MyMaine Birth - Mid-week midwife edition, Gayle Eckey of Stone Mountain Midwife in Brownfield, Maine

MyMaine Birth - Mid-week Midwife edition featuring Gayle Eckey of Stone Mountain Midwife in Brownfield, Maine

Welcome back to another mid-week midwife episode of MyMaine Birth! In these episodes we explore the world of childbirth, pregnancy, and motherhood from the perspective of midwives in the great state of Maine. We will delve into the latest research, share personal stories and experiences, and connect with experts in the field to bring you the most up-to-date and reliable information. Whether you’re a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother, or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you.

If you or someone you know is expecting and would like to capture the precious moments of meeting your baby for the first time, I highly recommend considering my Maine Birth Photography services. I am a professional Maine Birth Photographer specializing in documenting the beauty and emotion of birth. I also provide families a treasured keepsake to cherish for years to come. And, I create a personalized and intimate photo album that you will treasure forever.

Join me today as we hear from Gayle Eckey of Stone Mountain Midwife in Brownfield, Maine. Gayle is a home birth midwife who is licensed in both Maine and New Hampshire. She is currently welcoming families who reside within an hour and a half of her home in Brownfield, Maine.

Gayle loves walking with families who are seeking something different than what has become the mainstream experience through the child bearing years. She practices from a place of common sense, trust, and love. Gayle is also adept in bodywork for the mother baby dyad as well as breastfeeding support.

This episode is sponsored by MyMaine Photo, Maine’s go-to studio for Birth Photography! Serving families across Maine. You can find more information here https://www.mymainephoto.com/why-me

Listen Here!

MyMaine Birth Mid-Week Maine Midwife edition of My Maine Birth featuring Gayle Eckey of Stone Mountain Midwife.

Angela: Hi Gayle, Welcome to MyMaine Birth! Thanks for taking the time to chat with me today.

Gayle: Yeah, I’m excited! I feel like it’s my first little trip into being a Maine midwife.

Angela: Yeah, I’m so excited - so you recently moved to Maine from Long Island?

Gayle: Yeah, so I grew up here. I am living directly under the farm that I grew up in. I moved to Long Island after I graduated high school, and I met my husband. Then for 25 years we were like, we are going to move to Maine, we’re going to move to Maine. It just wasn’t happening though. Then eventually we were just like we’ve got to go, we just have to do it! So we did, we packed up our two kids who were still living at home, sold a lot of our stuff and just came. So we have been here for a year in June.

So I am a mom of three, I have one that is grown and flown. He is in the military - he has been in the military since he was 17 and he is 21 now. And I also have a 15 year old and an 11 year old. And we recently just packed up and moved to Maine after 25ish years of living on Long Island. So we have just have been spending this past year, at least myself just kind of healing from what life in New York has been like - which I didn’t even realize how intense that actually was until I left it and started kind of re-acclimating to the world a little bit. My kids are all home schooled. They haven’t always been home schooled, my first went through public school, but my second two have been home schooled for the past 4ish years, and probably more like life-schooling. I’m not really great at curriculums and setting boundaries and setting rules - I think they seem to navigate life pretty well so I just do my best to support that.

I started midwifery school when my youngest was 2, which was a really interesting experience for my family and I think it really bonded my kids to my husband in a way that not all kids get to be bonded to their dad’s because he really was - because midwifery school was for me leaving my family every 5 weeks for a 2 week period of time, and I did that for two years - and so he really was the sole parent in a lot of ways, definitely when I was gone, but also when I was home. I had to do the clinical work and the didactic work and it was kind of intense, you kind of have to check out of life in general and just be a student midwife. So we are a pretty tight family unit.

Angela : Alright, so you are going to be sharing your three birth stories today, go ahead start where it feels right to you.

Gayle: All three of my birth experiences were different and came with their own gifts and lessons. My first, I was 21 when I found out I was pregnant and he was a welcome surprise, but I also was 21 and I just kind of like stepped into the system of like well I guess this is what I am supposed to do. I didn’t really question anything.

In retrospect, I was reading one of my little journal prompts I had kept and my husband had asked if I wanted to have this baby at home, and my response was “no I think I want to be in the hospital for this birth”. So he was a hospital birth, really fast - 6 hours for a first time birthing person is pretty quick - a normal vaginal birth. But in the hospital, I don’t think I can say that it was a natural birth. Even though I had no medications it was still kind of an intense experience.

Angela: So how was your labor with him?

