Birth and Mothering: 4 Stories of How Midwifery Care Impacts the Parenting Journey
Based on Twelve Births Spanning 2003 -2018
Birth and Mothering: 4 Stories of How Midwifery Care Impacts the Parenting Journey
A Conversation with The Birth Center clients Sara, Keira, Susan and Kelly
At The Birth Center, we aim to deliver your care in a safe, gentle environment — one where you can trust your body and your baby can enter the world peacefully. One of the reasons we care so much about your experiences during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is because these memories will stay with you forever. And they certainly impact how you raise your children.
It’s clear that birth is a transformative event. But have you ever wondered how it shapes your life and your parenting? We recently caught up with four TBC Moms who between them have had twelve births at The Birth Center. They shared how their experiences with our midwifery care and out-of-hospital birth have influenced their mothering. Not surprisingly, a few common themes emerged during our conversations. Here are six ways their experiences with Ruth and The Birth Center team have affected their lives with their children.
Joy during Pregnancy and Postpartum
Many of our parents at The Birth Center experience a pleasant sense of joy and satisfaction. For example, when describing her prenatal care with Ruth, client Susan Fischer Wilhem said her appointments were “always a pleasure,” adding, “I looked forward to those visits and was excited to go to The Birth Center.”
Susan admitted that her care with Ruth was her only experience with a reproductive provider, and she did not have baggage from a previous hospital birth. “I was not recovering from trauma as I went into parenthood, and I know that was a great gift,” Susan noted. “Everything about motherhood has been a joy — from the day I met my daughter and the day after that and so on. It’s pretty precious.”
For Sara Batchelor, who had a traumatic first birth in a hospital, midwifery care with Ruth led to an amazing water birth with her second daughter. She also recalled her postpartum experience after her first daughter was born in a hospital and taken to a different hospital’s NICU because of unnecessary interventions. “She screamed for six months straight,” Sara recalled. “Those were some of the worst months of my life — so much trauma.”
In contrast, Sara described the time after her second daughter’s birth as a “whole different vibe.” She added, “I appreciated everything after my second birth since my first experience was so horrible.”
Trusting Your Body
One of the hallmarks of midwifery care is the belief in physiologic birth and the body’s ability to bring the baby down and out without interventions. Clients agree that the mindset of Ruth and her team helped them trust themselves during birth and throughout life.
“Having births at The Birth Center helped me to trust my body,” reflected Keira Miller, who’s had five babies with Ruth. “Building trust in ourselves is really valuable because parenting can be an overwhelming responsibility. At The Birth Center, I loved interacting with other women who trust the process and trust the body. Ruth’s competence helped me be calm in chaos, and that continued as I became responsible for tiny humans.”
Kelly Friesen, who’s also given birth at The Birth Center five times, said her first birth experience made her realize that she could do more than she thought, a lesson she strives to teach her children. “Birth is one of the hardest things ever, but the strength it takes – what a wonderful message as a mom that we can give our kids,” Kelly noted. “It’s hard, but it’s worth it. The best things are the hardest things. It’s just such a true life lesson that we don’t always want to accept.”
Susan had similar remarks. “Birth was hard. Pushing for three hours was hard. Labor and transition were hard. It’s all hard, but as soon as Lucy was born, I felt like a million bucks. I felt supported, and I didn’t feel scared of my environment. No one was on a schedule. I can’t imagine having made it through vaginal birth without everyone around me having infinite confidence. I felt really happy and strong and capable.”
Natural-Minded Care for the Whole Family
The type of holistic care families experience at The Birth Center sets a high standard. That’s why Ruth is happy to recommend pediatricians and other providers in the community to parents who ask.
“Ruth connected us to doctors who supported alternative choices and our parenting philosophy,” Keira said. “These are people who are competent about the human body, yet they also understand that, ultimately, health choices are the parent’s decision. Having a pediatrician who can guide us through our children’s health as they grow and run into concerns, while trusting our intuition as parents, has been really valuable to me.”
Sara concurred. “Receiving midwifery care and delivering at a birth center made me open to things outside of traditional medicine,” she shared. “It has also shown my daughters that there are other options out there, especially for my younger daughter, who is interested in a career in women’s health.”
In addition, Kelly explained how Ruth’s personal, hands-on care impacted her view of all healthcare providers. “With Ruth, we all knew her, and my kids went to appointments with me. Ruth was willing to answer all of our questions. She took it seriously and took so much time,” Kelly remembered. “That set a high standard, and that’s what we look for now. We’ve found a similar style in the pediatrician Ruth recommended to us. When that’s removed, when we encounter a provider who’s hands off or short, who’s ready to move on and not willing to answer questions, we might look somewhere else.”
