MyMaine Birth - Sunshine’s Maine Birth Experience at Mercy Hospital, Portland, Maine

MyMaine Birth: Sunshine’s Maine Birth Experience at Mercy Hospital, Portland

Recently, I have had the pleasure of hosting Sunshine on the MyMaine Birth Podcast where she talked about her birth experience in Maine. She delivered a beautiful baby girl at Mercy Hospital in Portland, Maine with the help of her trusted midwives from Back Cove Midwives.

Sunshine is a Maine postpartum doula serving the greater Portland, Maine area. If you are in need of postpartum support the best way to contact her is to call or text, her phone number is (207) 409-9155 You can also email Sunshine at sdjdoula@yahoo.com but the best way to get ahold of her is to call or text.

Welcome to the MyMaine Birth Podcast, 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 Maine Birth Center and Maine home birth stories, every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated. 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’re looking to document your own birth story, I highly recommend considering my Portland Maine Birth Photography services. I am a skilled professional Portland Maine birth photographer and am very passionate about capturing the raw and emotional moments of the birthing process. And I create a personalized and intimate photo album, creating a lasting and beautiful memory of one of the most special moments of your life.

Join me and listen here to hear my conversation with Sunshine. Scroll down for the full transcript.

Angela: Hi Sunshine, welcome to MyMaine Birth

Sunshine: Hi!

Angela: So before we get to your birth story, can you tell me a little bit about you and your family?

Sunshine: So I have a daughter who is 27, and I have two cats and a dog. My daughter just got engaged so I am very excited about that!

Angela: What area of Maine are you located in?

Sunshine: I am in Westbrook but I brought her up in the Portland/Falmouth/Yarmouth area.

Angela: Alright can you tell me a little bit about when you found out you were pregnant and the type of care that you chose?

Sunshine: Sure, I had gone to massage school out in New Mexico and then my younger sister wanted to move to Portland. So I moved back to Maine with my younger sister and met my daughters father and got pregnant pretty quickly. I had chose Back Cove Midwives, and they worked out of Mercy Hospital. I had really wanted to do a home birth but after talking with my partner we made a financial decision - Maine Care was going to pay for the hospital birth - so I found a midwife who was teaching a class called - How to have a Home Birth experience in the Hospital. her hame is Shila Sailarance. I think she is retired from home birth midwifery now - but her class was so empowering and I got to see picture and videos of women giving birth in different positions and she kind of taught my partner how to (after washing his hands) check my cervix to see if it was time to go to the hospital. Yeah, luckily it was before they did all this testing. I did do one ultrasound at 20 weeks and found out I was having a girl, which was very lovely news. Then they were so busy in their practice that they added a third Maine midwife to the practice - I only met her once but she was the one on-call for my labor time which propelled me into the doula world.

Angela: Wow, so can you tell me about how your labor and birth unfolded?

Sunshine: Sure, so I was due the second or third week of June. I was walking around June 4th at the Old Port Festival, and it was a hot day and I was very pregnant - I think I was in labor and didn’t really feel it. So that night, I got into bed and I was reading a book - it was a very long book by Carolyn Chute called Merry Men - it was about a birth. I got to the end of the birth and my water broke! I felt this little pop and I rolled off the bed - it kind of smelled like baby poop a little bit but it wasn’t a dark color. So I called the number, and the new midwife was saying - well, you should go back to bed. But I was in pain immediately - so I would squat through each contraction and I would have my partner push on my back - and I just didn’t really think about it. I was in labor land, so I called her back a few hours later - I think around 3am - and she could tell by my voice that I was much more progressed so she said to go to the hospital.

In the meantime - my partner had checked my cervix and he was like - wow, I feel the head! So we got in the car - we had planned to walk up the street to the hospital because we were only a quarter mile from Mercy on State street - it was very painful to have a contraction in the car. So we got to the entrance and this woman was going to walk me down to labor and delivery - and there was this big wonderful man who was a security guard - and I started to have a contraction so I went down to squat. The woman got all upset and she was like - oh let’s get you a wheelchair or a stretcher. And he was like - no she’s doing ok - he obviously trusted that I was doing what I needed to do. I had the contraction and went down to get checked in. The hospital has a system where the midwife doesn’t come until the nurses check to see how far along you are. So I got into the room and I must have been in transition at that point. I had a really lovely nurse named Penny. She was on one side of me and my partner was on the other - and I was feeling like I had to push. So the nurse called the midwife who came rushing in. I just remember her saying - my goodness you're going so fast I didn’t have time to feed my dogs.

