Transcription of Mothers Day #35
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland Maine and broadcast on 1310 AM Portland streaming live each week at 11.00 a.m. wlobradio.com. Show summaries are available at doctorlisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors; Maine Magazine, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage, Robin Hodgskin, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, Dr. John Harzog of Orthopedic Specialist in Falmouth, Maine, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Booth, UNE, the University of New England and Akari.
Dr. Lisa: Hello this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast number 35: Motherhood, airing for the first time on Mother’s Day May 13th 2012 on wlobradio.com. Today I have in the studio with me as every week a fellow mother, Genevieve Morgan the co-host for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast and also the wellness editor for Maine Magazine. Thank you for joining me yet again.
Genevieve: Happy Mother’s Day Lisa, I know you are a tremendous mother.
Dr. Lisa: Well, thank you I know you are too. I think that part of being a tremendous mother is caring a lot, even when it hurts to care. Yes, in fact it is, the mothering piece is really interesting because it does translate into not just caring for your children but also caring for everything around them and everybody around you. It’s all really great. Sometimes it has its difficulties and being a mother is interesting.
Genevieve: I think one thing that we talk a lot about is mothering energy. That everybody, male or female, but certainly all women have this creative mothering energy that can manifest itself in many different ways.
Dr. Lisa: I agree, and we’ve brought in today for guests Dr. Ann Skelton who is the chief of family medicine at Maine Medical Center, she happened to deliver my second baby, Abigail and she was my program director when I was going through the family medicine department. She knows all about mothering energy as do Allison Gray and Emily Murray, one of whom, actually both of whom … they’re sisters which I think is this great thing. I used to babysit for them when they lived in Yarmouth. One of them is a labor and delivery nurse up in Lewiston, the other one is the founder of Birth Roots here in Portland.
We also have Sarah Plimpton who is a dear friend of mine and a new mom of not too long but long enough to have this great, movable, adorable baby that I get to see pictures of all the time. We’re talking about mothering energy and mothering and what it’s like to … how transformative it is to go through the birthing process.
Genevieve: Interestingly one of our former guests, the author and chaplain Kate Braystrip, I was reading one of her books a couple of weeks ago and in fact the origin of Mother’s Day it started in the Unitarian Universalist church. It was actually supposed to be a day of universal peace when all mankind lay down their arms so that no mother on the planet for one day would worry about her child being killed in battle.
I found that so interesting. I think you and I both wish all the mothers and mothering types out there fortitude and solace in their pursuits as mothers because we know from firsthand experience that it’s the most important job you’ll ever have.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, fortitude and solace and maybe even a little bit of joy. I was in Akari the other day, I got my haircut, I got myself all spiffyed up and I’m like, ‘I’m a new mom.’ This is all the new joyful stuff that you can do on Mother’s day.
Genevieve: Go on and do something great for yourself.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, use that fortitude to keep your family going on one hand but on the other hand get yourself out there and experience the fun of being alive. Happy Mother’s Day everybody, Happy Mother’s Day to my mom. Happy Mother’s Day and thank you for listening.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast features a segment called Wellness Innovations sponsored by the University of New England. In this week’s wellness innovation research shows that 50 years of motherhood manuals set standards too high for new moms. New research at the University of Warwick into 50 years of motherhood manuals reveals how despite their differences they have always issued advice as orders and set unattainably high standards for new moms and babies.
Angelo Davis from the department of history at the University of Warwick carried out 160 interviews with women of all ages and from all backgrounds to explore their experiences of motherhood for her new book Modern Motherhood, Women and Family in England 1945-2000. Dr. Davis found although the advice from experts changed over the decades, the one thing that didn’t was the way it was delivered, as an order, which left many of the women interviewed by Davis feeling confused and disillusioned. For more information on this wellness innovation visit doctorlisa.org, for more information on the University of New England visit une.edu.
Speaker 1: This portion of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast has been brought to you by the University of New England, UNE, an innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number one educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about the University of New England at une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: In the studio with us today we have Dr. Ann Skelton who is the chief of Family Medicine at the Maine Medical Center which is now affiliated with Maine Health. She also happens to have been my program director when I was going through the family medicine department so we have that personal connection and she delivered my middle child, Miss Abigail Marie, that would be 16 years ago this past January. So I know Ann in a lot of different levels. We were thinking about our motherhood show and we said, ‘Who can we get to come in and talk about mothering from a more professional standpoint?’ and I thought it was appropriate that we had you in Ann, so thanks for coming in.
