The Ordinary Doula Podcast

E86: Corporate Calls: Who's Checking On You?

• Angie Rosier • Episode 86

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Making personal connections with new parents is vital, especially in the clinical healthcare environment where postpartum families often feel lost in the system.

• Phone calls to postpartum patients create essential connection points during a vulnerable time
• Initial skepticism from parents receiving hospital calls quickly transforms to appreciation
• These calls serve as a lifeline for those struggling with postpartum recovery or depression
• Checking in weeks after birth is crucial when most visitors have stopped coming
• Postpartum recovery can be lengthy and challenging, especially after difficult births
• Everyone needs a support network they can reach out to during the postpartum period
• Human connection provides critical support within our capitalistic healthcare system
• New parents should identify their inner circle of support before they need help

If nobody's calling to check in on you, please reach out to someone in your support network. And remember to check on your friends, neighbors, and family members who have recently had babies - especially weeks after birth when things can be really hard.


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Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the Ordinary Dealer Podcast. My name is Angie Rozier. I'm your host. I'm a doula, childbirth educator, doula trainer, ibclc, postpartum doula. I get to see kind of a picture of a lot of people's experiences surrounding childbirth at this time of life, which is kind of cool. I want to share a little bit of something I've been noticing in one of my roles.

Speaker 2:

I work at a couple different hospitals. As an IBCLC just do part-time at a couple hospitals and do private practice as well. But in one of the hospitals I work in, one of my roles is to make phone calls to patients who have been discharged and are, you know, are now at home with a new baby. So I get to make these phone calls to literally hundreds of people after they have had a baby. I've kind of noticed something interesting as I have done that Kind of the point of doing it is to be a connection point right.

Speaker 2:

In a lot of my podcasts I will talk about making a human connection. I think that's super important. We need to be more connected to each other and we need each other right. We need human connection. It's important. So a lot of the phone calls I make are I leave a message, right, a lot of people aren't going to answer. They're getting a phone call from. I don't know what their phone is telling them it's from, but it's a hospital phone, right, a hospital number. So I probably wouldn't answer that phone call and a lot of people don't, so I leave a message.

Speaker 2:

But our purposes, the hospital's purposes, in doing that is to create a connection point. So we're looking at a postpartum time, right, we like to catch these people. In the first two, three weeks postpartum They've been home with their baby, whether it's their first, second, third, fourth, twelfth baby, whatever that is. They've been home for a little while. They're recovering from childbirth, whether that was a vaginal birth, a C-section, an induction, whatever that was. They're recovering from birth and they have a new baby. So part of what no, we don't say this to you know, to the people that we're calling but part of the intention of that is to have a lifeline. So, like, all right, how you doing? Do you need some help? Somebody cares and yeah, it is a big hospital, I mean it's a great hospital, but I love that they're making that effort. So it's while it's not official or professional postpartum screening.

Speaker 2:

We are reaching people at a time when and there's other times, of course, when postpartum depression can become a challenge People are susceptible to that for up to 12 months after their baby's born. We're just contacting them within two or three weeks, but we want to offer them a reach out if they need it. We're also a lot of times we just ask if they have any questions or concerns. People do sometimes like your touch points, your contact points with providers, whether that's pediatricians, your own OB or midwife. You're not going to be seeing them a lot of times for a while. You know you don't get constant access to them, so you may have questions or concerns that arise. We want to be a resource for that. And then another point of that is seeing how baby feeding is going. We always ask them and we are the lactation team that does the calls, so we want to ask them hey, how is baby feeding going? Can we support you in that in any way? And a lot of our conversations will shift to lactation questions or baby feeding questions or weight gain or whatever that might be. And even if it's not a help I can give right away on the phone, we do have resources that we can provide and offer to people in their communities that they can get the help that they're seeking. So I absolutely love that role of talking to a lot of people and leaving a lot of messages in that time.

