MyMaine Birth: “It’s Time to Fly” - LeAnne’s Downeast Maine Homebirth Story

LeAnne’s Maine Homebirth Story

I am so excited to have LeAnne Dunham, a Maine Doula and mother of now four boys joins me on the very first episode of the My Maine Birth Podcast! LeAnne is here today to share her Maine homebirth experience with her fourth son, Fletcher. This pregnancy and delivery came quite naturally, as she already knew what to expect and had incredible care from her midwives from Holly No. 7 Birth Center in Bangor, Maine.

Welcome to MyMaine Birth, a space where we share the real life stories of families and their unique birth experience 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 its 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!

If you are looking to capture your own birth story, I highly recommend considering my Maine Birth Photography services. I am a skilled professional Maine Birth Photographer and am very passionate about capturing the raw and emotional moments of the birthing process. I design a personalized and intimate photo album with every birth photography session, creating a lasting and beautiful memory of one of the most special moments of your life. For more information head over to https://www.mymainephoto.com/birthphotography

Join me and listen here! Scroll down for the full transcript.

MyMaine Birth Episode 1

Angela: Hi LeAnne, Welcome to MyMaine Birth!

LeAnne: Hi, This is so fun, thanks for having me!

Angela: So to start will you share a little bit about you and your family?

LeAnne: Yeah, so I live in Columbia, Maine which is Downeast in Washington County. We are about an hour east of Ellsworth and about an hour west of the Canadian border so smack in the middle there. We have four boys, my husband and I. My husband is a wildlife biologist and that is what brought us out this way about three years ago, and we landed in Columbia and he works out of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife office for the state headquarters in Jonesboro. So that’s what brought us to Washington County. We grew up in New Hampshire originally, and came to Maine for college and never left. We set our roots down and bought a house, and four babies later, here we are!

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

LeAnne: Yes, so we didn’t know he was a boy at the time so we just called him baby, and he was our fourth baby. We knew we wanted four, that felt like a good number for our family. I think we got to three and were totally overwhelmed and we were like , what’s one more. It felt like we had this missing spot, even though three was wild! That transition to three for our family. But we were super excited to get pregnant, and we choose to have a home birth with midwives that we had care with for my second and third pregnancy as well, so we were really familiar with them. And I have gotten to work with them as a Doula on the professional side of things, so I have this just wonderful connection with Chris and Anna and Julie - the midwives at Holly No.7. We were so lucky, because we are like a solid hour and 45 minutes from Bangor, so our third baby was also born here and I was just so grateful that they would travel this far for us, because it is definitely a commitment to get to somebody’s birth within two hours away. So pregnancy wise, his pregnancy was really pretty typical. And the only thing was - because we already had 3 boys - people would always say is this one different, do you think it’s going to be a girl? I would say - no, everything is the same. The only difference was that I had a lot of anxiety my first trimester, and it was something that really caught me off guard and took me by surprise a lot. I didn’t realize how anxious my operating level of anxiety was until I was talking to my husband about it and he was like LeAnne, this isn’t really normal. And I just couldn’t sleep, my mind was racing about all sorts of things that I never usually worry about. So for me that was a really different experience. I think as a baseline I am more of an anxious person anyway, I don’t like unpredictable changes. I like that predictability otherwise I feel anxious. So feeling that my mind was racing all the time feeling, especially that first trimester until around 16/20 weeks - and then things just got better, and I’m sure so much of it had to do with hormones and other factors too. So that was really different for me. And it also made me really grateful for the relationship that I had already established with my midwives that they knew me really well and it was something that I felt like I could really talk to them about. And that just became something that we have been monitoring in this postpartum time because that was another huge hormonal shift. So we were just extra vigilant about talking and communicating with each other after that difficult first trimester especially. But besides that his pregnancy was totally normal and healthy. It’s funny, I had gestational diabetes with my second baby and then I followed a very strict diet with my third and I didn’t have it with him, and my second and third babies also only had two vessel cords - which can be a normal thing that happens - and he had a three vessel cord. So in terms of physically him and I were good - it was just that anxiety piece which was really the only thing that really was surprising to me and really difficult to wrestle with during the first trimester.

Angela: Did you do any ultrasounds during this pregnancy?

LeAnne: We did an initial ultrasound around 8/9 weeks, and then we did our 20 week ultrasound just to check on his anatomy and all of that just to make sure that he was healthy. And then I had a bio-physical profile schedule for Monday and he was born on Sunday - so I almost had a third one, we were close!