Dr. Ann: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Ann the thing that I’m interested in most is why do you keep doing this? Motherhood is, it’s amazing, it’s wonderful; delivering babies is amazing, it’s wonderful, it’s a lot of work. You get up in the middle of the night, you’re on call, you’re on call today, you’re on call now but there is something about delivering babies that has kept you coming back.
Dr. Ann: Yes, I love it. I think one of the most important times to be a doctor is at the most vulnerable times in most people’s lives. In that I would put death and birth. Obviously there are lots of vulnerable times in between but it’s really important to me to be with my patients as they’re facing those nature changes in their lives and in their families’ lives.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been a family doctor for how long?
Dr. Ann: For 22 years.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve had the chance now to experience both ends of that spectrum multiple times over?
Dr. Ann: Yes I have.
Dr. Lisa: You are still practicing here in Portland?
Dr. Ann: I am.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me, have you had the experience yet of delivering a baby of somebody that you delivered or… the next generation in?
Dr. Ann: The closest I’ve gotten is that some of the girls that I met when they were say, six years old have had babies now. I haven’t delivered grand children but I’ve come close.
Dr. Lisa: What is it like to have followed a family at that entire amount of time?
Dr. Ann: That is amazing. Seeing the mother of the woman who is going to have a baby come in, knowing her when she was in her twenties or thirties and now she is coaching her daughter through birth, it’s really … you see the whole continuum; very satisfying.
Dr. Lisa: This, I assume is one of the reasons you chose family medicine in the first place?
Dr. Ann: It is, yes.
Dr. Lisa: Ann, talk to me about the family aspect of family medicine, why is family medicine so important in this day and age?
Dr. Ann: I think we learn different things about our patients by knowing their entire family. Certainly that’s the case for the child who might deliver and have known really since preconception and then take care of them in their youth, adolescence, etc. I think it also pertains to families that we don’t deliver, so just a little bit more understanding of the systems, the stresses, the situation that people are in when we know their entire family.
It’s really a joy to have the first family member perhaps come to you as a doctor and then have that person bring a spouse and two children eventually. Sometimes it happens by birth, sometimes it just happens because the whole family migrates towards a specific physician. But it’s a little bit different I think than other disciplines where we don’t get that window.
Dr. Lisa: What’s it like to deliver babies and practice family medicine at Maine Medical Center which of course is a tertiary health care hospital and it offers very high level care for people, all of us here at Maine? But you’re doing something that is basic and yet important; what’s that like?
Dr. Ann: Yes, when patients ask me about choices of places to deliver what I tell them is what’s really important is who is in the four walls with you; who is in that room. At the medical center you know that there is a lot going on outside that room that’s very high tech and could handle pretty much any emergency that came up but what’s really important is your nurse, the people that you bring to the delivery with you and the physician or midwife who is doing the delivery.
That team of people within your own room I think, is the most important aspect of what it’s like to deliver there from a patient’s standpoint.
Dr. Lisa: If you were a pregnant woman listening to the show right now, what types of things could you offer as suggestions for how to populate those four walls?
Dr. Ann: Pretty clearly only invite to be present the people who you think will really support you; not your mother because you think you should, or your mother-in-law because you think you should, or a friend because she’s never seen a birth before and she wants to be there. Really think about who the people are who are the most helpful to you because it’s going to be tough.
Dr. Lisa: You do become a mother at the birth of your child but becoming a healthy mother actually starts much earlier. Taking care of your patients even before they’re even thinking of pregnancy is probably something that you think about?
Dr. Ann: Yes. We think about, technically the preconceptual care but the bottom line is helping all of our patients be as healthy as they can for whatever will come up in their lives is important.
Dr. Lisa: You grew up in Maine?
Dr. Ann: I did.
Dr. Lisa: When you were growing up I think you got an English degree initially?
Dr. Ann: Philosophy.
Dr. Lisa: Okay, philosophy, alright. But you didn’t necessarily know that you were going to be a doctor right away?
Dr. Ann: No, I didn’t.
Dr. Lisa: What caused you to go in this direction?
Dr. Ann: I think it was really, when I went to college I was focused on getting a liberal arts education for the sake of education. When you’re thinking about college these days and costs and debts and so on that may sound pretty indulgent but I did it that way and I’m really glad that I did. That left me out of all of those really competitive pre-med classes; I went back and did the pre-med stuff. What really led me there was losses in my own life and the desire to do something that I knew pretty much every day you can be of service in a positive way.
Dr. Lisa: Do you feel like that has enabled you to deal with the losses in other people’s lives more effectively as well?
Dr. Ann: Yes I think so. I think one of the hardest things about losses is just first times not knowing how you will come out on the other end. Having been there a few times I think I can reassure people that yes, you do get through it.
