The Ordinary Doula Podcast
Welcome to The Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning. We help folks prepare 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.
The Ordinary Doula Podcast
E104: From Birth Center Plans To NICU Reality
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What happens when a carefully planned birth center delivery is suddenly rerouted by preeclampsia, a hospital admission, and a 34-week induction? We sit down with Andrea and Joakim to tell the full story of Magnus’s early arrival: the shock of a one-day pivot, the seven-week NICU marathon, and the quiet work of rebuilding trust in themselves as new parents.
We walk through the real logistics and the raw feelings. Twice-daily drives to the hospital. Care times every three hours. Learning the language of oxygen saturation, NG tubes, and feed volumes. Andrea shares the steep curve of breastfeeding a preterm baby—latching practice, non-nutritive sucks, and negotiating how much to supplement when transfer is hard to measure. Joakim opens up about the partner perspective, where limited hands-on time and a sleepy newborn can delay bonding and leave you wondering if you’re connecting at all. Together we unpack the “island” step-down unit, the optimism of almost-going-home, and the frustration of rotating teams and shifting milestones that made discharge feel like a moving target.
This conversation is equal parts practical and heart-forward. You’ll hear how they advocated for small choices within big hospital protocols, why one ointment change mattered, and how both gratitude and grief can be true at the same time. We talk about bringing Magnus home—no beeping monitors, just breath sounds in the dark—and how anxiety gave way to rhythm, confidence, and a breastfeeding breakthrough. If you’re a NICU parent, preparing for birth, or supporting someone through a preterm journey, you’ll find empathy, clear takeaways, and language to ask better questions.
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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
Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, 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_01:That um we're gonna introduce and we're gonna kind of talk about their story. They had um every everyone's story is pretty awesome, actually, but they had an interesting story that had some twists and turns in it, and so we're gonna kind of discuss their story with them. So I have with me today Andrea and Joachim and their little guy, Magnus. So you might hear our cute little youngest guest here who's so I wish you could see him. He's adorable. Um Andrea and Joachim had a baby in June, and their baby was due in July. Um, and so this baby's what? We're almost six months old now. So Andrea and Joachim, if you want to give a little introduction about yourself and then kind of tell us tell us about your story.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I'm Andrea, mom of Magnus, and Joachim's here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, hi, I'm Joachim.
SPEAKER_01:And this is your first baby, right? We're having a first baby.
SPEAKER_02:First baby. Yeah, we're both from Utah, so we kind of have pretty traditional, like, you know, upbringing here, Mormon backgrounds and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_04:Cool. Yeah, I was due on July 27th, and I was planning a birthing center birth. We'd done a bunch of birthing classes and um done a ton of things to prepare my body and our minds and everything for a natural birth. And um in the spring, I started to get kind of higher um blood pressure readings, and so they put me on a watch, and my midwife team said that they would have to transfer care if if they got too high, and that happened in June. I um on June 3rd, I I had a urine test come back positive for proteins for preeclampsia, and so they transferred me to care with the midwife at the U. And you can take and stand a mark or something.
SPEAKER_01:Um so now that's shifting to in-hospital, right? In hospital birth.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. In hospital birth. On on June 4th, I had just a follow-up appointment with the midwives at the U, assuming that I would be able to still do everything. They were just gonna monitor me and put me on medication. Um, but I the midwife I went to see sent me to the emergency um maternity. What is that called? The OB Emergency Service. Yeah, the OB emergency. And from there, I was admitted to the hospital. And when after I was admitted, I was told that I would have to stay until he was 34 weeks and I was 32 at the time, and that they were gonna induce me at 34 weeks. And um, yeah, that all happened in one day.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a huge shift. So you were planning it out of hospital birth, and all of a sudden you're admitted to the hospital for what they want to be the next two weeks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Just in a couple of hours, a huge, yeah, huge change.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And how how did that feel inside? I mean, I know it's so hard, but how do you how does one adjust to that?
SPEAKER_03:Sorry, we haven't really talked about it in a while, but um it was a lot to adjust to in a really short period of time. I definitely had kind of the same reaction uh in the hospital just I just had to take a minute to realize that this this birth that I'd been planning for so long and working so hard for and really wanting wasn't gonna happen.
