Birth Matters Podcast, Ep 16 - Home Birth in the "Upside Down" for 2nd-timer Inspires Doula Work

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Want to hear a birth story in which an almost 10-pound baby boy is born safe and sound at home after 22 hours of labor? Ready or not, that’s what you're gonna hear today! Hear all about Alishia’s 2nd birth following her first birth in a hospital 15 years prior. Alishia also shares about her journey into birth & lactation work as a Black woman and her hopes of serving underserved populations in central Queens.

Episode Topics:

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  • ultrasound...surprise, baby’s big! Alishia decides it wise to hire a doula at the last minute

  • water breaks, coping techniques (including the rebozo--a long scarf used by Mexican midwives as a coping tool--the tub, even vodka!), doula arriving

  • talks about never getting the urge to push

  • birth of baby and discussion about pushing positions

  • labor transition feels like “The Upside Down” alternate universe from Stranger Things and labor amnesia

  • foley balloon used in homebirth to help get things moving, description of how it felt for her

  • coping techniques that worked for Alishia - tub, peppermint oil, birth ball in the shower, changing positions, lighting

  • feeling lightheaded for about 48 hours after birth, physical adjustments due to that

  • home birth kit/supplies details

  • journey from giving birth at home into changing careers to become a birth doula and lactation counselor

  • thoughts on how Alishia can support fellow women of color to have better, safer births

  • Alishia’s final thoughts / wisdom for expectant parents

Resources:

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*Disclosure: Links on this page to products are affiliate links; I will receive a small commission on any products you purchase at no additional cost to you.

Transcript:

Lisa: 0:00

You're listening to the Birth Matters Podcast, episode 16

Alishia: 0:04

Have you seen the show "Stranger Things?"

Lisa: 0:07

Yeah. Yeah.

Alishia: 0:07

Okay, so in this show is the Upside Down. It's like this alternate universe, and when I was, now I know I was in the transition phase, I kept saying "I'm in the Upside Down!

Lisa: 0:23

Totally.

Alishia: 0:24

It felt like I was losing consciousness.

Lisa: 0:36

Hey, there. And welcome to the Birth Matters Show. I'm your host, Lisa Greaves Taylor, founder of Birth Matters NYC Childbirth Education and Labor Support. This show is here to lessen your overwhelm on the journey into parenthood by equipping and encouraging you with current best evidence info and soulful interviews with parents and birth pros. Please keep in mind the information on the show is not intended as medical advice, or to diagnose or treat any medical conditions. Have you subscribed to the show yet? Please be sure to do that wherever you're listening to this or over at birthmattersshow.com so you don't miss out on anything. Do you want to hear a birth story in which an almost 10 pound baby boy is born safe and sound at home after 22 hours of labor? Ready or not, that's what you're going to hear today. Hear all about Alishia's second birth following her first birth in a hospital 15 years prior.

Lisa: 1:31

Alishia also shares about her journey into birth and lactation work as a woman of color and her hopes of serving underserved populations in central Queens. Before we jump into the story, I want to let you know that this episode is brought to you by Birth Matters NYC's Childbirth Education classes. If you live in the New York city area, the best way to build your confidence and prep for an amazing birth and entry into parenthood and to connect with other expectant parents to build your very important support system is to attend group childbirth education classes. You'll spend quality time with your labor support partner in our comfy Astoria living room classroom as you prepare for not only birth but also for your best possible postpartum recovery and wellness as well as early parenting with classes on breastfeeding and newborn care techniques. Classes often book up about one to two months in advance, so be sure to grab your spot on the early side. For more information and to sign up visit birthmattersnyc.com. Okay. Without further ado, let's jump in.

Lisa: 2:32

Welcome, Alishia, I'm so excited to chat with you today. You have such an exciting birth story to share with us and so thank you. Thank you for your willingness to share these great experiences. Why don't you go ahead and just tell us where you are in your parenting journey and then launch into your birth story.

Alishia: 2:49

Okay. I'm Alishia. I'm from Queens, New York and I say I, I guess I was a patron of Birth Matters for the birth of my second child because I was doing a little bit different. I was doing a home birth with him. My first child was born in a hospital. So I have two kids, one 15 year old girl and one almost two year old boy. He's 21 months, 22 months old. So that's fun.