Dr. Lisa: I know that it can be particularly painful, and this is of course a Mother’s Day show so it’s hard, but it can be particularly painful to go toward what you think is a positive outcome, a baby being born and have a loss whether it’s early or late or even once the baby is born. Have you been in situations like that?
Dr. Ann: I have. Miscarriage is probably one of the most under recognized losses in our society; there is just no way to acknowledge it as … there is a lot of loss there. Unexpected outcomes such as the baby going to the neonatal intensive care unit, etc, those are difficult. Still birth is very, very difficult too.
Dr. Lisa: How do you as a doctor support your patients when they’re going through these losses?
Dr. Ann: Probably the most important to me is just being there. It’s clearly different for everyone but standing by and accepting and validating, I think those are some of the most important things.
Dr. Lisa: Along with loss, we’re talking about loss but there turns to be a gain of some sort. In mothering you gain a baby but you also somewhat lose a bit of yourself, it’s an interesting back and forth. It’s a positive, it’s all good eventually. You experience this with your patients as they give birth, what do you notice about people as they’re going through this transformational mothering process?
Dr. Ann: What I think I notice in terms of the transformation is really the focus of energy tends to move from couple to family. That’s a really difficult thing I think, for people to negotiate.
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Genevieve: Have you seen a change over the past 22 years with women having babies later and being more involved in the work force?
Dr. Ann: Yes, and men also taking much more of an active role in doing a good deal of childcare. A fair minority of families where the father or the other partner will stay at home as well or they’ll work their schedules so that hardly any childcare is needed.
Dr. Lisa: Do you find it difficult for new mothers to sequester their energy to try to do things for themselves as opposed to always doing things for other people?
Dr. Ann: Oh yes, I see that quite a bit.
Genevieve: I think that’s part of being female too.
Dr. Ann: It could be.
Dr. Lisa: What types of things do you suggest?
Dr. Ann: I think just putting it out there and naming it; having time for yourself. That doesn’t have to be an afternoon a week, it might be five minutes a day or whatever it is, but just holding on to some part of you without children, you without partner. I think that’s very important to nourishing your energy.
Genevieve: Maybe instead of a Mother’s Day we should have a mother’s minute or something every day?
Dr. Ann: I think that’s a good idea.
Genevieve: You spoke of being present and available to someone at a terrible moment and how meaningful that’s become to you. Was there a situation or a person in your life where that became clear to you; a specific instance where you understood that to be meaningful? How did that come about?
Dr. Ann: I think I witnessed it really … I had a wonderful mentor in Richard Rockefeller who certainly displayed that in many ways. I also think about that just standing by as really the root of obstetrics. You’re asking really about at times of loss but I think that standing by is really important through the delivery process too.
Genevieve: That vulnerability piece, when people are at their most vulnerable?
Dr. Ann: Yes, and the fact that you’re actually doing something by being there. You may not have to be touching, coaching, talking but just being there is important.
Dr. Lisa: I remember with my Abby it was very helpful to have you there. I remember you brought your knitting along.
Dr. Ann: That’s right. I was actually thinking of that and laughing to myself because I have had people tell me later that they were really, really angry at me because I was sitting comfortably in the room knitting and they were going through you know what.
Dr. Lisa: It’s a little hard to have it both ways. If you want somebody there then what are they supposed to do to entertain themselves? I don’t know, but I found it helpful so I’m glad that … If this doesn’t work for everybody then that’s okay.
Genevieve: It’s a confusing process. When you’re pregnant you hear that it’s this natural process and in the old days people used to go just give birth in the fields and there is the sense of, well, you should be able to do this, your body should just take over. But as we know that often doesn’t take place and you do need intervention. It must be interesting to be there and know when to intervene and when to step back.
Dr. Ann: Yes. I have learned a lot from my nurse colleagues about how to judge that with patients and when to suggest and when to not suggest. They’ve been very good teachers in that way.
Dr. Lisa: I think that you bring up a really good point and one that we’ll talk about with other guests on the show and that is it ends up being more of a team approach. It’s not always mom, although sometimes it’s mom and baby but often times it is a room full of people, it is the four walls that you’ve described. Do you think that with the advent of technology there has been some distancing between doctor and patient? When I was in residency we all would sit … not me all the time but there was the temptation to sit and watch the monitor, watch the contractions from the nurse’s station and when something exciting happens then we all go in. Talk to me that a little bit.
