Ask The Doulas Podcast | Gold Coast Doulas

Podcast Episode #9: How to Handle a Six-Week NICU Stay

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth, Parenting / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, birth doula, childbirth, multiples, newborn care, nursing, twins

On this episode of Ask the Doulas, Tricia talks about her experience with her twins staying in the NICU for six weeks. You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula, and today we’re talking to Tricia.

Tricia: Hi.

Alyssa: She is a post-partum and birth doula with us and also our multiples expert that teaches the multiples class. Tell us about your multiples.

Tricia: They are two. I have identical twin girls, Keira and Rosalind. They also have a big brother named Gideon. He just turned four.

Alyssa: Okay, so for a while there, you had three under three?

Tricia: I had three under two.

Alyssa: Three under two!

Tricia: They are 23 months apart, so yeah.

Alyssa: Wow, you are wonder woman. So when the girls were born, they had a significant NICU stay?

Tricia: They did.

Alyssa: And I know parents get really nervous about NICU, and Kristen had talked about how her daughter had a three-week stay. How long were your daughters in the NICU?

Tricia: They were in just over six weeks. Keira was in for 41 days, and Rosalind was in for 45.

Alyssa: Okay. So tell us a little bit about the birth story and how they ended up in NICU and what you and your husband felt.

Tricia: My girls shared a placenta, so we had issues for a little while. They were monitoring really closely. One of their placentas was velamentous cord insertion, so it was palm-shaped, and it was attached to both the placenta and my cervix. Keira started detaching off of the placenta.

Alyssa: So there were two placentas?

Tricia: No. One together; they shared. One had two cords. So they had separate sacks. There are three different types of twins. We were the second-safest, I guess is the best way. MoMo, they share a sack and they share everything.

Alyssa: Okay. One sack, one placenta?

Tricia: Yeah, which runs risks because umbilical cords can twist around each other. We had the safe kind of identical – well, safer. Two sacks, but they shared one placenta. So yes, they started to do a twin-to-twin blood transfusion back and forth, and so the placenta just kind of died, or was starting to. So Keira came out pale and not breathing at 32 weeks, and sister came out 30 seconds later. We had an emergency C-section because Keira was originally breech, so she was going to be a C-section regardless. She was Baby A. But it became more emergent when they realized that she was having issues with her placenta cord or her umbilical cord. So they both were intubated within seconds. Their scores were super low. I want to say Keira’s was a one and Rosalind’s might have been a two or a three. So super low at birth. I think the scariest part was we had our son first, so we knew that they come out crying and happy. And the doctors, when we came into our C-section, were talking about vacations, and by the end of it, the entire room of 30 people was, like, silent. So yeah, my husband really had a hard time with that. We both started crying. Both girls were fine. Keira was pretty much whisked straight down to NICU. Rosalind was a little bit more stable, so they were able to have her lay next to me. I have a photo of her little finger in my finger as they stitched me up, and her just kind of sitting there. But then she was sent back down with sister. Thankfully, I had a postpartum doula sitting there. My husband left for about an hour. It was very traumatic for him to have both of his girls and me and the whole – so he went and had his time. I really still to this day, two years later, have no idea what he did. I know he went through a drive through, and I know he sat in his car and cried, but I had my support for me, so we both were able to be where we needed, and my support was amazing. Having that doula there was – I honestly could not imagine being in a room with no babies; no husband, because he needed his time, and yeah. She was phenomenal. And we had a NICU nurse come upstairs a couple hours; it was a good couple hours and brought pictures and had weights. And both girls at that point were stable. Both were intubated, great. The NICU doctor was a little concerned. Keira’s hemoglobin was at an 8, and Rosalind’s was at an 18. They think it happened within the first, like those last couple hours when the umbilical cord started being funky and the placenta, because it can go so quickly. And they really don’t think it had to have been a couple hours because I was having contractions for a good 48 hours before the girls were born. They just weren’t consistent. But we had steroid shots prior. They weren’t going to start labor, because at that point they didn’t think that it was – when it was going to happen, it was going to happen. But she felt that Keira would do a lot better if she had a blood transfusion because her hemoglobin was so low for even an adult, let alone a baby. But blood transfusions for babies are really little. You think “blood transfusion;” you think these huge – it’s like a little syringe amount of blood. It’s super little because they were so little.

Alyssa: So did they explain that to you? Because I think if somebody told me, hey, your newborn baby needs a blood transfusion, I would just break down. So they said this is literally what it looks like? So they just pump new blood into their vein?

Tricia: Yeah, they did it through her head because the head veins are so nice and with babies, they still move. They’re little babies. She might be three pounds, but they’re tough little things at three pounds. And so they go through the head because it’s a really good opening; they don’t have to worry about trying to do it more than once. And so it’s a really little amount; it’s a little syringe. Thankfully, yeah, they did explain some of that. By that time I was pumping. I was able to thankfully talk to a NICU nurse prior to going into NICU, so I knew that without the girls, if I wanted my milk supply to go in, I needed to have a pump within three hours. I had to kind of fight for my pump a little bit, but I was able to get a pump in those first three hours because I was determined to have that. I was able to see the girls for the first time a little after midnight, and they were born at 6:52 and 6:53. So it took about four hours for me to get down there. I couldn’t hold them or anything like that. They were little things. But at that point, Keira had her blood transfusion and all of that. They were, yes, very fragile little things.

Alyssa: What goes through your mind?

Tricia: At that point, I think I was just so happy to see them okay that I really – I don’t think that there was much else because I had experienced her coming out not breathing and her being whisked away and knowing that I almost didn’t go in that day. They were going to send me home. When I went into the hospital, I came in with contractions every eight minutes apart. I was a centimeter and a half dilated. They thought they’d give me some fluids and send me back home at 1:00. I went to the hospital alone; drove a friend’s car; was in my nephew’s preschool class that morning. Like, nobody had a clue that these girlies were coming, and then 3:30, doctor comes in and, “You’re dilated to a three. We can’t send you home. You’re an automatic C-section. I can’t send you home. Contractions haven’t stopped. You probably should call your husband.” Husband’s going, “Do I have time to go get my oil changed?” I’m like, “No, honey, I don’t think you do. They’re acting like we don’t have time for this.”

Alyssa: Maybe that’s what he did for those two hours. “I got a burger and my oil changed and cried.”

Tricia: Right! So the first few days, yeah, were really just – I overdid it a little bit because the anesthesia made me feel – it takes 24 hours for anesthesia from a spinal to fully leave your system, so I could walk, I could pee, I could do all that. I felt invincible, but you’re not invincible. It’s the pain meds talking to you that you’re invincible. So the first three days I pretty much – we did not really have any visitors at the hospital when I was in there, which is way different than with my son.

Alyssa: And was that by choice? You didn’t want anybody to come?

Tricia: Yeah, I really didn’t. They can’t go into NICU, and I wanted to be down with the babies. I was up in my room to get meds, to eat, and to sleep. And everything else I did next to the girls. Rosalind was in – she had bilirubin lights for a couple days. They had bradys throughout the six weeks, which is when they periodically stop breathing. It’s a really common preemie problem is the best way I know how to put it. It’s just that in the uterus, if they don’t breathe a second, it’s fine. They’ve got all the stuff, so it’s them learning how to breathe. They still have to learn how to breathe. Rosalind had a little bit more issues with her lungs, so they were given surfactant to coat their lungs to try to help them breathe at delivery and to help their lungs grow and mature. Keira’s lungs took it; Rosalind’s did not. It all still, 24 hours later, it was pretty much right on the surface of her lungs kind of a concept, so she had a lot more issues breathing. She was off and on different various c-pap and nose canula and breathing. They both had caffeine at some point, and I remember a NICU nurse telling me to drink more caffeine because it was better that they got it through my milk vs. the little –

Alyssa: So what is the caffeine for?

Tricia: It’s to help with them remembering that breathing on their own, to help them be a little bit more alert. That was my understanding, anyway. It’s a lot of trying to get them to remember to breathe on their own because if they sleep and they forget to breathe, there’s a lot of monitors.

Alyssa: Interesting. I would have never thought caffeine.

Tricia: And once again, it’s a really tiny amount.

Alyssa: Oh, of course. “Let’s give them a cup of coffee in a syringe.”

Tricia: Basically! The medical aspect of – I never thought I would know all this medical stuff, and then you have twins who spend six weeks. Food’s in milliliters, and everything’s ounces, and those ounces matter. Like, you don’t think about it when you’ve got a full-term baby and they come home seven pounds and four ounces. But then you have a 3.4 and a 3.7 and they go down to the three pounds, and it’s like, you gained an ounce today! That ounce is huge! I exclusively pumped. We attempted latching, but they never really got the hang of it. Even with bottles, they were still like – part of the reason we were in NICU so long is because it took them a while to understand that oh, I have to suck, swallow, breathe. I have to eat. After about two weeks in for the most part they were feeder/growers. The first couple weeks were a little bit of one step forward, two steps back. Because Keira was under 3.5, she had to do a routine eye exam, which is because there’s a disease that they can get in their eyes if they’re on oxygen for too long. Their birth weight’s low because most of these babies who are that little are on oxygen for a while. And they also have to do a head ultrasound because there’s risks of breathing. And with her routine head ultrasound, they found a pseudocyst in the left ventricle of her brain, which looked more like a blood clot. It didn’t seem to affect function; didn’t seem to be anything too different. They ended up doing a head ultrasound of Rosalind because they’re identical, so they were curious if it was a thing. Both of their left ventricles are bigger than normal, I guess. I don’t really know what that means. Everybody’s brains look funny. The doctor made it out like, “They’re bigger than what the normal brain is, but if we were to do a head ultrasound on you, your brain would look funny too.” Like, there’s a very vague, “this is how your brain is supposed to look” concept. And so they both had bigger left ventricles, but sister did not have the pseudocyst. So they think the pseudocyst was part of delivery. Either that blood transfusion aspect where sister was getting her blood and she was giving it, or just with the placenta and delivery being a little bit more traumatic on her little body.

Alyssa: So is that something that goes away? You just watch it, or did you have to –

Tricia: It did. It did. They weren’t 100% sure. It’s not something that we studied much here. The doctor had to get a study from Sweden because they have more availabilities to that. If it did not go away, the doctor had said that it really wasn’t going to affect any function. It doesn’t affect anything. Hers did dissipate. That might be the wrong word, but it did disappear about eight, nine months in. She had an MRI. She’s had a couple of them, and so we are officially – neuro is done. She’s clear. She had a little bit of – she had to do some PT for a little bit for her right side because of just making sure everything crossed, but otherwise you would not know that she had that at all.

