Ep 180. Birth Story: Planned Homebirth After History of Preterm Labor

Welcome back to another installment of our birth story series! Today we chat about navigating the road of planning a homebirth after experiencing preterm labor, both emotionally and clinically. We reminisce on creating community through the midwifery model of care, and some major benefits we've seen from practicing midwifery as a team.

00:00 Introduction to Kelly and Tiffany

01:04 Diving into Today's Show

01:13 Birth Story Introduction

02:28 Current Reads and Recommendations

08:38 Listener Reviews and Feedback

14:08 A Memorable Birth Experience

19:37 Reflecting on Midwifery and Home Birth

20:52 Understanding Cervical Cerclage

22:01 Managing Preterm Labor and Pregnancy Surveillance

24:24 Challenges with Cerclage Removal

27:41 Navigating Personal Challenges During Birth

30:01 A Special Birthday Birth

32:26 Postpartum Care and Reflections

35:03 The Importance of Midwifery Partnership

37:35 Resources for Birth Workers and Final Thoughts

Links We Chat About

Midwife Kelly's Current Read

Midwife Tiffany's Current Read

Sustainability in Birth Work

Birth Worker Audit Course

Affiliate Information for Birth Education Course

Our Monthly Membership: 

Our Weekly Newsletter

Our Childbirth Education Course, use code RADIANT10 for 10% off

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to catch every episode. Follow us on Instagram for extra education and antics between episodes at: @beautifulonemidwifery