Dr. Ann: That still happens and I think that we are constantly vigilant about not using the technology to supplant being with the patient. Because when you can do it from outside the room sometimes that does seem a little bit easier but being in the room is so important. There are ways that we’ve reduced the use of technology too, for example the use of the electronic monitors used to be used fairly continuously, now we do more off and on listening or intimate oscilatation.
Genevieve: I was wondering about the caesarean birth because a lot of people feel disappointed when they have a caesarean birth and now the data goes back and forth between whether if you had one Caesarean birth whether you can have a vaginal birth after that. What is the newest take on that?
Dr. Ann: It’s still an informed decision between the mother and her doctor because there are pros and cons for each way. Clearly the recovery is usually a little bit quicker and easier after vaginal birth but the planned caesarean has a little bit lower risk of some things that although extremely infrequent are at times catastrophic.
Genevieve: Can you have a vaginal birth after you’ve had a caesarean?
Dr. Ann: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have any tips for patients who might be listening; pregnant women or their significant other, spouses or people who might be helping them for communicating with their labor and delivery team?
Dr. Ann: I think being clear up front about what you want, knowing that things may change. For most people writing it down some place is helpful. I think everybody has probably seen online or used birth plans which really get the key elements in the things that might happen during the course of labor and delivery. Those can be really good as guides but I think that others will talk or have talked about how you really need to be prepared to change expectations on the fly in this area.
Dr. Lisa: Do some of this communication, is it impacted by the care provider that you choose?
Dr. Ann: Absolutely. One of the things that you’ll be checking out as you go through the initial parts of pregnancy in those early visits are is this person someone who is listening to you, communicating with you? Do you feel comfortable bringing up your questions? That kind of thing, in most groups you won’t necessarily be delivered by the person who provides most of the prenatal care but you should be able to get pretty good sense for the openness and respect that people in that group show to their patients.
Dr. Lisa: How many babies have you delivered? Do you know?
Dr. Ann: I stopped keeping count a long time ago. I think I probably told you Lisa that I used to just because babies often come at times when you might have been doing other things. I used to track the numbers so that I would take my husband out to dinner for every baby that I delivered. I was so far behind that I knew I would never catch up and I at that time I said, okay, dinner is always on me. If we say, maybe 20 a year for 22 years then I guess that’s 440.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a lot of babies, and probably there are more.
Dr. Ann: Yes, there could be more. I love seeing them around town, at sporting events. It’s really cool to say, ‘I delivered that young man or woman or child.’
Genevieve: I just want to say happy Mother’s Day to your mother, and I don’t know if your grandmother is still here but we are very lucky in the state of Maine that your mother gave birth to you. Happy Mother’s Day to your mother.
Dr. Ann: Thank you, I’m sure she appreciates that and my grandmother does too.
Dr. Lisa: We appreciate your helping bring so much life into Maine, into this part of Maine and also for the work that you do at the family practice department at the Maine Medical Center and continuing to focusing on the importance of family and relationships as you did in a high tech situation. Thank you for coming in and joining us today.
Dr. Ann: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.
Dr. Lisa: On today’s Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we have a special Mother’s Day show which is just replete with mothers of various sorts but also people who are helping mothers. These individuals in studio with us and with Genevieve Morgan my co-host are Alison Gray who is a labor and delivery nurse at St.Mary’s hospital and mother of three, and Emily Marie who is the co-founder of our birthroots here in Portland and mother of one.
I must say I was surprised because I realized after we agreed to have you on the air I use to babysit for you a while ago. It’s very funny to see you here and all grown up and you’re actually a testament to the idea that we do listen to what people who are interested in the radio hour and podcast have to say because this was your idea Alison to have the show about what we call the peri-natal care. But we are really talking about helping women through the birth process and their experience. It was such a great idea we said, sure come on up and let’s talk.
You’re so interesting in that you’re a labor and delivery nurse at St. Mary’s which is in Lewiston but you have three very distinct birth experiences yourself, so tell me about that.
Alison: My first daughter was born … I was pretty young and I really was always drawn to the kind of more natural birth options, but ended up having her at Mercy Hospital in Portland. I had a midwife who was at Women to Women at the time; she doesn’t do OB stuff anymore. But she was amazing and she really helped foster this passion for helping pregnant women.
I had a great experience at Mercy, it was about as wonderful as it could get especially for a younger mom. I think sometimes the stigma is there and the nurses there were amazing as they usual are and I had great experience. My oldest daughter is 15, and then my next daughter is seven they were about seven years apart and I chose the home birth route.
It has always been of interest and I think being a little bit older, maybe a little bit more confident in that process having been through it once before and had a pretty smooth transition. I also had a lot of family support which would probably make or break that situation for anyone.