SPEAKER_04:And then also just adjusting to the environment of the hospital, which is super different. Um even though everyone at the U was really great on my team, but it was hard, it was hard for the first little bit, and then I had periods during my hospitalization that were hard as well, that it would hit me that this wasn't going the way I wanted it to. Um so yeah, it was not my favorite. Yeah, it was hard. Not my favorite thing, yeah. And it still obviously has impacted me ongoing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Do you have something to add?
SPEAKER_02:Oh gosh, yeah. I think everything just came at once, like a ton of bricks. And um, you know, I was kind of expecting something to go kind of that route as soon as they started explaining what was going on with the pre-eclampsia, but I wasn't expecting necessarily for it to escalate that quickly or for a hospital stay. Of course, I didn't know what the protocol was. So I think I was just kind of having to disconnect a little bit so that I could stay sane and helpful in any way. So that's kind of kind of what I did to kind of hold it together, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because you had days, days in the hospital. How many days were you there total before induction? 12.
SPEAKER_04:Uh, I was there for 10 before induction and then two after.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay. Wow. And so Magnus is born about 34 weeks.
SPEAKER_05:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Um, and you know what? I was there with you, and I know that part of the story, of course. But he, you know, being at at Premi at that point, um, we now are looking at um a NICU stay, right? So um let's walk through that next chapter a little bit and what what that was like as he was there for a little while.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, um, I was we were told to just expect that he'd be there through his due date, which was six weeks, which I thought was insane because everybody I knew who had a baby in the NICU, they'd been they were told that they'd be released on their due date. Um, but they were only there for like a week or two weeks or three weeks.
SPEAKER_01:Shorter.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And so I had that expectation, and it probably made it a lot harder than it was because hoping for him to come home early. Uh-huh. He was um released five days after his due date. So we were we were in seven weeks in the NICU almost. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And how big was this little guy when he was born? How many inch did he weigh?
SPEAKER_02:He was four pounds. Like four pounds twelve ounces, I think. Yeah. Like sh under shine under five pounds or so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So cute.
SPEAKER_03:He was little.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, he was really little. And as soon as he was born, they were just, you know, kind of saying, hurry, cut the cord, and then put him on Andrea's chest for about two seconds, and then whisked him through the window to the NICU. So it was very, very brief and I think kind of traumatic a little bit.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so tell in the NICU, what were his goals? What is obviously a baby that young, or um, what did he need to work on uh developmentally? Like what were they white waiting for during that time he was in the NICU for him to be able to come home?
SPEAKER_02:I think mostly it was just making sure that he could hold his own O2 sacks okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:His blood oxygen was all right, and then just being able to feed okay. So he's a he's in the screeching phase. Yeah, he's in the screeching. He sounds like a dinosaur.
SPEAKER_01:He's a cute dinosaur.
SPEAKER_02:We like it. We like your vocalization.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. He's supposed to be napping, right?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he he doesn't care. So so as he's in the NICU, tell me a little bit about the cadence your life gets into as you're I know you there is a lot of trips to the hospital and visiting him after you're released. Tell us a little bit about that that little chapter of life.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um, so I was in the hospital for just a couple days after, so that was easier. But then when I was released, um I I had a really hard time being separated from him. Yeah. Um, and so I would go up twice a day and try and fit in work and everything in between. The U is not far from where we live, it's like six or seven miles, but it takes 20-25 minutes, depending on traffic. And so that, and then I would spend one or two hours with him. So it was it was a lot of time, yeah. Out of the day, um, to get there, but I didn't really feel like I had a choice. I felt like I really wanted to spend as much time with him as I could.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he's telling you his story, yeah. And that's his version.
SPEAKER_02:He's like, Yeah, that's the silver version. We need an interpreter.
SPEAKER_01:Do you want us to move him so he's not no, he's so fine. It's great. He's here.