Lisa: 3:19

Yeah, a handful, I'm sure.

Alishia: 3:21

Yeah. I mean it works because my 15 year old helps me a lot with the baby, but still it's like a wide range of emotions every day.

Lisa: 3:30

And before you launch in, would you mind just sharing a little bit of your decision making process in choosing home birth after having a hospital birth?

Alishia: 3:39

Yeah. Well I had my first, I had my daughter when I was young, I was 19 years old and I didn't really do much research on pregnancy or giving birth. I just went to a doctor and they told me which hospital I was going to and, and I just did what I guess was put in front of me. And that experience wasn't terrible. I was able to have a vaginal birth, but I just felt very out of control and I don't like to feel out of control. So the second go round, I put a lot more thought and effort into what I wanted it to be like and what I wanted for my baby. And I was not finding that in the offices of most OB-GYNs. So my husband was the one who actually suggested a home birth. I'd never even considered it. But the more I looked into it, the more comfortable I felt.

Lisa: 4:34

That's so cool. It's not common that the partners suggest that.

Alishia: 4:38

Yeah, I don't know where that--well, he's very into nature, so he likes to do things as hands-off as possible.

Lisa: 4:44

Oh, and I always love to support local businesses. Do you want to share what his business is?

Alishia: 4:50

Yes, it's Isaiah's Fig Tree. It's, I like to say a landscaping business, because we don't take care of lawns, anything like that. We really install therapeutic gardens in sometimes residential, sometimes commercial all throughout New York city. So you can find this on Google.

Lisa: 5:07

Yeah. And Instagram. I love seeing the beautiful pictures of all of the therapeutic gardens. Beautiful work.

Alishia: 5:15

Thank you. I appreciate that. So should I get into my birth story?

Lisa: 5:19

Yeah, launch right into it. Sure.

Alishia: 5:20

Okay. So once I decided on a home birth, I had to look for a midwife and I ended up with Tania Zarulnick. She's based out of Park Slope. She was great. She was good for me in that she was informative but not like handholding, right? So she put a lot of the responsibility back in our court, which I think is important. Everything was normal. Pregnancy was normal. I did feel very tired for most of the pregnancy, which was weird to me because I'm very active. It was hard to make the adjustment and I didn't understand why because she kept telling me that my baby was small, because I'm small.... (laughs) Yeah. What a surprise that was. I went past 40 weeks and when I did, she sent me for an ultrasound. And I'll never forget this day. I'm in the ultrasound room with my daughter and Zach, my husband, and everyone's smiling, he's laughing. I'm on the screen, it's like one of those 4D things, and then all of a sudden the technician goes, "Oh my God." And I'm like, "Oh my God, what? What's happening?"

Lisa: 6:27

Never say that! Seriously!?

Alishia: 6:27

I know! And my heart drops. I'm like, "What?" So I'm trying to read her face, like what's happening? She goes, "He's going to be 10 pounds." And I'm like, "No, he's like 8 pounds, like, no." And then they call in all these people to do all these measurements. They're like, "Yeah, he's measuring at 9-13." I was at 40 weeks and one day, and then so now they made it seem to me like an emergency. Like, "You have this big baby, we have to get him out right now." So I was, I left there, I called my midwife and she's like, "Okay, he's a big baby. What are you going to do? Just wait." And I'm like, "But I don't want to wait!"

Lisa: 7:10

It's so hard to hear it's a big baby, right? It really scares the you-know-what out of us.

Alishia: 7:16

Yeah, it does. I was not prepared for that. And along the, along the pregnancy journey, I considered using a doula, but I figured, "I've done this before. I have a midwife, I don't need a doula." But then when I left that appointment, talking to my midwife, she said, "Yeah, maybe you should really look into connecting with a doula." And I remember I emailed you, I'm like, "Do you know any doulas? I was due yesterday. And now I need a doula. I was connected to Nubia Martin from Birth from the Earth. Yeah. And I didn't, I, you know, I, I had called her early on in my pregnancy, so we knew each other a little bit, but we had never met in person. And she took me right on. I ended up going to 42 weeks to the day. And I, I guess it was an induction. I used the foley balloon, and within an hour it fell out. And then immediately my water broke. I was sitting on a birth ball in my living room. I'm like, "That was fast! I didn't expect that to happen so fast." And things started really, really quickly. The contractions came really fast and really intense. And I took your class, and I was reading all these books and I knew to be mindful and I had a baby before, but like everything...

