Jaymie started off her pregnancy under OB care but came to realize that the medical setting wasn’t the right choice for her birth, so she transferred her care to a home birth midwifery team. She shares about what helped her prepare for her physically demanding labor at home and how her husband and team of midwives supported her throughout labor. She also shares her experience breastfeeding and working with some lactation consultant friends.
Resources:
Healthy Births, Happy Babies - podcast by a chiropractor
Babies in Common (a MA podcast)
*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.
Sponsor links:
Birth Matters Online/Self-Paced Course (this episode mentions a promo code for a listener discount)
Birth Matters NYC Childbirth Education Classes (Astoria, Queens and virtual)
Free “Pack for Your Best Birth” Packing List (with free mini-course option)
East River Doula Collective (find a doula, attend our free “Meet the Doulas” event)
Episode Topics:
Never wanted to be pregnant, has a low pain tolerance
Find out they were pregnant right around Mother’s Day 2020
Jaymie wanted to do lots to prepare
Starting a journal writing prayers and letters to the baby
Took the online course, lots of date nights
Worked out throughout pregnancy
Spinning Babies daily activities and parent class
Went to Webster chiropractor around 32 weeks
Read hypnobirthing book, liking portion on fear and the need to feel safe
Christian Hypnobirthing app
At first, planned to give birth at a hospital, but switched to home birth early 3rd tri
Read a book called Supernatural Childbirth and listened to podcasts that built her confidence
Listened to the Birth Matters podcast as well as one by a CA chiropractor called “Healthy Births, Happy Babies”
Kurt not comfortable with giving birth at home initially, researching it to get more comfortable with the idea
Interviewed a couple of homebirth midwife teams around 29 weeks, loved the difference in the care, switching to homebirth
Woke up from sleep just past due date with a pelvic sensation
Next morning, felt some cramping
Contractions gradually escalate
Going for walks, balancing movement with rest
Watch Green Bay Packers game while she colors by numbers and sits on ball
Contractions intensify as soon as game ends, but she can still talk and laugh
Doing laps around apartment, pedaling feet near couch
Kurt deconstructing DR table to put labor tub there
Needs to be on her knees leaning over couch
They recommend trying to get some sleep around 10pm but can’t as things are too intense
Lying on couch with Kurt on a pillow bed on floor, resting in between
Kurt doing tons of massage during contractions
Around 2am stopped feeling as much movement; they recommended doing Miles Circuit and eating something sweet to get some movement, midwife Serafina comes over just to check baby and check Jaymie’s vitals, leaves after ~1.5 hrs
Lots more time massage and eating fruit and electrolyte drink
Tried going into shower, using a “Z” pattern on her belly that helped
Student midwife comes around 11am
A 2nd midwife came 12:45, another one around 3:30pm
Getting into tub, listening to worship music, had affirmations on all the walls
Starting to feel urge to push and the water didn’t feel right
Goes to toilet and puts one leg up
Goes back on her side, lifting up leg, feeling like she’s unsure of what to do/how much longer she can do it
Gets urge to push and waters “explode”
Doing tug-o-war pushing position with a scarf
Moving into the bedroom, getting on her side with top leg hiked up, Kurt doing scarf work and 2 midwives doing a counterpressure on her feet
Reminding herself that rebounding is a good thing
Brooke came out with fist first
Being surprised at her lack of tears/emotional feelings when she met baby -- feeling more relieved and exhausted
Doing the breast crawl -- really cool
After 20 min she feels pain in her back, sign of placenta being ready to come out
Kurt cutting cord
A couple hours of cuddling time while midwives cleaned up
Midwives came back and did 2 stitches, coming back for 6 postpartum visits
Emotional & breastfeeding challenges in the beginning
Getting lactation consultant support from 2 professionals
Support from her mother, meals from church community, friends sending baby items
Reflections on transition into parenthood
The importance of feeling at ease and safe
Interview Transcript
Lisa: Hi, Jaymie and Kurt. So glad you're here today.
Jaymie: Yeah. Thank you for having us. We're so excited.
Lisa: Jaymie and Kurt, and I have a friend in common who pointed Jaymie and Kurt to my online course and they live up in the Massachusetts area. But why don't I let you tell us where you live and what you do for a living? Maybe how long ago you gave birth?
Jaymie: Yeah. So I'm Jaymie and this is Kurt.
Kurt: Hi guys! I'm Kurt.
Jaymie: And we live in the Boston area and I'm a pediatric occupational therapist.
Kurt: And I'm an architect.
Jaymie: Yeah. And we had a friend of ours that goes to our church and knows Lisa. And so when we first got pregnant, she had referred us to your website and your resources. And that's kind of how we got in touch with you. And we have Brooke here too, our baby girl, and
Kurt: She'll be eight weeks old on Sunday.
Jaymie: Yeah, that's right. Eight weeks. So she was born on the 17th of January this year.
Lisa: Hmm, still in that fourth trimester.
Jaymie: Oh, yes.
Lisa: Very intense time. And so thank you for taking the time and finding somehow finding the energy to meet today and share your story while it's fresh.
Jaymie: Well, I think that's why we wanted to do it sooner. Cause I think we've been talking about our birth story a lot and just processing everything that's happened in our family the past year. And it felt right to do this sooner rather than later, it forced me to write out everything and which I had been wanting to do, but just kept pushing off. So this was great.
Lisa: Yeah. Lovely. Yeah, you never know. Some people just feel so overwhelmed in these early weeks that they're like, no, no, no, not yet. But then I always do encourage, you may want to just jot something down some notes, cause some things stay with you forever, but then other aspects you really start to lose them pretty quickly. It's nice to be able to look back or listen back and hear all the details when some of those details get fuzzy.
Jaymie: Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa: And the friend we have in common was one of my college roommates down at Baylor way back when, a long time ago, many children ago, she has a lot of children. Big, happy family!
So why don't you just share how your pregnancy went, if there was anything to note and how you prepared for this journey into parenthood?
Jaymie: Yeah, I think for me, well, when I was younger I would always say that I didn't want to have children, which is ridiculous because I love kids. I work with kids. Kids are really my passion, but I think what I was not thrilled about was being pregnant and giving birth. I have a very low pain tolerance and I hate hospitals like anything, blood, needles, medical. I just have a really hard time with, and all I really knew about birth was the medical picture of it. Like what you see in movies and I'm also a pediatric occupational therapist. And so when I do evaluations with kiddos and I'm taking a history for that child, I always want to know about the pregnancy and the labor and birth because that's part of that child's story. And so I've heard a lot of traumatic birth stories in my professional life and so it has kind of painted this picture of how scary pregnancy can be and how scary labor can be. And so I think when Kurt and I were first kind of praying about starting a family. I felt like God really wanted to release this fear from me of being pregnant and really wanted to renew my mind when it came to birth. And that definitely happened in this process, for sure. We found out we were pregnant the day before Mother's Day of 2020, which was an interesting time because it was like the beginning of the global pandemic.
Lisa: The height. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And do you mind my asking, were you actively trying?
Jaymie: We were like...
Lisa: Or just sort of open?
Jaymie: We were like open to whatever, yeah, exactly. Like we were casually trying, we weren't tracking anything or I think we were open to God's timing. Yeah, it was an interesting time to find out. But I remember when we first found out and I told Kurt that the test was positive and we were just hugging and crying happy tears. And I just looked at him and I was like, "Now what do we do? Like, what do we do now?"
Kurt: And of course my response was, "I think we just wait, we're going to play a waiting game for a little while."
