Birth Journeys: Birth Stories and Birth Education for Moms & Pregnant Individuals
Are you looking for a podcast to help you feel confident in your birth experience?
Then The Birth Journeys Podcast® is for you! We share powerful and transformative birth stories that illuminate the realities of childbirth. Hosted by a labor nurse and prenatal coach who specializes in transformational coaching techniques, this podcast goes beyond traditional birth narratives to foster healing, build trust, and create transparency between birthing individuals and healthcare providers.
In each episode, we dive into essential topics like birth preparation, debunking common misconceptions, understanding hospital procedures, and promoting autonomy in the birthing process. We also bring you the wisdom and insights of experienced birth workers and medical professionals.
This is a safe and inclusive space where every birth story is valued, honored, and deserves to be heard. Join us in exploring the diverse and unique experiences of birth givers, and discover how transformational coaching can empower your own birth journey.
Contact Kelly Hof at: birthjourneysRN@gmail.com
Birth Journeys: Birth Stories and Birth Education for Moms & Pregnant Individuals
When Nurses Become Magicians: Getting Babies Unstuck with Marya Eddaifi
From personal birth trauma to revolutionary solutions for laboring mothers—this conversation with Marya Eddaifi reveals how innovative manual techniques are changing birth outcomes worldwide.
Marya's journey begins with her own disappointing cesarean birth in 1995, a catalyst that eventually led her to become a labor and delivery nurse determined to find better ways to support women through childbirth. After nearly 24 years in the US Air Force and experience across four countries, Marya's quest to understand why some labors stall led her to a profound discovery: the critical role of fascia—our body's connective tissue system—in birth progress.
The conversation takes us through her revelations about positioning, manual techniques, and the strategic approach to helping babies navigate the maternal pelvis. With fascinating insights into techniques like side-lying release and Walchers position explained from both anatomical and practical perspectives, Marya breaks down complex biomechanics into actionable approaches that can help prevent cesarean deliveries.
What makes this episode especially valuable is Marya's explanation of her groundbreaking Dysfunctional Labor Maneuvers (DLM) app—an affordable, accessible tool that brings her expertise to birth professionals and laboring parents worldwide. Through an innovative algorithm, the app provides customized guidance based on labor status, dilation, and specific challenges, with easy-to-follow video demonstrations for immediate application.
Whether you're a birth professional seeking new tools for your practice or an expectant parent wanting to understand more options for labor support, this conversation offers a revolutionary perspective on addressing labor challenges through understanding the body's intricate design rather than defaulting to medical interventions. Mariah's passion for improving birth experiences while respecting individual needs shines through every minute of this enlightening discussion.
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Kelly Hof: Labor Nurse + Birth Coach
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Medical Disclaimer:
This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Hello, today I have with me Mariah Adife. Mariah is a labor and delivery nurse, certified personal trainer specializing in pre and postnatal fitness and corrective exercise specialist with experience across the US, england, italy and Germany. She served nearly 24 years in the US Air Force and is passionate about improving birth outcomes. Her studies in structural integration led her to develop innovative techniques to address labor challenges. As the creator of the Dysfunctional Labor Maneuvers course and the DLM app, she empowers birth professionals with hands-on solutions for labor dystocia. Her work is transforming the way birth is supported, making childbirth safer and more empowering for women worldwide. Mariah, welcome and thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm really excited to learn more about this app and how it can help labor professionals and parents that are going into the birth space and the backstory how this all came about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's backtrack to 1995. I love it, let's do that. I was pregnant. I was 22. At the time we were stationed in Hawaii, so my ex-husband was in the Navy and I was the dependent wife. When I got pregnant, I just put all my trust and faith in the doctors and nurses. I never read a book. I didn't prepare, I didn't take classes. It just wasn't something I heard people did.
Speaker 2:My family doesn't talk about birth. So I was really like very naive. I don't even really remember, but I was roughly 40 weeks. But even at that time I never used the word weeks. I was all like eight months, nine months, you know, just like any other young pregnant mom. And I showed up at one of my appointments that was for an ultrasound and the ultrasound tech says to me oh, you don't have enough fluid, and I don't know what that means at that time. And he said I guess you're having your baby today. And I laughed there's no way you can make me have a baby today.
Speaker 2:I didn't understand induction. I didn't even know what it was, never heard of it. My mom and sister, they went into their birth spontaneously and naturally. They just never talked about it. So I never honestly even thought about what an epidural is, didn't even know what an epidural is. I was extremely naive. They walked me over to labor and delivery and I'm told that I'm going to stay. And I was panicking. There's no cell phones 1995. I don't have a cell phone. I'm trying to get a hold of my then husband. I'm asking a friend to call him. I didn't expect this.
