947| Surprise Footling Breech Homebirth with Hospital Transfer and NICU Stay - Stephanie Pollock

I think my water just broke. I felt like things really intensified. She was right there and she was coming. It was an amazing feeling. I'm going to cry just thinking about it. I could feel her head. We heard her cry. We were squeezing hands and she was screaming.

I'm Bryn Hunt Palmer and you're listening to The Birth Hour. This podcast is designed as a safe place to come together and share childbirth stories. Stick around and join us to hear informative and empowering birth journeys from all over the world.

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Today's birth story guest is Stephanie and she has a home birth birth story to share. Her baby ended up being a surprise breach baby and was transferred to the hospital and had a short NICU stay. She talks about how while there were a lot of scary aspects of his story, she didn't feel traumatized by it in the end because she had such great support from her birth team. All right, let's hear from Stephanie.

Hi, Stephanie. Welcome to the birth hour. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I feel so privileged to be a part of this. Awesome. All right. Well, before we get to your story, will you tell us a little bit about you and your family? Sure. My name is Stephanie Pollock. I live in a little town called Cambridge, Ohio. I live with my husband, Jamie, my adoptive daughter, Sadie, from my first marriage. And then Jamie and I have a 16 month old son, Ezra.

And I just found out five days ago that we are expecting our second baby together. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. We have free range chickens and barn cats on our little farm. Hopefully we're going to expand it soon. Jamie and I have been together for almost four years and married for one.

He drives semi-truck and I work as a full-time school bus driver. And yeah, that's us. Awesome. All right. Well, let's go ahead and talk about finding out you're pregnant and how your pregnancy went. Well, I want to start first by saying in my first marriage, I had struggled with my first husband with infertility for four years. We went through a lot of testing and a lot of things. And we actually found out that my ex-husband had Azuzpermia, which actually means zero sperm.

So we decided after some time to knowing that we'll never have a biological child to go the adoption route. So in September 2014, after a long adoption process, I was privileged to be in the labor room with my daughter's birth mother. And she delivered my daughter, Sadie. I was even able to cut the cord and be the first one to hold her. It was amazing.

Well, my first marriage didn't work out and I met my now husband in 2021 when I first got hired at our local school district. He worked there too. He was actually my supervisor. Yes, it's odd, but we worked together at the school and fell in love. And it was unfortunately timing was bad because I was going through that horrible divorce in a horrible custody battle for my daughter. But after even for wanting

nothing more for years than to just be pregnant and deliver a baby from my own body. Even after I adopted my daughter, I still crave that.

But then when I met my now husband, we just had such a good time together. I never thought about wanting to bring a baby into that. But on Labor Day, September 2022, I found out after being awake week late on my period and on the pill, I was pregnant. Wow. So yes, it was a shock. We bought the test together. He didn't know what I was going to take it. And he came in. I called him into the bathroom and I was on the floor, crying my eyes out.

Yeah, it was, it was a shock because for anybody that's dealt with infertility, you, you wait and wait for a positive test. You just, you imagine you see faint little lines and they're not there. And then here was a stark positive test at the time that I didn't want it the most. But, um, here I was, I was a pregnant and to be completely transparent, I even contemplated at the very, very beginning.

alternative options to keeping the baby. But it didn't last long because my husband, Jamie, he's always so level headed. And he encouraged me that even if it seemed like the worst time, no one is really ever fully prepared to have a baby. They just come in and he believed it was meant to be. And I definitely agreed with that later. So decide to move forward with the pregnancy, of course, and just embrace it as much as I could.

And I knew for years before when I was struggling with infertility, I did a lot of research on birth, even though I had never been pregnant. And I knew I always wanted a physiological birth as much as possible. And a home birth would have been a dream, but where we live, it's a really small community. There's no doulas, no midwives for at least an hour or more away. So I, at the beginning of my pregnancy,

I didn't pursue those options. I just went along with a normal OB, like other people do. And I actually went through three providers before I settled on my last one. So I went through two OBs. They both pushed for induction at 39 weeks, regardless. And then I settled towards the end of my pregnancy at about 28 weeks with a certified nurse midwife who worked under an OB at a hospital.

To be honest, she was almost like a puppet for the OB. Even though she was considered a midwife, she was still going through the guidelines of what the OB would have done. So it wasn't a physiological feel whatsoever. Going through my pregnancy, I mentioned a little bit about my pregnancy. It was really an easy pregnancy. Had little complications, no morning sickness.

