Morganne’s Story

“I met Katie when I taught barre at a studio here in Richmond and Katie was teaching prenatal yoga at the same studio.

At that point, I didn’t really know anything about birth at all. My husband and I had just signed up for classes at the hospital, and I knew that Katie had just gotten her doula certification and she’d attended a couple of births and was talking about how magical it was.

I was kind of blissfully unaware at that point. I didn’t want to be aware; I just wanted to stay where I was. And then the thought that the baby actually has to come out of me started to become more and more real.

I had avoided talking to Katie 1:1 because I was afraid of being talked into a natural birth. Then, I was helping her clean up after class one day and I mentioned that I didn’t know what I wanted and that I didn’t really know anything. She lent me a couple of books, and that’s my love language. I love to learn. So I read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskins and it talked about how childbirth had become westernized and dominated by male doctors and medicine. It was very much speaking my language at the time.

Even though I started to become interested in preparing for a natural birth, Katie never tried to sway me. She just offered up resources and education and helped me learn more. And, once I DID learn more, I realized that I was going into labor with no real sense of what could happen or how it could happen and no semblance of control – control is the wrong word, but I really like control, you know? 

I started learning more and more and then we did those basic classes at the hospital. What sealed the deal for me was the epidural needle. So then we signed up for the “if you’re going to try natural childbirth” class and I asked Katie if she had space for me.

With this being my first time going through pregnancy, everything was very scary and different. And she was always there – I could text her and ask her anything. And she would come over and do stretches – if I said anything was hurting me, she would come over and show me how to hang my leg off of the couch in a certain way, and she’d show my husband how to do certain things. She was just so helpful and reassuring.

Fast forward to my 38-week appointment. I go in thinking, “It’ll just be another appointment. No big deal.” It was on a Monday. I even had my lunch packed in the chair next to me. And my blood pressure was through the roof and there was protein in my urine. I was entering the early stages of preeclampsia. That meant they were sending me to the hospital to be induced, and that was not my plan. I called Katie and I was just bawling.

She calmed me down and said “I will meet you over there, and we will find out what’s going on. If it looks like it’s going to be a while, I can come back, I can call you, I can text you, whatever you need, I’ll be there. And we can still follow your plan to the best of our ability.”

So that really calmed me down a lot. And because the baby was not anywhere close to ready, it took forever. They did a series of induction processes, some of which are really painful. Finally, on Tuesday morning, they started Pitocin and things seemed to move a little faster.

Katie came back to the hospital and was helping me move through contractions. There was a birthing ball there, and she helped me with positioning. She didn’t speak for me, but she prompted me to ask important questions. If she had not been there, I would have been at the mercy of the doctor. I loved my OB and my midwives, but it probably would’ve been whatever was best for their schedule.

When the medical staff needed me to stop moving so they could better monitor the baby, Katie came in with questions: Ok, well, we can’t be on the ball – can she do this? Can we do this?

Then something happened that precipitated a need for a shift – I think maybe my blood pressure was really high and the baby’s heart rate was dropping. They said listen, you need to be still so you can have a magnesium drip or an epidural. And I don’t know what this means;  I don’t know what any of this is. If I hadn’t had Katie there, I would’ve been, like, whatever.

Katie is so brutally honest and real. I didn’t necessarily look at other doulas anyway, but that’s what really drew me to her in prenatal yoga, and that’s kind of what bonded us and grew our relationship.

She explained the differences between the two options and we decided the epidural was the better of the two options. So I ended up having an epidural. That part was also a little traumatic, because I was 8 centimeters dilated.

But, from my perspective, it ended up being the best it could be in that situation. I was able to control how much of the epidural I got. After that initial shot, I rested. I was able to not press the button again, and I could still kind of feel the need to push, which was important to me.

While I don’t remember much of what happened in those moments, what I look back on and notice is that my husband was able to be a very present and motivating and integral part of our daughter’s birth because Katie showed him what to do. She did help me hands-on when I wanted her to, but for the most part, she showed Matt what to do. She enabled him to be helpful. 

Like, I talked to my friend whose husband just kind of sat there and said the same three “good job, sweetie” words over and over again and she was like, I want to strangle him. That was SO not my experience. Matt was an incredible partner.

She also took pictures! So we have very raw, real pictures that we will treasure forever from Noah’s birth.

And she made me feel really cared for and comfortable and safe in what could otherwise be a scary environment.

Her breadth of experience is so valuable to me, too. There's no curveball that she's not prepared for. And I can't be prepared for all the curveballs.

I have a son, too! And his birth was totally different. It was nice to know what I was going into, but since I’d had Pitocin-induced contractions with Noah, I never really knew what a natural course of contractions felt like.

So I was 40 weeks with Levi and so over it. Middle of August 2020. When I went to my 40-week appointment, my doctor stripped my membranes. I called Katie and asked, “What can I expect?” and she said, “To be honest, a lot of my mamas get their membranes stripped and have intense contractions for 24 hours and then they sometimes go away.” And that’s exactly what happened!

So I ended up calling her that night at three o'clock in the morning and I was like, I don't know Katie, they're really strong and some of them are 30 seconds apart, and some of them are two minutes apart, they just don't seem to be consistent. But I don’t know?