Speaker 2:So then I found myself, admitted they were ripening my cervix, but I didn't understand what that was. And when they came in with the bag of Pitocin, all I saw was this big bag of contractions, because they said we're going to start your labor now. And I was like, oh my God, I don't think I'm ready for this. And so I got started in that time frame, got uncomfortable. Maybe it was the bed, maybe it was the contraction starting. I didn't really understand what was going on. I would call the call bell to ask to use the restroom. They wouldn't show up, so I would just take the monitors off and go to the bathroom. And next thing I knew there was like three nurses in my room scolding me for taking the monitors off and I didn't really understand why. That was important to them and I was in a lot of pain. So I asked for pain medicine and they said it's too early for an epidural. So they gave me something. Iv lasted a couple hours.
Speaker 2:I woke up still really uncomfortable. I was begging for an epidural for hours. They wouldn't give me one until I was at least four centimeters at that time. So I kept telling them to check me. Finally I'm four centimeters, so I get an epidural.
Speaker 2:And then I realized I didn't like how that epidural felt, because I didn't like that. I couldn't move my legs and I had to depend on people to move me. I felt like a burden calling them and that wasn't like how I imagined my birth. I didn't think that this could possibly happen. I thought I was going to be somewhere, my water was going to break and I would go into labor. So I didn't know what to make of this. My ex-husband he was sitting on a chair not helping me way across the room. There was no offer of a birth ball or comfort measures or nothing.
Speaker 2:So when I finally could get the epidural, they broke my water and then I started having D-cells and they would turn me. And I was really upset with that because they would tell me to turn. I said my legs, I can't really move my legs, and they would just flop my legs over and I was confused why do I have to turn? I didn't understand that. It was really like no explanation, nothing. Then they said to me your baby's in distress, so we think you should have a C-section. And they gave me this consent form. And all I remember of the consent form was something could go wrong and you might not ever have kids again. And I was like and I'm supposed to sign this? I guess I have to. What other alternative do I have? So I sign it, I go have my C-section. And of course they're not doing skin to skin at that time, right, babies wrapped in a blanket and I didn't know gender. So then they were like it's a boy and I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping for a girl. And when they brought my baby to me and I think it was my husband that brought the baby to me I just wouldn't look at him. I couldn't look at him, I turned away and I'm like OK, thanks, just I don't know. It was the processing I didn't have time for. So they take the baby out, because back then there's nurseries, right, so baby is gone. My husband went with him and then they put me in PACU for two hours by myself. Nobody was there because it was like three o'clock in the morning and I was just there with the labor shakes, didn't know what they were, and then I ended up just in my room, had my baby with me and then eventually discharged home. I think I spent about five days in the hospital and I felt so disappointed Wow, is that what birth is about? Like it was really anticlimactic for me and when I got home I clearly had been in a lot of stress because I ended up with this huge cold sore on my face after I got home and then I just moved on with life because I didn't know any better.
Speaker 2:And 15 years later I became a labor and delivery nurse because the Air Force offered to send me to nursing school. I was a medic, I was an IDMT, which is like a level of a physician assistant, just not really very official, very just Air Force stuff. So I had a strong medical background. I worked in a level one trauma center. I thought I was going to be a trauma nurse, honestly, but in my clinicals I went to labor and delivery and I didn't really care about that one.
Speaker 2:It was when I went to postpartum. There was a girl that I had to take care of who was actually 13 and in my son's class. She knew my son and I really was quite moved with like how much I wanted to protect her. And then I thought I love critical care, maybe I'll just do labor and delivery, get used to the little babies and move into NICU. And that was my original plan.
Speaker 2:When I finally finished school and all the training the NTP, the officer training, finally finished school and all the training, the NTP, the officer training, things like that I ended up getting stationed in England and after a few months I will go to what they call the perinatal nurse course and learn how to labor a patient. In the meantime I was doing a lot of postpartum work and really realizing I would see some of these ladies have these really gentle bursts and I thought, wow, nobody treated me like that. You know, is this what it could have been like when I went to the perinatal nurse course? We do two weeks of didactic in the classroom and then we do four weeks on the floor and during that two weeks we came across comfort measures. They didn't talk about it a lot. It was like here's a ball and here's some hip squeezes and I was like they could have done something. They could have offered me a ball.
Speaker 2:I said why don't nurses offer women this? And this is back in 2011. I said why don't they offer women this? And they said women want epidurals anyway. I said why don't they offer women this? And they said women want epidurals anyway. They don't. Most of them want epidurals. I said I get that. I wanted an epidural, but they wouldn't give it to me. So what do we do in the in-between? So I never forgot about that, that there's a timeframe where women were denied epidurals and I understand the thinking behind it. I understand they're just trying for the better outcome, but when induction is a really tough place to be in. So I just felt like they didn't give me enough knowledge.
Speaker 2:So while I was in that course, I started to research how to help a woman in labor and back then there was not a whole lot. You didn't find a lot on YouTube, you didn't. There was not a whole lot. You didn't find a lot on YouTube, you didn't. Obviously there wasn't social media and I came across doula and donut doulas, stuff like that. So I reached out to somebody that had a workshop that was going to be while I was in that training and they weren't that far. They were actually in Richmond. Her name was Kathy Stewart and so I drove from Langley which is in Hampton, virginia, that's where my training was to Richmond.