I had a lot of swelling and I had it from very early on, like nine weeks on. Nobody could find out a cause, but driving school bus probably didn't help much. I also, once I should have been able to feel the baby a lot move, I really couldn't. I went through some non stress tests and nobody could figure it out because he was moving on there.

on the non stress test, but I couldn't feel him. I didn't have an anterior placenta. I would try the kick counts, drinks, sugary drink, still nothing. And then the biggest issue I started to have later in my pregnancy with the hospital midwife.

the nurse midwife from about 32 weeks on, she was concerned because my belly was always measuring like two to three weeks behind. So she was always wanting to send me for ultrasounds to make sure that the baby's weight was okay, that there was no like IUGR or anything. But after two of them, I started to refuse the rest. And that's when we really started to bump heads.

I knew that if I kept having ultrasounds, it was just going to lead to a cascade of interventions. And she just didn't agree with my choice. But I thought, we don't get along great, but I'm just going to have to stick it out because they're just hardly any options. But at 32 weeks, I finally found a doula. Her name was Whitney. And we spent some time together, some meetings and things and got to know each other.

And she had worked with our local hospitals for years. And she said to me, Stephanie, I just don't think these hospitals are going to coincide with your birth plan. And she said, I know a midwife. That's a home birth midwife. And I think she would be willing to travel to this area for you. Let me reach out to her. So she did. And the midwife reached out to me. She lived two and a half hours away from us. So quite a long haul for her.

But she did have openings around my due date, which is amazing considering I was so close to my due date.

By this time, I was 37 weeks pregnant by the time I met with the midwife, but we met with each other. She seemed like a perfect fit. She was amazing. So at 37 weeks, I switched from the hospital midwife to the home birth midwife, and we started to really hit hard to get all the things ready for a home birth. I wish, oh gosh, I wish I would have had the home birth midwife throughout my whole pregnancy because

the insight of a midwife, especially along with diet. Opies and practitioners, they don't give you any insight on how to eat properly for growing a baby. And I was like a long time dieter, always on strict diet for years. And I didn't change much for that when I got pregnant, except for I started to just eat junk food. I guess I thought I could. And she was like, yeah, it's just,

I wish they would just buckle down more on letting pregnant women know how they need to eat. But when I met with Autumn, my midwife, she was like, hey, we got to get your protein up 100 grams a day now.

And she's like this. I mean, that's probably why your belly is measuring behind. Of course, you're probably going to have a small baby. It looks like regardless. But we need to get your protein up. And I felt so much better. My stomach was measuring two to three weeks behind almost up until I delivered. But within the weeks that I met autumn until I gave birth, it was only four weeks.

my belly had grown so much, my baby had grown so much just from upping my protein. But at a 39 week appointment with Autumn, because the baby had grown so much from my upping my protein, I started to get this like growth looking thing on the right side of my belly. It was just like a fist size ball.

And I thought, I asked her, I said, is that the baby's head? Because in every ultrasound, he was head down. And it was just sticking out. It's like, it looked like a separate part of my pregnant belly. And so she, of course, palpated my belly and everything listened to his heart tones. She said he seemed head down. Everything was right for that. She actually was more concerned that it could have been my fondness. And if that were the case,

I would have had what is called a bicornate uterus, which is like a heart-shaped uterus. And because of a baby, sometimes they can only grow in one side of that uterus. It can push your fundus out a different direction.

Of course, this was speculation. We didn't know. She said, we'll find out more like after the baby's born. It could be a growth. It could be the fundus. She was really certain that he was head down. And she did mention to me, though, that if you have a bicornate uterus, it increases your likelihood of having a breech birth quite a bit. But we didn't know. So we still weren't sure.

So this takes me to pretty close to birth. I was 39 weeks at that time, still driving school bus. My goal was to drive until the end of the school year. And that would have put me a couple of days past my due date. And my husband jokes that I willed myself not to go into labor before summer break began. But I just didn't want to miss any work. And I wanted to have him as close to when summer break started so I could have the whole summer off with him.

And I wouldn't have to cut into my work time whatsoever. So I made it, I made it to the last day of school and that was a Wednesday. And then that Saturday, I was like, you know, I'm ready to have this baby now. I want to do this. And I had done curb walking and all those things and walking all the time and trying to get things going, drinking the red raspberry tea.

And eating my dates and I had never, I didn't have any kind of like Braxton Hicks or anything. I had no signs of labor whatsoever. And I reached out to my doula on Saturday morning. I said, Hey, what about castor oil? And she was like, I don't recommend that you do that. It's, I don't think it's a good idea. And I said, well, okay, thanks for your input. And even though I valued her opinion, I was like, I'm going to check with my midwife. So I called Autumn.