Alyssa: So you said after a couple of weeks, they became feeders/growers. Is that like a common term for NICU parents? Like, they’re feeding well and growing, and that’s their main goal is just to keep them feeding and growing?

Tricia: It is. In the NICU, you start in the back. The littler you are, you start in the back. That tends to be –

Alyssa: So you kind of graduate towards the front?

Tricia: You graduate towards the door. So when we got there, we were in this little corner, and it was both girls’ beds, and you’re in the back. And you can tell that you take a little bit more. A little bit more nurses, a little bit more machines. You’re back there. Like I said, we were 32-weekers, so we were kind of surrounded. There was some 26-weekers. There were some 24-weekers. So when you’re toward the back, it’s generally – in this NICU, you’re a little bit more of a – “We need to monitor you. You’re not as stable.”

Alyssa: A little higher risk.

Tricia: You’re a little bit higher risk, yeah, which it’s not that you’re not stable. It’s just that nurses need to be checking in a little bit more and a lot of times you’re in the kangaroo pods, which are the big isolettes, and you need the darker lights and you need to be a little bit more quiet. So you get put back there so that you can really sleep and grow, and it’s more womb-like towards the back, as womb-like as you can be in a room filled with monitors. They give these blankets. Each baby gets to go home with this big, oversized blanket that they put over top of the isolettes so that it can stay dark. My girls still sleep with them at night; they’re their little NICU blankies. Then as they get a little bit bigger, because newer babies come in that are the younger and need the quiet and the more monitoring, you get moved to the front. And so my girls had about two and a half, three weeks and then got moved to right next to a window and right across the nurse’s station. So yeah, then they get put into little basinets because they start being able to control their body temperature, and they are starting to breathe better, and they don’t need the c-pap. They just have the nose canula which is a huge – the nose canula looks really scary. It’s actually a lot better than to be intubated, but it looks a lot scarier. So it’s got all these bigger monitors and whereas with the nose canula it’s just these little things of oxygen and it can hide behind the bed. So yes, as they get bigger, yes, they get closer to the door.

Alyssa: Okay. So for a good three, four weeks they were feeders/growers?

Tricia: They were.

Alyssa: When do they graduate? At what point do they say, okay, they’re good to go?

Tricia: They have to be breathing on their own. They need to not have bradys within – I want to say it’s 48 or 72 hours. It’s a decent amount of time. It might be 72 because that’s part of the reason that Rosalind ended up staying longer than Keira did is that she had a couple episodes and they can’t send – they have to make sure that she can go home not breathing. Now, there are babies that are sent home with breathing machines and with monitors and whatnot depending on where you are and what your baby needs. Every morning, the doctors come and they give you updates on how they fed that day and what they’re thinking about food-wise; what they’re going to add; what they’re going to change; positives that baby did. And then they also, if you’ve got questions, doctors will sit and answer your questions. They go through rounds. It’s the way that they can do the nurses from the morning to the night, keep everybody up to date per baby. So they also have to pass a car seat test. Mom and Dad have to sit and watch three different videos. There’s a car seat safety test. There’s a CPR class. There’s another one. I cannot remember off the top of my head.

Alyssa: But they want to make sure you’re going home prepared? As prepared as you can be.

Tricia: Yep, yep. They come home, and they’re really – the nurses are all trained. They’re trained for feeding; they’re trained for various different – there was one that was a lactation consultant, so she sat and worked a lot on trying to get the girls to latch and have to figure out some of that. They’re really knowledgeable. They have also social workers upstairs that come down weekly and are like, “What can we do to help?” My husband and I had a 45-minute drive. Our NICU gave us gas cards weekly to help pay for driving there and back and there and back. Because there is a house that’s like right next to it, but you have to be within an hour. So we were just close enough that really – and we had a toddler at home, so we wouldn’t have been able to really use that much anyway, but it was nice that they were like, “What can we do to help your family make this less—”

Alyssa: A little less stressful.

Tricia: A little less stressful; a little less, yeah. And then usually they do a room-in, so they send you upstairs, and you’re on your own with baby. They’ll come in and do vitals every three hours. It’s basically like you leaving the hospital –

Alyssa: If you would have had a full-term baby? So you get that night, maybe, day –

Tricia: Yep, you get that night.

Alyssa: It’s like, okay, I can do this alone before we go home.

Tricia: Mm-hmm. You go home; babies are off all the monitors. It gets a little bit of normalcy to this. They’ll wheel you down in the wheelchair, and the whole, like, this is what you do. Like, I did not leave from the maternity floor when I was sent home because I could not leave from that floor empty-handed. I was like, I’m leaving from the NICU floor. You can put everything back down to the NICU floor, I’m just leaving the hospital and then coming back. If I leave this floor, it’s –

Alyssa: Something in your brain just won’t let you –

Tricia: Something in my brain. I was leaving my girls. I was leaving my girls together. It was that – I’m not leaving as a postpartum mom. I’m leaving as a mom. And I think that for whatever reason, that made a big difference.

Alyssa: So last question I have is you finally get to take them home. Well, one, and then the other, but you finally have both babies home. How do you deal with the nerves of what if they stop breathing? I mean, every parent has this fear of what if they stop breathing in the night. There’s all these what-ifs, and you have like a hundred more. How do you handle that?

Tricia: I know some parents buy the little Owlet monitor thing. There’s a bunch of different sleeping monitors. My girls came home on a schedule, so we kind of kept their schedule. I will be honest; I was over their crib just kind of watching them breathe for a while. Because you don’t, and you can’t. There’s really not – there was an oversized chair. I pumped in their room a lot, so I could watch them breathe while I pumped. You kind of just eventually get a little bit less – I don’t know if it ever really goes away.

Alyssa: Does it ever go away? I mean, I still check my almost-five-year-old daughter’s breathing at night before I go to bed, so that never really goes away, but you get to a point where you’re like, okay, these girls are healthy; they’re going to be able to sleep through the night, and now I can sleep through the night.

Tricia: Yeah. I mean, I had a post-partum doula that I talked to for a while because I did have a lot of anxiety.

Alyssa: The same one that was with you in the hospital?

Tricia: Yes. Due to just – yeah, I had a lot of anxiety from NICU; a lot of fears. So talking through a lot of it helped too. I think being able to talk it out and being, you know, they’re okay. They’re here now. My big thing is they’re here; they’re healthy. They’re happy. They’re fierce little things. But they’ve had a really long day. They’ve had a long rough road. Writing it out helped too. They have a book they both will get that is their full NICU journey.

Alyssa: So you would write every day?

Tricia: Pretty close. Regularly. I wouldn’t say every day, but pretty close. It has their updates; it has their weights. It talks about when Keira came home. Actually, that was probably the hardest day of NICU was taking just one of them home because it felt so foreign to me. I needed – I was supposed to have two. There’s two of you. And they’d never been apart. At least when I left, they were still together. It was really weird to take just her home. It was a very bittersweet day. Our family’s all like, “But you get to get ready for one.” I’m like, yeah, for two days, and now I get to take this infant in and out of the hospital. It’s not as great as you think it is.” I mean, it had to happen. It was fine; it was great; it was four days, and they left her bed and they made it as comfortable as they could. So their book talks about that a little bit. And I was a little bit more open with them in their book than I was with, like, Facebook-updating my family.

Alyssa: Oh, I’m sure. It will be a beautiful thing for them to read when they get older, I’m sure.

Tricia: Mm-hmm, for them to see how far they’ve come.

Alyssa: Yeah, and for you to remember because I feel like, you know, even a year ago, you forget little stories, and I’m a huge proponent of writing things down especially during the newborn stage because you are in this fog, and if you don’t write it down, you probably will never remember. And kids love to hear those stories about themselves, so I think that’s a beautiful way to track that.

Tricia: Yes.

Alyssa: Well, thank you so much. I feel like we have a million different multiples topics we could talk about, like your pumping alone. I think that could be – we will definitely talk about that again.

Tricia: Yes, I could talk for days for that, and all the places I’ve pumped.

Alyssa: We will talk about that for sure. Well, thanks. If you have any questions for Tricia, contact us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com. And you can find us on our website, goldcoastdoulas.com. Thanks for listening in today. We will talk to you soon.

Podcast Episode #9: How to Handle a Six-Week NICU Stay Read More »

Podcast Episode #8: Kristin’s Experience with the NICU

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, breastfeeding, childbirth, newborn care, pumping

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Kristin shares her experiences with the NICU when her daughter was born. You can listen to this complete interview on iTunes.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, and we are talking to my partner Kristin today.

Kristin: Hello, I’m Kristen, and I’m a birth and postpartum doula at Gold Coast.

Alyssa: When we talked to Kristin earlier, we found out about your birth story, and during that time, you had said your daughter Abby when she was born spent four days in the NICU. So can you expand on what it felt like as a parent to have a baby – you know, after a kind of traumatic birth experience, and then you don’t get to bring that baby home right away. How does that feel?

Kristin: Yeah, and again, those of you that heard my birth story, it was traumatic in some ways, and then I had preeclampsia, but very redemptive in that I was able to have an unmedicated birth with very few interventions with the preeclampsia, which is pretty rare. And after I had Abby, it was very standard. I was able to do skin-to-skin and breastfeed, but they did some testing and found that she had glucose issues, and so then it led to her getting transferred to the NICU, and we were fortunate in that the DeVos Children’s Hospital had literally just opened. And they had the really-preemie babies in there, and they had the regular ICU that we started out in, which was overcrowded and there were parents standing everywhere, and I was trying to nurse and hold my baby. And they somehow ended up transferring us to the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital where we had our own private room and more individualized nurse attention, and I had a rocker and I could hold Abby and nurse her there. So we got to experience those amenities which now as a doula has served me very well. And so that was really fabulous, but because of her glucose issues, our pediatrician had recommended that she start with an IV and then it led to, once she got off of that, she was on enhanced formula. And I was pumping the entire time, so we would spend time with her, and then I would go back to my room to pump, and my husband would stay with her. And I was pumping without a baby in my room, which obviously you never imagine that you have your child and then they aren’t actually in the room with you. So that was overwhelming because I kept getting all of these people coming in to help me, like say, okay, you’ve got photographers that want to take your picture with your baby. Well, my baby’s not there when I’m in there pumping. The lactation consultants come in, and my baby’s not there, so they’re helping me with pumping, and that’s about it. So I’m going back and forth, and even though again I had what’s considered a natural birth, I was in a wheelchair because it was one end of the hospital to the other. So I was getting dizzy trying to walk all of that way myself, so I was overwhelmed by a lot of things. And the pumping was overwhelming. So again the heel pricks constantly were hard on me as a mom to see her get poked so many times and cry, and all of the cords and everything that’s involved in a NICU stay is overwhelming. Everything beeps all of the time. You can’t really fully hold your child. And everything was timed when I was eventually able to attempt nursing with her. So once she got off the formula, I was able to spend about ten minutes, because everything was very timed out in the NICU, trying to nurse. So if I couldn’t get her to latch or if I couldn’t get my milk to come in – it was coming in at the time that she was in the NICU, so some of that was frustrating because she wasn’t getting a full feed, and then they had to supplement after.