Speaker 2:

Afterwards. Some of the phone calls are long and we have a good chat, other are pretty short. But one phenomenon that I think is pretty fascinating is the phenomenon of people's reaction to this phone call, if they answer the phone. I should track that sometime and see how frequently, what the percentage of leaving a message, you know going straight to voicemail, and those who answer their phone. But for those who do answer the phone, always, almost always, I guess it is a pretty skeptical answer. So I get it's and I it's the patient's phone number. So it's usually a woman, sometimes it's a man, but usually it's a woman who answers the phone and right away, because they see what number is calling.

Speaker 2:

You know, whatever hospital it says on there, I don't know what it says, but they're kind of skeptical and so they were like Hello, who is this? And I kind of explain. And it's fascinating to me to see how quickly they soften up when I call to just say how are you doing? We wanted to check in on you. We want to see how you're doing, how you're feeling in recovery. We want to see how your baby's doing. How's your baby eating? Do you have any questions? Is there anything we can help you with? And people soften up almost instantly, almost immediately. So it's hilarious to see that skepticism with the first hello and then to see them soften, some of them laugh even a little bit about it.

Speaker 2:

Some of them will say, oh, okay. Some of them will say, are you calling about my bill? They think I'm like from billing or something which is sad, right, like that. They are skeptical right away of somebody checking in on us from from an organization or from a corporation. But after we, we break that ice for the first little bit and they're like, oh, just a check-in, okay, cool, and then we can have a great conversation. I've only had, honestly, of the hundreds of calls I've done, probably one where she was just kind of rude the entire time.

Speaker 2:

And I get it, people, maybe I just you know, you just got your baby to sleep or you just laid down for a nap, whatever that is, and so maybe the timing's not right, so don't answer it if it isn't, of course Often, of course, we're going to hear a little baby crying in the background and that's kind of fun, or if they're hey, yeah, the baby's eating right now, or anyway, that's kind of a fun little part of my job that I appreciate being able to reach out and make that human connection, because that again demonstrates to me in the corporate world and corporate America where medicine is so incredibly um, capitalized, like it's a huge part of capitalism, right, and the medical community. We're in this massive medical system and people come into it. They have their, whatever their experience is, and oftentimes it's intimate, right, like with childbirth, and whether it's an illness or an injury, like you're feeling vulnerable, you need support in every way physical, emotional, mental and sometimes these massive medical systems aren't providing all of that. So it's kind of fun to reach out to people and connect that way. So that's all I got for today.

Speaker 2:

It's just kind of interesting, as I've noticed, what happens with these phone calls Skepticism, people usually warm up, but it's kind of fun to check in on people. So I guess my message to you is human connection is important. If nobody's calling to check in on you, they're probably not. Please have people you can call and reach out to whether that's family members, your inner circle. In those weeks after labor and delivery, right Like when the baby's young and new and you're figuring things out, you're still recovering. That's a lot going on. You're probably not sleeping amazing, Taking care of yourself. You know that gets set to the side pretty instantly as you're focusing on baby needs and baby care, which kind of consume everything. So if nobody's calling you to check in, who can you reach out to? Know who your inner circle is, know people you can call about anything. Know who your best support is going to come from. And please feel free. If you're struggling, if you need help on things, reach out for support.

Speaker 2:

Almost everyone I would say like to say everyone can find some source of support near them, although it might be from interesting sources. Please reach out for support if you need it and make that human connection. Hope you have a great day. Thanks for being with me and thanks for answering the phone. Those who do and check on your friends, check on your neighbors, check on your family members, see how they're doing. Everybody wants to come see the baby in the first couple days and then they forget about the couple weeks, a couple months that come after that. That are hard right. That are really hard, especially if somebody has multiples or a difficult birth situation that they're healing from. That can take a while. So please check in on your friends and family. Thanks for being here today. Hope you have a good one and please make a human connection as always. See you next time and be good to those around you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Doula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.