Lisa: 8:33

Flies out of your head...

Alishia: 8:33

And I'm like, Zach was working. August 16th. He's a gardener; he's out. But when he came home he saw that I was a little bit distressed, so he called Nubia and I can't even keep track of the time after that. But I remember when she came, I was sitting on a birth ball. I had my reboso pinched in the door to my bathroom and I was pulling down on it with each contraction. And when she came, she didn't say a word, she just sat behind me and she put some counter pressure on my back and she goes, "When you have these contractions, don't try to hold on to it. Just let them go." And the first time I did that I was like, "Oh my God, I've been doing this wrong the whole time." It was such a relief. Oh my God. And I'm like, "You are an angel. Thank you for telling me that." So my water broke around two o'clock in the afternoon. I labored at home in the shower, the birth ball in the bed, and I ended up giving birth the next day at 12:02 in the afternoon. Labor was long and hard. I actually drank vodka.

Lisa: 9:52

I don't blame you.

Alishia: 9:56

It got to a point where I was fully dilated and fully effaced, but I just never, I never got the urge to push. And it was so intense that I think I was scaring them. So my midwife's like, "Do you want a drink?" I'm like, "Yes." She gave me a drink and I'm, I'm not even kidding, I just, I chugged the vodka, like if it was water. She's like, "That was fast." That was supposed to last you for a while!" But it didn't. That's one of the things that still puzzles me to this day. I never felt the urge to push. The only reason my baby came out was because my midwife, she said, "Okay, it's time to--time to give birth." And I'm like, "Okay." And I did some squats and like within three pushes, he was out. But I never felt like that uncontrollable urge to push.

Lisa: 10:48

And I'm sure you've probably changed positions to try to see if that would trigger.

Alishia: 10:52

Yeah, I was all over the place. I had a tub shower, tried laying down. I was walking. I live on the fourth floor, walking up and down the steps, nothing. It was just like, I dunno.

Lisa: 11:05

It doesn't always happen. It usually does, but not always. And it sometimes can have to do with the position of the baby, but who knows?

Alishia: 11:16

Yeah, it still boggles my mind. But he came out easy and healthy. He's calm like his father, he didn't really cry. He latched right on. My daughter was there. She was 13 at the time. She was there throughout the labor. She wanted no parts of it. She stayed in her room for 19 and a half hours. After she heard him crying, then she came out and she was not with it at all because she's like, "There's so much blood in here." So she went back in her room until it was all cleaned up and then she came out. Also my midwife had a birth assistant who was helping me. She was dancing with me through it all. I forget her name. My team was really good and they placed bets when Zion was born on how heavy he was and Nubia, my doula, hit it right on the head. She guessed 9-14 and he was 9-14.

Lisa: 12:15

In the pushing stage, I mean, yes, you had given birth before, but even having given birth before, I would expect the pushing stage to take longer.

Alishia: 12:25

No, it didn't. I was like...the position for pushing, I was standing and hugging Zack and then when the contraction came I turned around and like squatted down.

Lisa: 12:34

Ah, supported squat. Opening that pelvis.

Alishia: 12:36

Yeah.

Lisa: 12:37

That made a world of difference. Don't you know? Because don't you know that like in a hospital on your back in the bed, it would have taken hours, hours, and then might not have even, yeah. It might've not gone anywhere. So I love hearing that. That's so fantastic.

Alishia: 12:54

It was a very, you know, I tried to describe, this is...have you seen the show Stranger Things?

Lisa: 13:00

Yes. Yep.

Alishia: 13:00

Okay. So in this show is the "Upside Down." It's like this alternate universe. And when I was, now I know I was in the transition phase, I kept saying, "I'm in the upside down."

Lisa: 13:16

Totally.

Alishia: 13:17

It felt like I was losing consciousness. Like I would...I was constantly doing this, like to try to bring myself back out of the Upside Down. It sounds so crazy, but that's what it felt like because you're like at this place where you're out of control and it's just like, like you keep getting swept there with each contraction. I was like, "I never want to go there again."