She had me call her and talk to her and she said, “I don’t think this is it. Try to rest.”

And so I didn't go to the hospital, thank goodness, and I laid my head down and went to sleep, and they were gone. She just knew. She had the experience to know what to expect from that. It helped me avoid a false emergency trip to the hospital, and my mom was coming from two hours away.

But then I had contractions the whole next day, and they started getting really deep into my lower back and being really painful in my lower back so I asked her about that and she asked me a couple more questions, had a few Facetimes with me, and said it sounds like the baby might be flipped.

And so she got on FaceTime and showed Matt and I how to do this move where he’s like, behind me and at the start of a contraction – I think I can't remember what it was now, but I think it's like three breaths – and then he would like pull up on my belly and hold. And I would tilt my pelvis forward. And we did that throughout an entire movie. And yeah, yeah, but it worked! It was, you know, it stopped being such a painful low back situation and once we got him flipped, the contractions started being much more regular. 

That same night I texted her at three o'clock, and she was like, “Call me, let me hear your voice.” And I called her and she was like, It's time to go, I can hear it. She met us at the hospital in triage and my water broke, but I didn't realize it. I was like, “Something's happening.” And Katie was like, it's okay, your water just broke. And just was with us every step of the way. 

The whole time I was pregnant with Levi, I was like, you guys, this baby's huge. He's up under my ribs. And he's on my bladder. He's just enormous. And I was like, okay, okay, so I lay down and the midwife does the dig into my stomach thing. And she asks, “How big was your first baby?” And I said six pounds. And she said, “This isn’t a six-pound baby.”

This time I didn't have any drugs at all. I mean, it was hard. It was really hard. And for a long time, there was just an immense amount of pressure. I can't tell you how many different positions we got into. 

It was taking so so so long. 

We had a nurse who was so sweet and also so tough, which was what I needed. It was nice to have a bad cop to Katie's Good cop in my corner. Katie was soft and just there with the coping and the type of motivation that I needed, because she'd already done this with me once before.

The nurse said, “He's got to be there. You have to feel them.” And I said, Katie, he's not there yet. I cannot. I know he's not there yet. It's not time to push. She's like, I just don't understand. So she asked the nurse to come over. And the nurse checked me and she said, you still have a little bag of water in the way. My water only broke halfway or whatever. There was still something there in the way. And I said, “Well, can you break it?” And she said, “Well, if I break it, he's gonna come.” I'm like, “Okay, let's go.” 

And she and Katie kind of took me aside and explained that the nurse didn’t want the baby to come without the midwife being there. But I finally did convince her to break it for me and the midwife showed up at the last minute, but um, it was brutal, brutal and beautiful. It was beautiful. Yeah, but I had that with Levi. I honestly don't know if I could have done it without her. 

I felt like you know what's gonna happen and so you can get through it. But I was in like a deep pit of, “I just can't do it anymore. I don't even have one more minute left in me,” but I know I don't have a choice. He has to come out. 

And where Matt was so instrumental with Noah, he still was so wonderful with Levi – but I needed Katie’s muscle imprint and to know when and where to push because I think Matt was a little overwhelmed with the whole thing because it was so much more intense than it was with Noah.

And he ended up being a 9.5-pound baby and was like 21.5” long! He was so huge.

Katie was also there for postpartum support. She checked in with me every day, like “How are you doing? What do you need?” And she told me things like you know what’s best and it’s ok. If you just cannot pump right now, or if you have to supplement with a little formula, it’s ok. She was always in my corner. It seems like especially postpartum, everyone else is there for the baby. But you just went through all that to bring this baby into the world, you know? So having that support singularly focused on me was essential.

Everyone thinks pregnancy and parenthood are so cute and sunshiney and wonderful. But she was not afraid to tell me that yeah, it’s really, really hard. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But she was also quick to say, like, I can’t even begin to explain how you’re going to feel when you look at that baby’s face for the first time.

I don’t usually watch stressful, scary, or dramatic TV shows or movies. That’s just the kind of person I am. Life is hard enough. But if I do, it has to have a book version, and I read the book. That way, I know what’s coming when. And Katie really spoke to that for me. I just knew I could trust her. And I knew that her experience with her own births and her assisting other mamas made her need to tell the truth made me feel like I can trust her.

And she was always there. I knew she was always going to be there. She said, call me and text me anytime. She brought us props and books to borrow. She showed us stretches and all of the things. You can just ask her or tell her anything. Nothing scares her. Nothing’s too gross. Nothing’s too weird. She’s just like, “It’s ok. It’s no big deal.”

It’s like being able to go to a friend you’re 100% comfortable with, but better – because there’s so much experience and knowledge behind it.

Overall, just very reassuring and calming and empowering. Like a force to stand beside you and walk beside you through a process that can be any number of things, including terrifying and sad, and where you can feel really out of control. Katie helps you take back some of that power.

Both of my children’s births could have felt very scary and out of control for me if I hadn’t had her.  Just, she just truly, she just made the best-case scenario for both of their births possible, even though they were very different situations. I would recommend her to anyone.”