care, for he and I was.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: You know it was a little bit of a challenge, but it was, all in all, a good pregnancy, yeah.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: So I did choose to go with a midwife and for both of my pregnancies we went with St Mary's and Lewiston and overall we enjoyed the experiences we had there.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: We definitely, I think for both of them we had just really done the 20 week ultrasound where we had, you know, we had chosen to find out the sex of for both of them.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So we're eager to know and plan, and it was funny.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I remember distinctly thinking that my son, liam, was a girl.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: I was so convinced he was a girl, I don't know why, that I was very surprised when he was a boy.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: He was a boy, yeah.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: So we, you know, we, having more of a holistic sort of mindset, you know, definitely enjoyed going with a midwife and you know, we tried to keep testing to somewhat of a minimal.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I did find out that I had gestational diabetes with William, and that was a bit of a surprise, but I was able to control it with diet, which was really nice, but it was.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: You know, it was a little bit of a journey.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: You know, I remember having to check my sugars and all of that.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Um, but with my daughter live, I didn't have that issue.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, yeah, but it did create a big baby.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: So how did your labor start with Liam?
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So he, he did not want to come out.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: So at 41 weeks they ended up inducing me and I think part of that was because I did have the gestational diabetes.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: So he was set to possibly be a big baby and he was.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: So they did induce me.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I remember going in the morning before and it was a long, very painful process.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: I got the Pitocin and I remember just sitting and waiting and then all of a sudden it kicked in and it was very intense.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, at that time I had nothing to compare it to.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: He was my first, but the labor, the cramps, it was pretty intense and he wasn't born until 141 that next morning.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: So again, overall it went pretty well, considering I chose I had really from the get-go I didn't want to do the epidural or any sort of pain management.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I think at the last minute I remember howling and sort of wishing that I had done something, but overall I was happy that I had made that choice and that it had worked out.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: It was a journey.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I definitely remember, you know, sort of moving around.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: I remember being in the tub, the bed.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: I remember at one point I just couldn't, I was not okay with laying down, and so eventually I actually delivered him standing up, which was different.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Again, there were a lot of differences between my son and my daughter, so cause I was in the bed when I delivered her, so it was.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: It was a journey, as it always is, right, I mean things overall went very well.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: He was a big headed, nine pounds, three ounce baby, which totally shook me Cause I was, like all of you know, like 105 pounds before.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: So yeah, how was your postpartum time and what did that look like for you?
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I?
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: remember I mean so he was our first and you know I was young, I was 22.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And it's like, as much as you prepare yourself for it, there's just no preparing you for having a baby, for what it's going to feel like in your body and for what it's going to feel like to care for a little person, and I just remember feeling so shaken by it.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: To be honest, I remember being home and feeling like, what are we doing with this baby?
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: And you settle into it quite quickly.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: But I remember feeling very weak.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: I had gone into the pregnancy with anemia and so I very distinctly remember my postpartum time being very weak.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I remember people coming to visit and I remember feeling like I couldn't stand up for very long, and this was weeks later.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: So I definitely, looking back, especially with the work that I'm doing now look back.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I was pretty depleted.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I was in need of some nourishment at the time and it was especially hard because at the time, the job that I was doing working, social work I needed to go back to work in six weeks.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: And I look back now and I'm like, oh, that was so heartbreaking to we found a daycare, that we knew the family, and so we felt good about that, as good as we possibly could.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: But I remember it was really challenging trying to get back to the swing of things.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Remember, it was really challenging trying to get back to the swing of things, go back to work.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: I had a really hard time leaving his side and so that brought about a lot of emotions and again I felt like it took a long time the first time around, especially when I compare how it went postpartum with Liam, compared to my daughter Liv.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Five years later it really took me some time to feel like myself again, for sure.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: So five years later you became pregnant with your daughter.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Can you share more about how that all unfolded?