SPEAKER_02:You can add your own baby sound effects, Lady.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. All part of the story.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Um, but uh oh, what else was I gonna say? Oh, they have care times, specific care times that they asked you to come for. And so it was kind of that was another challenge to kind of fit it all into their time structure. Like we could go outside of care times, but if I wanted to be there for his feeds or or diaper changes or anything, I had to we had to be there at those specific times. And so everything in our life um just had to fit around that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, revol. What were the times that you normally went?
SPEAKER_04:Uh it changed regularly too.
SPEAKER_02:So 10, 2, and 6 or something.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, roughly sometimes that or it was 12, 3, and 6, they were every three hours, but he was moved like eight times during his stay in the NICU, and almost every time he moved, we had new care times. So that was also hard.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, they were doing construction in the hospital at the time, and so he had to get moved around a lot.
SPEAKER_04:Well, and also depending on the needs of the other babies in the NICU, he was moved to a less critical area, and his development, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like when he needed less care. Yeah. And how was the staff at the at the NICU? How was working with the staff and the people you got to know?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, they were all very friendly. I think they were kind, um, most of them were informative. Um, but some of the difficulty, I think, just had to do with um continuity of care, where um some of the staff may have done things slightly differently, especially when he started getting some exfoliations on his bottom.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, just how they would treat it would differ depending on who you talk to. And so it felt like there was a little bit of inconsistency. Um, and it is a teaching hospital, so you know, there's a lot of people that are kind of observing and in and out and uh involved in the care where otherwise it may not be the case.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, and tell me, like, you know, obviously he's your baby, but living his first few weeks in the NICU. Um, I know we had talked before a little bit about that. That was kind of a challenge too, right? Like some a lot of choices are being made for you. Um, and I remember that that's gonna be hard too.
SPEAKER_04:Um yeah, there was a lot of things that I mean, in my perfect plan, I would have breastfed him from day one and um not had him have any formula or anything. Um which is not bad, it's just what I wanted for him. Yeah, and your goals. Um luckily my milk came in quickly, but um, they had to fortify his feeds with formula, and they didn't like they didn't ask us any questions about any of that, they just did what they were gonna do. So the brand that they use of fortification and whatever supplements he needed, and um even the diaper brand, like or diaper ointments, like so many things we would have been involved in making the decision on that.
SPEAKER_02:We weren't able to you know, we weren't necessarily hypercritical of a lot of the things that they were doing, as we knew they'd be temporary, and we weren't you know overly worried about, um I guess you know, because we have more of a holistic approach to things, and so but you know, given our backgrounds, I'm kind of somewhere in between on it where I completely understand how hospitals operate and you know the protocols that they follow and kind of the standards of care that they have. So it wasn't you know so off-putting per se, but there were some aspects of it that were frustrating, probably because we'd never gone through it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's all new, and it wasn't anything close to what you were hoping, right? As you shift you shifted your plan shifted. Um, tell me, like in those he was in the NICU for um seven weeks. You got to see him a couple times a day, which was quite a sacrifice of time, of course. Um, when you guys are at home, like how were you supporting each other during that time than you were like with overnights and things like what were your particular like Joaquin might have different uh needs or worries um than Andrea? Like, what was that time like for you guys at the home?
SPEAKER_02:I think we were just so tired that we just you know, outside of taking care of normal day-to-day things for ourselves, we didn't really uh necessarily, I don't know, did we have any really hard hard time otherwise?
SPEAKER_04:Or was it kind of well, I mean I was having a hard time. I think it was a different experience for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I guess it was a little bit of a different experience for me because I was still trying to manage work and doing everything else at home. So I was probably probably more absorbed in that. Um, of course, maybe we'll get to it later, but we had frustrations probably over just the timelines of when he'd be released. So I think that was our biggest point of difficulty, but I don't think that we necessarily had to um we didn't have, I guess, interpersonal problems with each other because of that, or you know, I would say our support was probably a normal baseline. Cool, good in terms of supporting each other.
SPEAKER_04:Good, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Would you say that?