Breastfeeding Success
Even when breastfeeding starts out well immediately after birth, clients often need support to continue nursing their babies. Thanks to Ruth’s expertise as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, The Birth Center clients are able to get breastfeeding help through our sister organization, The Breastfeeding Center.
“My daughter latched and nursed at The Birth Center, and it was all fine,” Susan said. “She was born on a Wednesday, but by Saturday or Sunday, one of my ducts got plugged. I called Ruth, and she taught me how to unclog it right away. We went on to nurse for three and a half years. I’m a small breasted woman, and my baby was fat! That made me feel like a success. I never experienced a situation when I thought, ‘Oh no, who am I going to call?’ I had that with Ruth. I knew I could get the advice that I would’ve gotten if I lived in a village where the women had that knowledge.”
Meanwhile, Sara detailed her very different breastfeeding experiences. Because her first daughter endured a NICU stay, Sara started her lactation journey by pumping. “I didn’t even register for a pump because I planned to exclusively nurse,” she lamented. “I was using a hospital-grade pump, and there was straight blood coming out of my breast. The nurses were feeding her in the NICU, using a combination of formula and expressed milk in bottles. After she came home, I tried nursing her every day on both sides. I went to a lactation consultant, and then finally at 3 months old, she latched and went on to nurse for 18 months. I had a much better breastfeeding experience with Lauren.”
Normalizing Birth
At The Birth Center, birth can be a family event if you want it to be. We welcome siblings, and we actually think that teaching young children about the normalcy of birth helps decrease the fear about birth that seems to permeate our culture.
“As we added children to our family, they were all invited to attend their siblings’ births. They were whole-family events,” Kelly reminisced. “For me, that just makes it such a normal, happy part of our lives. Their birth stories are stories we love to tell because everybody was a part of them. When we talk about them, we talk about that child’s special birth and how everyone was there.”
Susan echoed similar sentiments. “My daughter loves hearing about the day she was born — how when she was on my belly, she grabbed my husband’s finger and looked him in the eye. She doesn’t look at birth as a fearful thing and has said she might want to be a midwife.”
Peace, Even in Grief
Keira’s birth experiences with Ruth include four live births and one stillbirth. During her last pregnancy, Keira learned she was expecting twins, so she transferred care to an obstetrician and began planning a hospital birth. Within a few weeks, the medical team discovered that the identical twin girls had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), a serious condition where the babies share a placenta and a network of blood vessels. This results in one baby acting as the donor, who gives away more blood than it receives and risks malnourishment and organ failure. Meanwhile, the recipient receives too much blood, causing cardiac complications. Keira underwent surgery to correct the blood flow problems, but the recipient twin died in utero around 20 weeks’ gestation.
“After the doctors said the recipient twin’s heart had stopped beating, the providers considered it a singleton pregnancy,” Keira recalled. “As long as everything was going well with the surviving twin, I could transfer back to Ruth, which I did.” Because Keira carried her angel baby along with her survivor baby, she and her family didn’t know how the angel baby’s body would be affected. But they knew they wanted her with them, wrapped in a blanket.
“We were able to dress her and arrange for her cremation,” Keira noted. “We took both of our babies home and shared them with our family. We were able to take our angel baby to the funeral home ourselves. We were able to take our time and have privacy and intimacy. None of that would have been possible if I had given birth in a hospital environment. Ruth was exactly the kind of quiet, attentive presence we needed. She gave us space and time. That was and is a big part of our grief journey. It was important to us and feels like such a blessing.”
Final Thoughts on the Connection Between Birth and Mothering
We’ve shared stories from four unique families with four different birthing experiences. Yet all of these moms felt the support of The Birth Center team. Through it all, they gained confidence in themselves and learned how to trust their bodies, helping them to embrace the parenting journey with joy. Even when loss and pain overwhelmed them, the compassionate care from The Birth Center made a difference.
We are proud to offer this gentle approach. We are grateful for the difference that we can offer to families, not only at the time of birth, but throughout their family years. And so, we’ll keep providing safe, holistic care for many years to come. Are you interested in learning more about care at The Birth Center? Email [email protected] or call 916-344-1860. We are happy to offer you, too, the benefit of a Birth Center birth.