My Maine Birth - Diantha’s Ellsworth, Maine Birth Experience
My Maine Birth - Diantha’s Ellsworth, Maine Birth Story
Welcome to MyMaine Birth, a space where I share the real life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine. From our states biggest hospitals, to birth center births, and home births, every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated. From the first feelings of pregnancy to the first cry of your newborn, we explore the journey of child birth in all of its beauty, intensity and emotion. Whether you are a a soon to be mom, a seasoned mother, or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you!
On today’s episode of MyMaine Birth Podcast, join me as Diantha shares her story of birthing her daughter at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, Maine.
If you or someone you know is expecting and would life to document the precious moments of meeting you baby for the first time, I highly recommend my Bangor Maine Birth Photography services. I am a professional Bangor Maine Birth Photographer specializing in capturing the beauty and emotion of birth. I also provide all families with a treasured keepsake to cherish for years to come. I create a personalized and intimate photo album with every birth photography session. You can also find more information on my services here https://www.mymainephoto.com/birthphotography
Keep scrolling for a transcription of this week’s interview or you can listen to this weeks podcast here!
Angela: Hi Diantha, Welcome to MyMaine Birth!
Diantha: Hi!
Angela: So to get started will you share a little bit about you and your family?
Diantha: So I have a husband and two kids, Lily and Connor. And Lily was born when my husband Mitchel was working on his Ph.D at UMaine in Orono, so that was 2015 when she was born. Then shortly after, she was not quite a year old, when we moved to Vermont where we grew up, and that’s where my son was born. But Lily was born in Ellsworth with the midwife team.
Angela: Alright, can you share a little bit about when you found out you were pregnant and the care that you choose?
Diantha: Yeah, so we decided to stop -not trying - to get pregnant. The one thing I wanted to avoid was not having a due date on the day of my sisters wedding. Which I accomplished, but I was 8 months pregnant in my maid-of honor dress.
But ya, the pregnancy was great, easy, she was born in September. It was so hot that September. But it was a really easy pregnancy. We ended up hiring a doula. I can’t remember how far along I was, somewhere around 20 weeks. We decided to hire a Maine certified doula just based on all of my research - I decided - I don’t want the birth you see in the movies - with all of the screaming, out of control, excruciating pain experience. I was like, there has got to be another way. There has to be other options. So I did some research, found out about Maine certified doula’s and hired a Maine certified doula - and she was actually a hypnobirthing instructor too. I had been receiving care from the Ob-gyn office. And its kind of like, an OB is and OB, right. So through meetings with my doula we came up with a list of questions. After going through my birth preferences, she was like why don’t you take this list of questions to your OB. Obviously she knew him, obviously she knew it wasn’t a good fit, but she didn’t say that. She was like “bring your list of questions and let me know how it goes”. After I asked my Maine obstetrician the first question, it was like OMG no! I do not want to be induced at 39 weeks pregnant, and on and on.. all of his answers.
So at 36 weeks pregnant, I transferred to Ellsworth. I just remember that first meeting with one of the midwives there - I walked out and was like - wow, that was a different experience. So, when she came into the room her first question was - tell me about your baby. I was like oh, ok - that’s not a question they ask at the OB’s office. So that was wonderful, I just felt so taken care of and seen, as a pregnant person. So that was wonderful.
Angela: Wow, so what did you care look like at the midwife practice versus at the OB’s office
Diantha: Well my experience at the Maine Obstetrician was just all very routine. I had done enough research to know that I wanted to hire a Doula and know that I wanted to do the hypno-birthing program. But other than that, it was just - whatever the OB suggested. I choose to do less genetic testing than all of it - I think I just kind of had this feeling in my body that everything was fine and regardless of who the baby was - we would just be fine. So we choose not to do a lot of the genetic testing. We did the routine ultrasounds. I had the gestational diabetes test done at the OB, and they did mention that my levels were in the higher range. So the Maine midwife team, when I got to Ellsworth, they were like, your numbers are on the higher end of normal. They gave me the option of either having a Maine Obstetrician join the team or doing the three hour test to confirm the result. So I did the three hour test - because I would rather know and just be able to keep my midwife team. So I was happy it ended up being fine, the test was negative. So I transferred at 36 weeks, I did do the group B strep test also with the midwives and tested negative - so there wasn’t a decision I had to make about antibiotics or anything like that.