Angela: So tell me about your labor and birth!

LeAnne: yeah, so he was born at 42 weeks and one day - so he hung on for awhile. And historically my pattern is all over the place. My first son, who is almost 7, was born at 42 weeks and I had him in the hospital so he was an induction. And then my second son was right at 41 weeks, and my third son was right at 40 weeks, he was my due date baby. And so this is like a great lesson, and my former math teacher, nerd brain thing - is that you can’t extrapalate data from only three points - because for me, I was like - ok, we are trending in the right direction, they have all come a little earlier and been a few ounces smaller this time. And then he was by far the largest baby and the latest one, so we really reversed the curve with him.

But labor started after I had been having prodromal labor for about a week straight. And for me that looked like pretty consistent contractions every morning from about 41 weeks on from like 4am to 10am and then they would just peter out and do nothing. On the Friday before I was 42 weeks, so 41 and 6 days, Anna - one of the midwives at the birth center - because if I get to 42 weeks then I need to have a bio-physical profile in order to stay in their care, that is part of their protocol. The reasons are to check on the placenta and to make sure baby has enough fluid, so her and I made a plan that if I didn’t go into labor during the weekend that I would have to go get an ultrasound on Monday, so that was our plan. But otherwise, her plan was to come to our house early Sunday morning and start the natural induction methods with some pumping and some herbs to see if we could get labor kickstarted.

So she lives in Bangor so two hours from me, so I had woken up Sunday morning like normal, having what I thought was prodromal labor. And Anna texted me around 5am and said hey, I’m getting things ready to leave and head your way but if you are awake and having prodromal contractions just start pumping and follow the protocol that her and I talked about to see what happens. So the protocol that she gave me was pumping with my electric pump, 10 minutes on one side, 10 minutes on the other and then 10 minutes off. So I was like, ok, here we go. So I dug the electric pump out of the bin and sat on my yoga exercise ball in my living room in the total dark, all of my other kids were asleep and I was just like we’ve gotta do something here. So I started pumping around 5:30/5:45, so I did one round of the protocol so it was about 30 minutes. And during my 10 minute break - I had made overnight cinnamon rolls the night before… and I was very done being pregnant mentally and emotionally… physically I felt really fine, like I wasn’t swollen, I am super lucky, I really did feel fine. I was hiking with my kids right up until the end, like carrying my toddler on my back, it was just the mental and emotional aspects of still being pregnant. I just became a hermit and that was how I dealt with it, I just stopped responding to texts and answering peoples questions. I just didn’t want to talk about the fact that I was still pregnant.

But, I told my husband the night before - I am making cinnamon rolls because we are having a birth - day party tomorrow and I want cinnamon rolls there. So during that 10 minute break of my pumping protocol I took the cinnamon rolls out of the fridge and I was like - this is happening - we are doing this today, like we are having this baby. So then I started the second round of pumping and it was probably like 6:45 at this time, and my boys had gotten up and they were doing their morning thing starting to eat breakfast and watch shows, and I was sitting in this chair in my living room and my water breaks. And I definitely noticed the contractions when I was pumping the first time and they were super weird, it was like 2-3 minutes apart for 30 seconds, it was just a very weird pattern, and I thought usually when they are that close they are long and very intense, and I just thought this pumping is making things so weird, I don’t know what’s going on. And then my water broke - sitting in this chair in my living room - and I was like ok, I’m really having this baby today.

So I think you get to that point, and for me I got to that point during pregnancy, where like - obviously this baby is coming, we are past time for this baby to come, and then it gets real and I still wasn’t prepared. So it’s kind of funny, because being a birth worker, and seeing and supporting so many families at this point in pregnancy, like yeah - of course I know 42 weeks is normal - like in my rational brain I know that - but my emotional pregnancy brain just couldn’t rationalize that I was still pregnant. Then of course, my water breaks and I was like oh yeah, no this is actually happening, like this is for real. So my water was like a small break, it definitely soaked through my sweatpants, there was no question - it wasn’t pee for sure, it definitely was watery but it wasn’t a giant rush. So I kind of looked at my husband and was like - I’m pretty sure my water just broke, and this was around 6:45. And Anna planned to get to our house around 7 and I knew she would be there shortly around that time. And I was like, ok I think we need to get the house ready to have our baby - like all of that stuff that I planned to do in my relaxing early labor, like get the sheets on the bed in the right order, my mother in law was going to come and pick up my older boys so I wanted to get their lunches packed for the day - so like all that stuff, I was like, oh no we’ve got to do this now. So it was like 6:45 when my water broke, so we started changing the sheets on the bed and that was when my contractions got intense like all of a sudden. I was like changing the sheets on my bed, and every two minutes I was like leaning over the window sill to have a contraction and then I would go back to putting the sheets on the bed.