Alyssa: They’d take her away from you?

Kristin: Yes, so I had my ten minutes to get that done, and that was really overwhelming. So I wasn’t sleeping. And my husband had experienced, with his daughter from a previous marriage, five weeks in the NICU, so he was very familiar with the NICU. So for me, that made everything easier, so all of the protocols and the beeps and the wires, he was able to help me with, but for me, even four days was a lot, but for him, this was nothing in comparison to his daughter. So we were able to navigate that, and again, I mean, there was a rocking chair there, and it was very comfortable. My step-daughter could come in and visit, but it can be overwhelming. So I have a heart for NICU and high-risk moms because of my own experience, and many of them experience longer stays and just so much more intensity as far as conditions with their babies. Glucose is very minor in comparison, but it certainly made breastfeeding challenging because, again, with nipple confusion – and in the NICU my daughter had to have a pacifier, which all of my natural birth plans were like no pacifier; never going to introduce a bottle, at least until the first month or six weeks, according to what I learned in Lamaze class and everything. So that really – a lot of my plans just went out the window, and I had to adapt. And so I wasn’t sleeping well, and we ended up getting released a day before Abby, so luckily, the hospital allowed us to stay an extra day, but we went home without our daughter, so you can imagine the car seat behind you, and not having a baby, and all of these family members and friends – it’s my first baby, and wanting to come visit us in the hospital, and I was turning people away and saying “No, there’s no baby. You can’t go to the NICU; there’s no visiting.” And then to go home and spend the night in your home without your baby there is really tough. So again, I have a heart for moms that experience that for so much longer than what I did. But then the next morning, we got up very early and went to the hospital, and she got her glucose tested and she was fine to go, so we were able to go home. But then when I got home with her, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to breastfeed, but she didn’t really want to breastfeed. She wanted a bottle. It’s so much less work; it’s quicker. So, you know, I was pumping, so she had my pumped milk that she could use, and we stopped supplementing by that point, but I had to get a lot of help from lactation, so I went back to Spectrum Health multiple times and met with the lactation consultants, and that wasn’t really working. So then I ended up having lactation consultants come into my home and help, and I finally got the latch that would really work for me comfort-wise, and I was able to make it work. And then my daughter didn’t to wean. She wanted to nurse forever.

Alyssa: She never gave up. So was there any fear that day you brought her home, like, she just spent four days in the NICU because there’s something wrong, and they said it’s manageable now, but now she’s home. Did you have this fear of what if something happens while she’s home?

Kristin: Yeah, I mean, I certainly wanted to go to the pediatrician’s office as much as I could for reassurance that everything was okay. And I didn’t know that I could care for her as a new parent and having other people have their hands on her and telling me what to do, and so I was overwhelmed. And my husband went back to work, and I was used to working, so I had my leave time, and that was a little challenging, especially having spent three weeks on bed rest right before having her. So that isolation was a bit much, and I didn’t know what postpartum doulas were back then, but I did have the help from a local nonprofit called Moms Bloom, and a volunteer came into my home who was retired. So she was a grandmother, essentially, and she would hold Abby so I could take a shower or do some things around the house, and that was nice. And it gave me someone to talk to because again, I was overwhelmed and lonely. And it reassured me that I was doing everything that I needed to, and that there were no concerns, that she was normal and healthy. So yeah, there is some of that anxiety as a new parent coming back from the hospital and that’s something that I wouldn’t be able to catch, could be wrong again with her. But we got through it, and again, she nursed into toddlerhood, so it all worked out.

Alyssa: Go, Abby!

Kristin: It’s all about, yeah, just getting resources and having a support system around you after getting home from the NICU because it can be overwhelming.

Alyssa: It’s so easy to give up. I think that’s key it just have enough support and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Kristin: Yes, exactly. Yeah, and so you’re not alone, NICU moms! I understand, in a very small way, what you go through, but there are so many wonderful nurses and support groups within the hospital, and the breastfeeding support groups, so just know that you have resources and reach out to the community. Postpartum and overnight doulas are here to help, so again, that’s something that I would have used had I know that that was an option, and for NICU moms especially, we can lighten your load a lot and give you reassurance and support with your new baby or babies.

Alyssa: Well, thanks for sharing, and if you want to find out more our daytime and overnight postpartum doulas, you can check out our website, goldcoastdoulas.com, and then if you want to email either of us, Kristin or I, info@goldcoastdoulas.com. We would love to hear from you. Thanks, Kristin.

Kristin: Thanks.

Podcast Episode #8: Kristin’s Experience with the NICU Read More »

Podcast Episode #7: Cold and Flu Season

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Cindy talks about how to stay healthy during the cold and flu season. You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome back to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula. Today’s episode is sponsored by Cindy’s Suds, and we have Cindy with us today.

Cindy: Hello.

Alyssa: Hello. We are going to be talking about cold and flu season because it is upon us.

Cindy: It is, yeah.

Alyssa: Give us some good tips and tricks for parents and kids to get through this season.

Cindy: Okay. It is hard because everywhere you look, people are sneezing, snotty; Kleenex are out; eye goobers. I mean, you just look and you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to get the cooties. It’s all over!” But there are definitely some things that you can do proactively to try to keep your family healthy during this time of year. The biggest – and we’ve all heard it over and over, but I cannot emphasize enough how important handwashing is. It truly is the cornerstone of keeping you and your family healthy during this flu season. As a mom, you should be washing your hands all the time because we’re constantly doing little – “Oh, let me wipe you nose. Let me do this. Let me do that.” You’re constantly touching, and so you should be constantly washing your hands so that you’re not cross-contaminating.

Alyssa: Which is crazy, because I do; I wash my hands all the time, and then I get super dry hands because it’s the middle of winter.

Cindy: Right, right. Well, I do have some options for that at cindyssuds.com!

Alyssa: Segue!

Cindy: Right, segue! And that does tend to be a problem is just drying out your hands really bad. But you know, segue, we do have great products that are 100% natural to keep your hands soft during this season.

Alyssa: Just keep some lotion next to my handwashing at the sink.

Cindy: Exactly, exactly. But the best thing to do really is just you need to wash your hands. The whole latest thing is the ease of hand sanitizers and Purell and things like that. I obviously am not a proponent of those. Your good old, basic, old-fashioned soap and water; that’s really all you need. You really just need to have basic handwashing with soap and water. You want to try to use warm water. You want to try to wash your hands for about 30 seconds, which is singing Happy Birthday twice. That’s really what you need to do. You want to make sure that you’re getting between your fingers, the tops of your hands, you know, just really getting a good lather on, rinsing and drying. But that should be your cornerstone across the board for this time of year, especially obviously after you blow your nose, wipe someone else’s nose, wipe someone else’s eyes. Before you touch their eyes or nose; you should be doing it then, too. Obviously, before you prepare food, before and after bathroom use; the typical things. But I just can’t emphasize enough: handwashing is key. And it’s also key to teach your kids now to do it so that it becomes a lifelong habit. Even now, before we do anything, like before we sit down for dinner, I’m still – and my kids are all teenagers. I’m still, “Wash your hands,” because I want to plant the seed over and over even though they’re all teens. It’s so important to make sure that you’re washing your hands at certain times. You just need to add to it, unfortunately, at this time of year. You can help teach your kids for sneezing and coughing to do into your elbow because that is going to help prevent some of that splash, if you will, of a sneeze or a cough from going everything.

Alyssa: I’ve seen those slo-mo videos.

Cindy: Oh, man, they’re nasty. They’re so bad. So teach them to sneeze or cough into their elbow, kind of looking away, so that you’re trying to avoid some of that transfer of saliva as it goes out. The more sleep that you can get, obviously, this time of year, is really going to help keep your body healthy. In the wintertime, our bodies tend to need more sleep anyway just because we have less sun, and our internal timeclocks are geared more towards needing more sleep in the winter, so listen to your body. When you feel tired, you should try to go to bed. And this is blanketed for your kids, too, even more so, because our kids are – they obviously need more sleep than an adult does, and they’re stressed in their little worlds, too, with school and different play things and sports and whatever. Water, water, water, water. That needs to be something that you’re just really pushing as a mom for both yourself and also for your kids, to really make sure that they’re getting the fluid intake that they need because your bodies really need the fluids to flush out and to try to keep your body healthy. And food should be your cornerstone of your medicine, if you will. “Let food be your medicine,” so more leafy greens, more fruits that have the naturally-occurring vitamin C in it, so your citrus foods. But really use food as a cornerstone of keeping your body healthy and kind of thinking – every bite that you’re taking in, think of it as something that you’re giving your body nutrition-wise and almost like a medicine-wise, because it truly is. I mean, all the food that we eat is going to either be feeding our bodies or depleting our bodies, so let those food choices be feeding what you are trying to do, and basically, it’s trying to be healthy and have a healthy body. So healthy food choices, lots and lots of water, teaching sneezing and coughing into your elbow, getting proper sleep, handwashing all the time. So those are the biggest things. I did mention the whole Purell, hand sanitizer thing.

Alyssa: Yeah, you know, if it’s the only option, you know, you’re at the mall, and the kid wants to go in the play area, if there’s nothing else, I’m going to hand-sanitize. But yeah, I really try to stay away because you hear how bad it is, and we’re killing all the germs, like the good bacteria, and we’re just kind of making ourselves sicker.