SPEAKER_04:Or yeah, you can totally throw me under the bus if you're no, I think I think I I think because it was a little different for me. Um, probably just based on hormones.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That and recovery, right? You were recovering from birth too.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So like having to get up in the night to pump so that I could have like so I could send milk to the hospital and yeah, trying to recover physically. Which was just yeah, it was a lot, it was nice, I guess, to not have to worry about the baby trying to recover physically, but um, I think it was more of a toll on my mental and emotional health.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, to be separated from him. But I feel like kind of your Joachim reaction to um that situation or stress in general is to just kind of work and like put your head down and get other stuff done. And so for me, I was just kind of more just experiencing that part on my own, yeah, which is not any fault of yours at all. It was just a different experience.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you're having different experiences, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And on that note, I've remarked to Andrea that my experience was different because in the in the NICU, my so I usually went once a day because I had work. Um, so I'd go after work. And my interaction with him, you know, other than changing his diaper and doing a few things, feeding him a bottle is pretty limited. And I don't know if other um fathers experience that or other you know partners of those who have children. But if I because I had limited interaction with him, and because um his ability to interact with me was limited, he was just sleeping most of the time.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And um not showing a lot of you know what would probably be considered a lot of personality and so on and so forth. I felt like my ability to bond with him was kind of muted or delayed. And because I didn't, you know, have the experience that Andrea did carrying him for nine, almost nine months and giving birth. Um it's just different. And I don't know if that's something that other men have in common in that experience, or if that's I'm just weird in that way, I guess. But it's totally different now. Now that I know him and can be around him in somewhat normal circumstances, I feel like our relationship is totally different.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. It's a lot about mom and baby in the hospital, right? And in the NICU, it's especially when someone's breastfeeding, we're getting a lot of um uh mom time in the hospital, skin to skin, and the cares are more with with the mom for sure, which can be kind of isolating as a dad. Like you're standing there, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, or sitting there and and you know, everybody's coming in doing their thing and so on.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and that part did kind of um strain our relationship a little bit because for me I wanted to spend as much time there as I could. And for him, he's like, I'm just watching this baby sleep going.
SPEAKER_01:He's like, What are we doing here?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, because I just felt like I couldn't do much with him or for him at that point.
SPEAKER_01:And then there's other pressing things in life, as life, like you said, with work, like it carries on, right? Like, um, there's things that need your attention outside the hospital, obviously. Yeah, that was hard. So, Andrea, tell us like breastfeeding wise, when did this little guy, when did he I mean, he's a champ at it now, but how did that go in the hospital and when was he able to, how'd the breastfeeding start with him?
SPEAKER_04:We tried pretty early on, maybe like even the second day he was there and he was not able to. Um, but we kept trying for the first few weeks, and he uh I don't think he even really latched really well for like man, I don't remember the timeline, it's all a blur, but yeah, I want to say it took a couple weeks. Um but I had to work with a lactation specialist quite a bit to help figure out how to get him to latch and to actually be drawing milk because I would feel like he would latch and then just probably just non-nutritive sucking for a lot of it. Um and then he he started kind of getting the hang of it, but then the hard part was trying to figure out how much to feed him through his NG tube. Right. Because we weren't sure how much he was getting from the breast, and that depending on the nurse and what part of the NICKI we were in, that was a little stressful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, a lot of different opinions from different different people on breastfeeding and uh its importance and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and I wanted to try and breastfeed every time I got there, every time I was there, which was twice a day, but sometimes it would have started his feed without me, or um sometimes it kind of felt like they were in a hurry and they didn't want to give me the time to try. Yeah, but most of the time they were great though, and they knew that it was a priority and the best thing for him. So they allowed me to, but he really didn't start breastfeeding well until he'd been home for a few weeks.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So even at the end of his Nick, you stay, he was still in the learning process. Okay. Yeah. But he's doing great now, it looks like. Yeah, he's great. Yeah. Awesome, awesome. So let's talk a little bit about it's coming time, right? He's getting closer to the due date. Um, we're looking at coming home. What was that process like?
