My Story
My Philosophy
My Labor Procedures

About your Doula: My Story

My husband Chris and I have eleven wonderful children – yes, they are all ours! I have given birth ten times. (We have one set of twins.) With the first three, we were pretty uninformed and really just trusted the medical people to dictate how they would be born. Then we found that pregnancy number four was actually babies number four AND five. What a surprise! Suddenly I was a medical oddity and we needed another doctor besides our family practice doctor. At around 30 weeks the babies were still breech and it was determined that they would be delivered cesarean section. Again, we didn’t question anything, just went with what we were told. At the same time, a local midwife told me that most likely they could be delivered vaginally. I knew nothing of home birth, so I went with the section. 

The c-section itself went fine, the events that followed left me feeling rather disturbed. First of all, I developed a fever and found I had an infection. I would not be allowed to go home until the fever was gone. Taking care of my babies was such a chore, all I wanted to do was sleep and bonding with them was not on my mind. I was allowed to go home after a week and then, whether it was another infection or still the first one, I got horribly ill to the point that I couldn’t turn my head or even pick the babies up without help. My fever had also returned. I ended up having a friend watch my new babies while Chris took me to the hospital. They were stumped as to what was wrong with me until my incision broke open and it was obviously infected. My doctor stayed after hours studying to find that I had Toxic Shock Syndrome. It was so bad that I was offered communion by a priest! (How often do they offer people on the maternity ward communion?) I was in the hospital for four more days. Luckily, my husband took good care of the children at home, including the new twins.

Bonding with the new babies was not the same as the other children had been. The illness really threw me for a loop. Also, I had planned to breastfeed them and the medications I was on would not allow that. I spent a good month or more pumping and nursing and supplementing and nursing and pumping….you get the idea….that was all I did. If not for the support of my husband and encouraging words from my pastor’s wife, I don’t know that I would have stuck with it. Sticking with the nursing of the twins is what really caused me to bond with them. If I had decided to bottle feed, I certainly would have found it easier to prop bottles or let someone else feed them. They nursed for a full year and I am SO thankful. 

That experience made me realize that I really needed to research birthing options if I was going to have even one more baby. We decided that home birth was a good option for our family. We have since had six more babies, all born at home with a midwife.