Cindy: Exactly. 100%, I agree. But there is a fine line because you also, if you’ve been at a petting zoo all day and you’re going to eat lunch and there’s no water, you’re kind of stuck. And so your options are if you have towelettes with you – if you can think ahead, bring some paper towels and some soap and water in a little baggie, just like moistened paper towels, or handwipes, things like that; if you’re thinking ahead, great. Unfortunately, too, I feel like a lot of schools now are mandating that kids carry Purell with them. In fact, it was –

Alyssa: Really?

Cindy: I know. I homeschool so I don’t have that experience, but I have friends that are given a list of things that your child needs to bring to school for the school year, and Purell is on that list.

Alyssa: Well, at least – and maybe you can start making this. I’ve seen some all-natural hand sanitizer alternative kinds of things.

Cindy: And we have something called Germ Guard, and so it is different essential oils that we use with a witch hazel base. And witch hazel has a natural 14% alcohol, so it still does have alcohol in it, but it’s in the natural form because it’s witch hazel, and that’s just what witch hazel is. So we have our essential oil Germ Guard blend which is a spray, and I know a lot of moms use that as a natural hand sanitizer. They keep it in their diaper bag. I keep one in my purse for the same reason, like if I’m not around water.

Alyssa: That’s awesome. I wonder if that would count at schools.

Cindy: I don’t know. Schools tend to be kind of regimented, so I’m not sure.

Alyssa: Well, I can tell you they are teaching in preschool – because my daughter will cough and sneeze in her elbow, and she does – I watch. She doesn’t do it long enough, but I watch her hand-wash, and she knows.

Cindy: It’s a start. Yeah, it’s a start, and as a mom, we’re teaching these life habits and these life skills. So if you’re teaching them now to do the washing of the hands, that’s perfect. That’s what you want to do, and that’s great that they’re teaching the cough and sneeze in the elbow, because that’s really –

Alyssa: I mean, at least if they’re doing it 50% of the time.

Cindy: Right, exactly. Anything that you can do to lessen the viral load that you’re picking up every day, great. You know, it’s – being sick, unfortunately, is a fact of life. We have bacteria and viruses as part of our world, but you can eliminate and decrease some of the viral load that you’re exposed to just by some basic lifestyle habits, you know, like we just mentioned.

Alyssa: Yeah. And I think talking, too – so my four-and-a-half-year-old, the second she comes home from preschool, it’s “Get in there and wash your hands,” because all I can picture – it’s like she might as well have poop on her hands. I don’t want her to touch a thing, so I make her wash, but I tell her why. I’m not just like, “Wash your hands.” I’m like, “Hey, you’ve been at school all day.” “Well, I washed my hands before we went outside.” You know, she tries to give me all these excuses. “But I did it before I went potty.” I’m like, “Did you do it after you went potty?” So just explaining, you know, germs all over your hands from the toys, from the playground, from the other kids; we’re going to get ready to eat, so I want you to wash your hands, and then she’s like, okay.

Cindy: And it doesn’t change when they’re teenagers, either. You’re still doing the same old song and dance. You’re around people all day, and you touch things all day at the store, you know, you’ve got to wash your hands. But yeah, very true, very good points. So you basically teach that handwashing, and if you aren’t in a place where there is water running, the next best thing is if you can get your hands on a natural hand sanitizer; that’s great.

Alyssa: Yeah. I think I might have to get some of the Germ Guard next, then. I like the idea of that.

Cindy: Yeah, it’s great stuff. And lots of people have used it as a hand sanitizer. You can use it in other ways as well. It’s a really great-smelling product, too, for just helping to kind of clean up the air this time of year, too.

Alyssa: Yeah, instead of spraying Lysol.

Cindy: Oh, gosh, no.

Alyssa: It just kills me to see how many products on the market people buy, spray in the air, breathe them; light these candles that are toxic. Like, we’re just breathing it non-stop.

Cindy: Right. You’ll have to have me back for another episode because that’s such a pet peeve of mine, all of these assaults to our bodies that we’re breathing in all the time that are full of chemical and fragrance. You don’t realize it because it’s everywhere, but it really has such a negative effect for making your health deteriorate, so it’s just one of those things that – it’s a whole other topics.

Alyssa: Put that on the list. Put that on the list.

Cindy: Exactly, right.

Alyssa: Well, thanks again for joining us.

Cindy: Absolutely

Alyssa: If you have questions for Cindy, you can email her.

Cindy: Cindy@cindyssuds.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram under Cindy’s Suds, or you can look up our website, which is www.cindyssuds.com.

Alyssa: Thanks for listening. And you know you can find us goldcoastdoulas.com. Email us: info@goldcoastdoulas.com. Find us on Instagram and Facebook, and be sure to subscribe to this podcast. Talk to you next time.

Podcast Episode #7: Cold and Flu Season Read More »

Podcast Episode #6: Dispelling The Goddess Myth

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, childbirth, doulas, pregnancy

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa and Ashley talk about The Goddess Myth and how it affects your birthing experience. You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula, and today we have Ashley Forton with us.

Ashley: Good morning.

Alyssa: She is also a birth doula and postpartum doula. We both just recently read a Time Magazine article called The Goddess Myth, and it raised a lot of questions. Ashley, what was your first – well, why don’t you give us a synopsis of this article?

Ashley: Yeah, so the article kind of starts out talking about this “goddess myth” and how there’s this rise in natural birth, and how a lot of women are trying to achieve this image of being a goddess and having this perfect natural birth, and that they’re kind of blaming that on a lot of women feeling failure or feeling regret or feeling like they couldn’t live up to this perfect image that we’ve created. And it kind of stood out to me that, that’s still possible. If you want to have this beautiful, natural birth, bodies are capable of that, but it also brings up a lot of points that that’s not best for everybody. And so I found it really interesting some of the things that they brought up about different women’s experiences and where their emotions went if it didn’t go according to that perfect plan they had in their head.

Alyssa: Yeah, I’ve kind of thought that – you know, there’s all this knowledge at our fingertips. You get pregnant, and you can just know so much. And then you have this goddess myth, where you didn’t birth good enough if you didn’t do it naturally. I’m glad that there’s an awareness about this and that women are asking questions and knowing that it’s a possibility to birth this way, but on the flip side, there’s so much feelings of guilt and shame and regret if you say, “This is the only way I can have my baby,” and then it doesn’t happen that way. And then there’s all this mom-shaming of “Well, I did it naturally.” Or, “Oh, you had an epidural?” Or, “Oh, you’re not breastfeeding?” There’s so many good things happening within the community and within the medical field with natural births, and I think it’s beautiful and amazing, but a Caesarean birth is also a birth. If you had an epidural, it’s still a birth.

Ashley: Absolutely. And I think a lot of that – I don’t think the goddess myth or this desire for natural birth is the problem. I think that part of it is us as moms, as women, who come into this new journey of parenthood; we try to compare. I think comparison is the root of all this evil because what happens is when I compare my birth to yours, we’re not comparing apples to apples. You bring a completely different emotional history; a completely different physical experience. You have different genetics. Our bodies are not identical. So there’s no way for me to say what I think is best for me is also best for you because I don’t know the ins and outs of your life and your emotions and your physical experience and your relationship with your partner. And all of that plays into birth, so when we have a baby, no matter how we have it, and we go sit down with our friends and we say, “Here’s how I had my baby,” we start to compare. We start to say, “Well, this is how I did it.” “This is how I did it.” And none of those are greater or less than the other. We all need to take a step back and go, “Do you feel good about that? Do you regret anything about your birth?”

Alyssa: Did you do what was best for you?

Ashley: Yeah, and that’s a lot of why I became a doula because in the beginning, when I first got pregnant with my daughter, I thought natural birth was the only way and this is best for everyone. And I started talking to my friends and talking to women who had different experiences, and going, oh my gosh. My experience has nothing to do with your experience, and I can’t say what’s best for you. And I wanted to start changing my own mentality to looking at it as, if you look back at your birth story and feel like you made great decisions and you love your birth, regardless of what those intricacies of that birth were, that’s what matters. Because women carry their birth story with them forever, and you start motherhood with birth. You start with pregnancy and your experiences that lead up to birth, and if you have regrets and you feel like a failure, that’s going to follow you the rest of your life. But if you feel like you have made the best decision for you; not comparing it to anyone else, just the best decision for you in that moment: you can’t regret that. You can’t look back and say someone else should have done it differently. You made the best decision for you, and then you feel like you just conquered the world because you got – even if it was curveballs, you did the best for you throughout the whole thing. And so you start off motherhood with this confidence rather than comparison and failure and feeling less than another mom.

Alyssa: Yeah, it’s so important, because starting off that way just leads to continued problems, emotionally, physically. And then the comparison starts, when, you know, “How is your baby sleeping?” “Is your son potty-trained yet?” It’s a non-stop battle. You’re constantly comparing. And you know what, stop.

Ashley: Right, because every kid is different. So I mean, having two kids myself, I can tell you there are so many differences just between my two children, who genetically – they share my genetics! There should be something in common. But so comparing to my friend, it’s like your kid’s way more different than my kid, so again, we should quit comparing. We shouldn’t be comparing to each other, our kids to each other. Yes, there’s a lot in common, but we need to start finding our own joys and successes on our own, not trying to get our success from being better than someone else.

Alyssa: Right. There was something else in this article, too, so after the article, looking at the magazine here, there was another little side article called The Well-Intentioned, Misinformed, Oversharing Pregnancy Experts. And one line that I highlighted says, “When you’re pregnant in public, you learn quickly that everyone’s an expert.” And this gal was talking about how she liked to enjoy her coffee still while she was pregnant, and the barista, this 20-something guy, would give her this look, and say, “Are you allowed to have this?” And she’s like, it’s one shot of espresso in my coffee! And everyone becomes this expert, and I think deep down, they’re well-intentioned statements.

Ashley: Right. They think they’re looking out for your health and safety, somehow.

Alyssa: Yeah, but again, it becomes another form of mom-shaming.

Ashley: Absolutely. We talk about that a lot in hypnobirthing, where I tell my moms not to compare to others, like I already talked about, but I also tell them, when someone gives you advice, take it with a grain of salt because they do mean well. When your mother-in-law says to you, “Oh, well, I did it this way,” she thinks that’s the best way, and she wants to help you. It doesn’t necessarily come across that way, and you can kind of take it or leave it, but know that you get to make those decisions that are best for you. If a cup of coffee is what you need, and you’ve cleared that with your ob., if you feel good about it, drink that coffee, girl! You don’t need your barista’s opinion. They’re not your ob. They’re not your healthcare provider. So yeah, it’s like, take everything with a grain of salt. Know that it comes from a good place. Instead of just getting super pissed off right away, which is easy to do, just know that, okay, they probably mean well, and you can still go do whatever the heck you want.

