Birth Story: Unmedicated Hospital Birth with Jamie Peterson
Show Notes:
[1:59] The Reviewer of the Week is 13021310241026717, and she says, "I just found this podcast at 16 weeks pregnant and wish I would have found it sooner! These women are doing incredible work by educating and providing women a resource to learn. Love their opinions and outlooks on birth with their honest experiences. The BEST podcast on pregnancy and birth!"
[2:36] Our guest this week is Jamie Peterson, who lives in Minnesota with her husband Erik and her daughter Noa who just turned 1 in March.
[3:15] Jamie's pregnancy experience was pretty standard with nothing super wild or crazy. She hated being pregnant. She was not one of those women who are like, "Oh my gosh, this is the best!" There were a lot of changes that people tell you about, but she wasn't actually ready for like: things she couldn't eat, her jeans didn't fit her anymore, and the extreme fatigue at the beginning.
[4:45] Stephanie asked if there were any concerns during her pregnancy. Jamie failed her glucose test, but other than that she didn't have any major concerns.
[6:38 ] Jamie chose to have her first baby in a hospital. She wanted to have a safety net in place. She went to an OBGYN where they had both OB's, midwives, NP's, and PAs. She wanted to keep her birth as low intervention as possible. The downside though was that she had to meet a bunch of different providers because there was no guarantee on which provider would deliver her baby.
[8:18] She always knew that wanted to at least try to have an unmedicated birth. She wanted to get the information, gather as much as she could, and do her best to have that be the reality. Her husband was very supportive, but she joked that thank goodness that pregnancy lasts nine months because it took him nine months to learn how to support her and nine months to know how to be supported by him.
[10:54] What did your preparation look like? She started listening to the podcast around 12 weeks. She didn't think she needed the birth course and didn't purchase it until 30 weeks. Jamie and her husband would watch the birth course every night when she got home from work. She sat on her birth ball to do figure eights and hip stretches. She also visited a Webster-certified chiropractor starting at 12 weeks. She did the squats, but wasn't able to do the forward leaning inversion. She also walked a ton. She also hired a doula on March 3rd, and she was due March 18th. The doula was a good way to bridge the communication gap between her husband and she likely when she would be in raging labor.
[15:12] Jamie really enjoyed the affirmations. She listened to a lot, like my body was made to birth, like my baby and I are safe. She's never been able to successfully meditate and couldn't get out of her own head to just lay there and chill. She used the frozen bag of peas for the labor practice.
[15:58] To prepare mentally, when she would wake up in the middle of the night and wouldn't feel her baby, she would talk to God. She would pray over her baby a ton because she had a lot of anxiety. Pregnancy is an anxiety provoking thing. There's just so much that can go wrong. Your mind can just race.
[17:17] She also crushed the red raspberry leaf tea every night starting at 32 weeks. She also harvested colostrum. She also ate granola bars that had dates in them.
[18:13] Jamie walks through her birth experience. Around 36 weeks, she went in for her cervical check and was 2.5 centimeters dilated. At 38 weeks, they tried a membrane sweep. At 39+5 weeks, she had a chiropractor and acupuncture appointment. Her midwife went to do a cervix check and Jamie's water broke. She was 5.5 centimeters dilated. They started monitoring baby's heartbeat and sent her to the hospital. She got an IV and told her nurse about how she didn't want interventions. After a few hours she asked her doula to come to the hospital. She wanted to get in the bath but when they checked her, she was 9 centimeters. All the things that she thought she'd want (peanut ball, her husband touching her, etc.) did not work. All she could do was hang her hands over her husband's shoulders and breathe through it. Her baby was born three hours after her water broke. She kept expecting the contractions to be worse.
[28:40] To make labor easier, Jamie tossed her hands over her husband's shoulders, and swayed her hips, so she was at a 90-degree angle. Movement is huge.
[30:19] Were there certain things your husband did during the labor process that was really encouraging or helpful? Jamie felt that his presence and knowing how proud he was of her was exactly what she needed.
[31:24] Jamie's best advice for moms is to get as much information as you can, as anxiety provoking as it can be. Sometimes it's also super empowering. So then at that point, like you're feeling empowered, but if it doesn't go your way, and you do end up having to get an epidural or going against something that you had thought would be your plan, you can at least feel like you did your best. You left nothing else on the table, and you came in there as prepared as you could be. I can only attribute how positive and great my birth was to the preparation that I did and learned about on this podcast. You are so much tougher than you know, and that carries on through like being a mom. Childbirth is hard, and it's tough, but you are tougher. Having a baby is hard. Breastfeeding, pumping, whatever is hard, but, you are so much tougher, and that's what's been really cool about motherhood in general, is like learning how, how strong I am and how tough I am, and that God made women to be these miraculous people who do this miraculous thing.
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