Jaymie: And I was like, "No, no, no, we need to prepare!" I'm very much the over-prepared, need to research a lot, I want to be ready for this. And so I do that with everything in my life. And so this was, this is no different. So we did a lot to prepare during pregnancy. I think that one of my favorite things that we did pretty early on initially, is we started a journal and I would just like write different prayers that we had for the baby and things that we felt like God was speaking and we also documented fun moments, like when I felt her kick for the first time or when Kurt got to actually feel her kick for the first time. So that was really fun because I feel like it started this bond between us and our baby really early on.
Lisa: I love that you did that.
Jaymie: Yeah. I wasn't great about keeping up with it at the end, towards the end of pregnancy, but it was like, admit it was a really special thing that I'm so glad we have and can look back on.
Lisa: Yeah and I'm sure it'll be special for Brooke to look through as well. Yeah. As she grows.
Jaymie: And it's interesting too, the journal that I chose, because it, on the front, it says, "Beautiful girl, you can do hard things." And we didn't actually find out her gender until she was born, but I just felt like I was supposed to have that journal and I was like, maybe it's just, that's supposed to be for me, you know, that quote.
Lisa: Maybe, yeah. That's sometimes a birth affirmation, yeah.
Jaymie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it's kind of special that she's a girl now, special to have that. And then we did a lot of research and education and I remember pretty early on I was talking to one of my OT mentors, but she's just a spiritual mentor too. And she gave me some really good advice, she was saying how I know you love to prepare, I know you love knowledge and that's wonderful, but make sure that you're doing so out of joy and out of curiosity, as opposed to out of anxiety and control, which can sometimes be my tendency. So that really helped to shift my mindset and my heart posture as we were learning and preparing for birth.
Lisa: That's a good one. I love that idea, that concept. It's come up before in past episodes, curiosity, that whole thing. Yeah, and that need to surrender control is a big one that so many of us struggle with and don't realize is actually a the thing that we're going to need to be doing in giving birth and in pregnancy before that, and in parenthood, too. You're learning as all of us do. Yeah, that can be one of the harder aspects of this journey. I love that somebody brought that to your attention and your consciousness.
Jaymie: Yeah, that totally helped to shift my mindset because I think at first I think I was trying to gain a lot of control and gain knowledge in order to control. And so just that simple mindset shift totally changed the way that we were preparing. So, and it was, it was so fun and joyful to learn so much about this process and what our choices are and what our options are. And so we did do your online course and we did the online on- demand version of your course, which is great because we spent many date nights watching those videos. We did like instead of dinner and a movie, we would do dinner and birth education. And we would try to do that every Friday night and go through some.
Lisa: Either you just came up with that on your own, or you watched my introduction in which I say, think about birth class as some last special pre-baby dates for yourself, time to deepen and strengthen your connection, because that is so important to protect that as you're probably finding out it can be really challenging on a relationship here, especially in these first months and years when things are so intense and they're growing so rapidly and you're exhausted. So I love that you thought about it that way.
Jaymie: We just re-instituted our Friday date nights and Brooke often crashes them, we tried to be intentional about that. But yeah, that's how we spent a lot of our date nights.
Kurt: A lot of date nights. Yep. We usually do it on Fridays and just being the end of the workweek, Jaymie would often fall asleep. So I watched the birth class probably three times...
Jaymie: And I wouldn't fall asleep because it was boring. I loved the information and I was just so I was just so tired. I'd be like, "We have to watch that again because I liked what she just said, but I totally just missed it."
Kurt: I was a pro, I knew all the terminology, all the different ligaments and stuff. Yeah. Everyone, when we were telling them we were pregnant. It was uh, hilarious.
Jaymie: Yeah. It was great. Thank you so much. But I think what I loved about your course was how comprehensive it was and how it pulled together so many different approaches. Like it wasn't just one, the Bradley method is one way of doing things or hypnobirthing is one way of doing things. I think what I loved about your course is it just offer a wide array of strategies and knowledge and I loved that it had partner tips for Kurt. There were specific videos on partner tips of different stages of labor, and yeah, we got so much out of it. We watched your whole thing within the beginning of the third trimester and then when we got closer to our due date, we actually rewatched a lot of the videos that had to do with labor positions and coping strategies and watched those and practiced the different techniques like with the rebozo and things like that as we got closer.
Lisa: You are my ideal student, I love it! Because that's my hope with the online course, you have lifetime access and my hope is that if people have future babies and they might find it useful to go back and review, whichever, just pick and choose that they can. And like you said, you took it a little earlier on in pregnancy and to have it fresh, to go back and especially for the labor coping stuff. That's so great! Thank you for sharing that.
Jaymie: And the postpartum one too, I remember like day two or something, I was like, "Pull up Lisa's video on how to burp, like, I don't think we're doing it right." We would watch different videos postpartum too. So, yeah. And then I did a lot to prepare my body as well. I love to exercise, and so I just continued to go to my, I do a burn bootcamp. And so I continued to do my bootcamp classes six days a week throughout my pregnancy. And it was great because my trainer actually had a baby the year before. And so she was able to modify the exercises and really walk with me through the process and make sure that I was still getting a great workout, but I was doing so safely. I ended up, I worked out six days a week until the day before I went into labor, which I'm so glad that I did because I really think that it prepared my body for the strength and the endurance that was needed to...
Lisa: Absolutely.
Jaymie: Get through labor.
Lisa: I'm so glad your trainer had that experience before you did so, so that there was some customized to pregnancy kind of advice. That's great.
great I'm so glad your trainer had that experience before you did so, so that there was some customized to pregnancy kind of advice. That's great.
Jaymie: Yep. We also did the Spinning Babies parent class. And that one is really focused on baby's position. And I did their Daily Essentials exercises pretty regularly. And at around 32 weeks I started going to the chiropractor two times a week, which prior to pregnancy I'd actually never been to a chiropractor, but I was having some back pain. And then in my research was realizing like that could also help with just alignment and balancing and can help baby to get into a good position. And so, so I did that starting at 32 weeks, two times a week, which was great. It really helped with my back pain and I think helped with the labor.
Kurt: It really helped with your back pain.
Jaymie: Yeah.
Kurt: I was massaging her back, like as hard as I could and I still couldn't get the spot just right.
Going to chiropractor was huge for you.
Lisa: Nice. And as you looked for a chiropractor, did you seek someone with like Webster technique expertise or prenatal expertise?
Jaymie: Yes, our midwife referred this particular practice and yeah they were changing the Webster technique and experience with that. So I felt comfortable doing that.
I also read the hypnobirthing book, which I didn't end up using hypnobirthing specific visualizations; they just weren't really resonating with me, but I did find there's an app called Christian hypnobirthing and I liked it. They have a lot of faith-based guided meditations and encouraging scriptures and different breathing tracks. So I listened to a lot of those tracks more like during my last few weeks of pregnancy, not so much in labor, but I feel like that was really sweet. I would listen to it before I would go to sleep some nights and I liked that, but I did like the chapters in the hypnobirthing book that talked about the fear response. And how when we enter a state of fear, what happens in our bodies specifically during labor and how labor is physiologically designed to stall and how that can make contractions that much more painful. And there were chapters that went into how the birth process truly is a natural, beautiful design and how a woman's body knows what to do, but we have to feel safe in order to do that without necessarily putting timelines on it or interfering with that process, if it's not needed. And it just talked about how, how to calm the mind in order to let your body do its job. So that book was really helpful because it just encouraged me to know like I'm made for this. I'm perfectly designed to give birth to our baby and I have to feel safe. I have to feel safe doing that. I think that really resonated when I was reading that book.