Angela: So how did your labor start and what was that experience like for you?
Diantha: Yeah, so my labor started, I was 40 weeks and 3 days. My husband and I, we were building a corner hutch for our kitchen plates and bowls. I thought contractions were starting, but I just tried to ignore them. I think, it’s just my personality, I didn’t want to get worked up so I was like - I’m just going to ignore them.
That night was a full moon, but it was also a super blood moon. So we had planned on putting a blanket out in the backyard and watching it. And right from the beginning, the contractions were consistently 5-7 minutes apart, and very classic - early labor, crampy contractions. So we watched the moon, and then went to bed. And I just dozed in-between contractions all night. I woke Mitchel, my husband up at around 2 or 3am to tell him - I hadn’t slept at all yet. They were just coming, pretty consistently every five minutes. And he was like - why don’t you call Evelyn, our Doula. And I did, and she was like - ya they sound like early contractions still, why don’t you get in the bath tub and that will either slow them down some so you can rest and get some sleep, or if it doesn’t we know this is probably it. So I got in the tub and they didn’t slow down at all - they started to get a little bit closer together. So Evelyn was like - ok your 45 minutes away from your care team, why don’t you give them a call and let them know what’s going on, and if you want to head there now, we can do that. So I called and they were like, yeah why don’t you come in. I think at that point they were coming every more like 3 minutes, but still very manageable - not super intense. So we drove to Ellsworth, Maine. We got there around 6am and got checked by one of the nurses. I was 1cm dilated. They were like, well - we keep you when your 4cm, but let me call the midwife on call and we will see what she wants to do. So Diane was on call, and she said - why don’t you keep her and I’ll check her when I come in, in a couple hours. So in the meantime the nurses gave us some tips and things to do while we were waiting to get some more progress to happen. And we called Evelyn again and let her know - she said, Ok, well I’m going to wait until Diane checks you to head over. So by the time Diane got there - I was at 4cm. I think she was kind about it, I do wonder if I was actually at 4cm - I think she was being kind about it because she didn’t want to send me home.
So we stayed, Evelyn got there. We were in my hypno-birthing zone. I was pretty sure I wanted a water birth. I had done my reading and thought a water birth sounded nice. I got the tub all set up, and I got in and was like “meh, I actually don’t love this”. I like to be warm, even in labor, I love to be cozy. They have the tub at - I think it’s at like 100degrees or something - where they like to cap the temperature at. I was like, this isn’t doing it for me. I’m not warm and cozy.
So I got back out. I wasn’t checked again after Diane came. So, I was just doing my hypno-birthing thing. My husband Mitchel told the nurse when I was having a contraction so she could listen to the baby’s heartbeat during a contraction - because I was just so relaxed, calm, no change between having a contraction and not having a contraction. And I think, because I did the hypno-birthing I don’t have much memory of it. I just was in the zone. I moved around from the birth ball, to the tub, back to the birth ball, to the bed. But other than that, it was just - I don’t want to say it was “easy” because labor isn’t “easy” - but I was in this trance and it was very, very manageable. So it was nice. It was also slow, so because it wasn’t fast - it wasn’t super duper intense. It was a nice pace I think.
Angela: Yeah, wow. So how about when she was born?
Diantha: Yeah, so that was the one part that I remember being like - I don’t like this.. I don’t want to do this part again. I had been laboring for awhile, it was probably 2pm at this point. I got up on the bed and fell asleep - I took a nap. And everyone in the room was just kind of like - wait a minute, what’s going on here. So the Maine midwife asked if she could check me. I said yes - and I was dilated to 10cm and just resting. My Doula called it the rest and be thankful phase. I think looking back on it, I think the care team was getting a little nervous that I had been laboring for so long so they started encouraging me to start pushing. They asked - do you think you can start pushing? And I was like, I don’t know - I guess. And because I wasn’t having those super strong urges, I didn’t know where to push, so it wasn’t super effective at the beginning.
