MyMaine Birth, Dr. Rebecca Brouillette’s Maine Home Birth Story

Welcome to MyMaine Birth, a space where we share the real life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine. From our state’s 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 childbirth in all of it’s beauty, intensity, and emotion. Whether you are a soon to be mom, a seasoned mother, or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you!

Today’s birth story guest is Dr. Rebecca Brouillette, DC. She is a chiropractor at North Sky Chiropractic in Biddeford, Maine. Dr. Rebecca shares with us her story of becoming pregnant in March of 2020, her December home birth with care from her Maine Certified Professional Midwife, as well as her son’s journey with PKU.

As part of my commitment to capturing these incredible moments, I am proud to offer my birth photography services to families throughout Maine. As a certified Maine birth photographer and experienced doula, I am dedicated to capturing the beauty and emotion of this special moment in your life. I also create a personalized and intimate photo album that you will treasure forever. For all of the information head over to https://www.mymainephoto.com and schedule a call with me!

Check out this week’s podcast right here - or scroll down for the full transcript.

Angela: Hi Rebecca, welcome to MyMaine Birth. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us today.

Rebecca: Of course, I’m really excited and looking forward to it, thanks for having me.

Angela: So to get started, will you share a little bit about you and your family?

Rebecca: Sure, so my name is Rebecca Brouillette. I am a chiropractor in Biddeford, Maine. My family consists of myself, my husband Stephen who I have known since Kindergarten, and our son Rowan is about to be 2 1/2 and he is a busy dude and just super handsome and smart and sweet. We love him. We hear a lot about the terrible two’s and maybe that’s coming for the three’s but really, this stage is so wonderful - so I’m soaking up every second!

Angela: Oh my gosh, it is so special to witness them in every stage as they grow!

Rebecca: So true, yes! And I am finally starting to feel a little bit more like myself again so that has been really nice as well.

Angela: So will you share a little bit about when you found out you were pregnant and your thoughts in choosing your care?

Rebecca: Of course, so it’s a little bit of a funny story here - my husband and I never went on a honeymoon right after we were married. We had been married for a few years and I was like - you know what, we are officially going to go out of the country and do something special. My husband had never been out of the country. So we decided to go somewhere and I was like - ok after we go somewhere then we can start trying for a baby. And that was in January of 2020. And we went to Puerto Rico, and actually at that time it was kind of funky because they had just had the earthquakes and we were kind of like - should we go, we weren’t sure. So a little bit of a tumultuous time there to figure out what our plan was. Then we got back to the United States and in March of 2020 I found out I was pregnant. So right around the time we were all trying to figure out - what is this Covid thing. And as a business owner it was difficult for us to decide what we were going to do with the business. Like should we close down for a week, what does this mean, should we get some protocols in place and figure out if we were going to be deemed essential or not. So I took the week off from work and then we found out as soon as I opened the office back up.

So it was kind of a crazy time, we were excited - but then finding it hard to be excited because there were so many unknowns. And I always kind of knew that what I wanted for myself and for my birth included home birth. I think that everything going on with covid really solidified that for us. I knew I was going to personally feel a lot more comfortable and supported in my own home.

So my son was born in December of 2020.

Angela: So you used a home birth midwife?

Rebecca: yes, we used Morgan of Flourish Midwifery and she was really wonderful and great to work with. I loved having the visits in our own home, again I felt really comfortable and well supported in our choices. Part of the reason that I always knew I wanted a home birth was because there was a lot of trauma in my families birth history. So it felt really healing and empowering to be like - no I’m going to do this the way that I want to do this, and make sure that my voice was really heard. And so it was a really great experience. My husband was actually born at home and so were his siblings. So I had the support of my mother-in-law kind of cheering me on and encouraging me. And for my mom, I felt like it was almost really healing for her as well, so I thought it was really cool.

Angela: Do you care to talk more about the birth trauma on your families side?

Rebecca: Totally, yeah. I am happy to. So I am the oldest of actually five siblings. We are a blended family, but my two sisters that are blood sisters - both births for my mom were really difficult. My middle sister Hannah was actually birth injured. She was frank breech, and at the time my mom was told that her only option was c-section and she didn’t have any great chiropractic care before hand or anything like that. So, again she just really didn’t feel supported and they were like c-section, its the only choice, that’s what we’re doing. And when my sister was removed from my mom just after birth she suffered multiple strokes at birth, and she had to be air lifted to Dartmouth children’s hospital. I remember at the time, even though I was young being like where is my mom, and why isn’t my sister home? And it was really scary for me as a kid, so I can’t even begin to imagine what my mom went through. And because she had just had a c-section, she actually checked herself out of the hospital against medical advice so she could then go to Dartmouth and be with my sister. So just a lot, like can you imagine being so freshly postpartum and having to deal with all of that.