In terms of where to give birth, I think initially we were hoping to give birth at a birth center, the Cambridge birth center, but it was closed because of COVID. So we decided to give birth at a local hospital with the midwife team and hire a doula for the birth. And at that time we were at a hospital that was allowing partners to come for appointments. And so we were really grateful for that because Kurt was able to come to all the appointments, he was able to come to the ultrasound, the 20 week ultrasound. There were hospitals in the area that, that were not allowing partners to come at all.
Lisa: That's been the case mostly here in New York City. So I'm so happy to hear you got to go, Kurt.
Jaymie: Yeah.
Kurt: Yeah, it was awesome.
Jaymie: They ended up changing that towards the later part of our third trimester. They changed that where you couldn't have your partner and you couldn't have a doula in your birth anymore. They changed that.
Lisa: So I guess maybe Boston, the timing has been different in different cities in terms of that I've had upticks in cases.
Jaymie: Exactly, I think it was because there was a spike in cases. So the hospital we were at changed that policy, which I'll get into, but I'm really glad we ended up switching providers. But I think as we continued through pregnancy and I continued to do lots of research, I knew pretty early on that I wanted to have an unmedicated, natural birth with as little intervention as possible. That was really a strong desire of my heart. And I think the hypnobirthing helped. And I also read a book called Supernatural Childbirth, which talks about God's promises for conception and pregnancy and delivery. And I was just feeling more and more empowered that my body was perfectly designed to do this. And if I could feel safe and calm and tap into ways to sustain peace in my mind, my body would know what to do. And I just kept getting more and more confident that we could do this, that we could do this naturally.
And I also knew that if we were going to try to give birth naturally in a hospital, that we were really going to have to advocate. And so this is when I think I started listening to a lot of podcasts. I actually listened to your podcast and I found myself being drawn to birth stories of women who did home births. And I also listened to a podcast called "Healthy Births, Happy Babies," "Happy Babies, Healthy Births" -- something like that. It's hosted by a chiropractor out in California, and they have a bunch of episodes on home births. And another podcast I listened to is "Babies In Common" which is done by some folks here in Massachusetts. And they did a two hour episode on home birth, like the ins and outs of what home births are and the research and the statistics and all of that.
Lisa: I'll link to all of these things in the show notes.
Jaymie: I remember pretty early on like kind of jokingly saying to Kurt, like, what if we did a home birth? And he was like, "No."
Kurt: I did. She's our first child. So it was like, well, I would prefer to be somewhere by medical equipment and all that, this is something we've never done before.
Jaymie: Yeah, but I think
Lisa: That's fair. Right? That's the most common response among partners in the U.S. where it's sort of just a foregone conclusion that you would, of course, you'd go to a doctor and hospital. Yeah.
Jaymie: Yeah. And I think like a couple months later I kind of challenged you. And I was like, "Are you just saying no, because you actually don't want to, or because you don't know anything about home birth?" and you said that it was the latter.
Kurt: Yeah. The latter and just making sure that we would be safe, really. That was like the biggest thing for me. And how do we determine that? Is this is a normal pregnancy here. We have modern medicine that helps a lot of people out. So is it something we need or don't need kind of go from there.
Jaymie: So, he actually did a good amount of research to like, you listened to some of the podcasts and did his own research on home births. And I knew that if we were gonna do a home birth, that Kurt had to be 100% on board.
Kurt: Yeah. For me, it was just like, "Okay, how do we determine if we're low risk?" Right. It's like, okay, Jamie's made to do this. So how do we make sure that for me, it was like, if something does go wrong, what happens and then, okay. Let's make sure that we're in that low risk category. So theoretically nothing should go wrong.
Jaymie: Yeah. So we ended up taking the first step in interviewing a couple different teams and this was around 29 weeks. So I really didn't know if it was too late to switch. I knew that a lot of home birth midwives will only take a certain number of clients within the same month or who are due in the same month. So I didn't know if it was too late or if a lot of teams were already filled up and it turned out the team that we had asked around, actually our mutual friend had used this team for, I think, three of her births. So it turned out that that team of midwives had one more opening for a January due date. So already I was like "See? it's meant to be!", so we did the interview and we had a lot of questions. I think they answered all of my questions, exactly what I needed to hear. And then Kurt had very practical questions. Like, what do you do if something was to go wrong? And I think it was really reassuring to hear they are able to do resuscitation and could do IVs and can do stitches and they get to know you so well. And are there, you're their only clients during that birth. So they are able to monitor labor and look out for signs that you might need to transfer before anything becomes an emergency. And just in the interview process, I felt so listened to, so valued, so empowered, which I think Kurt could really tell the difference in me at even just during the interview, than I had been at any of my prenatals at the hospital, not because there was anything wrong with the hospital that we were at. It's just, I don't know where that comes from for me, but I just, I get so anxious in that setting. And so that was, it was very clear after that interview, this was the team that we wanted to give birth with.
Kurt: Yeah. I remember we were at an appointment at the hospital and I think Jaymie had to give blood that appointment and she was just like, basically shut down. And so for me, it was like at that appointment, me and the midwife there were essentially talking about her pregnancy and how she's doing. And
Jaymie: Cause I just like completely shut down. Yeah.
Kurt: Yeah. And so that's when I kind of realized, okay, this isn't a great space for Jamie to feel calm and just, we were taking your course at the time. And it was like, okay, stay home. And you're nice and safe in your home. And when you do go to the hospital and try to bring a bunch of stuff, to make it feel homey in the rooms. And so I was like, okay, this probably is not the best idea for us to be at the hospital here. And that's when we kind, of or at least when I was like, okay, I think the home birth option is going to be the best bet for Jaymie to feel safe. And for us to have a really great birth experience versus just getting through it.
Lisa: I love that you noticed those things, Kurt, that you noticed the difference in how she was feeling in different kinds of care. That's awesome. That it really helped you shift as well as just being so reassured. I felt the same way when I was interviewing home birth midwives, I wasn't a hundred percent convinced. I was still a little bit nervous about the whole safety component, which is most people's biggest concern with that, giving birth at home. Yeah, I was so, so reassured by all the safety measures that they have in place. And just being reassured that the vast majority of the time, if a transfer is necessary, it's not an emergency. They are going to know way before it is an emergency, like you were saying. Yeah. And the equipment that they have, and it was just all really not what I was expecting, but in a good way. Yeah. So I'm so glad you were able to find someone that late. Did you feel like there were, how late you were in pregnancy aside, did you feel like there were quite a few home birth midwife options in your area?
Jaymie: Yeah, we did. We ended up interviewing one other midwife, but it seemed like there were still that there were a good amount of options. But again, we just immediately loved this team and it was just one of those, "I know I'm supposed to give birth with you guys."
Lisa: Yes. Oh, that's what you want to feel. Yeah. Whether it's your care provider or your doula, any of your birth team. That's the, yeah. You want that's great.
Jaymie: Yeah. And it was, we just jumped right into prenatal visits because again, it was kind of late in my pregnancy. And so it was so wonderful though because they spent so much time with us, like every visit was at least an hour, often an hour and a half and they just spent so much time getting to know us, getting to know our hopes and really answering all my billions of questions and it just, yeah, I left every visit feeling more and more empowered after every visit.
Lisa: And did you go to them for every visit or was it a combination?
Jaymie: We did, they have different options that you can choose from like different packages. We ended up going to them, to their office, and then all the postpartum visits were at home. It ended up being such a relief too, because I think I had mentioned this, the hospital that we were going to give birth at stopped allowing partners. We were originally going to have a doula when we were going to give birth at a hospital and they stopped allowing doulas to be at births. And so it was just, it was definitely the right choice for our family.
Kurt: We also had a lot of fun telling people that we were pregnant during the pregnancy. I mean, Brooke here is the first grandbaby for either side of our parents. So it was just super sweet and super fun to just like surprise all of them.