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to at Home with Kelly and Tiffany, where we share powerful tools, exciting education, and relatable views about holistic health, physiological birth, and thriving in the female body. We are home birth midwives in sunny San Diego. Passionate about the alternatives that give women control and confidence in health, in birth and in life. We've poured a lot of love into creating very in depth and high value offerings. A monthly membership, a physiological birth course, and holistic guides for the women who really want to dive all the way in. But this podcast. We want to bring zero cost information about health and natural birth and make these important topics accessible always. Your support of the show is also zero cost and means everything to us. When you leave a review, share an episode and join our newsletter. It really helps us keep this space open, ad free and full of honest, valuable conversations. Now let's dive into today's show. Welcome back to the at home with Kelly and Tiffany podcast. I am Kelly. I'm Tiffany, and we are sharing one of our favorite things today, which is a birth story. We have loved sharing them. We've loved the feedback that we get from sharing them. I think it's incredible to be able to share things like this. In any space because the more that you hear about birth, about real birth, about how birth really can happen and flow, especially at home, I think the better because we have separated ourselves from birth in so many different spaces and being able to hear about it, see it, read about it, listen to it, all of that, the more access we have to it, the better. And so we love being able to share this kind of stuff. And looking forward to chatting about the one today. Yeah, I was just telling Kelly before we started recording. This is an uneventful birth. We have lots of talk about adjacent to the, to the birth. There's always something to talk about, right in midwifery care. But the birth itself, I was just like really digging in the chart, looking really? Is that all that happened? Pretty much. The baby just came out and then we left, done, and done. It was good. But before we dive in. Kelly, I have I have an icebreaker for us and I have a review to read. So why don't you kick us off? My question for you today is, what are you currently reading? Because we are just, I think my, one of my favorite things that we both do is make time for. Reading for pleasure and getting to pass books back and forth. We both have similar tastes in nonfiction. I mean fiction, well nonfiction also, but specifically fiction. What are you currently reading? And then I'll share what I'm reading right now. Yeah. So I've been through quite a few books lately and. Caveat. It hasn't always been this way. Right. For a while we were reading because we had to, for school for a while, we weren't reading because kids stuff, you know, and all of that. But being able to carve out some time to read, even if it's just, I mean, it's part of my nighttime routine and sometimes it's, I, I run outside and I take a 20 minute break and read or whatever. But depending on what season you're in, this is something that potentially you can weave in, but also don't feel bad if you can't. But currently I am reading and I'm only like, I don't know, 50 pages into it, but I'm into it. It's called Lady Tan's Circle of Women. And it is historical fiction based way back when. And it is, it is a fascinating story about like Chinese culture back, you know, in like the 14 hundreds at this point is where we are and I am loving the storyline and we're weaving. My mom gave the book to me'cause she goes, oh, there's birth stuff in it, right? So she's always like, oh yeah, you might like that. But the story of midwifery. Back then and what that was looked like in the community and how they managed women's just issues and how they viewed that and whether it was a blessing or a curse and, you know, all, all of like these very different pieces of the culture. I'm loving learning some of those pieces or being reminded of some of them. There's like an entire underlying thing of foot binding and all of that. It's just, there's so many pieces of the story that are really compelling. So. I can't tell you that. I say, yes, you should read this book, because I am not super far into it, but that's where I'm at right now. I don't always read birth related things. This is sort of birth adjacent, I suppose. But I'm, I'm really enjoying it. I think because of that historical fiction connection to it. Awesome. Yes, I'm, that is just kind of our thing is his, the historical fiction piece and people's stories that like, it feels like it could have actually happened and usually the woman is the main character and just living through her experience and you know, trying to understand that in context of like. This someone lived an experience similar to this is just cool. I mean, it kind of goes along with birth storytelling, understanding women's stories, right, and telling stories and yeah, under just, just learning and understanding through other people's stories is so powerful. What you told me last week. Hey, I just barely started this book and you're gonna love it. And I'm just like, okay, hurry up and read it. I'm ready. I'm ready for it when you are done. But I'm reading the book that you gave me last a couple weeks ago. The Lion Women of Tehran, I think is what the title is. And a little bit when we do, you and I do historical fiction, we're usually looking for like World War II or maybe World War I sometimes. But this one is set in, this one's set in like the sixties to the maybe late seventies or something. Well, that's how far I've gotten in the book so far, and it's set and I ran around, the communist and feminist political movements in that country. And the following the lives of these two women who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, have different ambitions, have different family structures and styles, and kind of these two paths that beautifully converged in friendship as adolescents and. Grow apart and come back together. And now I'm at the part in the book where