Lisa: 13:42

But then we do forget over time.

Alishia: 13:45

And now I want another.

Lisa: 13:48

You were sharing that earlier.

Alishia: 13:50

But yeah, so that's my story.

Lisa: 13:52

Wow. Now backing up to the very beginning of that, I have not heard of a foley balloon being used in a home birth locally. So, so your midwife used a foley balloon?

Lisa: 14:02

Yep. I was desperate, and I don't know if this is just her policy, but, or all the midwives policy, but she said that if I went past 42 weeks then I would have to be transferred. So the day that she put the foley balloon in, it was 41 and six, so it was like do or die. And she came over with her assistant and they did it on my bed in my bedroom. Because she was hoping that it would work in 24 hours and it worked like in...she, I don't even think she got home when I called her, and I'm like, "Okay, it's out."

Lisa: 14:37

Your body was so ready. Needed just a tiny nudge it sounds like. And how did that feel for you? The foley balloon.

Alishia: 14:44

Putting it in was a little bit uncomfortable because she's a small woman and it was hard for her to get in the position. So her assistant actually did it. But once it was in, the only uncomfortable part was, it was like the catheter bag, those tapes on my leg. That was just annoying. But yeah, it was so quick. I didn't really get too... it didn't bother me at all.

Lisa: 15:06

I think my, as you're saying that, a lot of my students who have that used in their births say it was so painful. It's occurring to me that if your cervix is really soft and ready to open up, it's probably less likely to be as uncomfortable as it would be if it's firmer. You know, having to really try to open it up and get the balloon in there.

Alishia: 15:31

No, I didn't feel it felt like a, like when you go to the doctor for a routine check, it wasn't really painful.

Lisa: 15:39

Well, I'm so glad that worked.

Alishia: 15:44

Me, too.

Lisa: 15:44

As you were coping for those many hours, we're there. You mentioned a few specific things like the hanging from your rebozo, and some squatting and some counter pressure on the, on the lower back, the hips. Were there other coping techniques that you found really helpful?

Alishia: 15:59

Yes. I had the, the tub. And that was like, I was like diving face first into this tub. They wouldn't let me stay in there for long, I think because my water broke so early on in the game. But the tub helped a lot during transition. And aromatherapy. When I was in the Upside Down, my doula, like, kept waving a hand in front of my face with peppermint oil on it and it would wake me up and bring me back. So that was really great. And I was in the shower, I actually had my birth ball in the shower and I was just sitting on that for a long time. And vodka. And changing positions a lot. I was all over my place walking, sitting, standing, dancing. The one...I could not lay down though, they wanted me to take a nap. I'm like, "That's impossible. I can't sleep through this."

Lisa: 16:56

And were you able to eat? Did you have a sense of hunger?

Alishia: 17:05

I was not hungry at all, but my midwife kept encouraging me to eat and I did not want to. So she made me, she fed me like a baby. She made me have a spoon full of honey because she said, "You need your energy" and that was terrible. I hate honey, but that was the only thing. I had water, I was drinking throughout but I was not hungry at all. And music. They kept telling me...I guess I was difficult at a certain stage. They kept saying, "Do you want music? Do you want...?" I'm like, "No, I just want this to be over." My son's name is Zion, and there's a song by Lauren Hill called "Zion." She wrote it for her first son. And so they started playing that song, and I'm like, "I don't wanna hear that! Just turn it off."

Lisa: 17:53

They thought that would be so sweet.

Alishia: 17:59

Yeah, no.

Lisa: 18:03

The music can be funny because like I thought in my first birth I thought...I grew up in a family of musicians. Music is everything to me. I love all kinds of different, different kinds of music and I thought, "Yeah, that's going to be my coping thing. That's going to be one of the things that's going to be really helpful to me" and it was playing in the background, but I have absolutely no recollection of hearing it at all. And maybe in my subconscious it was helpful. I have no idea. But, like, as compared to...one of my doula clients was obsessed with that, she had, she had made several different playlists and she would get really irritated if her iPhone glitched and it like stopped. She was like, "Turn it back on! Turn it back on." It was like very much a focal point for her. So I love, I love hearing those different things that people are just irritated by.

Alishia: 18:53

Yeah, I just turned it off.