So thank goodness my sister is totally wonderful and beautiful and perfect, but it was really touch and go for a long time whether or not her brain would be able to heal itself and whether she suffered a lot of brain damage. Thank goodness she was very resilient. But then my mom went into pregnant with my youngest sister really just feeling of course nervous, and then was told again - don’t even try for a VBAC, your only option is a c-section which now we know is really just not true… so many factors playing into that. And after that, she suffered multiple herniated discs in her back. That’s actually how my chiropractic journey began because thank goodness my mom was a very stubborn woman and was like - absolutely not, that’s not my only choice, I need to look into some other options and alternative things. She found a chiropractor… and of course as the story goes, she got great results and was able to avoid surgery and work on her core and all that great stuff. And at the same time I was having a lot of headaches as a kid and the chiropractor said - hey I might be able to help with that, and again the rest is history.

Angela: Wow, that is really interesting! So ok, we are going to come back to your chiropractic journey in a few minutes. But to get back to your birth experience, what did the rest of your pregnancy look like - did you do any tests or any ultrasounds and how was everything looking leading up to your labor and birt?

Rebecca: Yeah, so another piece of the home birth is - I am a small business owner, so I do not have health insurance. It was something that I really had to think about, like maybe I should get onto a plan… like god forbid if anything happened or if I had to transfer to the hospital what would that look like.

I think kind of a little known fact is - if you compare how much a hospital birth costs to a home birth, it is actually a lot more economical. So as another benefit, I thought of that.

So some of the testing that we did was of course some blood work to make sure that all of that is situated. The doppler we used regularly to just check his heart rate and all of that. I did choose to do two ultrasounds, one at 20 weeks - and we went to a private ultrasound suite for that, which was pricy but I thought that it was worth it to give me peace of mind. I thought it was worth it, I am definitely a higher anxiety person, so that was something that as far as interventions are concerned - I felt comfortable with that and I wanted to do it. I felt the benefits outweighed the risks there. I had a good experience, but while we were there we found out my placenta was just a little bit lower lying - but now I know that it is really normal at 20 weeks. I think that is something that people should be aware of too, it can be really scary if your like - oh man, placenta previa… if that term is floating around, you may be thinking you might not be able to deliver vaginally. But the placenta really does have plenty of time to move before you get to whatever full term is for you and your body. But because of that, I wanted to do another one just to make sure that it was moved out of the way - because that home birth was so very important to me. So we did another scan at 32 weeks and everything was beautiful and perfect and ready to go.

Angela: So now how was your labor? When did that start?

Rebecca: Totally, so labor - I really am thankful that I really had overall a very positive birth experience, because … we will talk about this in a second… but my postpartum was a bit harder - so whoever is up there, I think doesn’t let you have a hard time with both… it’s too much! So labor started in the morning at around 8:30, I remember specifically I had a few practice contractions the night before and I was like - this feels a little different than the traditional braxton-hicks and my husband was in the bathroom, and I was knocking on the door - like hey, I have to pee… right now! And as I was knocking on the door, my water broke. So I was like - ok, this is happening!

When he finally got out of the bathroom, thank goodness, I called my midwife to let her know that had happened and I had lost my mucous plug as well. So at the time because we were getting closer to Christmas, and my family knew that I was getting closer to my due date - I had some family in town and they were like - hey can we pop by, we would love to see you. So I have this really great picture of me surrounded by most of the women in my family all touching my belly at the same time and I was having active contractions. So at the time I was like - this is so sweet! Now get out of here!

So that was at around 11:30 in the morning. My midwife came around noonish. She had offered to do a check if I’d like to just to see where we are. And I felt like that was going to be reassuring to me to do that. And I figured she could pop by and if we weren’t further along that she would leave and come back. So when she did the check, she was like - I think I should stay. So that was a good thing.

After that things got really intense for me and I got into the pool, and I really wanted to have that water birth. I labored in there for a very long time, and then we decided that gravity might be necessary - so I ended up having my son on the birth stool, which was really cool. I remember my legs being crazy shaky though, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get out of the birth pool - but I was able to. The interesting thing about my labor is I had a very long pushing phase. I pushed for almost 4 hours, so that was really intense. That is one thing - now I have a little more body awareness and knowledge. One great thing I am very thankful for too, is I have a pelvic health therapist that works in my office, and I have a pelvic health pt that I saw before and after - so really just learning more about my body and how I hold those muscles so tight down there. And really, i think it is so interesting - we aren’t taught how to push, so I feel like having a lot more knowledge around that next time around feels like it will be really helpful for me!