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: It's funny.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: We had never planned to have kids so far apart in age.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: But I do think that the birth experience, as you know, as as well as things did go, compared to some some really kind of shook me, and the healing process had really shaken me.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And so I think, originally we probably would have chosen to have our kids a couple of years apart, but I just wasn't ready.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: And so next thing, you know, four years later, my husband and I are starting to talk to each other like we're either gonna do this or we're not gonna do this.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: And so this one was this pregnancy was a little bit different.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: It was very planned.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: We sort of got in our heads like nope, we're going to do this and we're going to do it now, and we're very lucky in terms of we really didn't have any fertility.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: You know struggles with that, like literally the month that we had decided we wanted to get pregnant, we got pregnant.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: We had decided we wanted to get pregnant, we got pregnant.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: And so we were really surprised about that and thrilled about that.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And at that point, when I, you know, reflecting on my pregnancy with Liv I had when Liam was about Two years old, at that point I had already kind of sent him to different child care programs and I had really struggled with not being by his side.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Even though I was new in my profession, I was sort of budding with things that I was doing.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I graduated soon after I had him or before I had him.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Excuse me, but I really struggled with not being around him.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: So I actually quit my job, sort of put my career on hold, and decided to do a little bit of a child care program at my home, just because we were so in love with the way that we were sort of living here with him on the homestead with the animals, that we decided to sort of open that up to some other families.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: So anyway, that very much impacted my pregnancy going into it with Liv, because at that point I had a business, I had kids everywhere, and so I was very busy and very tired and at the time I did have someone working with me and I'm grateful that I had the support that I did, because I think otherwise, going into it with a pregnancy and with a newborn, that would have been wild.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: So anyway, that was sort of what was happening in my life during that time and so same thing we decided to go with St Mary's again, went with a midwife there and we had a really lovely experience at St Mary's.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: This time I felt like I kind of had my footing.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I felt more comfortable and confident, I think, as a mom, because I had already gone through this process.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So we kept things really simple.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I remember doing the ultrasound for her at 20 weeks.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: We found out that she was a girl and, funny thing, at that point I was like, well, I was wrong last time.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I totally thought Liam was a girl.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So I don't know, and it was hilarious because my husband and Liam were both convinced it was a girl and I was like, I don't know, I'm not saying it, I thought it was a girl last time and they were right.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: So they were quite proud about that.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It was really something that was really cool about going through that pregnancy journey was having my son be 4 years old.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: It was just such a lovely age and I remember him At the time we weren't homeschooling yet.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: He was in pre-K and he was known as the family man, so he was just starting to write and sign his name and he would.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: He would sign instead of just signing his name on his papers he would write all of our names Liam, liv, mom, dad.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: He was just so excited to be an older brother, so it was really, it was really kind of a lovely yeah yeah and having him there for the ultrasound like he was just, it was a, it was, it was really was really magical.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it was really cool having him there for all of that and he's to this day he's still a really incredible big brother yeah, so how was your birth experience the second time around?
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: it was very different.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I was not induced.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Um, my water.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I was surprised my water broke um, at home in bed and we were both sort of like all right, this is happening, you know, and sort of we kind of took our time but we made our way into the hospital and it still took a little while.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: I remember, once again, we were there in the morning and she wasn't born until like 8.13 that evening.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: So it's a little bit of a journey there too, with, you know, laboring, but overall things went really well.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: She, at the end, I just the biggest thing that I distinctly remember is that she just both my kids just didn't want to come out, and so she came out and she was a little bit smaller.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: But she, the midwife, the nurses couldn't figure out what was happening as I was pushing, because I was pushing and pushing and she was not coming.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: And then, when she came out, she came out with a fist which describes her personality today as well.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: So it was, it was just you know, we have kind of laugh about that she had come out with with her fist right, right next to her head.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: So that was funny.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean overall, very healthy babes, healthy mom.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: I feel really blessed overall about the pregnancy and the delivery of the babes and it's funny it was more of a blur.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: I think I was a lot more out of it after having Liam.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I think it just took more out of me and was such a shock to the system as a first time mom.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: But I really distinctly remember at St Mary's after having live they I mean they treated us like we were like guests at like this suite, like they the nurses were wonderful.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: They took such good care of us.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I remember it being a really lovely time, actually this short you know day that we were there.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: It was really lovely.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: So I can't say enough good things about the experience that we had there at the time.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And it was definitely an adjustment, though going from one to two felt like a big step going home.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so how was your postpartum time with Liv?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: It was nice, the timing was really great.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: So Liv was born on June 29th and at the time when I was running this childcare program at home, I had actually like all teachers and so we would close in the summertime.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: So I ended up with a much.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: It felt like a much roomier time to rest and recover and adjust to life with um, with Liv and with Liam.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: So we had the whole summer and then we opened back up in September.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: So a couple more weeks anyway there and yeah, so that felt a lot better than the six weeks and rushing back to work, just being knowing that I was gonna be home with them.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: But one.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I will say it was challenging.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Getting back into the swing of things.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Being with a group of children all day long, what alone, just my own.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Being with a group of children all day long, what a world, just my own.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You know it was a big undertaking and again I'm really thankful to you know having the staff that I had supporting me during that time.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I remember I would sneak out, you know, to either to nurse her or to try to put her to a nap, and so having that set up was really helpful.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: But it was.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: It was a lot, you know, and the program that I, that I ran for years, was a nature-based program.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: We were always outdoors with the kids, making fires, going on you know, little hikes and um, and I didn't.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It felt so important to me to raise her in that and to stay, and you know, with integrity, to what I was doing, regardless of having a babe, that I was always very stubborn.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I didn't, I didn't ever let anything slow me down.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: So I have pictures of her, you know, slow me down.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So I have pictures of her, you know, just a few months old, sort of sitting in the snow with us or sitting by the fire with us, and so she was right out there with us.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I had her, you know, in the little hiking backpack carrier and she was sort of with us wherever we went.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: So that was lovely in many ways and she was very much like the joke for a long time was out.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: She'll always be baby live, because we just had this community of kids who it was like, instead of just having one little brother older brother, excuse me who was excited to to have her, it was like a whole community that came back and was sort of ready to tend to her.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: So that was really lovely, but it was quite tiring, and I definitely remember having my emotional challenges, struggling with depression.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: And then, as time went on, I feel like it caught up to me more honestly as she got a little bit older by the time she was two, that was also the height of the pandemic.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: So there was a lot happening for all of us, right, but I felt like all of a sudden, like my anxiety had just like really ramped up in a new way that I had really never experienced in my life.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Suddenly I was having panic attacks.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: I just wasn't feeling like myself.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: I was feeling very just, increasingly depleted and weak.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, it's interesting because we talk about postpartum as being that, we think of it as a more short, immediate time, um, and I'm in a mom's life, but the truth is is that if you're depleted and you're sort of running yourself ragged and it doesn't, you're sort of you're not able to rebuild and replenish.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Um, and I think that was what happened for me, like I had always, um, always this holistic mindset and sort of thought I was doing a good job, but I wasn't doing enough for myself and I wasn't sure where to go with that, and so that did very much lead into my own healing journey.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I became very interested in energy medicine.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: I became trained in Reiki, and so I've been practicing as a Reiki practitioner for the past year or so, after having sort of been on my own healing journey with that.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: So you know, I've I've been.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I think being a mom brought up a lot in me and sort of forced me to do some nourishing and some tending to myself that I hadn't done in the past, and I think that that's a really beautiful thing, and so that's kind of led me to where I am today.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Wow, so can you share more about your business and everything you're doing now?