Lisa: Oh. That's awesome.
Jaymie: Yeah. We had so much fun thinking of creative ways to tell people on Zoom; we did a jeopardy kind of game for my grandma and my aunt and did different gifts or games or things like that to tell people. So we did, we had a lot of fun.
Kurt: We took side-by-side photos every week in all different poses. I think my favorite is Thanksgiving. I'm holding a turkey and then Jaymie pops up with her belly. That one might be my favorite.
Jaymie: Yeah. We did progress pictures of me and then of Kurt too, and put them together and then made the montage video of...
Kurt: It wasn't all research. We had some fun during the pregnancy.
Lisa: I love it. I love that you found ways to make it joyful and despite the limitations of the pandemic, that's so great.
Jaymie: Yeah, it did. I mean, it felt like that whole year was so fun for us because I mean, we were growing our family and it definitely made the, it made the pandemic easier because it felt like there was so much to look forward to and so much joy in those moments too. So, yeah, that was our pregnancy.
Lisa: Nice. Well, so is this a good time to jump into your birth story?
Jaymie: Yeah.
Lisa: Go right ahead. Wherever you want to start.
Jaymie: So I was due on a Thursday on January 14th, and I remember on Monday of that week, I had like a passing thought to go through my head that I was going to go into labor that weekend and that she was going to be born on Sunday. And it just kind of popped into my head and I was like, "Oh, that's weird." But I was preparing for that to be true. And sure enough on my due date went by and on Saturday, which was the 16th at like 4:00 AM. I was awoken from a dead sleep because it felt like the baby headbutted my pelvic floor. That's what it felt.
Lisa: Ow!
Jaymie: Yeah. And I woke up, I was like, something's different. Something is different. Something is happening. I don't really know-- it wasn't, it was just kind of a sudden sensation and then it was gone. But then when I woke up for the day, I remember feeling some cramping and I was wondering, okay, I think this might be the start. I actually debated if I should go to my gym class or not. I didn't because I was like, ah, I think this is the start of something. And then as the morning progressed, it kind of felt like the Braxton Hicks contractions, where like my stomach would tighten and then it was starting to pair with the cramping. But before that, it just felt irregular. And so that's when we reached out to our midwives and just let them know of the shift and they said that felt like some good pre-labor warming up. So we went for a couple of walks that day. I remember walking on the curb, like one foot on the curve of like our neighbors probably think we're crazy. So we did that. I was trying to balance movement and rest. Kurt, I think ran out and grabbed some of the like last minute things that we needed.
And I remember throughout the day, the cramping just progressively got more intense. It was funny, we were watching the Green Bay Packers play in the NFC Championship Game and Kurt's a big Green Bay fan.
Lisa: I was going to say, now wait, early labor activities: she chooses. Did she choose that?
Jaymie: It was fine. I was actually working on a paint by number during the game, like sitting on a ball and doing a paint by number watching the game.
Lisa: Not a very common football pastime but whatever works!
Jaymie: Yeah. I'm a Giants fan. So I was supporting him and the Packers by default, but I wasn't as invested, but it was funny we were joking because things definitely intensified right after the game. So we were, Kurt was saying like, she's going to be a Packers fan. Cause she was so kind to wait until after the game. The game ended around 6:30, 7:30. And I remember at that point, the cramping was coming in waves. Like it definitely got more organized and was coming about every 10 minutes or so, I would feel it coming. And it was interesting, my body knew what to do. At this point, it was still like, I was still able to talk and laugh and breathe through it, but my body kind of knew what to do when the sensation would come. I would be like, "I have to walk!" So I would just walk around our very small apartment doing laps or I would lean on the couch and like pedal my legs really fast. Almost like shaking it off. And I don't know where I was coming up with these, my body just knew this is what feels right.
Lisa: That's awesome. I love it when, yeah. When your body's just like, has this instinctive knowledge and just kind of leads the way. That's very cool.
Jaymie: Yeah. And I remember timing them too, during the walk. So one would start, I would look at the clock. And so I would write down the time that it started, like as I was walking and then just keep walking. It's fun. We still have that paper that just has a bunch of times on it. Meanwhile, Kurt was deconstructing our dining room table, so he could build the birth tub because we have a very small apartment where we are. So he just deconstructed the whole dining room table to create our birth area. And then the waves just progressively got more intense. And I started to feel like I needed to be on my knees, leaning over the couch. That's kind of how I was coping during the waves. And I remember at that point, seeing Kurt saying, "These feel pretty intense, we should probably fill up the tub. The baby's going to come really soon." I had no concept of how long this was going to be.
Lisa: You never know!
Jaymie: How intense. Looking back she was born almost a day later. So, but I was like, these are pretty intense. She's going to come. I just had no concept of where this with journey was going to take us. And we were in contact with the midwives at that point, just, we had a group text going and we were just letting them know what the intensity was, how frequently the waves were coming. And at that point they recommended trying to get some sleep. So I remember getting ready for bed and going to lay down at 10:00 PM and then a wave came and I just shot right up and had to get into child's pose. And I was like, "There is no way I'm sleeping, there's no way!" So we ended up being out in our living room. For the majority of the night I was laying on the couch and Kurt was kind of set up like a pillow bed on the couch next to me and a contraction would come. And I would get into my position of on my knees and folded over the couch, leaning on the couch. And I was having a lot of back labor. I was feeling so much intensity in my back and I knew because it was all the research that I was doing. I was like, "Oh no, she's posterior, that is so not ideal!"
Lisa: You knew all that Spinning Babies stuff maybe a little too much.
Jaymie: Yes. I was like, "Ugh, she's posterior." And so I would get in that position and Kurt would just rub my back as hard as he could. You did a lot of what Lisa said, I think, of the down and out.
Kurt: Yep. Tried to do, well, she wanted her back rubbed and I was trying not to make things worse or upset her. Like that was my goal the whole time. So yeah, a whole lot of back rubs, probably like 20 something hours straight of back rubs.
Lisa: Yeah, you were probably sore for weeks after.
Kurt: My arms were just killing me.
Jaymie: Yeah. But he didn't say that because...
Lisa: Oh, you better not.
Kurt: Not at that point. C'mon!
Jaymie: So like, that's how we got through those waves. And then, then it would end. And we would both go back to our little makeshift beds and try to sleep for seven minutes and then do that over again. And that was pretty much the whole, it was all night. And I remember at two in the morning or so I stopped being able to feel the baby move. I was really in tune with what the baby was doing. And I could really feel her wiggling and moving so much in between contractions, but around that 2:00 AM point I stopped being able to feel her move, which was a pretty big difference from what I was experiencing and I just didn't know if that was normal or if that was something to be concerned about. And so Kurt texted the midwives and just asked like, this is where we're at. She's still feeling a lot of back labor and stopped being able to feel baby move. And they recommended doing the Miles Circuit for the back labor to try to see if we could shift. And so I did the child's pose position a lot and then I also did the side lying position a lot where you're side lying and your top leg is hiked up really far and kind of rotated between those two. And then they also recommended to have something sweet, like some fruit or something like that to see if that might stimulate baby moving a little bit. And I remember Kurt feeding me pieces of clementine, and I remember thinking like, "I know I have to do this, but this is taking so much effort to just eat these little bits of clementine."
Lisa: Having to chew.
Jaymie: Yep. Apple too.
Kurt: Apple, banana.
Jaymie: Yeah. And he like cut the pieces so small and would just put them in my hand and I would just plop them in my mouth and try to swallow it. Even like an hour, hour and a half later after that amount of sugar, I still wasn't feeling baby move and so one of the midwives ended up coming over. I think it was like 04:00 or 5:00 AM just to check in and to check baby. And she listened to baby, she took my vitals and kind of stayed with us, watch some contractions and everything was normal. Like she was like, maybe the baby's just resting and...