Angela: Wow, yeah - so is that what the pelvic health therapist go over - how to push?

Rebecca; Yeah, definitely, yes! It seems so counter-intuitive - like when to we lengthen, and when do we shorten, and when to we contract, and how do we even recruit those muscles when we have been so turned off and disconnected from that for most of our life. I feel like for most of us as women, we don’t really know how to tap into that space, or it doesn’t feel safe to do that. So finding somebody that really is a space holder and is able to get you there and make you feel comfortable - either prenatally or postpartum. But I think definitely prenatally is really beneficial as well.

Angela: So how did your postpartum time go?

Rebecca: So immediate postpartum went pretty good. I have a funny video on my phone, that’s actually not funny looking back… the great thing about having a home birth is you are in your own space which is beautiful. The hard part is everyone knows where to find you, and they have easy access to you - so I remember my son wasn’t even 24 hours old yet, and my whole family ordered Chinese food or something… and there were way too many people, and I kind of have this video where I kind of pan around and my son is just being passed around - and I’m like oh, this is so wonderful. And then that night I remember having a horrible panic attack - and I remember thinking why is this happening - and then thinking, oh, because my baby should have been with me in my arms that entire time. So having some firmer boundaries I think would have been really helpful there. But that is really when I started noticing some of the large hormonal dips that started happening postpartum. And with those came some pretty bad panic attacks for me. So definitely some anxiety in the piece… and like I mentioned I definitely was dealing with anxiety well before I was even pregnant. But I noticed it kind of reared it’s ugly head when I was immediate postpartum.

But with covid and with Christmas, that affected a lot of having in-person resources, so that was difficult. And another thing it impacted was the newborn screening - so the heel prick test. So normally, for those that don’t know, that is done between 1-3 days postpartum and it is just the prick of the babies heel, and it is used to screen for lots of different things - but it was originally designed to screen for something known as PKU or Phenylketonuria which is what they call an inborn error of metabolism, or a metabolic disorder. And the reason it is really important to find that out sooner than later is that if it is not detected it can build up as a form of Phenylalanine in the blood and it can lead to some scary neurological consequences that are totally irreversible. So once it’s too late, it’s too late. So normally, you have this heel prick done and you get the results quickly. And if your baby does test positive for anything - god forbid - you can start treatment quickly and go from there. So we had Rowan’s done, and also being a home birth, we didn’t have to do it right away. You could go to a pediatrician, but I didn’t have one picked out, I had a wonderful naturopath that I was excited about using. But we decided, thank goodness to have that done. But the results of that screening didn’t come back until he was 3 1/2 weeks old - which again, it normally comes back within a few days. I remember my midwife calling me and being like - Rebecca, I need you not to panic… and of course I panicked immediately. Something did come back positive on that test, and my son Rowan does have PKU.

At the time, you are in freshly postpartum. Week three is a notorious hormone dump for moms and baby is cluster feeding, and it is just an epic you-know-what show just from the start. Then getting that news on top of that. We had to rush to Maine Med Genetics right away, it was an extremely traumatizing event for sure. Especially going from having this home birth and going from this outside of the system birth, and then having to deal with covid and not knowing what that meant, and having to transfer to a medical office. There were so many unknowns that really that started for me a slippery slope of some bad postpartum depression for me. And thankfully my son is great and wonderful, but when you are just thrown so far from what your expectations were, it was really hard for me to manage.

Angela: Wow, so what was the treatment, what did they do?

Rebecca: Yeah, so the treatment for PKU is a low protein diet. For example, now that my son is older and we know a lot more it’s actually really manageable. But when babies are little, it’s really hard to know what their protein tolerance will be - because everyone’s tolerance with PKU is different. There are varied levels of PKU as well… there is something called Classic PKU where they are really not able to process that at all. There is no - what’s called residual enzyme activity to break down this one amino acid in the blood. And then there is something called hyper-phenylalaninia which is … I don’t want to use the word less severe, but there are more options as far as food is concerned. And through some more in depth genetic testing, that is what my son has. So there are a little bit more options than somebody with classic PKU has.

So for example someone has classic PKU, they may only be able to do 3g of protein a day - which as an adult, that is really limiting, of course. My son’t tolerance falls somewhere around 16g of protein right now. But that’s not all of the protein that he needs to be able to grow. So what we have to do are special protein shakes that has that one amino acid taken out of it. So he gets all of the good building blocks, and he is able to grow - but he doesn’t have the thing that he can’t break down. So he has smoothies every day, and he loves them. Now we are able to accept that, but when he first received a diagnosed… we were just handed a can of ultra-processed formula. The first ingredient was corn syrup. So as someone who falls on the crunchier side, as a chiropractor, it was really heartbreaking for me. I was also told at that initial appointment at 3 1/2 weeks - they told me you have to stop breast feeding immediately. Because they weren’t sure if he could tolerate the breastmilk since we didn’t know what his tolerance was. And thankfully, we just had to stop the breastfeeding for the weekend. We had to do something called a Phenlalanine flush. So we had to get all of the excess out of his body, and make sure his body was able to process all of it for safety’s sake, make sure that he’s good and then we had to re-test.