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm the owner and practitioner at Flow Healing Arts, so that's what started as more energy-based work, which has been really lovely and rewarding.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Using energy medicine to support particularly women in my experience, in processing emotions that really get carried in the body and take up space and vibration, and processing trauma that's happened in grief and their lives, has been a really meaningful full circle journey for me because my background had been in social work and originally, before life happened and kids happened, I really thought that I was going to go into this clinical path and do counseling.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And I think life hands you what is best for you in this really wild way, because, looking back after my experience and doing social work for a few years, this is a much more meaningful path for me personally, you know, in terms of the energy work and in terms of really seeing people for whole.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: You know the whole body, mind, spirit that they are.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: And I look back now with the training that I have, and it's shocking to me that we're not talking more about nutrition, we're not talking more about movement and all of these other areas of our lives that are so important, and so, yeah, so to continue my sort of story, I, along the way, I had found a couple of practitioners who ended up being really pivotal to my healing, and one of them was a woman who runs a holistic woman's health program and I had worked with her to regulate my cycle postpartum and to really just support me through different aspects of my feminine health, and I was so blown away by really the effect that it had on me and the healing that it had on me that when she decided to offer a holistic women's health practitioner certification, I just jumped aboard.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: And that was not a plan, but I think you know at this point I used to be such a planner and that's kind of gone out the window, you know, I think I think what's right for you sort of emerges.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I really believe that, and so I'm finishing up that program currently and have been working with some women this spring.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: But it's been really a lovely experience of understanding the body through the Chinese medicine lens of things, so really coming to understand the constitutional patterns that we all have.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: And some of that comes from birth and from, you know, sort of inborn, from what our parents give us, but a lot of it is lifestyle related and so much of that can be impacted by things like diet and movement and just how you're managing stress, and so that's really what the approach is centered around.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: So it's really been lovely to get that education and background which is so much influenced my personal health journey, and I'm so excited to share that knowledge and education with my daughter to empower her as she gets older.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: That just feels like such a gift in itself.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: So to be able to do that and also marry my clinical background and my energy work background to really come together to hopefully offer women a different sort of approach to wellness.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Women, um, a different sort of approach to wellness, and it's yeah, I think it's you know, especially in the realm of, you know, childbirth and bringing children into the world, um, fertility is a really big um challenge for many families, as well as postpartum issues, and so that's those are two areas that I'm actually really excited to be able to support women moving forward with, because I really truly believe that the, the way our Western culture, the way that we're all just sort of functioning in in this world right now, particularly in America, just doesn't lend itself to a lot of nourishment and a lot of rest and a lot of, you know, we just we have so many stresses from so many different angles and we, we don't live in community the way that we used to.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: You know, the way that our ancestors did and I think that that's especially relevant in the conversation about moms and postpartum is that we don't.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: We often don't have the support systems in place that we need to heal meaningfully in a sustainable way, and so really interested in offering that support to women and that sort of community aspect of healing.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: What's the best way for people to get a hold of you?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: So I am on social media.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Flow Healing Arts this is a new venture for me.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: This Holistic Woman's Health so website is in progress.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they can definitely.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Social media is a great way for me.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: This Holistic Woman's Health so website is in progress.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they can definitely.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Social media is a great way to connect with me.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to link all of your information in the show notes so everyone can find you Wonderful.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, desiree, for taking time to share your stories today.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate you having me.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: It's been fun.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Before you go, I just want to remind you I really appreciate you having me.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: It's been fun.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Before you go, I just want to remind you I have a ton of resources for pregnancy and birth.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 22:20
  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.
• 22:39
  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.