they're starting to come back together in adulthood after a lot of relational and personal life trauma. And I can already see how the story is getting weaved in for them to reconnect in adulthood. And I see the. I see the victory in that for their relationship, but also for the political pieces too, in that, in, you know, in that country. And it's just, it's cool. It's really cool to, to be learning about. Historical pieces of just an well, and it's current, it's, it's related to what is happening in our world now in some ways, and I'm, you know, somewhat un uneducated about some of those pieces. I can't know everything. I, I mean, I'm very careful to not. Take in too much current event information because that would be overwhelming. You can listen to our last episode about adrenal fatigue. That was not a tip we provided, but we should have boundaries around information and how your body responds to that. But yeah, been, it's been really cool. So. Maybe we should keep sharing what we're reading if our listeners are interested, because we're pretty good about circling through some, some great ones. And we have a, we do have a list of books that we've shared with our Instagram followers before that are birth, like birth books with a lot of birth in them. So the birth junkies that wanna hear more birth stories and getting to get, getting to feed that a little bit through literature might be, might be a fun thing to emphasize at some point in the future. Yeah, I'll, I'll link the ones that we mentioned too in the show notes just in case you're like, oh, that actually sounds kind of intriguing again, both. I finished Tiffany's book, I recommend it. But we haven't fully fi we haven't fully finished them. So putting that as a caveat in case something crazy happens and it takes a turn. You can't blame, you can't blame me. But it has I I agree. Yeah. If they're not in the show notes Yes. We didn't end up recommending them. Exactly. Pulled that recommendation right back. Yes. We have a five star review for well, the, okay. The handle is a number. Which I understand you want it to be really anonymous, but it creeps me out a little bit. It's a little too sci-fi for me personally. But if you are 2 0 1 3 9 5, we are reading your review on the air. It's a be lovely review. We will buy you a drink if you tell us that you heard us, listen us, us if you. Heard us read your review. This is what she says. If you haven't given this podcast a listen and you are a lady, you have been missing out, do yourself and your body a favor and hit follow. I love when they include the call to action and the reviews. Thank you so much. I can't believe it has taken me this long to get around to writing a review, but I have been listening for years. This is a common thread, so if you are out there and you're thinking, yes, it's been, I've been listening for years. I can't believe I haven't written a review yet. That's all of these ladies actually ask of me. You too can join this new wave of women leaving. Reviews after being listeners for years. Okay. She says so much so. About being, about having listened to us for so long, so much so that my husband very much knows your names and has even mentioned your resources or education pieces to other ladies that he works with our councils. That's amazing. That's amazing. Your husband can leave a review too. Why, why would we stop with our actual listeners? I literally feel like you two have been my older sisters helping me navigate through womanhood. I appreciate the humor, canor and random rabbit holes that you go down, that it truly does feel like a fun and informative chat with friends. I found wine and GYN when I was engaged to my now husband, and it helped me get comfortable with my body as well as gave me helpful information and perspective for intimacy. Through this podcast, I was also introduced to steaming saunas, red light, and vitamins. That all helped me with me managing and tracking my cycle as well as improving my overall. Kelly and Tiffany also played a huge role in helping me optimize my fertility, and we were blessed to get pregnant on our first try. We then went on to find a midwife near us who we love and eventually had an amazing home birth, and are now enjoying snuggles with our sweet two month old baby boy. Thank you both so much for the empowering education you provide on the podcast, social media, and your website. Very sweet. I think that's like a mic drop. I'm like, what else do you say? That is so cool. I cannot believe that we get to be a part of stuff like this. Like that's so, I know. So rad. I love it. I know. Hmm. Warm and fuzzies. It's incredible. Yeah. I can't, next time we say, should we, do we need to return to the podcast? Is it worth it? Is that, is that a good investment in time for our community? The answer is yes, because women are, women are pursuing. Home birth for themselves, changing the trajectory of how their family views and experiences birth, and we've done that more than once. I can rest in that, that, that some way that we've shared information about birth has inspired women to look at alternatives and that is so cool to me. Yeah. I mean, honestly, even if all of this was just for 2 0 1 3 9 5 to have this experience, I would be like, well, that was, that was worth it. You know what I mean? Like that's, it's incredible. Absolutely. It's really cool. Okay, so, okay. So ladies, our goal with our reviews completely arbitrary, but goal nonetheless, is to have as many ratings as episodes that we have. So even if you can't leave a review, go on and just rate us. Go on and just click five stars real quick. If you scroll to the bottom of the app, you can see the review information right there. It's really easy to access. Right now we have 161 ratings, and this is our hundred and 80th episode, so we only need. 19 of you listening to go rate and catch us up so that we can, I don't know, maintain this goal. It's gotta be important to everyone, as important as it is to us. It must be. I was wondering if you were gonna do your math correctly that quickly, about how many more we needed. I was like, oh, I wonder what she's gonna say. Mm-hmm. Yeah. While I