I was upstairs brushing my teeth, because I had just rolled out of bed and hooked myself up to the pump - there was like no thought about actually getting ready for the day. And so when Anna got here I was upstairs brushing my teeth, so when she got there I was like - hey, I’ll be right down. And so when I came down I was like, I think my water broke - this is so weird to me, like I don’t know where I am in this labor - this is crazy. And then I had a contraction as I was leaning against the counter in the kitchen. And Anna was like - LeAnne, you are having this baby soon. She said, you are in active labor, this baby is coming quick and if you want to have this baby in the birth tub we’ve got to get that set up. And her assistant who is a student midwife who thankfully only lives about 30 minutes away, she called her and the phrase that she used I will never forget - she said, Aura (the student midwife) this baby’s coming, it’s time to fly! And then all of a sudden for me I was like, oh this baby’s coming, it’s time to fly! Like, get your head in the right space girl. So I was like trying to pack my boys for the day in-between contractions I was putting food in the boys lunch boxes to go with my mother in-law and it was SO funny. But my contractions were still pretty close together. And while I was doing that, my husband was getting the birth tub set up in our dining room area. He was running the hoses from the laundry room so he would go and hook one up - and at this point I really needed him to do some counter-pressure because my contractions were really picking up quickly - and so he would get one of the hoses like halfway screwed on and I would be like “babe, I need you back here!” and he would come running back to the kitchen to do counter-pressure and then run back to finish putting the hose on… and I’m sure it was hilarious to watch the two of us… and in-between contractions I was like alright, what do the boys need for lunch today? And - Is your mom on the way? And it was just those loose ends that I felt like I needed to tie up because I just wanted to make sure the boys had an easy transition and I had envisioned and planned things a certain way in my head and now all of it had to happen in like five minutes - and it was crazy.

So my photographer and my mother-in-law both got here around 7:45 and things were really picking up - that was the time Steve was running back and forth and there was hot water boiling on the stove to make sure the tub was warm enough and they had every pot in the house filled up and boiling on the stove - it was actually this really cool image. And thankfully both my midwife and her assistant who is a student midwife in our area were here, so once the two of them were here I was able to relax a lot. So around 7:45 my mother-in-law got here and essentially got the boys right in the car and took them to her house, and she only lives about 30 minutes away so that worked out great. And so while my husband was loading the boys up in the car, I was having a contraction and my midwife was squeezing my hips and my water broke - Big Time! Big gush, with this second gush now all over the kitchen floor. And it was one of those moments where it was like, ok now we are really picking up in intensity. So now he comes back in from putting the boys in the car and now I’m just stark naked and just covered in fluid, and I got really hot all of course, because my body was working really hard. And that’s really when that peak transition labor hit - once my water broke. And of course, I threw up. I started to vocalize more, and that major transition labor was definitely setting in.

I was trying to wait as long as possible to get in the tub, because for me that always feels like the best place to deliver. I have had two previous water births, and that water is just so therapeutic for me, so I tried to hold on as long as possible. Because that was my last strategy. My last comfort measure was getting in the water and I wanted to make sure I really needed it. So thankfully they had the tub ready, and I remember my midwife Anna saying - The tub is ready whenever you want to get in. And I was like - I need a few more contractions before I get in.

I wanted to be really desperate before I get in, because I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to get back out and then back in - even though in my head I knew - this baby is going to be here really soon. I wanted to make sure it was like the last straw. So around 7:50 was when my water broke really big, and I got in the tub around 8:05 or 8:10. I had a few more really big contractions in the tub. And then I had a few minutes rest in-between and then my body started to push. So I was sitting in the tub reclined, so my legs were out in front of me, and that felt good for sure to get off my legs, because they definitely felt like Jello after all those contractions standing up. And my husband was sitting on a little stool right outside the tub so I was kind of leaned back onto his shoulders, and that was the position I had delivered our two previous babies in and that was what felt good for me. I tried at first to be on my hands and knees, and my legs were just not interested in supporting me in that moment, so I just reclined right onto Steve. So I started pushing around 8:20, and right away I felt like somethings different. I couldn’t figure out what it was, it felt like my body was pushing SO hard. I had my eyes closed and through my birth fog I remember this thought crossing through that was like - I think this baby is sunny side up - like why does it feel like this?