Gayle: It was 41 weeks and a couple days which is the normal. I had gone to the Ob-gyn that day and they of course stripped my membranes, without consent. So after that I had a couple contractions but nothing too crazy. I went on, had a normal day - went to bed - slept for a couple hours. And woke up in labor. There was no denying, or wondering “I wonder if this is it” it was like no “this is it”. So we kind of right away just packed up and went to the hospital because I was in it. And I got to the hospital and I can just remember them trying to ask me all these questions and like triaging you and I was just like this can’t be happening right now - I can’t be doing this right now. Then they were trying to put me in a wheelchair to wheel me up to labor and delivery and I was just like I’m not sitting in that chair - no way! And by the time we got up into labor and delivery I was definitely active and moving through labor pretty quickly. I don’t think I was in the hospital for more than 4 hours before he was born.

I had to ask my husband to tell me his birth story for years after he was born, because I was super proud of the fact that I had labored and birthed this baby naturally, but there were parts of that experience that were really difficult for me to wrap my brain around. Like, I had an obstetrician who had been practicing for a super long time, and it was her normal standard to give every one of her patients an episiotomy. So, I was doing well laboring and I wanted to be laboring on my side - and she kind of forcibly flipped me over and then gave me an episiotomy and he was born within 15 minutes. So part of me just always goes back to that piece of like, uhh if I had just stayed home - that would have been a totally different experience. But there is always retrospect in every birth, you always have those little pieces of like oh what if I had just.. or oh I wish that didn’t happen like that.. Healing from that episiotomy was one of the worst things I have experienced as a human being I think. It made my postpartum very difficult. And as a 22 year old, I didn’t really know myself yet, so I didn’t know what I was feeling or what I was navigating at that time probably was postpartum depression - in retrospect we always can see things a little bit differently. So that birth, what that provider did to me, really changed the trajectory of how I knew I would birth any other children that chose to come through me. So he was my only child for 7 years. I wanted my second child so badly, I just called him in so strongly, but it took him 7 years to decide he was ready to come. When he was ready, he was the gentlest pregnancy and birth and postpartum experience. What it felt like to be pregnant with him, how we birthed together and then how he is as a human being then and now is so interesting and he was the child that I felt most connected to - not that I don’t feel connected to all of my kids but there was something about him that really like was this strong connection. He was my unassisted birth. I hired a midwife and I told her right from the beginning that I was pretty sure I’m going to have an unassisted birth - and she was kind of like oh ok, we’ll see. Kind of like what I tell people now when they are talking have unassisted births - which I obviously support - it really has to be an agreement that I think you make with this being that is coming through you. Even though in my mind and my heart space I knew that I was going to have this unassisted birth I didn’t really know that he was going to be unassisted until I was laboring with him. I felt no need or desire to call in anybody to that space. The only reason I woke up husband up was because I wanted my pool filled. He interestingly was my longest labor, I’d say he was 13ish hours, but it was only intense for that last little bit of him coming through. But his labor in general was really enjoyable, it actually felt really good. And that of course, kind of lead to having a really different postpartum experience. I was much more able to ask for what I needed and to recognize that it was okay for me to get in my bed at 7pm at night and not do anything except for be in my bed with my baby. And sometimes just be in my bed and know that my baby was safe out in the living room with my mother-in-law or my husband or even my 7 year old at that time could make laps around the house with the baby.

So that birth experience for me was healing in a lot of ways because of what I had experienced with my first baby. And really set me up for owning how I wanted to parent and how I wanted to show up for my kids, and how I wanted to show up for the world in general. I think those second babies for a lot of people, they push us into our true human-ness. I just love him for that. I could see who he was in pregnancy and his birth is so much how he is as a human being - very much calm and quiet and gentle and just like able to be present without being overpowering by any stretch.

My third baby, she brought the fire to this family. We didn’t know with any of our kids if we were having boys or girls. But her pregnancy was a totally different experience. I knew that I was done having babies after my second was born, but I didn’t really know when she was coming through. I couldn’t feel her in the same way that I could feel my second son. I was still nursing him when I got pregnant with her. I knew very clearly at that time that I would probably have another unassisted pregnancy this time and birth. I was living on Long Island when I had my baby and only nurse midwives are allowed to practice on Long Island - and what I knew of that care at that time was not in alignment with who I had become as a person and how I wanted to be cared for or have someone witness me. I went back to my midwife, I kind of want to do this, but I still want to be in contact with you, and she was like - that’s fine but you still have to pay my full fee. And I just was like, I can’t. I’m not going to do that. And my sister who still lived in Maine was like oh this midwife just moved in right under my house - you should reach out to them and just come here to have your baby. So that’s what we did!