SPEAKER_02:Well, so we were in an area of the U Hosp U of U Hospital, if I can mention that, called the Island. It's kind of supposed to be where um babies kind of go go to graduate, so to speak, and then they're you know released from the hospital. And so we got pretty excited that he moved into that area because they don't really have to have a lot of oversight, and uh, you know, there are fewer nurses and so on and so forth. Um, but essentially what had happened was, you know, at the end of that stay, we thought, oh, he's you know, he's going to go home. And then he ended up getting moved into the maternity wing uh where people recover. And I don't remember the exact apartment. Do you know? It was like a it was like a nursery, essentially. It was the nursery and the postpartum wing. The postpartum nursery. Um, but you know, they said, well, it's well, it's good that he's moving there because he needs less intervention. At that point, was he off the ng tube? Or he wasn't quite off the ng tube either. So he was still on a little bit of oxygen, still needed just a little bit to keep his sets up, not very much. I think it was like 0.3% room air. It was the most minimum before they you know would take him off of oxygen. And he was still feeding a little bit through an NG tube, and it just felt kind of defeating because we thought, oh, he's going home. And then it's like, oh no, he's still got another section that he's just kind of waylaid to. And a bunch of babies kept coming and going as the days went by, and we're like, when is he going to go? So we're just kind of waiting for him to get that um independence off of the uh O2 cannula and being able to get off the NG tube. And so that's kind of what they want. They want one or the other. Um, so it was it was also irritating, I think, because we constantly had rotating physicians in and out, a lot of them, you know, doing residency or learning, and everyone kind of had a different take on where he was at, and so on and so forth. So it kind of felt like a too many chefs in the kitchen scenario.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It was also super hard because he just he was like perfectly healthy.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Like he didn't have he didn't have any like developmental issues, or he wasn't sick. There wasn't anything like really wrong with him. Just waiting. Just waiting. And so yeah, watching babies come and leave and and or babies that had been next to him for a while go home was really, really hard because like I just felt like we could Yeah, he was great and we could probably figure out how to feed him and um, you know, keep him alive on our own. Yeah, yeah. But um it just got harder and harder and harder. That last move was really, really hard for us. The environment was super different.
SPEAKER_02:It's very cramped.
SPEAKER_04:Um the the nurses, it was like he'd never spent a day in the NICU before. Like they they didn't transfer, it felt like they didn't transfer any of his information over any of his care, like they just started fresh. Um, and so that on top of us thinking that he was going home, and then them telling us every day that he needs to hit these milestones for his feeds and his oxygen, and every day like he he got close or he'd hit them, and then the next day he would drop back down. And so it was just like it just became super hard like to to deal with that mentally and emotionally.
SPEAKER_02:Just felt like endless goalpost moving, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just keep moving the finish line, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, that is tough. Um uh and then feeling like parental autonomy, right? Like, yeah, you're not in charge, which I mean, this is our kid, this is our baby, um, and a lot of other decisions. And that's obviously we're so grateful for the skills and the compassion of staff and any NICU, but yeah, once they start getting healthier and you and it's hard to um see other policies and the protocols that they're upholding, sometimes that's difficult to understand. Like, oh, he seems fine. Like, can we, you know, take him home? We do get very ready for that for sure.
SPEAKER_04:And they did, they did like listen to us when we said, Oh, his diaper rash was improving when they were using this. And they said, We've never heard of that, but we can ask, and they got it, and they used it and it it helped them. So they did listen to us.
SPEAKER_01:Good, good, good. Because you want it to be a team approach, right? It should be obviously a team approach for your education. And you guys probably learned so much more. You're using different vocabulary than you have had before to use before, right? And G tubes and O2 states, and yeah, you guys learned you had a whole education that you didn't know you wanted to have about everything he did.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, even having worked in the hospital system, you know, in Utah, you know, I knew a lot, I knew a lot of medical terminology and so on and so forth, but there was a lot of new things that pertain to babies that I didn't know.
SPEAKER_01:So it's a steep learning curve, right? At a very emotional time as well. So it is, yeah. Yeah, and you're obviously incredibly invested um in outcomes and in the patient. So a couple couple other questions I want to explore. You mentioned, Andrea, um, other babies. Like you guys were there a while. Some people are there for weeks, weeks, weeks, right? Like some people there for 12 weeks, some people there for two days or two hours. There's different um stays in the NICU and for different reasons. Did you guys get to know anyone? Did you make any new friends as you um I mean you're you're in a similar time of life, other people doing a similar hard thing? Did you have a chance to get to know other parents in your visits to the hospital? We didn't really.