And I asked what she thought. And she's like, you know, it's not a bad idea if you want to try it, mix it with some ice cream, blend it up. You know, if you want to do it, sometimes it takes more than once. Sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it doesn't work at all. But you can try it. So I did it. I was ready for that baby to come.

And so I mixed the castor oil with my vanilla ice cream and almond butter, made a shake, drink it all down, just gulped it down. And well, I'll tell you what, to this day, I still can't have almond butter because oof, that taste. But I didn't have really anything going on. I had like some little light cramping and everything. And I called my midwife and I said, hey, how long does this take? And she's like, yeah, usually you should notice something in about two to four hours.

I wasn't feeling anything. It was a hot summer day. And I was like, I told my husband, I said, I'm going to go out and push Mo the yard. See if that would get something going. He thought I was crazy, of course. But I did that, still felt nothing. And then probably about eight o'clock at night, I was settling down. We were going to watch a movie together. My daughter and Jamie and I started to get more cramps, still very light. Nothing I couldn't handle.

But then we went to sleep at about 11 and I woke up at one 20 in the morning and I have felt my first real contraction. And I always wonder, you know, cause my first baby, well, I know what a contraction feels like, but you know, you know what it feels like. And I knew from all the birth stories that I listened to, I should definitely try to go back to sleep. Uh, and I did, I tried to lay back down, but four minutes later, another contraction. Same feeling as the other one.

And they stayed four minutes apart while I laid there about 20 or 25 minutes. And I'm like, wow, they're already four minutes apart. This is crazy. I'm just going to wake up. So I will throw in that pretty much my entire labor, those contraction state four minutes apart from the beginning almost until like the last hour or two.

I really wanted to let my husband get as much sleep as he could. So I got up and just did busy work, laundry dishes. I was changing light bulbs, getting everything ready for the home birth. And then at about 4 AM, so this is about three hours later, I was like, I'm going to call my mom and see if she wants to come over and hang out with me while my husband's sleeping. So I called her and she was super excited because she was asking me every minute, I feel anything up until that day. So she was ready.

So she came over for a while and then Jamie woke up at about 6 a.m. and he was not too happy I didn't wake him up sooner but I knew he needed his rest for what was to come. And then I decided to call my doula at about 6.30 just to let her know I was in labor. My thought was I didn't really need her to come over at the time. I wasn't working really hard through the contraction. They're still four minutes apart but it wasn't like real hard work and I could talk through them.

And I just had this odd feeling about at that moment, I wasn't ready for someone to come into my birth space, I guess. I was, you know, just hanging out with my mom and my husband. And for my doula, even though I love her and I still do, it was just like, I almost felt like I had to be the hostess, you know, and I had to worry about if she needed anything. It was like entertaining a guest.

But I didn't, I didn't speak up about that. So she insisted that she come over just to get things set up and help me with, you know, positions and things like that. And it was fine. She, she came over and we walked a lot and I got on the birth ball and she tried to help Jamie with the hip squeezes show him how to do it. She would do it, but I didn't like it at all. I really didn't want to be touched. I didn't feel like it helped.

So at about 11 a.m. At this point, I'd have been in labor about 10 hours. They started to get harder. The contractions, they were more of a struggle to work through.

I asked my do a lot to put on some music and if they could fill the labor pool for me. And I didn't want to have a home birth. That wasn't my intention. I wanted to use it for pain maintenance. I did not want to birth the baby in there. That's not how it worked out though, as we'll get to. At about 12 PM, my contractions, that's when the four minutes apart was out the window. They started to fluctuate quite a bit.

They were going from three minutes to one minute to two minute to just 45 seconds. It was like they were everywhere. And I showed signs of being in transition. I was really sick. I was sleeping in between contractions. So my doula called my midwife then. And thank goodness she was at church, which was only an hour and a half away from us instead of two and a half hours away.

And so she was like, okay, I'll head over there. And she got there at 130. So by that time I was really struggling to work through the contractions. I was starting to fear the contractions because I just knew that they were just getting harder and harder to work through. The pain was intense. I was quiet laboring up until this time, but I started to get kind of loud and my midwife just kept encouraging me to only let out low moans.

And I did listen to that and that helped. And I just remember talking to my baby quite a bit. I kept saying, it's okay, baby, you can come out. Please come out. We're ready. We're ready. And then I started to feel like I had to use the restroom. And I felt like I had the pee. And then when I got on the toilet, I felt like I might have to poop. And my midwife said, well, that could be a good sign.