So the Socopee Valley Midwives were my midwives for my third baby and they really supported me. I felt like I could just say to them this is what I am looking for, this is what I am open to. They really went out on a limb with me in a lot of ways- at the time this was Brenda and Lindsey and Lindsey was the one I spent the most time talking with - and she would be on the phone with me for hours before I came up to Maine to have this baby. I was just really open with them that I felt like I wanted an unassisted birth and they were fully supportive of that, and made room for me for that. And of course, the second I had any kind of - ohh I think this is labor - I remember wanting them so badly. I can remember calling Lindsey and telling her I think I’m in Labor and she was like ummhmmm. And I was like I think I need you to come. And she didn’t ask me any questions, she just heard me, and she just came. And I rememberer her getting there and kind of like falling into her arms, like I don’t know to this day - what that was. I really feel like my daughter called her in, like we needed her to be in that space with us, I don’t know why. But I felt completely loved and held, and that really let me kind of go through her birth experience.

Her birth was hard, and fast and furious, and noisy, and beautiful and it was just so much. But her pregnancy was also like that, I was tired, I was gigantic. I didn’t feel well, I didn’t feel horrible either but it was just like an extreme opposite of what I had just come from in my last birth. So that was kind of hard for me to wrap my brain around. But she was born with the sunrise, into my hands. Lindsey was present with me and at one point I can remember asking her to put her hands down and help me, and she very gently did without being intrusive and then kind of backed away. But I was really grateful to have her just be there, and I can remember her saying to me at the perfect time - which as a midwife now I’m like how do I re-create that for other people having their babies. She just said to me “your baby is going to slide right into your hands” And it was the only thing I heard, she was totally behind me and not really in my space but she said it at the exact perfect time - and then my daughter did, she just like slid into my hands, and it was wonderful.

Her postpartum was probably my hardest postpartum because we then had to travel back to Long Island. So I had this young child 3 1/2, a newborn, and a school aged child that had to be back on Long Island to start school. And so there was this whole series of events that happened once we got back to Long Island, first my newborn got sick, we had to go to the hospital with her - and then immediately upon getting out of the hospital with her - my older child fell and broke his arm and it was back to the emergency room with him. And that really tipped me over this edge that I knew that I was kind of on - of postpartum anxiety - so my postpartum with my third baby was actually very difficult. I wound up not really having the support that I needed, other than my family. By the time that I realized that I was not doing ok, it made it even harder to find the help that I needed, because I was so far into my own head space of not really being ok. My husband would stay home from work some days to make sure that I was ok, and that the kids were taken care of, and definitely my in-laws - especially my mother in-law and both of my sisters in-law both really stepped up and held me in a time that I really needed to be held. And eventually, after going through a handful of providers that were like “well you didn’t have your baby with us” so they can’t help you. Then the pediatrician says “you can’t take anti-anxiety medication because your breast-feeding”. Then the therapist says “stop sleeping with your baby and give your baby a bottle so that you can take this…”. It was like “ughh ahh”. And I knew in my heart that all of that was not going to actually serve me. So I ended up calling my midwife who was my midwife for my second baby and she was like “oh yes come and see me” and she put me on anti-anxiety medication which as a human I don’t generally like. I feel like there are a lot of other things we can utilize before we get to that point. But, I honestly feel like her putting me on anti-anxiety medication at that time in my life, possibly saved me, definitely saved my relationship with my children and my husband. And it was one hundred percent what I needed in that time. So that experience for me was humbling in a big way. It was humbling. I definitely had judgement around people that needed to use anxiety medication or medication for depression - and I can admit that openly - it makes me feel bad that I held that judgement, but then when I really needed it and kind of had that experience with it - it was like, ok I understand this differently now. So ultimately that experience really helped me step further into my parenting and step further into being able to help people in a different capacity and sit with people in a different capacity.

So those were my birth experiences! Three very different experiences, and three very different humans. I can’t believe how much I look at them and think “ahh yes, this is who you are and I knew you before you came, this is not surprising at all, this is who you are as a human”.