Kurt: A little bit of Jaymie's expectations too, of like, what movements are during pregnancy or during labor, sorry,
Jaymie: They helped to reassure.
Kurt: Yeah. Like you're not going to feel her all the time, but she's doing just fine that it listen to her heartbeat and everything seemed normal.
Lisa: Yeah. But good for you for going ahead and it didn't hurt to check in with your midwives just to be sure, because if you're ever in doubt, it's better to just get that reassurance and checking things out if needed. Yeah. So I'm glad that you got that reassurance.
Jaymie: Yeah. And just really just having her here was like, she has, I mean, the whole team did, but Serafina, who came, has such a calming presence to her and grounding presence. And just like her sitting with us, I was like, okay, everything is okay. And I remember her saying at one point, she's like, "Oh, what's the date today? The 17th, that's a great day for a birthday." And so I was like, okay, so you think the baby's going to be born today? Great. I can do this for a day. And it was like 4:00 AM. So like, it really could, but I was like, as long as she's comes out today, I think I can do it. She ended up leaving after like an hour and a half or so. And I remember thinking like, "Oh, if you feel comfortable enough to leave right now, that means we still have some time. Like, we're still just still doing this. Okay." But again, I was like holding onto the fact that no, today will be her birthday. And I had that word that she was going to be born on Sunday and it was Sunday. So I was holding on to that hope. So she left at like, I don't know, five or six in the morning, and I don't have a lot of memories of what happened the next four or five hours or so. Kurt had to remind me, I think we spent a lot of time in the living room. I was on my side and Kurt was just rubbing my back and trying to feed me more fruit, like little pieces and like an electrolyte drink and just trying to keep me hydrated. And we tried going into the shower at one point because I remember the surges getting more intense and I'm like, we need to do something different. So we went in the shower, we put a yoga mat on the bottom of the shower and brought a ball in. And so I was on my knees in the shower, leaning over the ball. And Kurt, a couple of days before had installed one of the shower heads that you could remove. I didn't even know he did that.
Lisa: That was thoughtful.
Kurt: I remember listening to the one story of you doing zig-zags across someone's belly, and then you like went up and then she freaked out.
Lisa: Yeah, mistake. That was my novice doula mistake. Cause that was my very first birth as a doula. Yeah.
Kurt: So I remembered that and was like, oh, we need to get one of the handheld showers. And so I put it in and then we ended up going in the shower and I was doing what you had recommended, just doing the Z pattern, which seemed to help you, I think.
Jaymie: Oh, it was funny because I knew that's what he was doing, the Z pattern and I didn't have access to language at the time, so I couldn't tell him, but I remember in my head, I was very, I had a lot of thoughts during labor. Some people get out of their head, but I had many thoughts during labor and I remember thinking, "Oh, good job, baby. You're doing what Lisa taught us." I had that thought.
Lisa: Because he had watched it five times.
Kurt: Yeah. I was, that's in there. That story is never leaving.
Lisa: You'll forever hear my voice. I'm sorry.
Jaymie: No, it was great. I'm so grateful that he knew all of those things because it was so helpful. And I think eventually it got to the point, early morning, it got to the point where I was like, I want someone here. It's getting pretty intense, I want someone here. And so we had a team, the practice was a team of four midwives, but two attend your birth and then they also had a student midwife, so we had three midwives with us. And so the student midwife ended up coming first, I think around 11:30 in the morning. And then another one came around like 12:45 and then another one came a little bit later, like 3:30. And it was around that point that we tried the tub, the birth tub. And so I remember that being a nice time. I think again, I had no concept of when she was going to come, so I was open to a water birth and I remember being in there for a while, like two hours?
Kurt: Yeah, two, two and a half hours or so.
Jaymie: And I remember that being like a nice time. I was kind of squatting at the side of the pool and Kurt was right in front of me. And so. It was like really nice. I could actually see him face-to-face and give him a hug. And he was like, massaging my shoulders and my back. And I remember tuning in to the music we had playing. I had made a playlist of all my favorite worship songs and we had it playing throughout the labor, but it wasn't really until I was in the tub that I was like tuning in to some of the songs. And we also had in the dining room where the birth pool now was, we had taped up a lot of the birth affirmations that you had given us during your course. And I also had made some of my favorite Bible verses and just taped those all around the birth pool. And so I tuned into those as well during my time in the tub.
Kurt: A helpful partner tip yoga ball, get the big one for next to the tub. Cause I was sitting next to her on my knees or squatting or something and my legs were killing me, but also I'm not in labor. So I really don't have a leg to stand on and complain about pain. So a yoga ball was game-changing.
Jaymie: Yeah.
Lisa: Thank you. That's such a great tip!
Kurt: Yeah. Yeah. Totally saved. Saved my legs and knees.
Lisa: Yeah. And like you're saying, you don't want to verbalize that, like, "Uh, this doesn't feel good." Because, oh waa. Right. But like, you do need to be protective of your body too, because you're about to be a new parent as well and we need you to be functional and not injured, right?
Jaymie: And he was awake the whole time too. Like he wasn't, he didn't sleep at all during this time and he was working too. I knew that. It helped that I was a OT so I had yoga balls of every size.
Lisa: That's fantastic.
Jaymie: Yeah. So we had a big one, we had smaller ones. We, yeah. So he was able to...
Lisa: Forget the small apartment, we're going to have all the balls!
Jaymie: Exactly, yeah. So much, so much stuff.
Lisa: And can I ask a question, backing up to when you guys were on the couch and Kurt was, I think you said on the pillow bed, on the ground, maybe I think it's, maybe you were saying.
Kurt: I became a six year old and built a pillow fort.
Lisa: That's great! That's great! You do what works, right? Were either of you able to sleep in those brief few minutes in between at all?
Kurt: No.
Jaymie: You didn't. I don't think I did, but again, I feel like my memory is kind of fuzzy of that time. I know I shut my eyes and just tried to rest, but I don't think I actually slept.
Kurt: No. Her contractions were every six to eight minutes. So we'd close our eyes and then Jaymie would say, "One's coming." and then I'd pop up and start rubbing her back. And then she'd be like, okay, she would breathe through it. And then she'd be like, "Okay, it's gone." And then we both kind of just collapsed.
Lisa: Yeah. Well, at least you were conserving energy, even if you weren't able to fully sleep. That's so important because you had a pretty long labor in the end.
Jaymie: Yeah. Yep.
Lisa: Anyway, sorry, you can go back to where you were in the pool and Kurt was on a ball outside the pool.
Jaymie: Yeah. So that was nice but then around that, like two hours, two and a half hour mark, I started to feel sort of an urge to push and I didn't feel grounded in the pool, so it didn't feel like I could really push. It didn't feel like this really strong urge yet, but it just felt like I needed a shift. And so, so I ended up getting out and going to the toilet and sitting on the toilet for a while with like one foot up. And I remember at that point and sitting on the toilet, having the thought of, I don't know how much longer I can do this, what are we doing? What are we doing here? Are we getting anywhere? It just kind of felt like I had been doing this for so long and I didn't know what was next. Something needed to happen. I think in my mind. And I remember sitting there, Kurt was with me, I think just probably rubbing my back because that's what he did the whole time. And I remember yelling, "I don't know what to do!" which was the first time I think I had used words in a while. And one of our midwives appeared. I told her, "You're like a fairy." She would just float in and be helpful and then if we were good, then she would float away. It was so magical. And so she kind of helped us to find a position out in the living room.