When I sat on the toilet, I didn't have to go anymore after a while. I did have a strong contraction, but it actually felt reasonable on the toilet. And I thought, well, maybe I should stay here. But I didn't. I asked if I could just go back to the pool.

And so I went back to the pool, probably not a good idea if I didn't want to have baby in the pool, but I did anyways, I went back to the pool. And I should mention I had not been checked at all throughout my pregnancy at all throughout my labor. So of course, they're just going through signs, the transition signs that I'm having. I never had an urge to push yet or anything, but my midwife didn't push for anything. It was all about, you know,

my body, my choice, and I so respect that. When my contractions were at their peak, the thing that helped me the most is I would lean on the edge of the tub over the edge of the tub and put my head down like on the edge of it. And my mom would just bring the water up and let it flow over my back and run my back up and down. It's like, it felt so, so good. So I guess it's true. You always need your mom.

And so at 2 p.m., I was officially at the 13-hour mark of labor. I had my first urge to push, finally. And my midwife just told me, hey, push when you're ready, when you feel like it's time. So I, on the next contraction, I still have the urge and I push. And immediately with that push, my mucus plug came out, my water broke, all in the tub. And

Everything happened fast because on the next push, my midwife asked my husband if he wanted to catch the baby. And he said, yeah, yeah. And so he leaned down into the pool with his hands, Autumn asked him what he saw. Did he feel the head? And he said, oh, no, that's not a head, it's feet. And that's when we all knew that the whole feel in the room changed because this baby was not coming out.

head first. It was coming out first. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it was. I was crazy. My midwife, she loves to tell that story. My midwife about my husband leaning down said, Oh my God, it's feet. I mean, she just got a kick out of that. But yeah, we weren't expecting it. But my midwife, she, she was so calm the whole time. And even though with the chain of events that happened after this, she never lost her calm and it helped

the whole room, keep that calm, which I am so thankful for. But Ezra, my son, he made all the correct movements to deliver himself breach. He did exactly what he needed to do for it to be a safe breach delivery. So we got, it was, it's an odd thing delivering a breach baby because you feel each individual limb. So I felt one foot and leg, then another foot and leg.

Then the butt, which is kind of the hips and the butt, it's like that's kind of like your pain and then the shoulders can be, the head wasn't nearly that bad. But we got to the point where it was just his head left and I had no urge to push nothing. And I just, I remember from all my research that if you don't have an urge, don't push because it could prevent tearing.

But, and I just told my midwife, I can't, I can't push. I don't feel like I need to, but she knew I needed to. So she got close to me whispered in my ear and she said, she said, Stephanie, we have to get this baby out right now. So I knew it was urgent and I just had to push, even if I didn't feel like it. So I did, I gave my hardest push. She ended up putting her hand up in there and just kind of guiding his head out while I was pushing.

And he came right out and then she put him in my arms immediately. My pushing total was only 12 minutes from start to finish. It was very quick. But when he came out, she put him on my chest. There was no crying, no sound. And he was completely blue. And his eyes weren't open. Nothing. It was just nothing. And Autumn and her assistant

immediately started resuscitation on them. They used an infant-sized mask and worked on them there while he was on my chest. And she kept telling me, Stephanie, talk to your baby. Let him hear your voice. And I couldn't. And that haunts me to this day. I didn't know what to say. He looked dead. And I was in such a shock and panic. And I just kept looking at my husband crying. And I thought, all this pregnancy and all this labor. And he's gone.

She told me, she said, we need to keep working on him, but his heart tones are, you know, they're building his, his beats are coming up. She said, but your cord is too short for me to work on him properly. Is it okay if I cut the cord? And I even love in this moment, she still got my consent for anything. And of course, I told her that she could definitely cut the cord. And so she took him over and laid him down on the towel by her legs and worked on him there about another minute. And my mom kept asking,

if she should call an ambulance. And at the time we lived right in town on Main Street. So it wouldn't take them long to get there. So they did call, they were there in less than a minute. It was like 30, 45 seconds, so quick. Yes. And so they, they, they took him and the midwife's assistant went with the baby and my husband, Jamie went with the baby.

And I just sat there in the pool, not crying, just tired and stunned and couldn't believe that my baby and my husband were gone. And I just felt alone. I just couldn't believe what was happening. I knew nothing because by the time they took him, he still wasn't. His eyes weren't open. He hadn't made any noises. It was, I just didn't know what was happening. But on that ride, that's when

the separation between Western medicine and the midwifery model of care really showed itself to me. I wasn't there in the ambulance, but my husband was. And the EMS workers took off the infant size mask. And by this time he, my husband said he was starting to pink up and starting to make noises. And they put an adult size mask on him and worked on him and blew out his locks.