It felt so much harder than my previous births where I really did experience that fetal ejection reflex where my body just took over and pushed my baby out, and I didn’t really have to add that extra umph for those previous births - and for this one I was like holding onto Steve’s hands hard, pushing so hard. So I thought, maybe he is in a funky position, like why am I pushing so hard? And of course, for the context of how big he was - he was 10lbs 10oz - it made sense that I had to push really hard so that was a huge variable, but I didn’t know that at the time.. I just thought - maybe he’s in a funky position. It felt different, and it felt like I was working so hard. So he started to crown really slowly, and then that contraction ended and he kind of slid back up - and all of that was really good, because that was very slow and very gentle on my body. And with the next contraction his head was born, and then he started to do his little rotation and with the next contraction his shoulders came out and Aura, my midwife, grabbed him and put him on my chest and there he was - all ten pounds ten ounces of him… And at the time I didn’t realize how big he was because of course he is on my chest and looking down I just see the head view. But my photographer took this amazing picture of him from her perspective on my chest and of course he is rolls on rolls down his back and I’m just like - oh yeah, that’s a ten and a half pound baby… no question. So it was just kind of this crazy moment once he was here, he came out and he was perfect, he cried right away and his color transitioned perfectly. He was born at 8:28, so I was probably in active labor for an hour and a half, and it was wild.

It just was intense from the beginning and I just remember saying things like - I can’t even believe what just happened. I think I was kind of right on the edge of feeling a little out of control and like I couldn’t catch up with the contractions. Sometimes when people have really fast labors, other’s say - oh that’s awesome you weren’t in labor for very long - but then also the intensity that has to happen is just shoved into a shorter time frame, so - I think about a 6 hour labor would be good for me… an hour and a half was a little short.

And so we didn’t know he was a boy, although I did assume he was throughout the whole pregnancy, we had three boys already. So we checked right away to see if it was a boy, and I was like - it’s a boy, of course it is! That wasn’t hugely surprising that he was a boy, but it felt like our final little puzzle piece was here and it was kind of wild. So he transitioned great and he was born at 8:28 and my placenta was born at 8:36 so it was not long afterward. The placenta was born and that went smoothly. I stayed in the tub for that, it was just nice to have everything in the water, so then when I stood up I didn’t feel so icky. So my husband cut the cord after the placenta was born, of course it was ready for that. And then I got out of the tub and I felt really good, so we made our way upstairs to our bedroom and we just got tucked in. Thankfully I had put the plastic sheets down on the bed earlier in the morning, and my midwives put the cinnamon rolls in the oven, because that was ALL I wanted after he was born. So we just snuggled in bed for awhile and ate cinnamon rolls, and couldn’t believe that he was here and it was like early in the morning still.

Angela: Wow, that is amazing! So tell me, how has postpartum been going for you? How was your initial healing, did you have any tearing?

LeAnne: No, so thankfully I didn’t tear, he had a very large head to match his very large body, but he came out really slow and I am really grateful for that, even though the rest of his labor was wild and fast - it was slow when it needed to be, and I appreciated that for sure. In terms of my physical recovery - it was really good. What was really helpful was that my husband was able to be home for the first four weeks, so especially with our older boys, that made a huge difference.

And so I really was able to focus on just resting and recovering, and nursing and bonding. Nursing was a little challenging at the beginning. I think because he was really low, especially the last couple weeks, and then of course got squeezed really good on the way out because he was so big. So I think his jaw muscles were just really tight from all of that, so he just couldn’t open his mouth really wide - so when he would go to nurse it was really tight and pinchy and so the first few days my nipples got pretty beat up. Then it started to get better as he was able to stretch and open his mouth a little bit more. Then my milk came in, so I was really engorged. I have always been a massive over-producer, so we had to kind of wrestle with that like his tight latch on really full breasts was really hard. So it started to get better, and then my milk came in, and then it got worse for a few days, and then finally around day 10 it was a lot better. But it was really just giving us time to figure all that out.