I actually went back on my side with my leg, my top leg up really high, and I felt a really strong urge to push and so I did and it felt like a giant water balloon exploded out of my body, which was crazy. Like it was audible.
Kurt: Oh, yeah, you heard it. Like it was a loud pop.
Jaymie: Yeah.
Lisa: Oh my goodness.
Jaymie: And I remember like, my eyes popped open and one of my midwives was right in front of me and was like, "Hi." And I was like, "What was that? It was crazy." They use such gentle language, like "That was your fluids releasing." I was like, "That was fluids exploding! That was crazy!" And she's like, "That was actually pretty crazy. It doesn't [usually] happen quite like that."
Lisa: Did the midwife get splashed or did they come in right after?
Jaymie: She was at my head. She was like, right in front of me. I don't actually know because my eyes were shut.
Lisa: Sure. That makes sense.
Jaymie: I mean, it felt like the entire apartment flooded. It was crazy. So I went back into the bathroom. They cleaned up that situation. And then I feel like that's when things definitely intensified, things started moving and I kind of entered more of the active pushing phase and the midwives were much more hands on at this point, I think. Earlier on-- it was so beautiful the way that they worked-- like earlier on, if Kurt and I were good and we were in a good groove, I didn't even know where they were. They kind of just let us do our thing and periodically they would come and just check baby's heart, check my vitals, and then they would disappear again. And I had no idea where they were.
Lisa: You know what that reminds me of is when, if you go to a really like fine dining establishment and the servers just magically appear kind of like a fairy, but a good server is going to be where you don't even know, you just magically have the things you need. I don't know why that came to mind, but the way you were describing this midwifery care, it reminded me of that and the beauty of that, it's amazing.
Jaymie: Yeah. I mean, I was very like, the process just unfolded so naturally without any interference and Kurt and I were just, if we were good, we were good. If I would say, I don't know what to do, then they would come and kind of offer some suggestions or a different position and then, if we were good again, they would float away, but...
I love your term, "float".
They were, just their energies are just so calming and gentle. They didn't just walk away. They floated away. You can tell, I love them so much.
Lisa: That's so great.
Jaymie: But this was when they were definitely much more hands-on, which was great. Cause I needed a higher level of support at this point. They would offer different positions that I would push in. So I remember trying lots of different positions. I was on my hands and knees, I was in child's pose, I was squatting, like Kurt was sitting on the couch and I was like squatting facing him. I was squatting holding like a scarf and another person was holding the end of the scarf and so I would like pull. It was you?
Kurt: I was me.
Jaymie: Okay.
Kurt: I was holding the scarf the whole time. It was like tug of war for like an hour and a half.
Jaymie: I would really pull and kind of flex my body. So we did that for a while and then eventually it got to the point where they suggested moving into the bedroom because it would be more comfortable. And so I ended up getting on my side in the bed and we had made the bed with our good sheets. Then we put a plastic cover or a plastic sheet over the bed and then we just got really cheap sheets and put it over that. So if we were to give birth into the bed, which we ended up doing, it was easy to just clean everything up, throw everything away. And then we were just in our bed.
Lisa: I remember getting a shower curtain, our midwife, like maybe it was in the home birth kit, or I think it was one of the extra things we needed to grab to just put on top of the bed and then get the cheap sheets. Yeah.
Jaymie: Yeah. So we did that, that worked out really well. And so I was on my side in the bed and I had my top leg hiked to really far up and one of the midwives was holding that foot, almost giving counter pressure to that top foot and then another one was giving kind of pressure to my other foot. Kurt was kneeling on the bed facing me holding that scarf and I was holding the other end of the scarf and then the other midwife was ready to catch baby. So it, like, all of us were just in the bed. It was probably like the funniest picture.
Kurt: All six.
Jaymie: Yeah. It was six of us.
Kurt: Brooke included.
Jaymie: And so a wave would come and I would push through my legs almost like a leg press, yeah. And I would pull the scarf and flex my body. Initially I kept going more into extension for some reason. And once my midwife was like, "Try flexing as you pull, like curling in." And that was a game changer. I had to cognitively do that, my body wasn't doing that naturally. But it definitely got me so much more force or momentum or I don't know, the physics worked a lot better.
Lisa: Yeah. I wonder if it was helping your deep transverse muscles to contract and squeeze add that additional power.
Jaymie: Yeah. And it, I mean, it was a full body workout. Like I would like a contraction would come and push through my legs, pull through my arms, crunched my torso. So it was, yeah, it was a full body workout. And I remember pushing, pushing so hard and then I would stop to breathe and be like, okay, is she out like, is anything happening?
Lisa: Are we done yet?
Jaymie: Yeah. And I remember one of the midwives was like, "Yeah, you're doing awesome stretching." And I'm like, "Ugh! That means no, we're not done. Okay."
Lisa: But what a great way to frame it.
Jaymie: I know!
Lisa: A lot of like nurses or care providers would have been like, "Nope, not yet!" Not an encouraging thing to hear rather than like "Great stretching!" I mean, that's not what you wanted to hear. I get that. But it could have been worded...
Jaymie: Yeah. I was very in my head, I knew what was happening and I remember feeling her do the in and out situation that you had described of like, you feel baby come out and then they kind of come back in and...
Lisa: Rebounding. Psychologically that's hard cause you just want to be meeting your daughter.
Jaymie: Yeah, but I remember feeling that and being like, "Oh, this is hard." But then also in my head remembering like what you said, I was like, this is so good for her. It's squeezing all the liquid out of her lungs and from an OT perspective, this is such great deep pressure and it's building her body awareness and helping with her reflexes. Like I was saying that in my head.
Lisa: You were just talk yourself into like this is okay. This is good.
Jaymie: It's okay that this is happening as much as it is hard. And then eventually like one of those times her head stayed out and I guess she also had her fist by her head too so it was even more stretching that needed to happen. And she kind of, the midwives were saying that she kind of punched her way out, like super woman.
Lisa: Hi, I'm a super hero!
Jaymie: Yeah. Exactly how she got out. And yeah once her head like stayed out, then it was pretty fast. I think only a couple of pushes and she like twisted right out and they put her right on my chest and I thought I would cry. I thought I would be so much more emotional than I was, but I think I was just in complete shock. I just remember being like, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." Just saying that over and over again. I think I was also exhausted too. We have some pictures that the midwife had taken and I'm just like, you could just tell, phew, I was just tired, but I do remember hugging her and talking to her like, "Wow, baby. That was so hard. That was so hard. You worked so hard, but we did it." I just remember saying that to her and, and then I was like, wait, what is it? Because we didn't find out, we didn't find out her gender. So I just picked her up. Yeah.
Kurt: Kurt, do you have reflections on those moments of meeting your daughter or any parts of pushing?
It was hard to, it's hard to go through as a partner, husband, father, cause like you're just on the sideline for the most part. I mean, I was actively supporting her, but like there's not a whole lot, at least in my head, that makes it seem, would seem to make a difference. Jaymie's going through this intense pain and marathon of a labor. I remember it being like hard to watch, especially when she's pushing, Jaymie was turning purple from squeezing and pushing so hard, so I remember that being really hard. I'm not super emotional as just a person, but I remember bawling when I finally met her.
Jaymie: Yeah. It was really sweet. I think I can count on one hand the times that I've seen Kurt cry and so it was really sweet to see him getting emotional. She did do the breast crawl, which was so cool. Just from again, like from professionally, from an OT perspective to watch her use all of her reflexes and just how smart this little being is. She knew exactly what to do and I was just in awe watching her move her way and latch and yeah, it was just, it was so cool to, to experience that. And after like 20 minutes or so I started feeling pain in my back again, and I was like, "Oh no, what's happening?" And so I said that and they were like, "Oh, your placenta is ready to come out." And so I was like, "Okay, well, let's get it out. Because I don't want to feel any more back pain."