So that will end up in a NICU stay, but I will get to that later. While I was back at home, my midwife worked with me in the tub to deliver my placenta. And I don't remember much of this because I passed out in the tub. When I was trying to deliver my placenta, I just woke up to everybody yelling my name there.

And they told me I'd passed out and my midwife said, I don't know how much blood you're losing because the tub, I had lost my mucus plug in it. It was just the water, you couldn't see what was happening in there. And so she asked me if I could try to make it to the bed.

I agreed and everybody helped me get to the bed and she examined me. There was no hemorrhaging. There wasn't a lot of blood loss. I didn't even tear, actually, which is not surprising because I found out later my son was only five pounds, four ounces. So he was a tiny little guy. So that definitely helped with no tearing. And then my midwife asked me if I felt like I needed to try to use the bathroom to pee and

I thought like, yeah, I think I could. And so I had almost made it to the bathroom and I passed out again on the bathroom floor. And I woke up about a minute later. Autumn was taking my blood pressure. Everybody standing around me trying to get me to wake up and

She told my mom, hey, go across the street. There was a grocery store. She said, get her some Gatorade. Help replenish some of the electrolytes. Her blood pressure is normal. We'll just give her some time. And then my doula made me some toast. And I ate a few bites while I was just laying there on the floor. And I was like, I am not comfortable on this bathroom floor. I really want to try to get to bed. So they all helped me up and helped me walk from the bathroom to the bedroom. And

passed out again on the way to the bedroom. Lying on the bathroom or the living room floor completely naked. The house was a mess because, you know, I was going back and forth bleeding and there's blood all over the house. It looked like a murder scene in there. The tub was yucky. So.

And I was, my mom said, I think we really need to call the squad to come get her. So they got me dressed in like a nightgown because I was totally naked. But you know, after you have a baby, you don't even care. So the EMS that took my son just a couple, you know, about an hour earlier came and took me to the hospital, same hospital that my son was at.

quickly after I got to the hospital, they asked me if I wanted to see my son before they light flighted him away to the NICU at Nationwide Children's in Columbus. And I just want to mention

This is one of the many options with a NICU stay that you feel like you have no voice in your child's care. You see so many advocates for you in the NICU. They'll come and meet with you in the room and say, you know, if there anything you need help with or, you know, are, how are the nurses? And then you complain to them and nothing's happening. And if you try to fight any of it, they threaten to call children services on you. You feel like you just have no voice in their care.

But I, of course, did say I wanted to see him before he left. I was still very woozy and shaky, so I couldn't stand up. They wouldn't let me stand up. So they wheeled me to about five feet away from his little incubation thing he was in. And I saw him, and he had all these tubes on him and wires on him. And I just, all I could do was cry. His eyes still weren't open, still never saw my baby's eyes.

And it just so much trauma from all the plans that I had sent in place. I worked so hard to have the birth I wanted to have. I wanted to have the golden hour. I wanted skin to skin. And I didn't want this medicalized approach to childbirth at all, but

Here he was, hooked up to all these tubes and machines, and here I was in the hospital. But my hospital stay was short. I was able to leave the next morning. They really didn't do anything for me. They didn't give me any fluids. All they really did was criticize my decision to have a home birth. They kept saying I stopped prenatal care at 37 weeks because I switched to a midwife.

And that irritated me so much. I never stopped my prenatal care. If anything, I got better care. But they just, they don't understand there. So thank goodness while I was in the hospital overnight, my husband was in the NICU. He drove to Columbus to be with my son. And he did so much for us because he got us set up at the Ronald McDonald house.

and we were able to stay free from my son's entire NICU stay. They have tons of activities for kids and they feed you for every meal and it's a walk right across the street from the Ronald McDonald house to the NICU and it was

Oh, is it godsend? It was amazing. I'm just so thankful he was able to set that up for us. So if you ever go to McDonald's, donate to the Ronald McDonald's house. So the NICU stay, that could be a whole nother episode in itself. It was total hell. While we were there that first night though, I didn't know it, but my mom was back at home and she was scrubbing our house from top to bottom. I think normally the midwife in Dulo would have cleaned up a little bit, but considering the circumstances,

and everybody kind of left in a hurry. Nobody had. So my mom did all that for us and I'm so thankful for that. So for Ezra, while he was in the NICU, he was put on a cooling treatment that first night because they said he had been with a lack of oxygen for four minutes, which it really wasn't true because when he first came out, he was still connected to my umbilical cord. My midwife started working on him immediately, but that's what they wanted to do.