Lisa: 18:56

What about your lighting? What was your lighting like?

Alishia: 18:59

Well, by the time it started getting intense, it was nighttime and I didn't turn any lights on. I remember the only light was the light from my midwife's laptop. She was very hands off and at one point I glanced over to her and I'm like, "You should be helping me right now" and she was on Facebook and I'm like, "I'm dying and you're on Facebook right now?!" That'd be only light source was the Facebook page for my midwife. But by the time I gave birth, it was the next day and it was sunny out, and I didn't mind. I felt like it helped me get a new sense of energy, like a new second wind. The sunlight. It was summertime. A very hot day and I was freezing out everyone. I had all the air conditioners on in my apartment. I had the shower on super cold. I don't know how they survived. They were all wearing like sweaters and blankets.

Lisa: 20:01

I always am sure to take like a rebozo or something to wear, because often when you're in labor, your body is working so hard, you get really hot. That does not surprise me at all. You were wanting everything cold.

Alishia: 20:17

Yeah. And then afterwards I forgot to mention. After he was born...so I'm on my living room floor and I have to get to my bedroom. I could not walk. I had to crawl to my bedroom. I think I lost a lot of blood, and I was just very light-headed. I couldn't walk, which is so weird, now that I think about it, for like the first 48 hours. Going to the bathroom or going anywhere, I was crawling on all fours. Strange.

Lisa: 20:49

Well, I mean thinking of how the position you gave birth in, too, required a lot from your legs and often we do feel shaky, but that is a long time to feel....

Alishia: 21:03

Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't really that my legs were feeling uncomfortable. I just, I was very lightheaded. I was afraid I would fall, so I just.

Lisa: 21:11

Oh, you were staying close to the floor. Okay, got it. Yeah. Must have been the loss of the blood. Can you tell us a little bit about the supplies? Like the home birth kit? How did you know what to order? Did your midwife point you in the direction, and what all was in that?

Alishia: 21:25

She had a kit list on her website. It was great on her website and all I had to do is click the link and pay for it, and it was all shipped in one box to my house and I rented the pool from her, and that was that. It was easy. I didn't have to, I mean there were optional things on her list, but I just checked off everything and whatever I didn't use, I just donated it right back to her, like to use in another home birth.

Lisa: 21:54

Nice. Do you remember, what's like a sampling of what was in the home birth kit?

Alishia: 21:58

A peri bottle, which was my best friend...

Lisa: 22:02

A handheld bidet, yes.

Alishia: 22:02

Exactly. Shower curtains, which was weird for me. I didn't understand why, but she used it to line the floor so I wouldn't get blood on my carpet....What are those called? Chux?

Lisa: 22:15

Chux pads. The waterproof pads.

Alishia: 22:18

Many of those that I used for lots of days. There was a sitz bath in there that I did not use.

Lisa: 22:24

I'm impressed that you didn't have to use that.

Alishia: 22:27

I just...I didn't want to be bothered with the assembly. There was a sheet on there. There were towels for the baby, diapers. But the one thing that wasn't on there that I would recommend for all midwives to put on there were adult diapers. Because I, you know, dealing with the pads, it's just too much. It's so easy to just put on a diaper, take it off, and get rid of it. So I sent my daughter for that.

Lisa: 22:57

Depends, a lot of people love.

Alishia: 23:01

She felt weird going to buy them, a little 13 year old.

Lisa: 23:10

Good tip. Thank you. You shared with me the exciting news that you've moved into birth work as a result of giving birth twice. Can you share a little bit about what made you want to do that?

Lisa: 23:24

Yeah. When I decided on a home birth, everyone aside from my husband thought I was crazy, thought I was a hippie. It was like "Why?" Like everyone...and then they would say, you know, you know "You're strong, you're strong." As if I was like a superhero or something. Especially because my baby was so big. They're like, "Oh I could never, I could never..." and I felt first right after birth, like there was nothing that I did intentionally aside from mentally saying, "Okay, I'm doing this," there was nothing else that I did that brought--intentionally--that brought my son here. I just, and I, what I try to say to everyone is, "You have to let go, right? Because your body will do what your body is supposed to do. But thinking about it or saying, I have to be this level of strong or this level of open-minded or this level of healthy to do it, then that then you're like setting yourself up with doubt." And because I got the curious reaction or the negative reaction around the home birth at first, and then when I had my baby, then women started to feel like, like maybe like admiring me, I just felt like I want it to tell every pregnant woman like, "You can do this. Not because you're a superhero, but because you were designed to do this."