Lisa: I've had my fill, thank you.
Jaymie: Yes. That was relatively quick. Yeah. And Kurt got to cut the cord.
Kurt: Yeah, that was cool.
Jaymie: Eventually they waited a while.
Oh yeah, a half hour before we cut the cord. But that was really fun.
Lisa: And was the cord long enough for her to come all the way up to your chest?
Jaymie: Yes. Yup. And then, then they left us like they, dimmed the room and kind of just let us be for a good hour, hour and a half. They cleaned up the entire apartment, they cooked us dinner.
Lisa: Another one of the fairy aspects of homebirth midwives is they just whip it all into shape. Do the laundry.
Jaymie: Oh yeah. They started a little laundry. Yeah.
Kurt: I think our house was cleaner when they left than before they came.
Lisa: Nice.
Jaymie: I remember that being such a sweet time. Like we talked about what we wanted to name her and we just had that time for just the three of us in our bed. It was so sweet. One funny moment that happened, Kurt had left the room. This is like after that hour or so, he had left the room for a second and it was just me and Brooke and I had lost my voice, I guess, all through labor, I did a lot of moaning and breathing and I guess after 24 hours of moaning, you lose your voice. And so I literally had no voice left and I remember lifting up the blanket and she had pooped everywhere, like all over her, all over me. And I was by myself in the room and I was like, "Kurt..." I couldn't...
Lisa: Oh, no.
Jaymie: Help. Someone help. And then when he came back in and I just like pointed. I was like, "Help!" so that was just a funny moment that had happened. Eventually the midwives did come back in and do the check on her, took her weight and I needed to get two stitches, I think. And again, they just did that right in our bed. I know, again, it was so sweet because I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have to do stitches after all of that?" Like I was thinking, I was more nervous about the pain of the stitches than anything else. But they were so sweet. Kurt took Brooke and sat right by my head. I stayed in bed and we put our worship music back on and one of the midwives held my hand and walked me through a guided meditation as the other....
Lisa: That's so cool.
Jaymie: Yeah. Did the stitches. So they made it okay.
Lisa: I'm impressed that you only had to have a couple of stitches, given the compound presentation it sounds like where her fist was coming first.
Jaymie: Yeah. I guess it... I don't know.
Lisa: But you also were very intentional with your form in pushing, which can make a huge difference in the pelvic floor integrity.
Jaymie: Yeah. And I think, I mean, I could feel everything and so I was only pushing when my body told me to push and so I think I was very in tune with what was happening and what my body was doing was helpful to time and pace that whole process.
Lisa: Absolutely.
Jaymie: So, yeah, the midwives left after a couple hours, made sure nursing was going okay and then it was just us and we were already home and in our bed.
Lisa: Nice. And usually midwives come back pretty soon, like the next day or so. Is that what happened with you?
Jaymie: Yeah. They did six postpartum visits. They came back day one, day three, one week, two weeks, four weeks and six weeks.
Lisa: Which should be our standard of care everywhere and it's not!
Jaymie: Lovely. And they came to our house for all of those visits and then they were also available via text. So if we had any questions or we did a lot of like, "Is this normal? Is this normal?" kind of questions and we would just text them and ask and they were great about getting back to us and be like, "Yep, totally normal." Or ask more questions and help us troubleshoot. So, yeah, the way that that team did the whole process was so awesome. I also liked how they monitored throughout labor, they didn't once do a cervical exam, so I never knew how far dilated I was. And I didn't want to, I think I would have been really discouraged if I had gotten 12 hours into labor and I was only three centimeters or something, I think.
Lisa: Oh, yeah. That could play mind games with you.
Jaymie: Oh yes. So that was great that I didn't, we could just kind of let it unfold naturally.
Lisa: That's great. I'm glad you pointed that out because that's a big difference between birth settings. In hospitals there's a pretty rigorous timeframe where they want to do them before your water breaks, every two hours after the water releases, let's say every four hours, sometimes a little more sparingly, but there's really only so much information we're getting from that. And it's giving excuses actually in that environment to say, "Oh, we need to add Pitocin", or "We need to do this intervention or that intervention." And so yay for home birth, you weren't on that deadline, you weren't on a clock. They were just giving nature and your body and your baby time to unfold in its very unique, organic way. Right?
Jaymie: And I think she needed that time too, because she ended up coming out anterior. So at some point she must've rotated because I think she was posterior for most of it, but she worked it out. We worked it out and yeah, I mean, it was definitely really hard. It was like the hardest thing that it's, I guess it's labor, it's called labor for a reason. And I remember right after being like, "Yeah, I don't want to do that again. I'm good." But now I think looking back, I just feel like I remember how hard it was, but I feel so incredibly proud of myself and of Brooke and of Kurt and just how well we worked together as a team of three. And I'm just like, "Wow, we did it!" And so I look back at it like, "Yeah, we could do that again." I feel so empowered by the whole experience. Home birth was absolutely the best way that we could bring Brooke into this world and I felt so safe during that whole process.
Lisa: That brings so much joy to my heart to hear that you had such a great experience. So wonderful! I'm getting all the chills. Well, so do you want to share anything about these first few weeks of being a parent? Anything on breastfeeding or how your healing has gone or any aspect?
Jaymie: Yeah. I mean, it's hard. Nothing really prepares you for what these immediate weeks are like. The first week or so I definitely felt like a truck ran over me, like my whole body was sore. My biceps were sore, my shoulders were sore. Every muscle in my body was sore.
Lisa: Muscles you didn't even know you had.
Jaymie: Exactly, yes. And I didn't expect the hormone shifts to be so intense. I had moments where I was just crying and crying and I feel like some of that may have been an emotional release from labor and birth too, because I didn't cry right after. So I feel like some of it was just a release from that. But yeah, I didn't realize how much your hormones change and how that can really impact your emotions.
Lisa: And one thing you missed out on with the recorded course, I haven't been able to do any recordings, I haven't so far anyway regarding the pandemic. And in our live classes or live virtual classes, we've been talking a lot about the grief process of this time in your life, this time of pregnancy, and for some people giving birth during the pandemic, it's not what you expected, and to give yourself that space to process some grief along those lines, even if it's in pregnancy or in the postpartum. And so I would imagine that at least part of what you would have been feeling is a bit of maybe even PTSD. I mean, I've been reading about how many of us are going to be having some degree of PTSD from just this scary pandemic and not knowing what's happening and all of the different things that that has meant in the different ways that that has looked. Do you feel like any of that's playing into?
Jaymie: Absolutely. I mean, I think that was a lot of things playing into it. I think too, I remember talking to my grandma about this and she was saying how, you're so connected to your baby when you're pregnant. And then when they're born, like they're here and you meet them, but they're no longer inside of you, they're no longer attached to you. And so it's almost like your body has to, she actually got that advice from her mom and learned that explanation of like your body kind of has to adjust to not having baby attached to you anymore. So I think there was a lot of, yeah, a lot of these different factors that were impacting my emotional state.
And breastfeeding too, was a challenge at first. I think hearing different people on your podcast talk about breastfeeding. I feel like it's a challenge for a lot of people and she latched right away. Initially it was going great, but I think her latch may have been too shallow and so I was experiencing a lot of pain a couple of days in to the point where I couldn't wear a shirt because fabric rubbing hurt too much. I remember one night I was just in rough shape. I was like wearing those like diaper things and just waddling hunched over because I was so sore and I had no shirt on and my hair was a mess and I just asked Kurt, I was like, "Will you ever find me attractive again?" And of course he was like, "Of course I find you attractive right now."