Alyssa: So I think bottom line, we as mothers have to learn to build each other up and encourage each other and talk about our birth stories together because talking about it is imperative, but sometimes we don’t want to talk about it with our friends or neighbors or family because we know we’re going to be shamed. So if we knew that we had a judgment-free person just to talk this birth story out with, it would be so beneficial for mothers and encouraging, and I think, bottom line, we just need to support each other.

Ashley: Absolutely, and recognize that everybody is going to do things a little bit differently, and that’s okay. And so recognizing that in others and in yourself, it takes practice to not initially come to a judgment. It’s hard to look at something and not compare. So it’s easier said than done for me to say, “Let’s quit comparing,” but I think we really do need to focus on that, and when a friend comes to you and opens up and says “Hey, there’s this thing that happened in my birth, and I do feel like a failure, or it didn’t go as planned,” give them the space to talk through that without reinforcing the judgment they’re already feeling. Just be there for them and let them talk it out. And if a friend comes to you loving their birth story and they did it completely different than you did, celebrate that joy with them instead of saying, “Well, I did it differently.” Just let them share that joy with you.

Alyssa: Yeah, I agree. All right, if anyone has any questions, comments, anything about this episode or ideas for future episodes, email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com and remember, these moments are golden. Thanks, Ashley.

Ashley: You’re welcome. Have a great day.

Podcast Episode #6: Dispelling The Goddess Myth Read More »

Podcast Episode #5: Why Choose Natural Products for Your Baby’s Body?

Ask The Doulas Podcast / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, baby sleeping advice, baby sleeping tips, how to get a newborn to sleep, how to make a baby sleep, newborn care, newborn care educator, sleeping and babies, sleeping and newborns

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Cindy and Alyssa talk about the benefits of choosing natural care products for your baby and your household. You can listen to the complete podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. Today we are talking to Cindy, creator and owner of Cindy’s Suds. Can you give me your elevator speech of what is Cindy’s Suds?

Cindy: Sure, sure. So Cindy’s Suds is a 100% natural company that provides natural bath and body products and products for home, primarily to parents of younger families who are seeking to make the change from more conventional-type products to more natural-based products once they start realizing how much better that is for their bodies and for their families and homes and everything.

Alyssa: I love it. I recently got some of your stuff, and I’m obsessed with the body butter. I love it.

Cindy: Oh, good. Which scent did I send you?

Alyssa: I don’t even know. Do you have an unscented?

Cindy: I do, yeah.

Alyssa: So tell me how you started Cindy’s Suds and why.

Cindy: Okay. So I have three kids. Our middle child was born with very, very dry skin and severe eczema, and his skin is so much thinner than my other kids, if that even makes sense. My other two kids, when they were born, they had darker skin and they just loved them, “Oh, they look like they have a tan. They look darker.” When he was born, I was like, “Whoa!” Almost transparent, his skin was so thin. So he had always had very sensitive skin, just really paper-thin, almost, and after he was probably maybe six to nine months, I really started noticing his skin was super, super dry. He started developing eczema patches on his legs, on his butt cheeks, on his arms. And he would scratch them at night or when he would take a nap, and he would wake up from his naps with bloody legs and bloody fingernails, and it was just heartbreaking as a mom to go in there. He was trying to give me this little smile, and he’s got blood on his sheets and blood on his legs. So that broke my heart, and in my mind, because I’m a physician assistant by trade, in my mind I thought, oh, well, it’s eczema. You treat eczema with steroids. But in my mom’s heart, I’m like, are you kidding me? There’s no way. This kid, his skin is way too thin.

Alyssa: Yeah, what does cortisone cream do?

Cindy: It thins out skin, yeah, so cortisone cream further thins out skin as it’s decreasing inflammation on the skin, so I’m like, there’s no way. This kid already has super thin skin. There’s no way I’m going to do that to him. So that kind of got my mind rolling with, well, what else is out there? What else could I do? And this was almost – well, this was 16 years ago because he’ll be 16 this month. So there were natural products out there, but there weren’t to the degree that there are now, and so I started going to the library and getting out books because this was also almost to the point where the internet was kind of still in the early phases, and just because I’m more old-school, you just didn’t think to go to the internet for things because it wasn’t really a resource that normal moms tapped into yet. So I went to the library and got a bunch of different books, and there were not a lot. There were a handful of books on making natural products for your skin and for your body and things, so I just started combing through those and writing down. This sounds good, and this sounds good. Kind of compiling little mini-recipes that I would try, and I did try the recipes, and it worked, and I ended up with so much of it that I started giving it away for gifts and for friends who had babies, and then here we are, ten-plus years later. Well, I didn’t start the company until after I’d been doing it for several years.

Alyssa: So you’ve been making this for 16 years?

Cindy: I’ve been making it for 16 years, yeah.

Alyssa: And the company?

Cindy: And then we’ve had that for ten years.

Alyssa: So for six year you made it but didn’t sell it. What finally made you – was it a friend going, “You really need to sell this stuff”?

Cindy: It was that. It was friends; it was family; it was the fact that I had so much of it at home from making it for my own family that I got to the point where I’m like, okay, either this is just – it’s got to go to more people, gift-wise or birthday-wise or whatever, or I should start selling it. And then I had a couple – the reason why I started, funny enough, was we had a garage sale, and I was getting rid of my baby stuff. And so I had some of this, of my product, out for sale, and one of the ladies who ran a craft bizarre at a local church said, “Oh, you should be in our craft show,” and I was like, oh! Perfect idea!

Alyssa: So is that how you started, craft shows?

Cindy: That’s how I started was craft shows, yeah.

Alyssa: Okay. And so 16 years later, what happened with your son’s skin? Did it progressively get better? Did you find out what caused it?

Cindy: You know, in hindsight, I’m sure so much of it was diet-related.

Alyssa: That’s what I was wondering.

Cindy: Yeah. And that’s kind of where we’re all going. Looking at the skin as a whole, the skin is kind of a mirror or window into what’s going on inside your body. And so when you see skin issues on the outside that you’re like, oh, something’s not quite right, you’ve got to look inside. What’s not right on the inside? And oftentimes more than not, it’s a dietary condition, but back up 16 years ago, we didn’t really think that way right off the bat. It was more like, oh, there’s a skin condition. You treat the skin condition. And I think still there are maybe some people that still think that way. It’s a skin condition; treat the skin. But more often than not, if it’s a skin condition, let’s see what else is going on and let’s figure out if it’s dietary or if it’s autoimmune, which can also have a little bit of a factor, too, with eczema, psoriasis, things like that. But typically there is some kind of a dietary component. So in hindsight, yes, he probably had sensitivities, even back then, to dairy products and probably to gluten, as well. For sure dairy because now he’s on a dairy free diet and much better.

Alyssa: So you have figured out some dietary things now as a 16-year-old?

Cindy: For sure, yeah.

Alyssa: Yeah, because my daughter, who’s four and a half, we found out – it’s been about two years ago that we found out her eczema was due to several food allergies. And it’s funny because the older generation, like you said, 16, 20, 30 years ago, they’re the ones who say, “Oh, this is just a bunch of bunk. All these gluten free; that’s just ridiculous. My kids had eczema for years.” Well…

Cindy: Hmm. Exactly!

Alyssa: “Yeah, you just put cortisone cream on it; you deal with it.” And we have noticed a significant difference. She still does get eczema and we have to put stuff on it occasionally, but it’s definitely internal.

Cindy: Yes. For sure, for sure. And when I went to PA school, I graduated in 1996. There was nothing in our schooling on anything holistic, anything alternative. It was strictly western medicine because that’s what was taught. And so it’s relatively a new concept still for those of us old-school people that went to school in the 80s or 90s. It just wasn’t something that was even – something that you thought of or studied or were aware of. So a lot of this stuff is self-taught, and then just learning from there, and then seeking out providers now that are natural-minded or alternative-minded. Not to say that I’ve turned my back on western medicine, but you need to embrace both, I feel like, because there’s a huge component where both are useful.

Alyssa: Right. So what would you recommend? Let’s say we have a new client; they have a baby. I think thin skin or not, all babies have just such super-sensitive skin, and you have some really good baby products.

Cindy: We do, yeah. So whether you use my product or somebody else’s product or you make your own product, my overall encouragement for a new mom, especially, is seek out something that is as natural as possible. The fewer ingredients the better, obviously. Most things that you’re going to buy over the counter, store-bought brands, they contain chemicals. Even if they say, “Oh, it’s the natural version of Johnson’s & Johnson’s,” or natural version of whatever –

Alyssa: Many of them still have alcohol.

Cindy: Tons of them do.

Alyssa: As one of the first ingredients!

Cindy: Right. It’s like water and then alcohol. So you’ve really, really got to turn into a label-reader. That’s huge. I know a lot of moms are like, oh, I’m going to make it myself. Which I’m like, excellent. That is so great. Do it. Dabble in it. Learn about it. But a lot of moms just don’t have the time to do that because parenting is so overwhelming at first, especially with your first. There’s just so much to learn, so much to do, that if you don’t want to make it yourself, seek out a company or two that you trust, that you believe in, that has the same philosophy as you do with using minimalistic ingredients, and just be a label-reader. You’ve just go to flip everything over that you’re buying and see what’s in it. The fewer ingredients, the better. And then everything just sparingly. For a little baby, you don’t need to douse a baby. Sparingly. Another thing that I always tell new moms: new moms nowadays, they want to give their baby a bath every night. And babies don’t need baths every night. They just don’t.

Alyssa: It really dries out their skin.

Cindy: Once a week. Oh, man, it does. So once a week; twice a week, at the most, but this nightly bathing routine just strips the body of natural oils.

Alyssa: I try to get my clients, post-partum clients or sleep clients, away from a bath being part of the bedtime routine for that reason. And plus with some babies it actually kind of wakes them up and it’s a fun activity.

Cindy: It stimulates them, yeah.

Alyssa: So I tell them unless this is putting your baby to sleep, this does not need to happen at night. So let’s pick a day, Sunday afternoon, you know, let’s give them a bath once a week. And the nighttime routine is more like, let’s read a book, sing a song. Let’s get that bath out of there because when my daughter had eczema or had it really bad, and I was bathing her sometimes every day, every other day, because you think you need to – it was making it worse.