The cooling treatment, it's supposed to be like a cutting edge, you know, technology to prevent any brain damage from a lack of oxygen. The thing about the cooling treatment, though, is it made his organs slow way down. So everything is not working properly because the baby's so cold, it's just shutting down. And because of this, and then the

EMS blowing out his lungs, he was put on nitrous oxide and a seed path while the cooling machine. And then I found out later that they had him on some sort of anti-anxiety medicine to keep him mellow, which irritated me so bad because my whole pregnancy, even while I was sick, I wouldn't take anything. I didn't want any medication going into my baby's body. And here he is.

on anti-anxiety medicine. And no, they didn't get our agreement for this or anything. They would make all these decisions for his treatment. It would seem like overnight. While we were away and we'd come back the next morning and they're doing something different. But after three days on the cooling machine, they started rewarming him.

And he was warmed fully on the fourth day. And that's when he started to make rapid progress because his organs were coming back up, you know, he's warm. His brain stand came back completely normal. He had nothing wrong with him. He was perfect. He was able to breathe.

uh, without anything but some oxygen on that fourth day. They took off the CPAP mask, which was amazing because that mask on the little baby's face, their eyes completely swell. So here my baby is at four days old. I still haven't seen his eyes open ever because he can't open them. They're swollen. Um, and it cut in the mask cuts into their face and they have so much

rash and chapped and chafescen and their lips are completely dry. It's just horrible to see. He was just on the oxygen at that time. And within that day though, he was off of the oxygen. I mean, they were just stunned by the progress that he was making. It was so quick.

I was pumping this whole time. So I started pumping when I was in the hospital the first night for passing out, pumping every two hours religiously every day, which pumping in the NICU is hard work because they have very, very strict rules on how you wash, what you wash in, what you put them in after they're washed.

And they do have lactation rooms for this that you can pump in there, use their medulla breast pumps, and then you can wash. So they have the washing station. And my husband, he was so great because he would like haul all my parts for me and we'd take the walk to the lactation room so many times a day to do this. And it was a struggle.

By the fifth day, I finally could nurse my son for the first time because he was off everything. And of course, they give you rules for that and make you so at first it had to be on the schedule they said. And I did fight, you know, for our rights for that. And I said, I'm going to feed him on Ezra's schedule because if he's hungry, he's going to want to eat. He had had nothing by mouth up until that time.

I was pumping, they were putting it in his feeding tube that I think it was going down into a stomach. And so this was his first experience having anything by mouth. So a lactation consultant did come in to help me with this and the lactation consultants at this particular NICU were not the greatest. They're so forceful about the holds they want you to use. And it's like, if you're not doing their holds, you're not breastfeeding right.

And that's just not true. You just hold your baby and what feels comfortable for them and what feels comfortable for you. And sometimes that helps immensely and helping them get a better latch. And if he was latching, he just wouldn't nurse long. He would nurse like four minutes or five minutes. And then he'd want to come back and do it again in like 20 minutes. And it was just

It was a lot to keep on top of that. And the nurses just kept hounding. They're like, he's not getting enough milk. They were weighing his diapers and they were saying they weren't wet enough. They didn't weigh enough at all his wet diapers. And, and they kept saying, just give them a bottle with your milk. That's all you have to do. Just give them a bottle with your milk. Let me find out. I didn't want to.

I didn't want to want to have a bottle at all yet. But I did give in. I caved on the sixth day. I gave him one bottle. But when I gave him that bottle, he really didn't eat a whole lot more than he ate on the breast. So that was the last time he had a bottle. Then finally on the sixth day, we got the good news that we could go home.

But when you're in the NICU, when your baby's in the NICU, even though he wasn't a preemie, you still, to release you from the NICU, you have to jump through hoops. We had to do a car seat test and it has to be, the baby has to be in a car seat for the whole duration of your ride home. So our ride home was an hour and a half. And so the baby had to sit in the car seat for an hour and a half. Even if they got fussy, you couldn't take them out.