was talk, I was doing math while I was talking and I was thinking. Is that the right number? And I did it. I think I got it right. I think you did, and I'm really proud of you. One time we were doing math on the podcast and this was EPIs many episodes ago, and the. The way that we both did. The math was so wrong, but we didn't catch it, and it was our virtual assistant at the time who was helping us in post-production. She's like, I don't, I don't know how to bring this up, but the way that you guys did the math was so wrong. I don't know if you wanna rerecord it or cut it out or We were like cut it all out. I don't care if it makes no sense jumping from one thing to the next, just please s spare us that embarrassment. That was great. That was funny. We're, we're homeschooling moms. What do you expect? Mm-hmm. Kid. That's what a calculator's for My word. I love it. I have to do math in my head. Simple arithmetic in my head. Come on, how dare you. Okay, let's jump into this birth. I'm excited to talk about it. I think probably the, some of the more interesting pieces of taking care of this particular client happened in her prenatal time, but going through her chart again, of course was so sweet. Brought me right back to that. This is a family that we've ended up doing several births with most recently. Their fourth baby last year, which was just, I mean, wonderful. There, there are some women who were made to birth, and I know that that's a really silly thing for a midwife to say, right? So let me, I was like, who, where are we going? Where are we going with this? I know, I know. I don't want all women are made to birth. Of course. Like that is what we are. We, we were created and designed and it, that, that our bodies are made for, that all women's bodies are made for that. Some women truly have an easier time with it, and I think sometimes that is a huge, a huge contributing factor to ease with. It can be. Preparation, education model of care. I mean, setting all of those things up absolutely tends to lend to ease with it. Some women do all those things and they have a really difficult birth, right? I think this particular mom is just physically, biologically, genetically. One of the women who just has easier times with birth. And I think we need to tell those stories too. I think women sometimes who have really smooth, easy births that they didn't have to work really hard for. Feel a little bit like, I don't know if my stories is valid as the woman who had to work so hard, you know, for her outcome. So I think that's just worth mentioning. The other sweet thing about. How our practice has developed and we get to see that through working with families multiple times. Is for the most part right now. While Kelly and I are really intentional about keeping our practice load smaller we're really interested in taking care of women who are in our direct community and in our direct lives. And, just a, you know, being able to take care of people who are our friends and and so that makes it extra sweet too, to look back on this birth from several years ago, recognizing we were just meeting this family and, also, we just had them over for dinner a couple of days ago and they gave us all the stomach bug that interaction. And I was like, life and community. You're very much still a part of our lives and enjoying your season of, of family life. And so. That idea of community midwifery, that idea of maintaining that connection and maintaining that proximity, we can't do that with everybody. It's not possible. But that is a really rewarding piece of what we get to choose to do sometimes. And I remember this client specifically, she didn't feel very drawn towards home birth necessarily. She had, she came to us pregnant with her second baby. She had her first baby in a whole other country where they were doing like some church planting work. She moved here around 20 weeks in her second pregnancy, and she didn't establish care with us until about 22 weeks. So more than halfway through her pregnancy, she wasn't, say she, she had a, a completely. Unmedicated vaginal water birth in this other country and was like, yeah, that really worked for me. I thought that was cool. It was like, that was great. I would like to do that again. But she wasn't like, I've gotta have midwives and I've gotta do home birth. But what she did say is. I've gotta find somebody here in my new home that I can anchor to. I have to find community, I have to find relationship. I have to start developing friendships and relationships and being intentional about that in community. And so midwifery is one way to do that. And we don't ever talk about making a decision towards midwifery like that, but it's valid and it's cool and it's. It's a huge part of what like we're here for in, in professional and personal life, and so I just think that's worth mentioning because there's more benefits to midwifery care than. Just being able to have your baby at home or people leaving you alone or the autonomy and you know all that. Yes, it is interesting too'cause since you mentioned she was in another country for her first and had this like great hospital birth experience and she came here and was like. So I've been researching and it doesn't seem like hospitals do, like, can offer the same thing that I got in my previous country. And we were like, that is a good assessment of the differences in that care. You know, just offerings of what is here versus there. And so she was like, wow, that's really interesting. Like trying to, trying to manage being pregnant, wanting this specific birth experience, coming to a new place. Like all of the things that she was managing. Looking back on that, I don't think I really realized it in the moment. Looking back on that, that's so much on your plate to be like trying to figure out and wanting to do that relatively quickly. So it was sweet to see that she caught the vision of midwifery care and home birth as quickly as she did because she was sold out very quickly on it. Like, she was like, oh, I see what I see what we're doing here together. And yes, like this is, this is what was for me. This is, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. And now they're one of the most home birth families we know. They're like lending their birth tub out to other clients of ours and. Always singing the praises of how cool it is to have your baby at home. But I remember having some serious conversations with them where they're like, okay, so since we're so unfamiliar with this, like, is this safe? How can, how, what do you, how do, how is this okay to have a baby in your home? And yeah, so there's still like a bit of a learning curve there. But she did come in with a little bit of unique history. She experienced. Miscarriage before she had her first viable pregnancy. In that first viable pregnancy, she experienced preterm labor and had a cervical cerclage placed. Kelly, you wanna share with our readers real, or readers, our listeners real quick, what cervical cerclages and what, how that's used? Yeah, so basically the idea is that it's a, it's like sewing, right? We're sewing the cervix together, basically with a little stitch saying. Okay, cervix, we think that you might want to soften and open more, or like earlier than you should. So we're gonna help remind you that you're supposed to stay closed. There is some research for it. There's some research that is against it. That is, it is certainly an option that's out there. But that was what they decided to do after their first thinking their experience kind of, made them say like, yeah, we wanna do everything we can to keep our baby in as long as humanly possible. It doesn't really sound like necessarily she got a lot of education on the option to forego that also. But she also seemed like, she was like, no, this is, this is perfectly acceptable for me. So that was what they decided. Right, so that, I think it's just more standard in the country that she came from because they were really quick to place it in her first pregnancy. So then they used it prophylactically in her second pregnancy. At 15 weeks, they just placed the cerclage, and then because of that history we decided to do some. More surveillance throughout her pregnancy through ultrasound. Just checking how the, how the cervix was behaving. There was a little bit of shortening that happened that was concerning when you see the trend towards shortened cervix in pregnancy. But there was no dilation in the actual cervical canal, so that could just be a norm for her. And then I mentioned that we took care of her in subsequent pregnancies when we laid out our, our information, you know, in other pregnancies with her about whether or not we should place that, that cerclage prophylactically or like, you know, it's kind of hit or miss with whether this is actually helpful or not. And she decided to take, the risk, quote unquote, risk with not placing the cerclage in subsequent pregnancies. And I think she actually did better with some of those preterm labor symptoms without the cerclage being placed. So I don't know. I'd said that's something to weigh the pros and cons out of. Also, she was on progesterone in this pregnancy from 15 to 32 weeks because of that history of preterm labor. And she actually did have like a lot of Braxton Hicks and pelvic pressure throughout her pregnancy. Lots of activity that, you know, she was constantly trying to decide. Of course there's like a mental, emotional component of this too, right? Like, is this the beginning of preterm labor? Do I need to pay attention to this? Is this just my body being kind of hyperreactive? How do I support it? And. And that is, that can be a really normal and relatively low risk piece of taking care of somebody in midwifery care. We can be managing those things and monitoring those things and giving a lot of attention to some of those pieces in order to keep things normal. And in this case we did, we were able to do that. Yeah. It's, it's always the balance, right, of figuring out like, what exactly are you feeling and not wanting to say, oh, that's so common, you're fine. Versus. Being on alert versus, you know, like being overly one way or the other and trying to figure out what the client wants. All of that. I remember thinking, oh, we're really balancing like a few things here. But I thought it was really fascinating. So we did a lot of research. I, we had never taken a circlage out, so we can't place a circlage, but we can un, you know, un snip the thread that is keeping the circlage together. And so we did some research on that and I was like, this is very straightforward. All of the information I read, I'm like, we understand where the cervix is, we understand what we're going to see, all of that. And so at her home visit, we're like, and we'll also just remove the cerclage now that you're within dates. Let's like see what happens. I didn't take into account the fact that she got her cerclage placed in a different country and it was much more involved and. Confusing to look at, and I was like, there's no legitimate place where I can, like, where we can actually snip this without some, more tools or something. Like we just simply can't do this at home. And we tried. We like really we're looking, we're really trying to like navigate what we could possibly do. And I remember feeling like, oh man. I can't believe, we couldn't get that done for her. And feeling a little disappointed in myself of like, man, I couldn't figure that out. We referred her to an OB for, to remove it, who also had a lot of trouble. Was like, I've never seen it done like this before. And I remember thinking. Okay, few. Yes, we made the right clinical call. Yes, it was more confusing than we all anticipated. So that felt really good. But she did go in, she got it removed and she went on with her pregnancy for a little while longer. And then eventually went into labor. Yeah. Yeah. I we're always really trying not to look like incompetent idiots in general, so it felt really validating. Sometimes easier. Yeah. Yeah. I, there's been a couple of situations like that before where we're like, we could be really off base here. This could be the simplest thing that we. Don't have a ton of experience in. But yeah, it is validating when someone else is like, yeah, this is actually