Cindy: Exactly, yeah. And that’s what I think is so great about the fact that there are doulas now, and I so wish that I had one with my kids. But you don’t know what you don’t know, and if you’re walking through parenthood for the first time, and your mom, most likely, was old school, and you give them a bath every night, and then you put on Johnson’s & Johnson’s baby lotion, and they smell like a baby. You don’t have somebody who’s going to kind of walk with you and tell you what may or may not be beneficial, and so that’s what is so great about having a doula walk beside you when you are pregnant or delivering or after delivery, as just someone to kind of give you feedback and what does this look like, raising this little tiny baby? There’s not an instruction manual. So it’s great when you can come and share with a new mom and dad what you’ve learned.

Alyssa: Yeah, we can be a trusted resource. And it’s hard. Every family is different, so, like you mentioned, like the moms or the grandma. They know one way of raising children because that’s how she raised hers, so she has these ideas in her head of how this works, but a doula has worked with so many different types of families and all walks of life, and we can walk into that space and say okay, I see where you are at right now. This is what’s going to work best for you, and then here’s trusted – again, be a trusted resource for this is how this looks.

Cindy: Right, exactly.

Alyssa: Well, thank you for sharing today.

Cindy: Absolutely.

Alyssa: We are going to have you on again later in the month, and we look forward to talking to you.

Cindy: Sounds good. Looking forward to it, too.

Alyssa: If people have questions about your products, do you have an email, phone number, or website?

Cindy: Absolutely. You can go to www.cindyssuds.com. That’s our website, and on our website, you can check out our products. There’s a little product description next to each product. If you have specific questions, there’s a Contact page on our website that you can put your question in and it sends it right to me. You can also email me directly at cindy@cindyssuds.com. Those are the two best ways to get ahold of me, and if you have specific questions, definitely shoot me an email. I love the education part of talking to moms and dads, just helping them kind of navigate the waters of what it looks like to be a new parent or to add a second child or a third child, or what does it look like to go from conventional products to natural products.

Alyssa: Because sometimes you have do that slowly.

Cindy: You do, yeah. You can’t sometimes just jump in. You’ve got to make a slower transition.

Alyssa: Baby steps.

Cindy: For sure. So yeah, I welcome any questions. Any way that I can help, shoot me an email.

Alyssa: Excellent. Thank you. And if you have questions about this podcast or Gold Coast, you can email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com.

Podcast Episode #5: Why Choose Natural Products for Your Baby’s Body? Read More »

Podcast Episode #4: When to Hire a Doula and Why A Team Works

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Doulas / Alyssa Veneklase / birth doula, childbirth

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa and Ashley talk about Gold Coast’s team model for doulas and about the right timing for hiring your doula. You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa: Hi, welcome to Ask the Doulas. I’m Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula at Gold Coast Doulas, and we have Ashley Forton in today talking about the question of when should I hire a doula? And Ashley is a birth doula, so we’re going to talk about births specifically. What have you seen lately? When does the average client hire?

Ashley: Well, I can tell you that some clients will hire as soon as they find out they’re pregnant, which is awesome, because what happens when you hire us – the minute you hire us, we are at your fingertips 24/7. So if you have a question, you get out of a prenatal appointment, you text us. “Hey, this came up. I’m not sure how I feel about this.” You need somebody to talk through; that’s what we’re there for. If you are on your way to a coffee shop and you’re like, “Hey, my girlfriend just mentioned this. Have you heard of this type of birth before?” We’re there for all those questions, and it really helps us get to know you throughout that nine-month period of time. So we certainly have clients that hire that early, but we also have clients that hire us at 36 weeks, 38 weeks.

Alyssa: They’re like, oh, shoot, I’m nervous. Maybe I should hire a doula!

Ashley: Yes, yeah! And a lot of times, people are like, I’m 36 weeks. Is it too late to hire a doula?

Alyssa: And what do you say?

Ashley: Absolutely not too late! No. It gives us a little bit of a time crunch, so it makes things a little bit more time-sensitive, just in case you go early, but one of the things we do is whenever you hire us, we try to get a prenatal visit on the books, so whether it’s one or two, depending on what package you choose, we want to come to your house and talk to you about any and all concerns that you have about your upcoming birth. Do you have a birth plan or birth preferences? Do you need help coming up with that? Do you have any medical concerns that you have brewing in your mind that have caused some anxiety? Do you have any sort of questions about birth or maybe even right after birth? What happens when I bring this baby home? Are there other resources that you need? We cater that appointment totally to what the client needs in that moment. So sometimes it’s that we create a birth preferences sheet right there on the spot. Sometimes it turns into, “Hey, I’ve got questions about what does labor look like? How am I going to know I’m in labor?” So we really cater that to what they need to talk about, and that’s time for us to get to know each other. So even if you hire us at 36 weeks, we’ll get that on the books right away, and we want to get to know you as best we can, so we know what type of comfort measures might be good for you. How do you relax on a regular basis? What is relaxing and comforting to you? We want to know all those things. Do you not like being touched? Should we not try and massage you? Are there certain things that you don’t want? And all of that kind of goes into building our relationship so that when you do go into labor, it’s not the first time that we’ve met. Now, granted, that has happened. I have been to a birth where I had not even met the mom. She hired us, had not even met me yet, and I went to her birth, and it was an amazing birth. Part of doulas’ training is attuning to the needs of the client, so if you get into a room with somebody that you’ve never met, paying attention to their body mannerisms; how they’re acting; what they’re emotionally acting like; seeing what do we think that this person might need; relying on the partner. “Hey, is there something that you think might be helpful?” So you can still have a beautiful birth in that situation, but hopefully we’ve had plenty of time to get to know each other before we get into that labor room.

Alyssa: Right. And our birth doulas at Gold Coast work in teams. Can you explain your take on the team approach and why that’s so important for a client?

Ashley: Yeah. So hiring a team of doulas, you get two doulas for the price of one. So let’s say you’re about 20 weeks pregnant, and you decide to hire a team of doulas from Gold Coast. You usually will meet with us, we’ll do a consultation, and you can decide if that’s a good fit personality-wise. Once you’ve signed that contract and paid the deposit, you have access to both of these doulas. So you get two brains to pick. You get two sets of separate experiences. Sometimes you’ve got one that was trained by DONA, one that was trained by ProDoula, so you’ve got different trainings that they’re pulling from. They’ve all been to different births. So you get twice the experience, which is pretty awesome.

Alyssa: Maybe one of your doulas had home births, and one of your doulas had C-sections. Or one of your doulas had hospital births with epidurals. And then yeah, all the clients you’ve supported. So you’ve probably supported every single type of birth possible.

Ashley: Absolutely. So it’s really great to have those varying sources of opinion and experience to draw from, and you’ve got twice the support. You’ve got two people in your corner without an agenda, without any judgment. There’s no comparison; there’s no, “Well, I would do it this way.” We’re not giving you our opinion. We’re not there to say, “This is how I would do it.” We’re there to say, “What do you think? How does that make you feel? Tell me more about that,” so that you can kind of navigate the waters with someone in your corner, so it takes a little bit of the pressure off. You’ve got extra information. We can give you evidence-based resources. We do that a ton. “Hey, this came up at my appointment. The doctor answered some of my questions, but I’d love some more statistics, more information, before I make a decision.” And we can send you some information so when you do make that decision, you feel like you’ve got everything you need. You don’t feel like you’ve got questions still brewing, but you’ve been stuck in a spot where you have to make a quick decision.

Alyssa: Yeah. So you have a team throughout pregnancy, and then what happens when your client goes into labor?

Ashley: So usually our teams have – everybody does it a little bit differently, but we’ve all got an on-call calendar, so it’s split up between the two doulas, and you call the person that’s on the calendar. And we figure out who can get to you the fastest. If one of your doulas is sick, we don’t want to send them to you. We want you to get the healthy doula, and that’s the benefit, too. If you hire a solo doula, you may not know their backup. So you may have spent nine months getting to know this doula, and they have the stomach flu. And they’ve got a call-in backup, and it may be somebody you’ve never met or never even heard of. And that benefit of having two doulas that you know equally, and you’ve gotten to know them through prenatal visits and everything; you know them, and you trust them going into that birth experience regardless of which one shows up. And so it’s really great to have that bond and that security because trust is really important when you’re in labor, and you need to trust every person that’s in that room. It’s an intimate experience regardless of cesarean, hospital birth, home birth. It’s an intimate experience, and you want to know that everyone in that room has your back and you know them and trust them. And so when you call, we figure out who can get to you, and that person comes and supports you. And sometimes it turns into a longer birth. Maybe it’s been 16 hours. And you need a refreshed doula. We want you to have an energized, ready to go, encouraging doula at your service at all times.

Alyssa: I think parents don’t think about that when hiring solo doulas. “I’m going to have this baby and my doula’s going to come, and then we’re done.” Well, what if it is long? You don’t think about “Well, yeah, I as the mother am tired, but how is my doula doing? And if my doula is tired, how well is she going to support me?” So yeah, saying, “Okay, you know what? I’m kind of done here. I’ve hit my max. I need to go sleep. I need to rest, for your sake. I’m going to call in the other team member, and they can come support.” Relieve the doula, relieve the tired doula, and then you have refreshed doula to support the mother.

Ashley: Which is especially important when you get to the end of labor. If you’re laboring and having a vaginal birth, those last few hours is when you really need to rally and have the energy and the encouragement to get through that. And so that’s when a refreshed doula really comes in handy. And it’s also important, too, that you partner’s getting rest during this, too, so you always have a support person. You’re not looking at your husband going, “Oh, I can’t believe that you’re sleeping right now.” You’ve got a doula supporting you. And then that husband can be refreshed to support you in the end stages, as well. So I really think it benefits everybody. The doulas working in a team; it makes it more sustainable for us so that we can have sick days and not be worried about who’s going to be with my client that I’ve developing this relationship with. You know and trust that partner. And so it’s easier for us to take care of our own kids when they’re sick.

Alyssa: I’ve read a statistic somewhere that the average burnout rate for a solo doula is three or four years or something.

Ashley: It’s two or three.

Alyssa: Really? I can see that. You’re on call, and you have your own families, and to not share that call schedule with another team member, yeah, that’s definitely hard, and that’s why Gold Coast chose this model. It’s much more sustainable, and we don’t want our doulas to burn out. We want to keep you.