But I had a home-birth with my middle daughter that went beautifully as well and so it was just natural to have it for my third child who is very, very fast. I really think I would have ended up having a homebirth even if I had planned a hospital birth with him; it was crazy. I feel blessed to be able to have those different perspectives.
In the hospital I work with women who have different goals for their birth scenario and so for people who are hoping for the less introventive scenario I feel like I come at it with a different vision of how that can happen because I’ve seen the other side of the pendulum I guess.
Dr. Lisa: How old were you when had your first child?
Alison: I was seventeen when Deely was born.
Dr. Lisa: That’s really young.
Alison: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: That’s scary young.
Alison: Yeah. That’s the best surprise young.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, right.
Emily: I understand and I feel like the care that Alison received through her midwife was so respectful and really put her in the driver seat of her care. I feel like that level of honoring this young as a mother really set the tone for being a confident parent.
Dr. Lisa: Absolutely. When I say scary young I mean just, there is probably a lot of fear associated with being 17 and having a child. I’m not even thinking about the stigma associated with being 17 and having a child.
Alison: It is really strange and this is not at all any kind of like pro young baby thing at all. But it’s almost, and I think this has to do with the birth process too because I see this with teenagers who deliver at the hospital, you haven’t had the years of hearing this horrible birth stories and seeing birth story on TV. It’s not on your radar at that age so you go into this process, for me personally just thinking, ‘Oh, well, that’s just how it is.’ I don’t think there was as much hang up of fear. Of course the day to day stuff, teenagers’ brains are just wired differently. I don’t even think you have the same worries, you just think, ‘It will work out,’ which probably isn’t good always.
But I do think that there is something about the more time goes on I think sometimes the fear builds a little more if you haven’t gone through that birth experience and you’ve had more time to maybe hear some of the other kind of, I don’t know, horror stories that people love to tell.
Emily: Or fantasy realities.
Dr. Lisa: That’s where I wanted to bring you in and talk about this, Emily. Our birth root, tell us what that is.
Emily: Birthroots was founded in 2004 by myself and Leah Deragan. We originally founded Birthroots with the intention of just shining a light on and making more accessible all of the non-clinical support options. While that’s still true, that’s still a large focus of what we do, showing families the whole spectrum of what’s available to them, we have grown into being a container for this experience of becoming a parent.
We work with families from early in pregnancy all the way through the first year of parenting. Just holding a space for them doing what we call building their parenting muscle just like the experience that Alison had which completely inspired me into getting into this work; having that experience of someone saying, ‘What do you think? What do you need to know in order to make a decision?’ and really having that be an authentic decision coming from the family influenced by all of that support network around them from their doctor, or their midwife to their family or their friends, what they read so they can make decisions from a place of feeling really confident in what they are doing.
Genevieve: Nature gives us nine months to prepare for this way and with Birthroots and as a family or whether with your parents or with your spouse or whoever it is to prepare for becoming parents. But there is probably nothing in human experience that is as immediate as that moment when your baby arrives. You go from one personhood to another. I don’t know what it would be for men. May be it more, I don’t know. But for women I think it’s child birth. What is it like being there over and over again with women going into this moment Alison?
Alison: It’s humbling, I feel like the moment I stop bringing that with me in my work, that’s probably the time I should not be doing it anymore because I think you see so many, there are definitely people who are burnt out or maybe need to step away but I just, I always feel humbled by that experience. Every person’s journey is so different and just trying to meet them where they are at. The community I work in has a lot of needs and many aspects. Regardless of all of the different needs that go on and it’s always this amazing transformative experience. I just see it as my job to really help support that as much as possible. There is just nothing to describe it. It’s…
Genevieve: Awesome.
Alison: Yeah. It’s amazing.
Genevieve: True, and it’s true. It’s amazing.
Genevieve For expectant mothers out there are many different non-clinical services; hypnosis, water birth, lots of different techniques. Do you guys have any opinion on, for people listening out there? What have you seen that’s worked?
Emily: It’s so individual. I think knowing that all of those options are there and helping a woman decide for herself. Some people just click beautifully with hypnosis and use it effectively in childbirth to stay really relaxed. Others need a lot more active, a lot more of an active approach. One of the things that happens in our classes is that we talk about all those approaches and practice a little bit from each of them so a woman has real sense of, ‘yeah, that one didn’t work as well’ or ‘this one clicked more for me.’ It’s more about knowing that there is this whole menu available and being able to practice ahead of time but then also have a plan B for what if that doesn’t work, then there is another resource available to turn to.