And then I developed an anterior lip on my cervix and just could not get the baby past it. So the Maine midwife ended up manually helping to move that piece of cervix out of the way. That was the not fun part. That was like - this is terrible. But we finally got her head past. I think I pushed for an hour and a half or two hours. Then she was born, and she was screaming. I mean screaming! Before her whole body had even been born - like her head was out, and she was just like - here I am! I looked over at my doula and she was like - well this one’s going to keep you on your toes.
She was right, Lily is a spitfire. She was born, came right up to me for skin to skin - pooped immediately - we were all covered in meconium. But the rest was smooth. The placenta came right out. I can’t remember who cut the cord. We hadn’t found out her sex, so we just got her cleaned up - got me cleaned up. And we were doing our bonding, our golden hour. Then one of the nurses was finally like - you guys are killing us, your not going to check? Let’s see if this baby is a boy or a girl. And we were just like oh, ya this is our baby. I think it was almost half an hour after she was born that we hadn’t even thought to check to see if she was a boy or a girl, so that was kind of funny.
Angela: So how was your postpartum time?
Diantha: It was rough. She was not a sleeper, she was a screamer from day 1. Yeah, we were in survival mode for a long time with Lily. She fed great, she was a great breastfeeder - so luckily there wasn’t stress there. But she just didn’t sleep. And when she was awake, she was yelling. And we investigated all of the things, allergies, gurd, there was just no explanation. And knowing her know, she is just a deeply feeling kid, and her feelings are huge. So we just have figured she just hated being a baby. She is so independent and she has very strong opinions, and very big feelings. And that combination, she just had a lot she was upset about and that was her only way to communicate. I think she started sleeping in 4 hour chunks when she was 6 months old. Telling this story, I hope no new, expecting parents are listening thinking - omg this is going to be terrible! I am a doula now, and I have not yet met a baby quite as intense as Lily. But postpartum was rough, there was not a lot of sleep. And that is actually one of the reasons we moved back to Vermont - was to be closer to family and have a little more support.
Angela: What made you decide to become a doula?
Diantha: Actually it was Lily’s birth. I remember just laying in bed, feeding her, after she was born. I just felt on top of the world after that labor. It didn’t even cross my mind that I needed pain relief or the thought of an epidural just didn’t even enter my head. I just felt amazing - those post birth hormones. Then I just got really sad, because that is not the majority of peoples experiences. I think the biggest impact that Evelyn, my doula, made for me - was encouraging me to have that discussion with my provider - my OB. Because if I hadn’t hired her, I wouldn’t have done that, and I am quite sure my experience would have been remarkably different. So I give a lot of credit to her, for helping guide me in the direction that I wanted to be. So I remember thinking, this is definitely something I could see myself doing. I was in survival mode after Lily was born for awhile - so I was not about to further my education then. So we moved back to Vermont and I got pregnant with Connor. So when he was a baby I started thinking about doing the training, I looked up DONA’s requirements for Doula certification. I ordered some books off the reading list, I was really thinking about it - but I was a stay at home mom, and it’s just not the time with a little one who is still nursing. Neither of my kids took a bottle, so it just wasn’t going to work then. So it wasn’t actually until the beginning of the pandemic. I was planning on going back to teaching, I have a secondary ed. degree, so I taught High School Biology before Lily was born. So that had been the plan, was to go back and do that. Then the pandemic hit, and I decided the teaching profession doesn’t seem all that enticing right now. So I was like, well, maybe I will think about this doula think. And I realized it was not going to be sustainable without a doula partner, someone to share call with so I could actually be at my kids birthdays and actually plan family vacations and all those things. So I texted a friend who was also a stay at home mom and was like - hey, do you want to start a doula business with me? And the rest is history.