So my daughter was so far into the birth canal and they decided that there was some meconium present - so they told me that when she was born she would go over to the other side of the room and get checked by an anesthesiologist to make sure she hadn’t inhaled any meconium. They couldn’t hear the heartbeat so she told me to push her out on the next contraction. And that was very painful, but she came out. I had a tear up into my urethra which was very painful. But I was so excited she didn’t have any problems with the meconium, so she came over to me very quickly. And I was just propelled into motherhood.

I felt like something was missing though, and I hadn’t heard of Doula’s before. And I felt disappointed that the midwives that I had grown to trust and love weren’t at the birth. The midwife who was there was very nice, but I didn’t know her. So a year later my younger sister had a baby in the Boston area, and my other sister and I were her support people. I saw her give birth and it was so amazing - she had a midwife too - and she was allowed to get up and down out of bed - and she pushed the baby out. That was when I decided I didn’t want to do anything medical but I did want to support women in Birth. So I took the doula training when my daughter was 4 years old.

The ballad house was operating in Portland and I took a training there, but it wasn’t a certifiable program. So then I took a Doula training at Birthwise Midwifery School in Bridgeton and that was in the year 2000. And I was very lucky because Maine Medical Center had an on staff Doula program at that time - so I got hired immediately and I got to attend 2-3 births per months during the first few months of being a doula.

Angela: What is the name of your doula business?

Sunshine: I call it Sunshine Doula and Massage.

Angela: What is the best way for people to get ahold of you?

Sunshine: Really to call or text me, I do have an email but I don’t want to miss anything so really the best way is to call or text. I mostly do postpartum doula work at this point. I did recently just volunteer for a birth at Maine Medical Center with a woman from Africa who I got matched up with from the Community Doula Birth Program. And I mentored a new doula - this woman was having her first baby, and her partner wasn’t in the country so us two doulas attended the birth and it was just wonderful.

Angela: Alright I will link all of your information in the show notes so anybody who might be looking for a Maine Postpartum Doula can find you.

Sunshine: That would be awesome.

Angela: Is there anything you want to share with new moms birthing in Maine?

Sunshine: Well I think new moms really need a lot of support and I think - as a society we prepare so much for the birth that we don’t think about postpartum - so I want to say to any new moms to reach out and get postpartum support. It is really important to have that.

Angela: So back to your own experience, can you share about your own postpartum time with your daughter?

Sunshine: I’m glad you asked, I became good friends with a woman who I took the child birth class with and we started to get together once a month to support each other. There was one mom who was having her second baby and we had our babies a few days apart - I would call her in the morning a mess and crying - and she would say - come on over Sunshine and we’ll have coffee. I went to her house almost every day - and that really helped. I was extremely sleep deprived. I was so neurotic about putting a pacifier or anything in my daughters mouth - I was just nursing her all night and finally realized that she could sleep all night without nursing. I could have done that at 6 months but I did that for a whole year. The sleep deprivation made me really - running on empty. And I think Maine Medical Center does have a zoom Mothers Group for babies 6 months and under that meets once a week.

Angela: Alright well thank you so much Sunshine for sharing your Maine Birth story today.

Sunshine: Of course, thanks for having me - bye!

And that’s the end of another MyMaine Birth Podcast! Thank you for joining me. I hope the stories shared here have been inspiring and informative to all of my listeners.

If you are looking to document your own Portland Maine Birth Story I highly recommend considering my Portland Maine Birth Photography services. I am a skilled professional Portland Maine birth photographer and am very passionate about capturing the raw and emotional moments of the birthing process. And, I also design a personalized and intimate photo album, creating a beautiful and lasting memory of one of the most special moments of your life. For more information head over to https://www.mymainephoto.com/birthphotography And schedule a complimentary zoom consultation with me!

Thank you for tuning in, 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!