Alison: We know statistically speaking that doulas greatly reduce the amount of intravention and C-sections that a person might encounter throughout the process. That is one thing. Sometimes people look at the cost and think, ‘I can’t afford that,’ but Birthroots actually does a doula training and people need to do volunteer births to get their certifications.
There’s always ways, that’s just an added layer of someone telling you ‘you can do this’ and giving you resources of understanding how to go through it. I think doula … connecting with a doula is a really beneficial thing regardless of if you’re going to just go in for planned C-section. They do everything. But also turning off baby story and I think good child birth classes that help, I’m a huge fan of pre-natal yoga, I’m a big yoga fan myself but there is something about working through the poses mentally. It reminds me of how you work through contractions mentally so I always try and put that plug in but like Em said everybody is so individual that you find what works for you. Educating yourself on what’s out there, educating yourself on what kind of provider might be a good match for you is huge.
Emily: And reducing fear. Fear is the switch that turns labor off. The less fear there is, the more that switch can be in its most effective position.
Dr. Lisa: What is the most, the biggest thing that you learned through your own labor, delivery, childbirth, mothering? Each of you as individuals; what have you, what has been the most transformative thing for you?
Emil: I think experiencing birth for me, towards the end of my labor my blood pressure was not where it needed to be in and we had to induce two weeks before my daughter’s due date. That was a long process that ended in a Caesarian birth. For someone from my background, teaching childbirth education, being a doula, I had always known and said, ‘Whatever works for you, you have to make decisions in the moment based on the information you have,’ but really making it through that process, we talk at birthroots about the difference between a trauma and an ordeal and that experience could have been traumatic.
That experience could have been, could have felt like I was no part of it, could have felt like it was the end of the world because it wasn’t the birth that I wanted. But it was so perfect, every step of the way with the support that I had around me with my midwife and the doctor that was backing her up really explaining things to me as we went so I could make really clear decisions every step of the way that yes, that was the right decision at that time. I emerged with my parenting muscle intact feeling like I was more prepared. It was very clear to me on a very internal level at that point that it really matters more that a woman feels like she was a full participant in that process.
Genevieve: How can people find out more about Birthroots?
Emily: We have a website ourbirthroots.org but our Facebook page is a very dynamic page. We have lots of friends and Leah, my partner at Birthroots really posts amazing things. She scours the internet for amazing stories and resources and articles that support growth of the parenting muscle. We also firmly believe in pluralism in the peri-natal world which means that we can actually co-exist as mothers with differing opinions and still like each other and respect each other. She holds that bar really high on our Facebook page for discussions to happen.
Facebook and our website and of course a resource guide that we publish each year with as many local peri-natal resources as we can find. There is an online copy on our website and another one coming out in May, end of May.
Alison: There’s resources in there that even if you are not pregnant or newly a mom would be beneficial.
Emily: Absolutely.
Alison: Definitely.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Alison Gray, mother of three and Labor and Delivery Nurses St. Mary’s hospital in Lewiston. Sister to Emily Marie, co-founder of Birthroots and mother of one. We appreciate your coming in and taking the time to speak with us. I must say as your past babysitter from many moons ago, I’m thrilled to see how much good you are doing in the world. I know that all the young mothers out there that you’re impacting feel the same way.
Alison: Thank you.
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Dr. Lisa: In the studio today we have Sarah Plimpton and I knew, I know her both personally and professionally. What we thought would be interesting is to have her come in and talk about her experiences as a new mother. Genevieve Morgan and I are old time moms, I’ve got an 18 year old, I’ve got a 16 year old, I’ve got an 11 year old. Genevieve has got …
Genevieve: It seems like a long time ago that they were infants.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, but you have a little one.
Sarah: Seven and a half months.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, teething and …
Sarah: Teething just …
Dr. Lisa: How is she doing these days?
Sarah: She just started sleeping through the night.
Genevieve: Hallelujah.
Sarah: Yes, indeed. She is almost crawling, working really hard on that. She has started bubbling. A couple maybe a month or so ago she started saying ‘Ba bababa. Ma mamama.’ That’s pretty exciting.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, and these are all things … all these things that you are bringing up are things that when you are going through them, these milestones, they seem enormous. They get written on the baby calender and the baby book. When you talk about them you pause. I remember all of these so vividly even though it was a long time ago. What other milestones have you seen in your own life as a mother because a lot of things have changed for you in the last what, 7 plus nine months?
Sarah: Right. I don’t know about milestones but I think a lot of things have changed certainly. I have a lot less time for myself which is something Lisa that you and I have always talked a lot about is carving out time in your life for yourself and I’m really fighting to keep that time. That has been a really big struggle for me. I’m not exercising as much as I used to. I just don’t have the time and I don’t really think I have the energy. That’s been a really big change over the past several months.