Lisa: 24:59

Yeah.

Alishia: 24:59

And because my doula came and put that counter pressure on my back and told me "Just let go." I didn't get that advice at the hospital and I would not have gotten that advice without her. I'm like, "Everyone needs to know this. Everyone needs to know that."

Lisa: 25:17

Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking my language.

Alishia: 25:22

I just want it to change. I wanted to help shift pregnancy and childbirth from managed by people who have nothing to do with the actual thing that's happening to self-managed and like that self-confidence. And my, my doula, she's a midwife now, she has five kids and she went to midwifery school and she did it all. And I'm like, "Well if she can do it with five kids, I can do it with two," although I'm not going to be a midwife. And I just, I really went to her, and I said, "Listen, you saved my life, so to speak, and I just want to, I want to do the same for other people. How do I do it?" And she took me under her wing and here we are. I'm a doula.

Lisa: 26:08

I love it. I love it.

Alishia: 26:12

I find that that happens a lot. I go to a lot of support groups, but when women use a doula, I find that they want to pay it forward. Some don't have the luxury of changing careers where they are in life. Thankfully I did, but most women want to pay it forward.

Lisa: 26:28

Yeah, absolutely. And you also sought out a lactation counselor certification. Did you just want to add that to your toolkit of expertise, or what caused you to want to do that? Was it your own breastfeeding journey?

Alishia: 26:44

I breastfed my son for a year, and that was very challenging in the beginning for me because I'm a busy body, and having to slow down to, you know, kind of put yourself on the back burner and feed this baby forever was hard. But again, it was met with, like all of my friends of childbearing age were like, you know, "Why?" You know, "Formula this" or "Formula that." And I'm like, "Why?" Okay, why. For my, my reason was my son was A, I knew it was best for him and B, it was just the natural way, which I'm drawn to now, but I wanted to know the actual, like I wanted to be able to say to them, "This is why. Like, these are the health benefits, these are the risk factors with formula," and so on and so forth. So it just seemed like the only way to do it was to study.

Lisa: 27:33

Yeah. That's so fantastic. Yay. And we, so, I mean, this could be a whole separate conversation, but I'm so excited every time I meet someone or know someone who is a person of color, particularly a Black woman who's moving into birth work, because we know about the terrible injustices and disparities in maternal health care and we need to make that better. We need to improve that. And to do that, I think, I think it really helps to have women of color in birth work, advocating and supporting.

Alishia: 28:09

It's hard. For me, it wasn't so hard because my husband is white and my family is all mixed up. So I, I am not, how do I say this? I'm very open minded, right? But a lot of women of color, some in my own family, a lot of things they see culturally as not for them. So home birth is not for them. Breastfeeding is not for them. You know, homeschooling is not for them. And I think it's just because of conditioning, social conditioning over generations and generations. And that is another reason why I wanted to get into this because you know, "Look at me," right? So "I'm, I'm doing it, you can do it."

And my own doula practice, it's not, you know, exclusionary or exclusive to women of color. But I, you know, I designed my brand and my website to really focus on different women of color, breastfeeding, home birthing, you know, with doulas, just in a, like a circle of likeminded people, so that when a woman of color comes across it, it's not, you know, "That's not for me, that's for this group, not my group." I really want them to see themselves, you know, looking back at them. So it is true what you say, like the disparity, but a lot of people don't even know that. Right? A lot of Black women don't even know when they become pregnant that there's this great divide in quality prenatal care. You just go to the doctor and you do what they tell you to do. So that was another very big part of my decision making in getting into birth work.

Lisa: 29:44

Good stuff. Awesome. Well, are there any tips or insights or wisdom you'd like to share? Any, anything that pops into your head to share with any expectant parents who might be out there listening to your story?