Ashley: Right, right! And I want to keep doing what I love! And I’ve really loved it. I am really glad that I’m part of Gold Coast and this team model, and it’s worked out really well. We’ve had so many clients tell us how much they’ve loved it. And the bonus, too, is if you have both of us come to your birth, then both of us are coming to your post-partum visit. We’re both going to come check in on you and help you process your birth, see if you need any resources, how are you healing? How are you feeling emotionally? How’s Baby doing? Do you have any baby care questions? And yet again, you’ve got two brains to pick. And our relationship doesn’t end when you have your baby. If your baby’s six months old and oh, my gosh, what is happening? This crazy thing, now he’s not sleeping, and drooling like crazy. Maybe it’s some teething stuff and we can kind of help you work through that. But we love to hear from clients down the road. We don’t want to just “see you later” as soon as we’ve done your postpartum visit. We want to maintain that relationship as well.

Alyssa: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think that answers a lot of questions for the listeners. Thank you for sharing your information and expertise. If anyone has questions, email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com and we’ll look forward to talking to Ashley again in the future.

Ashley: All right, thanks!

Podcast Episode #4: When to Hire a Doula and Why A Team Works Read More »

Podcast Episode #2: Having Kids Later in Life – Kristin’s Birth Journey

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth / Alyssa Veneklase / antepartum doula, babies, birth doula, childbirth, postpartum doulas, pregnancy

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Kristin shares about her birth experiences and how she started the journey to become a birth doula. You can listen to this complete podcast on iTunes.

Alyssa: Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I am Alyssa, co-owner and postpartum doula, and today we’re talking to Kristin, the co-owner and birth doula.

Kristin: Yeah, birth and postpartum.

Alyssa: She interviewed me last episode about my journey throughout pregnancy and what made me want to become a doula, and today we’re going to talk about her journey and what made her want to become a birth and postpartum doula.

Kristin: Yeah, so I had kids later in life, so I got myself into that high-risk category by age. I was 36 with my first pregnancy and had my daughter at 37. And I had a really great pregnancy, despite a high-stress job in political fundraising, and my nurse midwife kept saying throughout the pregnancy that I was having the perfect pregnancy and there were no worries. My health was great. My diet was great. And I planned myself the perfect, natural birth. I took Lamaze classes; my husband and I practiced; I watched all the documentaries; read all the books. I like to plan my way through life in general, and I thought that everything would just be the way I wanted it to be. And at 37 weeks, I got diagnosed with preeclampsia. My blood pressure was rising; that was the first of the signs. And so I got put on modified bedrest, which was super stressful for someone who felt like I had to do a million things before baby arrived: getting all of the things ready, the car seat installed, and running all the errands and finishing up work and all of that. And so I had to really take it easy, and every midwife appointment was beyond stressful because you get the blood pressure check. And so I was nervous about that.

Alyssa: Which made your blood pressure go up.

Kristin: It made it worse. So they kept watching me, and every week, there were more and more signs. So I got put on full bedrest, which was really frustrating. I was lucky enough to live above – for those of you that live in Grand Rapids, we had just moved back from Lansing, and I was living above The Electric Cheetah, and we had this place that was very modern, very open, the first tenants. And all of a sudden, we get married and pregnant, and there wasn’t a whole lot of room for a baby and not the ideal place to be pregnant. But the staff at The Electric Cheetah became like neighbors since we didn’t really have neighbors on Wealthy Street, and so they would bring up food to me when my husband was at work. They’d serve it to me on their fine china. He would call in different meals for me, and they would bring it up to my place.

Alyssa: So nice!

Kristin: Yeah, it was amazing. So that’s how I handled bedrest. I certainly could have used an antepartum doula for bedrest. I didn’t know what one was back then. My daughter’s almost seven, and so that wasn’t something that people really knew of.

Alyssa: Yeah, most of our postpartum doulas do bedrest, too.

Kristin: Yes, and our birth doulas do some of that as well with birth planning and some of the different aspects related to getting ready for birth. So yeah, I didn’t have a bedrest doula or anything like that.

Alyssa: I’m wondering, for those who don’t know much about preeclampsia, besides high blood pressure, why do you have be on bedrest? And for someone who may be worried about it or someone who may have it?

Kristin: Yeah, essentially, they don’t want you to be too active so the blood pressure keeps rising.

Alyssa: And what causes it?

Kristin: I’m not going to get into all of the different medical things, and women have it for different reasons, but of course, if they’re worried about a stroke, the providers are watching to make sure that mom doesn’t have a stroke. They’re worried about baby as well as the mother. Some women develop headaches. I did not. Some women develop swelling in their ankles. I didn’t really develop that, but by the time I was on full bedrest, I had protein in my urine, which they worry about kidneys and different organs going. So I was starting to have trouble with my kidneys, and I got an induction. So I ended my bedrest with an induction in a hospital. I remember being overwhelmed. I didn’t have doulas; again, I didn’t really know what a doula was with my first. So I called my Lamaze instructor; like, how do we do this? I still don’t want any interventions. Still working with the midwives. And it was very scary because I felt like I was alone in my room with my husband, and inductions can be long and boring, and you don’t really feel a whole lot. I had my membranes swept the day before and went in and had Cervidil, which can be taken out if there are any reactions with the baby. So mine was inserted, and my daughter didn’t react that well, so I didn’t have it in as long as they’d intended. And things ended up going quickly, but I had a lot of back labor, and again, I was alone. I didn’t want my husband to touch me because he couldn’t provide enough pressure. I felt like I wanted him to just, like, punch my back. Nothing was firm enough. And he didn’t know what to do; he was just in over his head, completely overwhelmed, kept referencing manuals. We had to make all these decisions as far as interventions and what’s the best thing to do, because my daughter had decelerations in her heart beat, and they were worried about her, and there was the threat of a cesarean. But I was very fortunate in my journey, other than back labor, which is an experience in itself. I didn’t have any major interventions; I never had Pitocin. I wasn’t on magnesium for my preeclampsia. I did not have an epidural. I was able to move around the room, and a nurse came in, who certainly had some doula qualities about her, and helped me move my baby, and we did hands and knees on a birthing ball on the bed, and all of a sudden, she turned, and I was able to push her out. I could feel her turn, and all of a sudden, it was like, I feel like I’m pooping. And Patrick’s like, you’re really not.

Alyssa: That’s exactly how I knew.

Kristin: And I said, “Can you just check, because I think I’m pooping!” And my daughter was born four pushes later, and it was a crazy experience, an overwhelming experience, and I remember – we’ll get into some of my journey with my daughter after she was born in another episode, but I remember going into my midwife at the six-week checkup, and she was talking to me about family planning and what to do, and because I was 37 and had preeclampsia. There were big decisions that needed to be made if we wanted to expand our family with another baby. We had my stepdaughter and then my daughter, and we wanted to have a third child. And so my midwife recommended that we give it some time for me to heal, but that I should probably start trying when she was about a year. And so I got pregnant pretty easily and quickly, just like the first time. I was very fortunate in that, but I was worried about getting preeclampsia the second time. There was a lot of chance that I would have that recurrence, so I was watched throughout the entire pregnancy. And so I hired doulas before I even told anyone else. They were the first call I made, and I wanted that support through pregnancy even more so than at the birth. I felt like if I could go through what I did without any sort of interventions the first time with preeclampsia and back labor, then I could rack out the birth, but the pregnancy scared me. Preeclampsia, getting that again, scared me. And so they supported me through the pregnancy; gave me a lot of resources. I listened to my midwives, did a lot of swimming, kept the stress down. I wasn’t working in politics like I was before. I was doing consulting. And I talked to lactation consultants because I was nursing my daughter through my pregnancy, and so –

Alyssa: So that’s not a failsafe planning method.

Kristin: No, it’s not.

Alyssa: There are a lot of people who think it is.

Kristin: No, it’s not failsafe. So yeah, there were a lot of things that I felt like having doula support really helped me with during that pregnancy, and I had an amazing intervention-free birth, and my son was huge, but he had no issues. He wasn’t in the NICU like my daughter. I never had any elevated blood pressure; no headaches, no signs of anything. But I was on that high watch, especially because I was getting closer to 40 by that time. I had my son at 39, so I was definitely in that advanced maternal age category by then, so it was a journey. So I started becoming more and more curious about doula support, but I don’t like blood. And I don’t really like hospitals. I didn’t; I do now. I didn’t like hospitals. I remember any time my dad had a procedure in a hospital, I was always just overwhelmed by it. I didn’t like to visit friends in the hospital who had babies. I didn’t want to be a patient myself. I had never had anything, no surgeries, nothing done in the hospital. And so for me to be a doula, where most doulas do the majority of their work in the hospital, didn’t really make sense, but I was still fascinated by birth and everything to do with it. So after having my daughter I got really active in breastfeeding groups and brought a national nonprofit to Grand Rapids. We had a big rally and speakers, and that was phenomenal. And that started me getting to know other birth workers, and I kept in touch with my doulas, and I started teaching Sacred Pregnancy classes after my son was born because that book really helped me, again, to avoid preeclampsia with the mental and spiritual aspect of birth and really also to be intentional about my pregnancy, because with your first pregnancy, you can connect with that baby, and there’s so many special moments between you and your husband or partner. But when you had a toddler running around or other children, it’s hard to connect to your baby. So Sacred Pregnancy gave me that outlet in journaling and meditation and affirmations. It did so much for me that I decided to become one of the first instructors in the US and went to a training with my whole family when my son was four months. So I had signed up for everything during my pregnancy, and I started – I had promoted my classes, because I’m an overachiever like you, before I even went to the training, and so I had a class set up two weeks after I got back, and ran the first class for my training class, and I had this amazing experience in Virginia with Anni Daulter, who’s one of my dear friends and the author and creator of the Sacred Pregnancy book and the Sacred Living movement, and that started my journey. I started teaching classes, and my students wanted me to be their doula. I’m like, “No, I can’t be your doula.” They’re like, “Yeah, you can. Just be at my birth. You know, we’ve spent all this time; you’ve been great.” And so I started teaching my classes under a doula collectives umbrella and decided that I was getting enough inquiries that I might try it out. Sacred Pregnancy started a doula training program, so again, I took my whole family to Florida this time so I could nurse my babies and go through this training program. It was four days, very intense, and a lot of journeying for me in some of my fears that I had surrounding being a doula, especially with blood. Like, it was pretty wild. We wrote our fears on each other’s body parts, the other doulas, and mine was blood. Everybody’s joking because they’re like, “There’s no way you can be a doula. That’s all you see is bodily fluids. There’s going to be fluid everywhere.”