And if you did take them out, yet start all over again. So we had to do that. We had to take a CPR class to take the baby home. Of course, he had to have a hearing test. And then through the hospital, they have a course for taking a NICU baby home. But most of it is talking about like if your baby needs resuscitated, if you're at home, if they're on a feeding tube, if they still have oxygen, which he didn't have any of this. But of course, we saw to take the course, which is about four hours long.

on the hospital's iPad. And then finally, on the seventh day, after doing all these courses and everything, they gave us our discharge papers. We were going home. And I was, yeah, it was long. It was so long. And my midwife told me later, she was like, I feel bad because this all could have been avoided if I would have worked on him longer because

He just needed a little extra help. Every breach baby needs a little extra help and she didn't think there was any reason. She thinks later she said, I did panic, but I don't think we needed to call the EMS because his heart tones were coming up. But you know, that's neither here nor there. Hindsight's always 2020.

And it worked out because we have a beautiful, healthy baby toddler. I guess I should say now, but yeah, he's completely healthy breastfeeding journey. It was interesting. I knew pretty quickly when he started nursing, there was a lot of clicking. And I said, I bet he has a tongue tie. And so I called our pediatric dentist,

in the area when we got home from the NICU. And they said, yeah, we'll get him in, but it'll be about two months. And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, he's gaining weight, but not, I just, I can tell that nursing is a struggle for him. It's a lot of work for him. And I didn't have like sore nipples or anything from it. I just knew it was a lot of work for him. And I mentioned this to my midwife when she came from my postpartum visit. And she was like, well, let's take a look. And so she looked and she's like, yeah, he has,

a lip tie and a tongue tie. And she was like, I normally do this right after the baby is delivered when I do like the newborn checkup. But she said, if you want, I can snip it right here for you. And I was a little bit nervous about that. And I was like, I can't be here for it. And my husband said, well, I'll hold him. And she did it. It was quick. He hardly cried. He got right on the breast afterwards and nursed and

Within about two weeks, he was nursing like a champ. No more clicking of firm, strong latch. He was nursing longer. I have like an oversupply of milk. And we're still nursing at 16 months postpartum. We're still nursing, which is wonderful. I didn't think we'd make it this long, but I always had a heavy letdown, had an oversupply, even though he was exclusively breastfed. I still had to pump and I had all this milk in my freezer.

I did find a Facebook page of Ohio women that are looking for breast milk and I was able to donate it.

to a woman that had twins. And I fed my baby in twins for almost a year. Wow. And it was wonderful. I'm finally at the point now where it's normal. You know, my, I don't have to pump so much, but I was thankful I could do that. But sometimes an oversupply can be almost as hard as an undersupply. I think there's so much that comes along with it. And it's so hard. And I had mastitis twice and

Somehow I got thrush and my son didn't and

I have had it three or four times throughout our journey. And he's never gotten it. And I don't know how that's possible. So my doctor, his pediatrician gave me the Nia statin for him if he would get it. But she said, don't give it to him if he doesn't get it. And so I just would dip my nipple in it. And that would take care of it within a day or so. And it worked great. But that is so painful, so, so painful. But we made it through and we're still nursing.

Everything's great now. And despite Ezra's rough start, he's totally perfect. He has no delays. There was no issues from that birth. And I just, I'm still pro home birth, even after my experience, even with this pregnancy, I would, I'm totally planning on another home birth. I had to get a new midwife for this pregnancy because Autumn moved away and she's pregnant with twins, but I think my biggest regret

for the pregnancy was not taking my prenatal nutrition more seriously. And I just, I can't stress that enough about getting enough protein and making sure the diet is right from the get-go because it really does make a difference for the baby. But it's good now and this pregnancy, I'm really buckling down and I've been eating a ton of protein. And yeah, so Ezra and I now are totally in love and bonded

I'm so thankful we have him. He is what we needed. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask about kind of your emotional processing of the birth and everything. It sounds like, like you said, you would still have another home birth, but what was that like just kind of processing at all? Yeah. I, I, of course, I listen to so many birth stories and, you know, there's so many people that have traumatic births. And I guess this would be one that would be considered a traumatic birth

I think the hardest time for me was the third day in the NICU. I just, I think that's when I had my emotional breakdown. I just didn't understand why this was happening to me because I tried so hard and fought so hard to have the birth I wanted. I tried to take care of the baby in womb as much as I could and I just didn't understand and I didn't have a voice in his care at the NICU, but I

After that day, though, I was kind of able to work through it fairly quickly. I'm like a research nerd, and I think that helped me get through some of the trauma more than anything else. I just buckled down on researching about breech verse and about bicorni uterus, if I would have one, which I should mention. I got an ultrasound when I went to go get an IUD inserted about six months postpartum and

they did not see a bicornic uterus.