So that weekend we were only able to do that specialized formula, and then after that weekend we were able to resume a combo of both breastfeeding and also the formula. To again, supplement to get those great amino acids without the one that he can’t process.

Angela: Wow, are there any resources that you’d like to share that were helpful for you?

Rebecca: Of course, yeah! So I am coming at it from kind of an interesting place, because even pre-pregnancy my specialty is pediatrics and pregnancy in the chiropractic realm. So really I guess my sector of chiropractic is neuro system based. So that is why and how we can help moms and babies, is really focusing on the balance of the nervous system. And I always kind of explain it as - my job as a chiropractor is really pretty easy, all we do is remove interference and your body is able to do the rest. So once we take away what isn’t working, your body is really innately intelligent. Part of my mission is giving that power back to moms and families, that really, you know the right choice for your family - and if you have someone lovingly guiding you, things can be a lot better. I am extremely thankful for the people that did lovingly guide me and support me through that entire journey. So when I was pregnant, some of the resources that I used… and there were a lot - which I am thankful for, because they helped set me up.. at least the best that I could be for what ended up being thrown at me postpartum.

So of course, I saw my wonderful chiropractors, they are angel’s on earth and I am so thankful for them. I worked with a pelvic floor physical therapist which I mentioned, I worked with a peri steam hydro therapist… someone who does vaginal steaming. So that was really great, I did that in late pregnancy, during labor actually, and also postpartum. So that was pretty cool. And then I worked with a personal trainer in postpartum I was really super thankful and super blessed… and again with everything that happened I actually had two postpartum doula’s who were both working towards their certification, so they were able to use my family for hours to receive their certification. So again, especially needing all the support I could, it was so wonderful and necessary. And again, I worked with really great IBCLC lactation consultant that helped me so much, especially through Rowan’s diagnosis and how to navigate all that stuff.

She helped me so much that I am actually now working towards my IBCLC now, so it is a really cool tie into my practice currently.

Angela: Yeah, wow that’s so cool! So now let’s hear more about your practice, what is the name of it, and what type of services to you offer to pregnant mama’s and babies?

Rebecca: Yes, so my practice is called North Sky Chiropractic and I have really geared it more towards being more of a collective recently. I really found out that, as you’ve seen on social media… that it takes a village. But where the heck is the village? Especially for me going through all this in covid and not having any in person stuff, or feeling like if there were in person resources it felt limited as to who could attend, and I just don’t ever want it to feel that way in my office in this space. I want it to feel totally open no matter where you fall on the parenting scale, there is literally zero judgement. And the services that we do offer here are of course, chiropractic care, that’s me! That’s my part of it, lactation - and that’s also me. I have a pelvic health therapist, and my mom actually does some energy healing and she is here in the office as well. And then I also have an infared sauna so that’s a cool little benefit. Selfishly, I love using it, so it’s nice to have here!

And I offer a lot of different support groups as well, I recently expanded the business, so we have a lot of square footage which means that we are able to gather. I think that community is so important. It was literally born out of necessity, so I have a weekly feeding support group. No matter how you feed your baby, if you are exclusively bottle feeding, or pumping or I have one mom that uses donor milk, and of course we talk about lactation as well. So that’s every Wednesday right here in Biddeford at 12:30. And then I also do a pregnancy support group. And so many different workshops and classes as well.

Angela: So how often is the pregnancy support group?

Rebecca: That meets once a month, and we are doing it on Sunday’s as of now… but I would really love for it to meet more often. I have heard from a lot of people that once they “graduate” and have their babies, they’re like now what.. And I’m like - well come to the other support group. But the wonderful pelvic health therapist in my office, her name is Amanda - Pearl Pelvic Health is her business, she was actually talking about a postpartum specific group as well. So lots of great resources.

Angela: Wow, it’s amazing what you are doing there!

Rebecca; Thank you

Angela: So what is the best way for people to find you?

Rebecca: So social media is kind of the name of the game nowadays, right! So I try to be pretty active on Facebook and Instagram, and that is just @northskychiro And of course we have a website with online booking.

Angela: Awesome, I will link all of your info in the show notes. Thank you SO much Rebecca for joining me today.

Rebecca: Of course, thank you so much for having me.