Angela: Wow, so you started your own doula business, it is called Empowered Birthing Vermont, do you want to share a little bit more about that?
Diantha: yeah, so Katie and I own this business together. We are in a pretty rural, low socio-economic location in Vermont - we are in the northeast corner - we call it the northeast kingdom of Vermont. So our big thing is just to try to equalize access to our services, obviously it is a huge shame that doula’s aren’t covered by insurance yet. Some insurances are starting to cover our services, but we aren’t there on a full scale yet. So we offer our services on a sliding scale and anyone who pays the full amount for doula services, we reserve a percentage of that and put it in our pro-bono fund so then we are able to offer our support to families who want doula services but can’t make it happen. I was there when I hired Evelyn, she offered her services on a sliding scale, and if she hadn’t - we wouldn’t have been able to afford it at the time. So we provide birth and postpartum doula services and we have also partnered with the regional hospital here in St. Jay and we are teaching child birth education classes at the hospital which has been really fun. It has been a really great partnership and the director of the birth center here has just been wonderful, and accommodating and we feel really lucky to have the relationship with our hospital that we do.
Angela: So what area’s do you cover, do you go all the way to Burlington?
Diantha: That is outside of our radius we say we will drive about an hour, so that covers 5 hospitals. Most of our births are at our hospital right here in St. Jay. But there is also Dartmouth Hitchcock in New Hampshire so we will go there, and Littleton Hospital in New Hampshire also we go to often.
Angela: Do you want to share a little bit about your son’s birth?
Diantha: It was a hospital birth. I looked into doing a home birth with him. But again, our insurance wouldn’t cover home birth midwives and we were still at that time in our life not at a place to be able to do that. So there is a midwife team, here at our hospital and they are fantastic. So with his birth, I also went into labor when it was a full moon - it was a blue moon for his labor. He was born on his due date. The hospital was actually being renovated, so I gave birth to him in one of those blue inflatable birthing tubs that was stuffed inside a janitor closet - but the door wouldn’t close because the tub stuck out a little bit - so they had one of those folding partitioned walls that they put up in front of the tub. So that was funny. But he came fast - his labor was maybe 4 1/2 hours or 5 hours from start to finish. So very different labor, but also great and very manageable.
Angela: 2 full moon birth stories!
Diantha: Yeah, and actually - so I just gave birth to a surrogate baby. I did that for another Vermont family and her due date was March 3rd and the full moon was on the 7th - and I was like that’s the day, she is going to be born on the 7th. I had another full moon baby! It was wild! I was like oh, you know, the first two were a coincidence.. but then with the third one, I was like I don’t know maybe there is something to this!
Angela: There’s something to this! So is there anything you want to add to new or expecting parents?
Diantha: My biggest advice is to hire a doula if you can. It is a really beneficial member to have on your birth team. Regardless of what you want your labor to look like. If you plan on having an epidural, or even if you know that you have a scheduled c-section, having a professional labor/birth support person there can really make a huge difference in your experience.
Angela: What is the best way for people to find you
Diantha: Our website is https://www.empoweredbirthingvt.com There actually aren’t a whole lot of other Doula’s in our area. In central Vermont and over in the Burlington area and Southern Vermont there are more of us, but our area is pretty limited. You can also find me on
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/empowered.birthingvt/
and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/empowered.birthingvt/
And thats the end of another MyMaine Birth Podcast! Thank you for joining me. I hope the stories shared here have been informative and inspiring to all of my listeners.
If you are looking to document your own birth story I highly recommend considering my Bangor Maine Birth Photography services. I am a skilled professional Bangor Maine Birth Photographer and am very passionate about capturing the raw and emotional moments of the birthing process. I also design a personalized and intimate photo album, creating a lasting and beautiful memory of one of the most special moments of your life. For more information on Birth Photography in Bangor Maine head over to https://www.mymainephoto.com/birthphotography and schedule a complimentary zoom consultation with me.
Thank you for tuning in and I look forward to bringing you more amazing birth stories. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review1. And I will see you back here again next week!