So my midwife still thinks I have one based on what my placenta looked like when it came out, but they should see it on an ultrasound. So it's kind of a mystery, whether I have that or not. But the trauma, I guess it just made me want to, you know, try for to get what I wanted next time. That's why it was so important to me to have another baby in the future, because I just I wanted a second chance to have the birth that I really wanted. And I think that

will help me to if I could just have that golden hour and get to stay home like I wanted. But it wasn't.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. My husband was worried I was going to struggle with postpartum depression. I was kind of worried about that, but I didn't have any of that. Maybe it's all the feel-good endorphins from breastfeeding or something, but it's been good and I've been pretty balanced about how I view it. It's just one of those things that happened and it happened, but he's healthy now and that's what I focus on. After all that, Miniki was so traumatizing being there.

Once a couple months pass and you get your baby home and you're watching them grow and everything, it's almost like, did that happen to me? Yeah, it's kind of a blur. You just let it go and it's a distant memory. And I just, I don't think about it too much now, which I think helps. Maybe that's my defense mechanism. Just learn it out.

Yeah well I can like relate to like it sounds like you just felt really supported by your midwife and trusted her and I feel like that makes the big difference with births that go unexpectedly and things that go you know wrong as long as you feel safe and like you were being well cared for it helps with the processing. Oh absolutely yeah I didn't doubt

her decision making on any of it for a moment. And again, she was so calm throughout everything. And I think even my mom, she can be sometimes a nervous, now you're emotional. And she was calm. I mean, we, yeah, I bet that was hard. Yeah. But we all fed off of the midwives and it was just a huge, I mean, it was just

a tumultuous situation, but we were all calm. And I think that helped too. And I just trusted her implicitly and, and that whatever call she made was going to be the right one. Yeah. And that you mentioned the third day and the NICU being the hardest. I think there's like a pretty significant hormone shift on like the third or fourth day. So I bet that also added to your meltdown. Um, if you think it's pretty common to have one regardless of situations. So that's a lot to be.

It's so hard in the NICU because like you're bleeding like crazy. And the NICU had none of the pads for me. Yeah, it blows my mind. I know. They had nothing for the women. I mean, they had no tux pads. They had none of the big like, I like the diapers personally. And I tried to pack as much as I could, but I didn't know how long we'd be there and I ran out. And they just didn't have anything set up. And it's so hard in those bathrooms.

to like clean yourself with the parry bottle and everything. And they give you a voucher for one meal a day if you're breastfeeding, but then nothing for the husbands. So yeah, it is like, okay, so I'm gonna eat once a day because I'm breastfeeding, that's gonna be enough. And my husband, we just had to pay for all those meals, but again, the Ronald McDonald house, that was a total godsend because all the meals they prepared for us

And every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, they prepared. And you could do laundry there. And it was wonderful. Yeah, that's awesome. All right. Well, any resources you want to mention? Of course, yeah. Of course, this podcast, I found this probably about four months into my pregnancy. And I just binged all the episodes as much as I could. I listened to them on my little earbud on my way to drive my school bus. When I got off, I'd listened to them on the way home.

It's just, I love it. It's just such an amazing resource. I'm so happy I can be a part of it. And then I also like the Down to Birth podcast. It's a lot more. They don't really have birth stories on there, but they have question and answers and they talk about more. It's more evidence-based, some issues that may come up in pregnancy. So I really like that one. And then of course, many women have loved the iNMA's Guide to Childbirth.

I really love that book. And then evidence based birth website, I got on that a lot for any issues that I want to research that may come up in pregnancy or test that they may want to do. That way I had evidence backing for the decisions I made, especially when I was dealing with my obese or the hospital midwife. And then this may not be considered a resource, but I did want to throw it in because it's a resource for me is my

relationship with my husband is very important to me. We have very close relationship. And starting from about two months postpartum, we have a date night every weekend. My mom watches the kids just for a couple hours and we go out, we enjoy some adult time. And it just helps so much because babies can kind of cloud over your relationship with your husband and didn't want that to happen. So

Our romance definitely hasn't taken a backseat with having and raising our babies. That's a good point to make for sure. All right. And then what's the best way for people to connect with you? Well, I'm not real active on Instagram or any of that, but I am on Facebook and they could just search my name, Stephanie Pollack, P-O-L-L-O-C-K, or they can email me at Stephanie White underscore 854 at Yahoo.com.

All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing Stephanie. Thank you so much, Brynne. Thank you so much again to Stephanie for sharing her story with us. If you want more information from her episode, just head over to the birthower.com and search for her name in the search bar to find her show notes page. I will also link to the Aqua True coupon code from the podcast app where you're listening to this episode and on the show notes.

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