The Birthful Podcast: Episode #269 [Birth Stories]
Jenny spent much of her pregnancy learning about every worst-case birth scenario, not knowing all the new possible things to worry about that a pandemic would provide. Then life surprised her even more by giving her the dream birth experience she didn’t think she could have. Check it out.
What we talked about:
- Her brother and sister-in-law’s tragic loss
- Her unexpected pregnancy
- Feeling overwhelming fear
- Setting up a hands-on, high-touch team
- A sheltered-in-place baby shower
- Changes to her birth team: telehealth midwife meetings and setting up a virtual doula
- Navigating the fight-or-flight mode
- Focusing on how she wanted to feel
- Hospital policies: no doula, no nitrous oxide, not being able to come back to the hospital after leaving
- Bag of waters may have been ruptured for a week?
- Starting things out with a castor oil smoothie
- Her wonderfully observant husband
- Setting up laboring stations and leading the way
- Trying to stay in laborland while being admitted to the hospital
- “You’re fully dilated!”
- Claiming her son
- Feeling so safe at the hospital, they stayed an extra day
- Navigating postpartum without family support, enjoying being the three of them
- “Time of learning to be still.”
Shortly after birth
This episode is brought to you by the National Birth Equity Collaborative creating solutions that optimize Black maternal and infant health through training, policy advocacy, research, and community-centered collaboration.
Click to learn more!
Resources mentioned and other helpful links*:
- Life with a Newborn: Why It’s So Hard to Take a Shower video
- Questions to Ask During COVID!
- MarchofDimes.org
- PregnancyAfterLossSupport.org
- Evidence Based Birth®
- Nurture: A Modern Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, Early Motherhood—and Trusting Yourself and Your Body, by Erica Chidi Cohen
- Birth Partner 5th Edition: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Partners, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions, by Penny Simkin
- Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin
- Empowered Birth Project (@empoweredbirthproject) • Instagram photos and videos
- The Pregnancy Podcast and (of course) the Birthful podcast!
Taking a walk during COVID
This episode is also brought to you by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, a Black women-led cross-sectoral alliance centering Black mamas to advocate, drive research, build power, and shift culture for Black maternal health, rights, and justice.
Click to learn more!
Related Birthful podcast episodes
- What you’re feeling? That’s grief (with a side of anxiety), with Parijat Deshpande
- Postpartum during COVID, with Elly Taylor
- VBAC during the Pandemic, with Mandy Morine (Birth Story)
- Preeclampsia during COVID, with Melonie Fitch (Birth Story)
Jenny’s baby boy
Courtesy of Jenny Murphy
[mark]About Jenny Murphy[/mark]
Jenny lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and new baby boy. They are navigating the steep learning curve of postpartum and “learning to be still.”
Your Questions During COVID handout!
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*May contain affiliate links. This means that -at no extra cost to you- I may get a small percentage of what you buy. That is one of the ways of helping me continue to do this podcast – Thank you!
Like the music on the podcast?:
Title music: “Vibe Ace” by Kevin MacLeod, from the Free Music Archive / CC BY (edited for length).
Sponsorship music: “Air Hockey Saloon” by Chris Zabriskie, from the Free Music Archive / CC BY (edited for length).
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