SPEAKER_04:I feel like um everybody was just kind of keeping to themselves. Yeah. Really? Focused on their kid. Yeah. Which I'm I was kind of surprised about. I thought, oh, I'm gonna be here for seven weeks. There's gonna be people I can um like commiserate with or feel supported by. But mostly people just kept to themselves and they would pull curtains around each area. Privacy and yeah, so you could do skin to skin or breastfeeding or whatever. And so I feel like that kind of cut it up a little bit, so there was less opportunity for interaction. But we were there and it's different because now everybody comes at the same time.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And so, yeah, we did see some couples repeatedly, but we just never really there was to know them.
SPEAKER_02:Was one instance where I did see somebody that I'd known previously, like, you know, five, ten years ago, or probably before that, probably ten years ago or longer. And I actually grew up with them in my hometown, and he was there, his wife was also, you know, delivering a premature child, um, with you know, probably worse, worse off than we were ultimately. But that was about the only time where I, you know, really interacted with somebody on that level, I think. Okay, probably more with the staff. Yeah, yeah, that's our connection. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah. And they're taking good care of him and yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, when we were moved into the island, which is like it's still part of the NICU, but it's kind of separate. All of a lot of the nurses that were on my team when I was admitted to the hospital were there. And so that felt like a good yeah.
SPEAKER_01:People you've seen before.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and who were invested in the health of the baby and and in my health. That was that was that felt like a good like connection and support there.
SPEAKER_01:Very cool, very cool. Yeah, so um tell me uh what as he's finally being able to come home. That was probably so exciting, right? Let's that the the day you've been waiting for, and then you get him home. What is that like to um, you know, he's seven weeks old, you've been pumping for seven weeks, you guys have been sleeping through the night for seven weeks, like bringing him home after such acute care and monitoring. What's it like to suddenly come home and have a baby with you?
SPEAKER_02:It was like, wow, they let us take him home. Are you serious? They trust us, they try they trust us, yeah. They trust us that we can do this, and there's no beeping monitors at home, right?
SPEAKER_01:It's quieter, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and for Andrea, I mean, you can say that you probably felt like gosh, I have to worry about him more now.
SPEAKER_04:It was super scary, yeah. But in the NICU, I'm like, this is my baby, I shouldn't be separated from him, let me just take him home. And then we got him home, and I was like, I don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like is he okay? And yeah, I don't know how to do it. Because you guys probably watched you watched all his his vitals and his stats for constantly every day, and now there's nothing no information like that, right?
SPEAKER_02:Well, sort of, we have an aloe. We got an aloe, which helps a lot. Yeah, too sounds.
SPEAKER_04:Um but it it's not it wasn't just that, it's like am I doing something that's causing him harm that I and I can't tell. Yeah, you know, like we were just we because we weren't that involved in his care in the NICU, it was like We were, right?
SPEAKER_01:You were very involved, but your their role is gonna obviously be different than yours.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, so we were kind of like their assistants, it felt like not for time, not his parents, yeah. Yeah, and so then being all of a sudden the only person in charge and trying to figure that out was really hard. Um, I I struggled the first several nights, had barely slept the first night. Um, just like not like trying to listen to him breathe. Um and just with all that, like, how can I be in charge of this? I don't know what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, but that only lasted for maybe like a week or so, and then we started to get into our rhythm. Yeah. And yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think for my own sanctity. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Go ahead. Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:You were gonna say, but um, just like gaining trust in yourself as parents, right? When yeah, you hadn't been, you know, the skill level of care that he needed was primarily someone else's, and now it's yours when he gets to that certain point. And yeah, just gaining confidence in yourself as parents, which of course you're gonna be amazing at it. But yeah, watching seven weeks a lot of other care is hard.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think, like you said, having the trust is important, at least to me, because I just don't have the nervous system capacity to worry about all of the things that aren't there necessarily, you know what I mean? Yeah, all the what all the what ifs, yeah. So I think I uh more you know, sooner than later put a lot of trust just into the natural processes that he goes through and that that it would be okay. And that, you know, I needed to intervene occasionally rather than feeling like I had to prevent or try to preempt all of these different things.