Lisa: That's the right thing to say. Good answer.
Jaymie: Yeah. And then I think once my milk came in, I had a lot of like engorgement issues, my flow was really fast and so she was adjusting to that and that was really hard. So for a couple of weeks she was like choking and crying and gagging because my flow was so fast. And I think as a mom, like such a primitive need is to feed your baby. And when your baby is struggling with that, like it's like torture. It was torture to watch her, but we had such great support. I mean, Kurt is incredible. He's so incredibly supportive of everything and really of our breastfeeding journey. Like I remember in those early weeks I would get her latched and then he'd be like, "Okay, what do you need?" And he would put pillows under my arms and make sure that I had water. And sometimes we would just sit with me, like, especially during some of those hard feeds when she was having trouble and he would just sit with me so that I wasn't alone and working through that. He's awesome!
Kurt: Box of snacks. Keep a box of snacks at your coffee table and just hand her stuff.
Jaymie: Oh yeah. That was helpful. Yeah.
Lisa: So great. Yay! It always just bring so much joy to my heart when I hear when people have really amazing, loving, supportive, eager-to-help partners. That's awesome. Yay, Kurt!
Jaymie: He changed a lot of diapers too in those first weeks. Yeah, it was great. We did talk to two different lactation consultants too, who were friends of friends, they were so kind to just kind of generously give their time and talk on the phone and troubleshoot. And they had really great advice of different positions to try and one piece of advice though, that one of the women gave us was, or gave me, was to talk to Brooke during the feeding and to say like, "I know this is so hard, I'm with you, I'm here with you." And that was a game changer for me in terms of my mindset, because we were doing this together. And I was, even though it was hard, I literally felt like she was being tortured. I could reassure her. We can do hard things together and so I felt like that was such a great piece of advice and by the grace of God, it is getting easier. We have found a pretty good rhythm now, and I'm so grateful for working through that and having the support that we did.
Lisa: Oh, thank you for sharing that tip that you got from the consultant, because I haven't ever heard anybody share that one on the podcast anyway, and that is beautiful and I love that it helped you so much. That's the most important part of it.
Jaymie: Well, it gave me something that I could do because so much of it was like, yeah, we tried different positions, but like during the feed I felt so helpless of not knowing how to control my milk flow. And that gave me something to do tangibly that I could work with Brooke through this.
Lisa: Did you find that lying back helps to slow down the flow?
Jaymie: Yeah, we did that, lying back and having the letdown happen first, before she latched making sure she's in alignment. Her head is in alignment over her shoulders, over her pelvis as opposed to her head turned. So just those kinds of tips were huge and it took a little bit, even with those suggestions, but she's getting it, we're getting it. And we had so much support too, I think, from our community and our families. My mom came and stayed with us for the first week or so, which really, you know, the only people that I felt comfortable having around in the state that I was in, as I described earlier, was Kurt and my mom. And yeah, she was amazing, she did laundry and grocery shopping and was really just an emotional support. Her presence, I mean, my mom is my best friend and so her presence and ability to hold space for me and Kurt was so incredibly healing for me. And then Kurt's mom came around two weeks and she brought so much food and so we had food for weeks, which is incredible.
Lisa: That's one of the best things.
Jaymie: Our church did a meal train too.
Lisa: Yay! Awesome.
Kurt: It's the little things of daily life that just don't get done or put to the wayside.
Jaymie: Yeah.
Lisa: Right? You don't realize it until you're in it how impossible just cooking a meal or even eating a meal feels.
Jaymie: Yeah. So that was so helpful. And, you know, we had family and friends sending diapers and wipes and baby girl outfits. Because we all had like gender neutral stuff. So it was fun to get a bunch of new outfits for her. And yeah, I think as hard as these first weeks are, we have had so many like really sweet moments too. Like the first time I remember, I think it was the second night, the first time that Kurt calmed Brooke from scream crying all the way to sleeping on his own. We both bawled, like we were both crying. It was like two in the morning and Kurt was like, "I did it!" It was so awesome. And I was like...
Lisa: Isn't that the best feeling?
Jaymie: Yeah!
Kurt: Yeah.
Lisa: You're like, "I just did that. I just calmed our baby!"
Kurt: There was a very large learning curve of trial and error to figure out what worked with her. I can't feed her, so it was like every trick in the book I learned. Figured out what worked and yeah, we did it.
Lisa: Have you guys... you did it, that's amazing. I love it. Have you found any particular comforting, soothing techniques helpful? Have the 5 S's been helpful or something else?
Kurt: The 5 S's yeah, those are my repertoire. She loves bouncing on a ball. Like we've kept the yoga balls out in about the house and bouncing on those.
Jaymie: You used your pinky finger a lot and let her suck on his pinkie.
Lisa: Yes, great.
Jaymie: I have a picture of her, lay napping and Kurt's napping next to her with his finger in her mouth. I got out of the shower and that's what I walk into. So we've had so many of these really sweet moments too. And the first time we went for a walk and got outside, the first time we saw her smile, it's been so sweet to have a lot of those moments, the three of us. And I mean, it's definitely an adjustment. I think for me being a person who thrives on being productive and achieving and working hard nonstop sometimes these days will go by and I'm like, "What did I even do? What did I accomplish?" But then I realized every time we meet her needs, every time we help her calm, every time we change her diaper, feed her, sing to her, tell her we love her. We're building this foundation for her. We're teaching her that she has a voice, that her needs matter, that she's loved unconditionally. And that's the foundation that she's going to have for the rest of her life. So when I get lost in the day-to-day chaos of new parenting, I just think about that and recognize that what a privilege it is to be her parents and to build that foundation for her.
Lisa: How are you so articulate in eight weeks out from giving birth?
Jaymie: I wrote out this whole thing, being over-prepared as I was.
Lisa: Still, that's even more impressive that you found the time and energy to make the notes first and think it through and all of that. Most of us are just flying by the seat of our pants eight weeks into parenthood.
Jaymie: Yeah. It's been helpful to process it for sure.
Lisa: Is there anything that you haven't gotten to share that you were hoping to share before we start to wrap things up?
Jaymie: I mean, I think for me, like the main takeaways is you have to feel safe. You have to feel safe in whatever environment you choose to give birth in. For some people that is a hospital, that is where they feel most safe and you have to feel safe for the environment and with your providers and just how important that is and to work until you find that. And you always have options for what that looks like, and it's okay to switch at any point so that you can have that safety, because that was definitely, that was a game changer for us. And I think what made our birth so special and as empowering as it was.
Kurt: Oh, can we tell them who our midwives were? You know, we've plugged a bunch of people.
Jaymie: Oh, yeah. Our midwife team, because we love them so much, so if anyone is in the Boston area and wants to do a home birth, but they're actually called Birth Matters too.
Lisa: Really? I didn't realize that, how fun!
Jaymie: Jessica, Seraphina, Emily and Maria and Adriana, was our student.
Kurt: Yeah, they were great.
Lisa: I'll be sure to get that information, confirm it with you and put that in the show notes. Wonderful. It has been lovely to finally get to meet you guys since you took my online course; it's my first time to get to see you face to face. It's been so fun, and it has been just such a joy to hear how beautifully everything went. Not that it was easy, as you said, but how empowering and how safe you felt and just what a beautiful transition into parenthood and how much you love each other, love your baby, support each other. It's just making my, I was going to say making my day, but maybe making more than that. Because I just think it's an inspiration to so many people, so thank you so much for taking the time and finding that energy right now to share today.
Jaymie: Absolutely. It's an honor to share.