Alishia: 29:59

Yeah. In most cases, there is nothing to fear, right? You just have to step outside of your mind and look at the world and see how many humans there are on this earth. And those all...everyone got here by being born, right? Every woman who's given birth has given birth due to nature, by nature's design, whatever you want to call that, you want to call it God, whatever. There's nothing to fear. You can do it. You just have to believe that it's, it's by design. Like for me personally, I just needed to control everything and organize everything and this is how I'm going to give labor, and this is what I'm going to wear and this is...it's just...none of that matters, right? Your baby's going to be born in his own time, even if it's 42 weeks.

Lisa: 30:52

And almost 10 pounds. And you were able to do it.

Alishia: 30:55

Yeah. Just I guess, "surrender." Just surrender. That's what being a mom is all about.

Lisa: 31:01

Isn't that true? Yeah. It's important to learn that in this journey into parenthood because it's, it is very uncontrollable. A lot of the, a lot of having another little human being. And birth, too.

Alishia: 31:15

This is true.

Lisa: 31:15

Thank you so, so much again for sharing this amazing birth story. It was so fantastic. And I want to be sure, if you would like, for me to share your website for your doula work and as well as Isaiah's Fig Tree website. I'd love to post that. Wherever this is posted, it'll be included in the show notes.

Alishia: 31:36

Great. Yeah.

Lisa: 31:37

What is your website?

Lisa: 31:38

Mine is whoamamabirthing.com. That's W-H-O-A-M-A-M-A-birthing dot com.

Lisa: 31:47

I love that. How fun.

Alishia: 31:49

And Isaiah's Fig Tree is Isaiahsfigtree.com.

Lisa: 31:55

Yay. Wonderful. I will be sure to do that. And if you would welcome referrals, I would be happy to add you to my recommendation list for my students.

Alishia: 32:02

Absolutely. Thank you. Please, please do. I really wanted to focus on--one more thing--on Queens, because when I was looking for my birth team, all the midwives were in Brooklyn and I'm like, "Where's everybody in Queens?"

Lisa: 32:13

And I know, right? It's crazy how little, how few birth workers we have here.

Alishia: 32:18

I don't understand. And my doula came from Yonkers. I want to change that. I've been trying to connect with other birth workers locally, so yes, please highlight that I'm in Queens.

Lisa: 32:28

Have you heard about the Astoria Birth Collective?

Alishia: 32:31

I have, yeah. I have reached out to them, but again, I want to reach more of the unreached areas. Astoria is the one section of Queens that has, has it all.

Lisa: 32:44

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's just the only collective in all of Queens that I know about. Maybe you can start a collective and like branch out and serve more of Queens. All right, well thanks again, Alishia. I hope to, I think I'm gonna see you at the reunion, right?

Alishia: 32:59

You'll see me and my baby.

Lisa: 33:01

I cannot wait to cuddle him. He's so adorable.

Alishia: 33:04

Thank you. Thank you.

Lisa: 33:06

Alright, have a great day and thanks again.

Alishia: 33:07

Take care. Bye.

Lisa: 33:10

So there is Alishia's second baby's birth story. I wanted to comment on the topic Alishia and I briefly discussed regarding worse outcomes for women of color, and especially for Black women. The maternal mortality rate for Black women is 3-4 times that of white women in the U.S., and that number is higher here in New York, around 12x as likely. Black infants are more than twice as likely to die than white infants. These are reasons it’s especially critical for people of color to equip themselves with labor support, knowledge of their rights, and self-advocacy tools. I’ll link to several excellent articles that discuss this issue, detail the maternal mortality rates and our rankings as compared to other developed nations of the world, and data from the CDC on this in the show notes over at birthmattersshow.com If you want to hear more home birth stories, we’ve shared two others so far, in Episodes 3 & 7. Okay, here’s a sneak peek of what’s up next week!

Speaker 4: 34:09

What the nurse said when I...she was like, "I'm surprised you're not just doing a natural birth, because you're coping really well with this pain. Where did you learn how to do this?" And I was like, "Oh, birth class. We learned these things." So it actually really helped to kind of learn some of the breathing techniques and walking around and stuff like that.

Lisa: 34:28

As we wrap up, I'll leave you with this thought today. Women all over the world give birth vaginally to all sizes of babies all the time, confounding medical experts who thought they couldn't, so tell yourself, "My body is creating a baby specifically designed to fit through my pelvis." Have a great week and I'll see you next time. ---END---

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