But again, we’ve also talked a lot about going easy on yourself and not beating yourself up to a pulp when you can’t achieve really, really high expectations that you set for yourself. I’ve also tried to think about the fact that this is a stage, I will not be breastfeeding forever and that will free me up considerably and she will get older and be less dependent and all that kind of stuff. But it’s hard. There are definitely days I just want to go for a run and I can’t, or I just want an hour to do this project or just be by myself and you can’t necessarily do that when you have a baby.
Genevieve: I remember when my firstborn was about your baby’s age someone said to me the days are long but the years are short. Now that I’m in a position that I am now with a 15 year old and a 12 year old, I really feel that because I remember those days with a newborn and they were endless.
Sarah: It’s a good thing nature makes them so magical.
Genevieve: Yeah, yeah.
Sarah: It is hard, the days can be long but I’ve recently realized that she is closer to being a year than zero and that is just blowing my mind. I feel even in the moment like I’m able to see that the years really are just going to start going very quickly.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve talking about managing expectations. I happen to have had a front row seat to your expectations of labor and delivery. Are you willing to tell us about how what you expected differed from what happened?
Sarah: Sure. I’m always happy to talk about my birth story. I went into it very much wanting to have a natural un-medicated delivery. I knew that that was going to entail a fair bit of education on my part and planning as well on my part. My husband and I took a class in the Bradley method last summer. I was due last September so June, July and August.
We spent every Saturday morning to learn about natural child birth which was in retrospect insane that we gave up every Saturday morning for an entire summer but that’s how dedicated and committed we were to the process of an un-medicated birth. September came we’d done this class, we did all kinds of preparatory exercises and all kinds of stuff to get ready for this.
I had this nice little birth plan and Lisa was going to come and be with me in hospital and help me get through it and all that kind of stuff. My due date comes and I didn’t go into labor which is fine. A week goes by and I’m still not in labor. I think it was six days after my due date, not a full week had gone by. My water broke on a Friday night and I thought great, this is it. It’s going to happen. I just have to wait for it to happen. I went to bed and woke up the next morning and I wasn’t in labor.
I went into the hospital and the doctors were very accommodating and great about honoring my desired outcome of not wanting to be induced, really wanting to give my body the time to go into labor on its own. A very long story short they sent me home Saturday and said, ‘Go walk around, go eat spicy food. If you don’t go into labor on your own by tomorrow morning, Sunday morning come back and we’ll check you and we will reassess what’s going to happen and what’s going on.’ I did all those things Sunday morning came I was still not in labor and it was very stressful day as you can imagine. There were a lot of decisions about do I get induced now? do I continue to wait? What are the risks? What are the benefits?
Genevieve: Because we should say that once the water breaks the baby is at a higher risk.
Sarah: Exactly. I was really operating under this assumption I think it’s more than 90% of women when their water breaks and they are not in labor, they do go into labor on their own fairly soon thereafter. On Sunday it was a very, very tense stressful day. They ultimately let me leave again. In retrospect I’m not sure that I would have left again if I could go back and do it all over again. But I did, with the same understanding that if by Monday morning I was not in labor, I was going to come back and have them check me again.
Monday morning came and I was not in labor. I had now gone more than two days with my membranes ruptured not in labor. They did an ultrasound. They said, ‘The baby…’ I didn’t know the sex at the time but they said, ‘The baby is fine but she is moving a little bit less than we’d like to see. There is not a lot of fluid in there. We’ve given this a lot of time; we think you need to induce.’ I said okay. As soon as the doctor said here is our professional opinion, they’d been so accommodating up to that point so I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to go with this.’
They induced me on Monday. The long and short of it is that even after an induction I still didn’t go into labor which was kind of amazing and crazy.
Genevieve: Does that happen often Lisa?
Dr. Lisa: It certainly can. These are the best laid plans so yeah, you can definitely end up not having the outcome you wanted.
Sarah: The induction occurred at about 2 o’clock on Monday afternoon. It was a 12 hour induction course. At about 1, probably a little late maybe two or three in the morning, Tuesday morning I started to get a really bad headache, I got really, really cold chills and I got fever. I knew immediately when I started to feel like that that it was over, that I was going to end up having a C-section, I just knew it. The doctor came in and they did all the temperature and all that kind of stuff, they conferred and said, ‘You are nowhere near delivering this baby. You developing a fever is a sign of potential infection in your body. It could impact the baby, game over.’