I was going to see a cranial-sacral therapist, that was one of my plan if it didn’t start to get better I was definitely going to start calling people in because it was definitely uncomfortable. But I could see that he was able to start opening his mouth wider and wider each day which made a big difference. But we were able to focus on just nursing and bonding those first few weeks, and we are still figuring it out. He is three months old today, so we are slowly finding our normal, and slowly gaining the confidence to start doing things all four of us and just me. And we have a wonderful little homeschool community here which is super supportive and also has really young kids, so it’s been an easy transition in that sense to - where I feel good about just dropping my older son off and know he is in good hands to do things that I wasn’t able to do those first couple months with my whole crew. But yeah, we are getting back out there now so its been good. And I think part of that has been that I really had low expectations for everybody, and our transition into three kids was really difficult, especially for our middle kiddo… he had a really hard time. So that really taught me to just have low expectations for everybody and not push and try and do things and expect things to be normal right away because no one really knows what normal is - especially those first few months. So I think being patient for myself, and our family dynamic - because it had changed so drastically so quickly, and that helped a lot managing my own expectations and perspective for sure.

Angela: Awesome, now you are also a birth and postpartum doula, your company is Adventure Awaits Birth Services and your are currently offering child birth education classes at Holly No.7 Birth Center in Bangor. Can you tell me a little bit more about your doula work?

LeAnne: Yeah! So I started my career as a teacher, and I taught middle and high school special education for ten years. Then after my first son was born, it was really clear to me that I was not going to have the mental and emotional energy to be both a good teacher and a good mom. I just felt like it was too much. And so when we moved to Columbia I was able to leave my teaching job, and hopefully retire from that career and dive into birth work more. So I became a certified doula in 2017 after my first son was born, and I took on birth clients and postpartum clients mostly during the summer and sometimes during the school year.

I sort of built up some clients in the Orono/Old Town area which was wonderful. And then when we moved, Covid hit and then we had a baby, and then Covid was still a thing and we had another baby. So I haven’t been able to do a whole lot of births down in this area, but I have been able to do a few which has been really wonderful. And while we are in this little people phase of our life I have been focusing more on teaching classes which I really love too, and that allows me to not have to be on call - which is what is most difficult with young children, especially little ones who are still nursing. So I have sort of shifted from on-call life for probably the next year to teaching more scheduled things which has been really nice.

But I got into birth work because I had an amazing doula who really opened my eyes to like - this is a thing, and I can do this, I’m really passionate about this. She was really instrumental in guiding us through our first birth which was an induction at the hospital which was not something I expected. And the way that she helped me shift my perspective and see things through that experience was really informative and inspirational for me. So I did my doula training with her, her name is Evelyn, she is located in Brewer, Maine. And yeah, I’ve just kind of done things slowly over the last few years in-between having my own babies which has been really fun, and I’ve recently gotten more into teaching classes. I teach child birth classes in Bangor at the birth center at Holly No.7, and that’s been a super fun connection, because I obviously have such a personal love for the midwives and then I get to work with them professionally as well. And I have done some midwife assisting with them, so when they have births down this way I am able to assist them with that which has been really awesome. So I have kind of dabbled in those sorts of things, and I will get back into the on-call life when I am ready because I do miss that.

Angela: Alright, I will link all of your information in the show notes. Thank you So much for sharing your birth story today.

LeAnne: Thank you, bye!

My Maine Birth is a weekly podcast, a specially designed place where moms can share their Maine birthing experiences. Consider subscribing, as it is the best way to support the show! Also, make sure to read the rest of our blogs!

This podcast is sponsored by MyMaine Photo. MyMaine Photo specializes in coastal maternity portraits and Maine Birth Photography. I am a certified Maine birth photographer and Doula and I would love to capture the emotion, strength, and love that unfolds Like a wedding, giving birth is a major life event that deserves to be documented and remembered.

For more information visit LeAnne online at https://linktr.ee/adventureawaitsbirthservices

You can also follow her on Facebook or Instagram @adventureawaitsbirthservices

Classes are held monthly at Holly No7 Birth Center in Bangor, Maine on the third Saturday of each month. Upcoming class dates are May 20, and June 17. The best time to take a class is between 32-38 weeks of pregnancy, please contact LeAnne to sign up!

For more information about Holly No.7 Birth Center in Bangor, Maine click here - https://www.hollyno7.com

You can find the My Maine Birth Podcast out now wherever you listen to podcast. Or here on my website under the podcast tab! https://www.mymainephoto.com/mymainebirth