Unmedicated Birth Center Birth Story: The Power of Support and Affirmations with Maren Rider

Show Notes:

[2:31] Our Reviewer of the Week, NatKhernandez, says, "This podcast has been one of the few that have brought me some peace and overall knowledge without scaring me about pregnancy. I love the positive birth stories and the educational ones like rhogam, hemorrhages, etc. thank you and I will be joining the course for next baby!"

[2:52] Our guest today is Maren Rider, a mom of two and pregnant with her third baby and also a My Essential Birth student! She'll be sharing the birth story about her second baby!

[4:37] Maren's experience with pregnancy overall went smoothly. She had a bit of nausea, but it cleared up around 10-11 weeks. She definitely noticed that the relaxin kicked in quickly so she had some issues with her hips and threw out her back a couple times when she was in the first trimester. Maren was pregnant with what is called Irish twins, which is when a baby is born within 12 months or less of their sibling. 

[7:21] Maren talks about her pregnancy. She had pretty healthy pregnancies, but her mental health tanked when she was pregnant with her second. She opted to do like the prenatal genetic screening to find out gender, but then got a high risk result, which really fueled her anxiety. With her first baby, they had been with an OB who had a couple of midwives, but because of the way it worked with the hospital, when she went to deliver, the midwives couldn't come because the OB they practiced under was out of town. She ended up delivering with the on call OB. She felt like the hospital pushed her on things she didn't want to and as a first time mom, she didn't know what to do. With her second pregnancy, she didn't want to go back to that clinic or to a hospital setting. Her husband's sisters delivered at birth centers and encouraged her to check out a birth center. She did some research and found a provider she really liked. 

[10:36] Maren shares about her first provider experience. She met the OB once and did not like him at all. She met with him when she was 37 or 38 weeks. She felt like the meeting was "I'm just meeting with you in case something goes wrong." He said, "I see on your birth plan that you don't want to get an epidural, but I'm here to tell you, you have my permission to get one." It didn't sit right with her for him to be like, "You have my permission." After that she did not want to go back.

[11:39] Maren signed on with the birth center when she was 10-12 weeks. Stephanie asked, "How did your husband feel about all that?" Maren said, "He's super chill about it. He's kind of like, you do what you want to do." They have lots of family support around the whole natural child birth setting, and his sisters were all ranting and raving about their birth center experiences. He was all gung ho about it. 

[13:43] Did Maren have more than 1 midwife and/or doulas? Maren had a group of four midwives and two student midwives at the time that she delivered. They didn't have like doulas in their birth center, but they doulas they recommend if you wanted one. They do birth center births and home births. She did meet with every single midwife multiple times beforehand and there was also a student midwife there as well. When she gave birth, she had already met both the student midwife and the midwife who were there.  

[14:41] Did Maren have any complications like GBS? She was GBS negative and delivered at 39 weeks so there was never any talk of induction. Not that they can induce at the birth center because it's out of hospital. But legally, they can only let you deliver at the birth center from 37 to 42 weeks.

[15:30] How did Maren prepare with her husband? He wasn't as hands on this pregnancy as he was with the last pregnancy for labor practices. They both went into it like "we have done this once and we're kind of a little bit better prepared." His biggest thing that helped her was just to keep her fed. He was definitely more of the emotional support and dealing with the symptoms of pregnancy rather than the birth prep.

[17:28] How did Maren prepare for birth? She tried to do the three daily exercises but really struggled with the forward leaning inversions because she gets pretty bad heartburn when pregnant. She would do the pelvic tilts and the squats all the time. She tried to go for walks daily as much as the weather permitted. Maren focused on meditation and visualization every day during her toddler's nap. She'd sit on the birth ball and talk to her baby and practice going over here positive affirmations and visualizing how she wanted her birth to go. She went step by step on how she imagined it would go almost daily. She focused on preparing her mental state so that when she got there she could really zen out and focus on breathing and the positive affirmations.

[19:03] Stephanie asked, "Did you find that coming from your first birth that you instinctively knew what you were going to need more of for the next birth?" Maren replied, "With my first birth, I just didn't really know what was going on. So I thought I was prepared, but you can't really ever know what you're going through until you go through it. I just I felt that I needed to be more in touch with like the calm side of me and be able to like relax my body more than I was able to. I think towards the end of my first labor and delivery, it felt out of control, as you know, the more pain you feel, if you're not in the correct headspace to begin with, then it's easy for it to slip out of hand. I really focused on doing that this time to just make sure I knew how to get into that correct headspace to help myself."