really complicated. And that was funny to read in the notes too, because we had done all the research on the certain type of cerclage and how to remove it, and we had what we thought was the right equipment. And then in the notes I'm, the way that we worded it, it was like really funny. But stressful too, because her first baby, she had around 38 weeks or something, and this home visit was at 37 weeks. So we're just thinking, well, we'll remove the cerclage then. But if she goes into labor with a cerclage on her cervix, that could be potentially damaging to that tissue and interrupt her labor. Her first baby. Her, her active labor was like six hours or something, so we're like anticipating another. Really straightforward labor and not having a ton of time in order to figure it out. So we had to tell her, if you go into labor before you have the cerclage removed, you need to go to the ER immediately and demand that they remove it and let them know what's going on so they can get it out as soon as possible. And that's, that's a sucky thing to have to tell somebody, Hey, your entire birth plan is gonna be potentially messed with because of this one little funky. Piece. I dunno. We learned a lot. We learned a lot. This, this these first couple years of practice. It's, it's good to look back on and see how much we learned. But let's fast forward to the birth here a little bit. This was an interesting circumstance. I know in our last birth story we were talking about. There were some personal things going on in our home and family life that were kind of hard to navigate and made things complicated. And this birth was a couple of months? No, several months later. Maybe three or four months later. And it was another really messy personal thing. What do you wanna share about how you were unavailable for this birth suddenly? So it made me so thankful that we do this together because no matter if one of us like got sick or had something going on, we always knew. Like the person who is in labor will get somebody in with them to support them. That they know that they love, that they have met a ton of times. Like that felt really good. Right. And we, I always thought like, oh, in the case of two people having their babies at once, right? But so this mom was pregnant. My son had come down with what I thought was food poisoning. And so I was like, well, that's fine. You know, like, we'll just deal with that. But then we were dealing with it for like a couple days and I am someone who is slow to like bring them in somewhere. But was finally like, oh no, I need to like actually bring you in. Turns out we had to go to Children's Hospital. Turns out they could not figure out what was wrong with him. It was the first night that we were, I think it was the first night we were staying there at the hospital. We ended up there for almost a week. He had surgery, all of these other things that came along with that. But the first night we were there, I, you know, I texted Tiff. Okay, we're actually having to stay just overnight, but obviously ended up longer. So we just need somebody else on call for us tonight. That's it. I'm sure in my head I'm like, is tonight gonna be the night? Yeah, right. But I'm like sleeping on this uncomfortable co on a floor of a children's hospital and I had forgotten to turn like my phone, you know, off, but I was still awake because we were sharing it with another, anyway, it was a whole story. Anyway, I saw her name pop up on my phone at like two something in the morning and I was like. Oh no. Like I don't get, I was like, I don't get to be there. I don't get to support my person. Just hoping all those details kind of came together, but also just trusting that it would, and I remember thinking when they called, I was like, oh, Tiffany's gonna have a birthday buddy, baby.'cause I remember it was like very early the morning of your birthday when she did go into labor. Yeah. It was the first and so far only. Baby that's been born on my birthday, and so that's just extra special. That's just so sweet. And that I get to share a birthday. This, this particular child doesn't care that we share a birthday. I always bring it up to her every single year, and she just looks at me like, okay, whatever. But I share. The mom's birthing day with her, that's a little bit more meaningful and sweet. And so it is special. But yeah, so she, so here, her birth story is at 39 weeks now. She's had her cerclage out for about a week. Thank God her contractions start around 11:00 PM the night before. She called us at two 15. We went right away.'cause we thought your first birth was six hours. We'll probably come to you quickly. I called another backup midwife that we had both worked Kelly and I. It was, it was such a blessing. Kelly and I had both worked with this midwife. As students and we knew her very well and we knew her heart for midwifery and she was a perfect person to bring into this particular birth, and she was willing and she came in the middle of the night was lovely. And I arrived at the birth at two forty five. They're filling up the tub. The mom's coping really well. She starts pushing about a half an hour later, he, she pushes for about five minutes and her water breaks. The baby's head comes out. The baby is born. My notes say she had skin to skin in the tub. Her bleeding's normal. She had a four hour and 15 minute labor. Pretty incredible. And I'm thinking back to some of the, her subsequent bursts and they were relatively quick Also. In fact, I can't wait till we get till we share the third one'cause that one was so fast, so crazy fast. Kelly also didn't make it to that one either. I, not because, but the one after, not because I was unavailable, I just wasn't on call that week. I needed to preface. Yeah, and there's not a ton other, this was just a season, man. This was this particular like year where we were building our practice was a hole. It was a whole vibe. There was a lot going on. Yeah. I don't know how we did it. It was a lot. But then this, this particular postpartum was really straightforward. We moved her, she's, she hung out in the tub for about a half an hour. Then we moved her to