I had a c-section, went from wanting zero intervention to having a nice little scar on my belly but in the moment I really felt like I had done everything I could to protect what I wanted. I think I was flexible along the way. I think it was a really good lesson for me in terms of becoming a parent; that you can plan for all this stuff and it just doesn’t matter, it’s going to be what it’s going to be.
Genevieve: She came out healthy and pink…
Sarah: She did, she came out screaming with I think almost apgar score which was a huge relief. We did have to stay in the hospital for a week because there were signs of infection in her system so she needed to be on a course of antibiotics for a week which I don’t think, in retrospect I fully understood what that would mean. I do look back at it and think I should have been induced sooner. I was holding onto an ideal for a little bit too long. I should have just said, ‘Okay, induce me,’ on Saturday night or Sunday morning or something.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a long time to have your membranes ruptured and be out and about. It’s actually to the credit of the people that you were working with, your doctor and the nursing team, that they allowed you to do that and allowed you to really try to move forward with the plan that you’d put in place; but still a long time. I think it does speak of the vagaries of birth, that things, they happen and you end up needing to make decisions that you can always Monday quarterback them. They are what they are.
But I was really impressed when I, because you and I were communicating back and forth this entire time because I was going to be willing to come in and be part of the birth and when you went to c-section, you really, you kept a very balanced view of all this, all the way along. I knew that you had gone through an enormous amount of time and effort and thought and you and I talked about a lot of different things regarding the baby and the birth and what was going to happen. I knew this could be extremely disappointing to you and it could have just been devastating but instead you just, you did what you needed to do and the baby was beautiful. The outcome was exactly what you wanted no matter what.
Genevieve: It’s a life lesson.
Sarah: It’s totally a life lesson.
Dr. Lisa: Because I think all the motherhood is like that. You have the best intentions and the best laid plans and then you know what? Your kid just wants to go and do something else.
Sarah: Yeah. I think the other piece of becoming a parent that experience sort of foreshadowed was just that there is no plan for how to do this. There is no instruction book, there is no… you can go and have all the advice in the world from the ‘experts’. But they all contradict each other. It all changes every five years.
It’s really just your gut and your intuition and your instincts which is … I think there are very few other jobs out there where there isn’t more training or professional development available to you. It’s like fly by the seat of your pants and ask the people around you who have been through it for their advice and just make the best decision that you can make. That’s hard.
Dr. Lisa: It is hard but it’s also rewarding. What are some of the high points of your last 16 months been pregnant, labor, delivery, birth, seven plus months old now?
Sarah: She is my proudest achievement. I don’t know whether to call her an achievement but she is the love of my life. I’m going to start crying.
But I think proud moments have been when we have figured things out ourselves and not … maybe we’ve gotten solicited advice from number of different people and have been like, ‘Eh, that doesn’t feel like the right thing for us to do,’ and we’ve maybe tried it and confirmed that it wasn’t the right thing, done something else and realized that wasn’t the right thing either and then tried something else and finally hit on, ‘Okay this is the right approach for this baby right now.’ That has been pretty rewarding at those moments when we’ve figured it out on our own.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been talking about, we brought you in the show with this idea of mothering energy. You personify mothering energy cutting across the way for us, congratulations on your newish baby who of course now I need to see her, okay. You fix yourself about that, I need to see this child I have this baby thing I have to hold her too.
Sarah: She will let you hold her.
Dr. Lisa: She’s beautiful so congratulations on that, and we wish you all the best on your journey moving forward with her. It’s Genevieve can attest it is an amazing journey, not always easy but amazing, so happy Mother’s Day to you and thank you for coming in.
Sarah: Thank you and happy Mother’s Day to both of you as well.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle; you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show number 35, Motherhood, Airing on Mother’s Day May 13th 2012, on wlobradio.com, this week’s guest have included Dr. Ann Skelton the chief of family medicine at the Maine Medical Centre, Alison Grey and Emily Murray a labor and delivering nurse from Luston and founder of Birthroots both sisters and mothers and Sarah Plimpton a new mother. We hope that you have enjoyed listening to the various perspectives offered by our guests.
We know that you have gained some gainful insights which may impact your own life as a mother. My co-host Genevieve Morgan and I wish all the mothers out there and mothering sorts, biological or otherwise the happiest of Mother’s days. Thank you for being part of our world, may you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Robin Hodgkin, Morgan Stanley Smith, Dr. John Hazog of Orthopedics Specialists in Falmouth Maine, Tom Sheppard of Sheppard Financial, Booth, UNE the University of New England and Akari.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Chris Cast and Genevieve Morgan, audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Jane Pate.
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