So if I’m going to go into becoming a midwife now, I think it’s interesting because people always ask, it’s always the question - how did you know you were going to become a midwife? what was the catalyst? And I think for a lot of people the catalyst is their birth experiences. They either had this amazing experience and they want to share that. Or they had horrible experiences and they want to shift the paradigm of what birth is so they are like “I’m going to do this, and I’m going to come in and make the change”. For me, I still don’t know the answer to that question. It is so interesting because I don’t think my birth, and my children were my catalyst into midwifery. I have always had this kind of reverence for pregnant people and babies, and I spent a lot of time as a doula and I did lactation consulting, and placenta encapsulating. And it just became this natural progression of well, this is the thing I do next. And it was really a stretch for me, because as a human, I hate certifications. I hate the things that we have to go through to say “I am a CPM”. I really push back against those. The only certification I hold is my CPM. I don’t like being put in boxes, and a lot of times when you have those certifications it puts you in a box. There are certain things like, you are beholden to the system. And its like, I don’t want to be in that system. And that is kind of how I practice midwifery now because I have not been a licensed midwife for the past five years. Living in New York it was illegal for me to be a midwife. And so I was so excited to come here and be a licensed midwife in Maine and New Hampshire, I am really struggling with what that actually feels like, and the rules around what I can and can’t do as a midwife - it’s making me crazy if I’m being completely honest here.

So I graduated from midwifery school in the summer of 2017 and then I got my CPM in January of 2018, and I was kind of up in the air with what I wanted to do with that. I continued to work with the nurse midwife who I had done all of my clinical skills with. She brought me on as her “assistant” and we really just continued on with the way that I worked with her as a senior student. I continued just to see her clientele with her practice and they knew what to expect. So for two years I continued to work for her. The majority of births we did together always. There were sometimes rare occasions where there would be two people laboring at the same time and we would split. And then eventually I got to a place, where I felt like I really needed to start learning who I was as a midwife as myself, and not who I was as a midwife under somebody else and their practice philosophies. And I love her dearly, she gave me a great gift of being my preceptor, because it wasn’t easy - because it wasn’t legal. And it was right around the time that covid was starting so that was kind of the thing that pushed me to say alright, I am going to do this.

I had been doing birth work on Long Island for over 10 years, maybe closer to 15 - so people there knew me. I had worked in the community for a long time. There were people that would come to me and say I want you to be my midwife. Those were the people that I felt totally safe - I trusted them - to be able to sit with them and know that they had me just as much as I had them. So I practiced on Long Island very quietly, with people that I really trusted. Right up until we moved to Maine. We have been here almost a year. I have been working on building this practice and being present on Instagram which has been one of the hardest parts of starting a practice - social media, and putting yourself on social media. So I am trying really hard to be present and do that. I feel like I’m just a little bit too old. The people that are having babies right now, they are on social media, that’s where they are getting a lot of their information from and that’s where they find their people. For me, I’m just past that, I go on social media to look at pretty picture and find recipes, so it’s just not the same for me.

Angela: Yeah, I definitely feel the same way sometimes! I think it’s so cool though. What is the biggest piece of advice you give to expecting parents?

Gayle: I think the thing that comes up for me, what I say to expecting people is that there are two people that are going through this dance. You only get to know your part. You only get to know what your part of this dance is - but there is another person that is having their own experience that is coming through you. That coupled with the fact that we live in this world where we feel like we want to control everything - and it feels stressful when we don’t get to control everything. That is the thing you really have to start working on, because you don’t get to control birth. You can control how you are responding to the experience but you don’t actually get to control the experience. So recognizing that a lot of your birth experience is surrendering to however that is going to unfold. You only get to do your part. There is a whole other person that has to do their part. So letting go of our expectations, and surrendering to the process. Really for me, when I was having my babies - and they were pretty quick - was you have to be committed to this experience. Even as someone that was like, I am not having a needle put in my back - one hundred percent, no way - I still had to be like “No, no this is what we wanted. We’re gonna stay home and we’re gonna make it through this”. That commitment is serious. You have to be really committed.

Taking your mind out of it - you have to. If you can’t, that is a lot of work.

Angela: yeah, I could not agree more with all of that. Thank you so much Gayle for sharing your story today!

Gayle: thank you for having me on!

You can find Gayle online at https://www.stonemountainmidwife.com

This episode is sponsored by MyMaine Photo, Maine’s go-to studio for Maine Birth Photography! If you, or someone you know is expecting and would like to capture the precious moments of meeting your baby for the first time, I highly recommend considering my Maine Birth Photography services. I am a professional Maine Birth Photographer specializing in documenting the beauty and emotion of birth. I also provide families a treasured keepsake to cherish for years to come. I will create a personalized and intimate photo album that you will treasure forever. Find more information here https://www.mymainephoto.com/birthphotography and schedule a complimentary Zoom consultation with me.

Thank you again for tuning in and I look forward to bringing you more amazing birth stories. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! And I will see you back here again, next week!