the bed. As soon as she got up and out of the water, we noticed a separation gush. And that is usually like when bleeding's totally normal and there's just one gush that starts and stops. We call that a separation gush.'cause we're assuming it's the placenta coming off of the uterine wall and there's just a rush of blood that comes with that. And it just is an indicator that. This placenta is separating that we should see the fundus, you know, starting to, to move down. That we should see some cramping, some more pressure, and we can kind of coach her on that too. And she did form more, more pressure. And then the placenta came out let's see, 10 minutes after we moved her to the bed and she had that gush. We assessed her for tears, which she had none. I charted her total estimated blood loss was 400 ccs, which is very within the realm of normal, and there was nothing else to note. It was just a very straightforward, calm, sweet. Peaceful relatively quick, but not crazy experience. Yeah, and it was, it was cool being able to jump back into postpartum care and go and, you know, meet the baby and hear her version of the story and all of that, but just how, just how like impactful that experience was for them to ground them to. Where they were living now to the community that they were in, was really cool to see from the outside also. And so while they didn't get to be there for the birth itself, it was, it was cool to kind of continue that scaffolding piece. That continued to matter a lot to them as they kind of anchored themselves here in San Diego. And so, yeah, I mean, I love sharing stories like this when we're like, and guess what? There was nothing. There's nothing like. Crazy to highlight or whatever. So many of the birth stories that we've been sharing have been. The work that has been done before, or like things that were going on in pregnancy that we were managing or talking about or considering, and the birth moving forward and, you know, being straightforward. Of course that's not true for every, you know, birth that we will continue to share, but it's been kind of cool to remember. Oh yeah, man. We were really blessed as we were building our practice with building our skillset, building our protocols, all of that prenatally, and then seeing the, you know, the work the kind of the, the fruit of that labor in front of us with these straightforward births. Yeah, and I hope that the other thing that listeners kind of take away from us sharing these stories or just giving a peek into the clinical part of our practice is that we get to do it together. We get to have that partnership, we get to have that backup, and even when something comes up where somebody is unavailable or breaking into their mom's house to get their childcare secure and running late, and like those, like those freaking pieces that you cannot even plan for you, we still get to enjoy. The support and the backup and the clinical perspective and getting to work together. I mean, it, it puts two clinical brains on a situation. It provides lots of backup. It provides, lots of ways for us to debrief and, you know, think a little bit more critically about the care that we provide it. It makes it, you know, it provides accountability in that way. It makes us better midwives and it gives our clients. Even though we do have so many similar philosophical perspectives, we have a little bit different background and a little bit different ways of approaching things and strengths and weaknesses, and it just helps to provide a really well-balanced, well-rounded experience for our clients too. Not relying on just one. Midwife brain on things. And so I know we have a lot of listeners who are hopeful for midwifery for themselves one day or working through a midwifery path themselves. And that piece of having that partnership and that friendship inside of your clinical practice is invaluable. So much so that having experienced it this way. For so long, I'm not sure if I would ever practice solo. It does not sound appealing to me whatsoever, and I know that's the majority of midwives is that's what they do, and obviously it can be done. I just think it's been such a gift to witness it done differently and done in this way that feels so supportive and connected. For e for us, but also I agree completely with like the experience for our clients as well. And so that has been a huge piece. I'll actually put in our show notes for anybody who's. On that midwifery path, we have a guide to kind of sustainability in birth work. I'll put that in the show notes for you as well, just for you to consider as you are thinking about, even, even as a doula, right? Considering some of these birth work pieces and support and partnership and things like that, just to give you some things to consider and think about. Yeah, and we are always plugging our childbirth education course because that's the best resource that we have for a really in-depth comprehensive preparation for birth on all levels, whether that's in the hospital, with medication at home, completely physiological. That is the place where we want women to, to be truly equipping themselves for birth, but we also have an opportunity for birth workers to audit that course. And we even have an affiliate program for, for those out there who are interested in partnering with us and sharing this education model. So let's put that in the show notes too, Kelly, so that women who are interested in. In auditing the course as another professional or want to partner with us with affiliation, have the opportunity for that too, because we're, we just wanna make these resources as abundant as possible. And that is a great, a great way for everybody to kind of get the more holistic and physiological perspective of birth that we're always chatting about here and will. Continue to chat about. I can't believe we're so in the flow of weekly episodes. I'm really patting ourselves on the back here with this one. We are achieving that goal quite nicely and I can't wait to be back here again next Monday talking with you ladies about the next thing that I wanna talk about. 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