SPEAKER_01:And knowing that you have a healthy baby, right?
SPEAKER_02:Like he's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He's gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_02:Right, just trusting that, yeah, assuming assuming the best, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's that is a hard a hard place to be. Well, as we kind of wrap up your story, um, I wanna uh like you know, you started as you Andrea, as you said in the beginning, like you were planning a home birth, you did a lot of cautious, careful, intentional preparation for that, ended up in a very different place. Um, and what an incredible journey to go on, right? And not a journey you chose, not a journey you loved, and and bittersweet, right? Like a lot of gratitude, a lot of mourning, um, a lot of um being grateful for some things, you know. This some babies, you know, are are much worse, like you said, your friend's baby was such so much worse off. Um, but yeah, talk to speak a little bit, if you will, as we wrap up about the the bittersweetness of your of your journey.
SPEAKER_02:You want me to go first and then you can end? Yeah. Okay. Um I don't know. I I'm I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful that he's here. Um, you know, even if I would have liked it to go differently, it's also okay that it didn't, at least from my perspective. And so I'm sure that there'll be therapy bills later, but yeah, you know, for for especially Andrea, but maybe me too. But I it's kind of in the rear view mirror now, and it's okay. Yeah, if that makes any sense to say that say it that way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_02:At least as far as I can tell.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, a lot of times after we do hard things, um it takes some time, obviously. Sometimes like, okay, that you know, we did that. Maybe it wasn't it was bad, but it wasn't that bad. So yeah, sometimes perspective from the rearview mirror can be very valuable. Andrew, how about you? What's the what's your thought as you've looked back on this journey since last six months, really, six or seven, if you look at even when you started getting high blood pressure readings.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um, well, I think the first thing is that I'm just grateful that I had a team of people who were watching out for my health because if if we hadn't caught it, I don't know what would have happened.
SPEAKER_01:And so And that starts with your home birth midwife, right? Your or your right.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um so that that's kind of bittersweet to me because it's obviously not what I wanted, but I'm super grateful that like we both came out of it healthy and okay. My sister uh had an eclamptic seizure and um ended up having to have a C-section while she was unconscious and all this stuff, so I know that it could have been a lot worse. So I'm grateful for that. But also I do feel like even though it was a hard transition to bring him home, I do feel like we learned a lot kind of what we were talking about um for how to take care of him. We kind of had somebody show us for several weeks.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, like how much he needed to eat and how to care for certain things. So I think that was helpful. And I think that um gave us more time. Yeah, we got some time to adjust and learn and um yeah. So I think it was I think there was a lot of good that came out of it, even if it was almost my worst case scenario.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very hard. Those kind of journeys aren't the ones we choose for sure. Yeah, it's hard. Wow. Well, thanks so much for sharing your story. I know that's a tough one as we met way last year, um, you know, planning for something different. And um, thank you for for sharing your story and letting me, you know, last year kind of be along for part of that and um witness from the sidelines of that. And you what an incredible team you guys make. What an incredible couple and how resilient you are. And look at that cute little boy, like how incredibly strong and resilient he is. Like, he's pretty perfect. So it's interesting, like they're worth it, right? The babies, babies are they're worth the work we put into them for sure.
SPEAKER_02:For sure, yeah, yeah. He's so fun and funny and cute and has so much personality.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so cute. We had no idea what it would feel like to be parents, but I've never loved anything more in my whole life.
SPEAKER_01:That's true, yeah. It's a big kind of love for sure.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, sure. Cool, and he's doing really well. He's like hitting all of his milestones, I think before his gestational age.
SPEAKER_01:So very cool, Jimmy. So for adjusted age, he's like above average. That's I think he's the head. Yeah, yeah, he's very cool. I'm not surprised. Yeah. Awesome, cool, cool. Well, hey, thanks for being with us today and sharing your story. And we want to just wrap up this episode of the Ordinary Doula podcast with our um our challenge and our our, you know, as we always say, please make a human connection. Go out and make a human connection today to help the life of someone else, and you'll lift yourself as well. Thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks, Angie.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Doula podcast with Angie Rosier, 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 birthday.