Alyssa: So how did you do it? How did you get past that?

Kristin: I feel like I just set the intention that I could do it.

Alyssa: That there’s a purpose behind this.

Kristin: And it’s not a big deal, and there was so much more to being a birth worker. So my first birth, I feel like it was a sign, but my client had a lot of blood loss and hemorrhaging and so on, and I didn’t pass out. So I was like, I can do this!

Alyssa: Test completed.

Kristin: This is a big test, and I rocked it. And I have so many husbands or partners that have that fear, and I’m like, “I’ve been there, and I’m actually a doula.” I never really liked to be around blood. I would cut myself and freak out. But it’s different because, yeah, it’s not a cut. It’s not an injury. It’s a natural, normal process. So I became a birth doula and started doing some postpartum ceremonies through Sacred Pregnancy. I had gone to another four-day training, this time in Georgia, and it was all about mother roasting and doing closing ceremonies and belly binding and herbal teas and herbalism, which I didn’t get into all that much, but I really loved the ceremonial aspects of the postpartum traditions and studying Malaysian culture. But I kept focusing more on my love of birth and helping mothers through pregnancy and their transitions, especially specializing in high-risk moms because that was my background, as well as moms who were seeking a natural birth. It was a year-plus into my birth journey before I supported a client with an epidural, and the first epidural client I had, I was like, this is amazing. We had fun, music was going, like, wow. This is totally different than anything else I had experienced because I was supporting very high-risk clients who were maybe even on bedrest their entire pregnancy; had medical conditions; they were getting cesareans that were scheduled and they wanted me to support them through that. Or clients who were either having a homebirth or seeking an unmedicated birth. And some had Pitocin and didn’t choose an epidural. There were all of these factors, but I didn’t have an epidural for a year, and I was taking a couple clients a month, so that was a wild experience. Now I have everything, but when I started out, it was kind of one or the other. High-risk, or someone seeking an unmedicated birth, and a lot of my clients were my students in class, which I was able to have this amazing bond with them for eight weeks with women connecting with each other. So yeah, I just fell in love with it, but I feel like the postpartum end of things is so needed, as well. It’s not just the pregnancy; it’s after, and women feeling like they don’t have a village and that they’re alone. And I, certainly, with two-under-two was overwhelmed and needed support, and it was hard to go places with two. The store was a challenge and going to the pediatrician’s office if my husband couldn’t help in the winter, because I had babies during – well, a Halloween baby, and a mid-January. So that’s not always that easy. So I could have had a doula come along with me to the store or the pediatrician or whatever, bundling two young kids. So I just love supporting everything to do with the journey to be a parent and to expanding the family and I feel like – you know, women in traditional cultures, they have this village to rely on; they have a sisterhood, and here, especially with people being so transient, we don’t necessarily have our families. People oftentimes isolate you if you once you have a kid, it’s like, okay, I’m going to give you some time to just deal with your baby. But really, we need help, and doulas do things that are different than what friends do or what parents do or other family members. We’ll do whatever we can, but we’re not just focused on the baby; we’re focused on the mother and her emotional needs as well as the father and his needs, which can be very different in the processing of becoming a parent for the first time, or the second or third time. So we focus on the family unit as a whole which is so unique and so needed, in my opinion.

Alyssa: You can email us at info@goldcoastdoulas.com. Check us out at our website, goldcoastdoulas.com, and find us on Instagram and Facebook. We hope to hear from you.

Podcast Episode #2: Having Kids Later in Life – Kristin’s Birth Journey Read More »

Podcast Episode #1: One and Done! Alyssa’s Doula Journey

Ask The Doulas Podcast, Birth, Doulas / Alyssa Veneklase / babies, childbirth, doulas, postpartum doulas

In this episode of Ask the Doulas, Alyssa shares about her birth experience and her decision to have only child, as well as her journey to becoming a postpartum doula. You can listen to the complete podcast on iTunes.

Kristin: Welcome to another episode of Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas. I’m Kristin.

Alyssa: And I’m Alyssa.

Kristin: And our topic today is all about why we decided to become doulas, so we’ll begin with Alyssa’s journey.

Alyssa: Yeah, so I used to work in a male-dominated field. I worked in the construction industry, and then I got pregnant, had a baby, and I think as with most women, they would say it just completely rocked their world. The way I saw things changed, and I wasn’t unhappy at my job, but I knew I needed to do something different. So I started to wonder, who’s helping all these women who are having hard pregnancies and they don’t have any support once they come home? And the term “doula” is something that I knew, but I didn’t know what a postpartum doula was, and I remember, Kristin, meeting you, and you were the first one who actually said the term “postpartum doula” to me, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, that exists?” And I started researching it, and I’m like, that’s it. That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. So I started looking into certification organizations, found one, and it fit well. I took the course, and they give you 18 months to complete it, but I am a total bookwork and nerd, and I think it took me about six months. I got all my bookwork, all my essays and reading and all the clients that I needed and everything that is supposed to take 18 months. And then I just did it, and I just have always felt compelled to help women and children, and it was even stronger after having a baby.

Kristin: We were in the same training together, which is pretty awesome.

Alyssa: Yeah, so I’ve known you since the beginning of my journey.

Kristin: Yeah, it’s so cool. So it was during pregnancy that you sort of started feeling different about the woman’s journey and experience through motherhood. What were your family planning options as far as future kids and how you handle your journey as a mother?

Alyssa: It’s funny. Family planning turned into a whole new concept because you spend so many years trying not to get pregnant, and then all of a sudden, you are trying to, and it’s more difficult than you expect. And we ended up – I think I was 33 when I got pregnant and 34 when I had her, and that is by no means old, but something in me said that I don’t want to have kids past 35. So I decided when we had her, when we had our daughter, we were going to give it a year, and then make that decision then. But I kind of knew right away that we only wanted one, and it’s really strange because my husband and I both grew up with siblings. And so as far as family planning, we didn’t really think about that during pregnancy, but knowing that we were kind of going into this being “one and done,” we had – yeah, that’s the first thing my midwife asked me at my six-week checkup is, “What’s your family planning? How are you planning for your future family?” And I don’t know yet. I don’t know. So yeah, we’re just good with one, and it’s been taken care of.

Kristin: And do people, especially in West Michigan that’s so family-centered, ask you and your husband a lot of questions about whether you’re going to have another baby or have a sister or brother for your child?

Alyssa: Of course they do. You know, the second you get married, it’s – well, first you’re dating, and it’s, “When are you getting married? When are you getting married?” And it’s pry, pry, pry. And then you get married, and it’s, “When are you having a baby? When are you having a baby?” And it’s all these prying questions with the best of intentions, and they just want to see you have a baby, but knowing what I know now and all the struggles people go through, it’s a really tough question to ask and an even tougher one to answer. And I feel like when you have baby number one, trying for baby number two, it’s still the same. Just because you had baby number one doesn’t mean it’s easy to have baby number two. I have friends who are struggling and have struggled for years to have baby number two. And it’s just not a question that should be asked, but I do. I get it all the time.

Kristin: It’s a very personal question.

Alyssa: Yeah, when I say that I only want one, I get the, like, smack-across-the-face guilt. “How can you only have one? You’re doing your daughter a disservice. She needs a sibling.” You know, they know better than I do, apparently. But we love our little family of three, and really, it just boils down to: it’s nobody else’s business. It’s my family, not theirs.

Kristin: Right, and you travel a lot, so it makes it so much easier with one child to have a very active life.

Alyssa: Yeah, we love to travel, and she’s been on an airplane since she was nine weeks old, and she’s so easy and so good. She’s our little world traveler. Not that we couldn’t do it with two, but it would be a heck of a lot harder, especially when you’re paying for an extra plane ticket and then you need extra rooms when they get older. So, I mean, part of it’s selfish reasons, right? It’s easy for us; she’s great; she’s easy; we can travel. We’re a little bit older. Not too old; I mean, I have friends who are having babies right now that are 38, 40, 41. It’s what’s too old for you? How do you feel? And for me, for some reason, it was 35. Maybe because my mom was 35. My dad was nine years older, so I saw that growing up, too, having parents who were older than the rest of my friends’ parents, and my father almost being their grandparents’ age.

Kristin: Yeah, I’m one of the oldest moms on the playground, that’s for sure.

Alyssa: I don’t mind it. We’re older and wiser.

Kristin: Yeah, for sure. So do you love holding babies, since you’re not having any more babies of your own?

Alyssa: I do. I get my baby fix all the time. I love it. I absolutely love it. And you know, honestly, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do if I had another kid. It’s a lot of work. One’s hard. My clients who have toddlers and then a newborn are sometimes – they can’t even comprehend how much extra work that is. And I wouldn’t be able to be helping and supporting clients the way I do now if I had more children.

Kristin: You’d be supporting your own family.

Alyssa: Right. So there’s always a give and take. I know my daughter would be an amazing big sister. I know she would. But there’s a give and take. She gets 100% of my attention and all my love and gets to come everywhere with us, and she’s my little buddy.

Kristin: And she has cousins, lots of cousins.

Alyssa: Yeah, lots of cousins, lots of friends. My husband and I going into this said we’re going to make a point to just socialize her. She will go places with us; we will bring friends; we’ll be the family that says, “Pick a friend. They’ll come to Disney with us.” It’s still cheaper than having another kid to bring a friend places occasionally. But there’s always a give and take, and ultimately, it’s each family’s personal decision, and it just kind of stinks that other people have to make you feel bad for what feels good for you. We love our little family of three.

Kristin: So what’s your best advice to a family or client who plans to only have one child and doesn’t know how to break the news to their family and circle of friends?

Alyssa: It’s hard. Based on personalities, I’ve heard people say flat-out, “It’s none of your business,” and I don’t go that route. I don’t think there’s a need to be rude or brash with people, but you can say, “That’s a nice thought,” or “Maybe that works for your family, but this works for ours.”

Kristin: Perfect. I love it. Well, thanks for listening, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on this episode. Remember, these moments are golden.

Alyssa: And I will be interviewing Kristin next episode to talk about her journey and her story. So stay tuned.

Podcast Episode #1: One and Done! Alyssa’s Doula Journey Read More »