[20:23] Were there things that you found either within the birth course or from the podcast that really stood out to you or that you kind of latched onto or like took with you, focused on, utilized as you were preparing for birth or during the labor? Maren really focused on finding those positive affirmations, and did some deep soul searching. She did the exercise where you find your fears, and you trace them to find your positive affirmations to counteract. She did that sometime in the second trimester and because she'd gone through the birth experience before, she had a whole bunch of fears based off of that first birth. She was really afraid of stalling cause she stalled a couple of times when she was in labor with my first, and she was afraid of having pushing urges before she was 10 centimeters dilated. She did a whole bunch of research on all those things and she made a whole bunch of affirmations based on those fears that she had. The other thing that she really took to heart was the advice to just constantly be moving in labor.

[22:04] Maren walks us through her labor getting started. She'd been having prodromal labor for a few days but nothing super intense. She wanted to have her baby on her dad's birthday, but she missed it by a day. Her family kept asking if she had had the baby yet, and she was grumpy because it wasn't helping! She took a long walk and then started feeling more intense contractions that evening after putting her daughter to bed. She had contractions through the night and did the miles circuit to try to get things going. Once her contractions were 3 minutes apart, she called her midwives and they told her to come in. By the time they got there (after a 30 minute car ride), her contractions were two minutes apart.

She got into the tub and was at 9.5 cm for about an hour and a half. Then she told the midwives she felt like pushing. She let her body do the work and after 50 minutes, her daughter was born!

[31:53] She had a great experience birthing in the tub. You get some of that weightless feeling too to help ease all the pressure. She moved positions quite often in the tub (semi reclined, hands and knees, kneeling, etc.)

[32:42] Stephanie wanted to highlight something important! Maren said she had zero vaginal exams her entire pregnancy and during her entire labor. You CAN give birth to a baby without a vaginal exam.

[34:03] What was the difference for you? Having somebody believe in or create a safe environment for trusting your intuition and believing in what your body is capable of versus before being told there's something wrong if you're having those pushing contractions or this and that, like something's not right here. You have to wait for this. What was the difference?

Maren said: "Oh man, the difference was huge. I mean, with my first birth, I didn't know anybody in the room besides my husband and an OB I'd never met. It was nurses I'd never met before. They were telling me things and, I don't think it's really possible to describe how vulnerable your birth space is until you've like been in it. But when you're in that position and you're feeling all those feelings of labor and delivery, and you get scared, it's super easy to get scared, and if there's people you don't know who are telling you like "oh well just do this, don't push yet, don't do anything, we should break your water right now because that's what needs to be done" then you're so vulnerable that you're willing to listen to them, even if it's not something that you really wanted to do going into your birth. With my second birth, I would say things like, "I'm really worried that I'm stalling." And my midwives would be like, "You're not stalling. We can tell because you can tell your baby's moving through your pelvis. You can feel her getting lower and lower. You're not stalling. You're fine." Or I'd be like, "I'm feeling pushy. I don't know if I should push. Like, what if I've stalled?" And they're like, "You haven't stalled. Listen to your body. You're doing okay." And I knew these people, I had relationships with them. I'd met with them prior to labor and delivery multiple times. I knew their names. I'd done birth classes with them. It was a night and day difference to have someone instead having my providers say, "Listen to me as the provider." They were saying, "Listen to yourself as the person giving birth. You have intuition, use it." I did not experience that at all with my first, and it was a wonderful redemption because of that. 

[38:32] Maren describes the environment when she got to the birth center and how it made her relax. There was dim lighting, she wasn't hooked up to anything, and she had her playlist going.

[41:23] What is your best advice for moms and dads?

For moms: "My advice for moms would be find a provider that you like. Find one that you're willing to be vulnerable with because if you don't, you're going to regret it, like a hundred percent. A little tangent, but my sister was pregnant and due at the same time as me this last pregnancy. She did not have a provider that she liked, and we would come back from our appointments and I'd be like, "Oh, cool, whatever.: And she'd be like, "I'm so angry. I'm so mad. They're fighting me about this and this and this." Not only is it the process of labor, but the process of being pregnant is really kind of stressful too. So find someone that is on your side that you trust, that is willing to listen to you and go with what you want to do and hold on to that person. Hold on to that provider because they will be what makes a huge difference in your birth.

For dads: Figure out how your partner needs your help to relax. My husband's not a very emotional guy. So for him, the emotional side of things was really hard, but I went to him and I said, "Look, you can hold my hands. You can rub my face or play with my hair, do all these things that are going to help me stay relaxed. And that's what I need you to do. You need to be in charge of that. You need to be in charge of keeping me hydrated and fed and moving" and just make sure that you're very clear about what their role is in your birth and how to help you relax through it too.

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Links Mentioned:

• My Essential Birth Course
• My Essential Birth Postpartum Course
• My Essential Birth Instagram
• 3 Free Exercises 
• Ina May's Guide to Childbirth