Speaker 2:Now when I went to the training, I was actually stationed in England, so I was just what they call TDY, so I wasn't going to work at this hospital that I was going to train in, so I was really just being treated like a student and a new nurse at the same time. So that's a hard place to be, especially like. I was 37 years old, I was not a kid and I had a 15-year-old child, so you know I was in a different space. I took the course just the donor comfort measures that she was offering in the donut doula training but I was so moved by the emotional awareness that I just ended up taking the course and was really an advocate for natural birth and like when you first learn that, you're really excited and you're like there's nothing better than natural birth, right? So you become this person who wants to help every mother who wants a natural birth.
Speaker 2:I was learning along the way that it actually wasn't very supported in the hospital. Nurses were not comfortable with it and I think that was the key thing. It wasn't that they didn't want the support, they just didn't know how. There wasn't enough training out there, so they shied away from it, and I didn't. But one of the harder parts was well, you're a new nurse, you just don't know. You need to learn how to labor two patients.
Speaker 2:You need to learn how I was just like, do you not Like to learn how I was? Just like, do you not like? I went back to my birth when I was doing postpartum women and I was really grieving the opportunity I lost and I actually ordered my medical records, because now I know what they're talking about and I had a window of opportunity because my son was going to. If I did it before he was 18, I could order the records. So I ordered the records. I got this thin little paper charting right. I thought I was going to have the whole strip on there. My induction to C-section was roughly about eight hours. I thought I would have a strip. I had a smidge of a strip, probably like four inches long, with one B-cell, and then in the charting it was saying like how I gave birth to a baby girl in two places. I had a boy and I do have that on video. So I was just like, wow, just how dismissive.
Speaker 2:And so I started to really advocate for a good experience for mothers and because of my duo training, I thought the good experience meant a natural experience. But women want epidurals. And then I said, okay, what do I do now that they can't be upright and moving, and so I finally went back to England in October, october and so March of 2012,. I found Spinning Babies because I was looking to help. I had a particular patient who wanted natural. We did everything. We had her in the shower and even my unit, while I was in the perinatal nurse course and I learned about wireless monitoring the perinatal nurse course and I learned about wireless monitoring. I messaged my flight commander and said hey, why don't we have wireless monitoring? By the time I got back from my training, we had wireless monitoring.
Speaker 1:That's really fast because we just got wireless monitoring.
Speaker 2:No, no, I had a really fabulous flight commander who she supported me. Her name was Tess Clark. She supported all of my little harebrained schemes because it was she agreed, and I think she had four children and natural births herself. So she was a champion of my upcoming, my upbringing right. You know, I was a baby nurse and she was like the mother hen and so she supported me and we got wireless monitoring. So, yeah, I had her in the shower because we didn't have tubs. What we ended up doing later on was getting inflatable tubs. And so it was like this we were doing this shift, but some of the nurses that were working with me were not comfortable with it Because, again, we're shifting but nobody's offering them the training I think every nurse should get doula training. And so when I saw this girl was like not progressing, stuck at eight centimeters, it was like let's try an epidural. So she tried an epidural, didn't work and she ended up going back for C-section. And I was like, could I have done anything? And they're like the baby was OP, so there's nothing you could do. And I was like what's OP? Like I really didn't understand that.
Speaker 2:So again, I get on the computer, I start researching how to help a baby who's OP. And that's how I came across Spinning Babies. I thought Spinning Babies was only an England thing and that the instructor was British. So I messaged like they were having a class in March and I was like hi, I'm Maria and I'm a labor and delivery nurse for American Hospital and this is what we do and I'm explaining all of this and then Gail replies back I know what you guys do, I'm from Minnesota. And then Gail replies back I know what you guys do, I'm from Minnesota. I was like, oh, okay, but the workshop was like 45 minutes away and it was hosted actually by Sean Walker. He's a very prominent midwife, especially in the UK, who works with helping breach birth. I was just, it was like my first exposure and when I saw that I said this is what we're missing.
Speaker 2:So I brought that back and again, trying to champion this, the nurses weren't really sold or they didn't want to do it or they were confused by it. So I said how can I help them understand this? So I started really studying that word, myofascia, because I thought there was something about it. This was something was making a difference, but I didn't understand what it was. There was not a lot of information out there on fascia 2011,. It was maybe getting a little bit of study for about 10 years at the time, so I managed to find these two DVDs. His name is Sean Real and he had fascia release and advanced fascia release. So I bought those DVDs and that was like my very beginning into fascia release as I was trying to learn that. I was also trying to prove myself as a nurse, prove myself with this doula stuff, prove myself with the spinning baby stuff and really trying to. I bought my own peanut ball and brought it to work. They were. Nobody was using them. I love that.
Speaker 2:So by 2014, I had moved from England to Virginia. That was the time peanut balls, I think because premier birth tools started coming out and so they started to make their way into labor and delivery. And then I was, of course, being like at one base moving to the next. I had to reestablish myself who are you, what do you do? What are you doing in there? What is a sideline release? And I said I really have to learn this stuff, because when I'm going to teach it or show them, I have to use proper terminology. I have to use like, the science behind it. So I spent so much time researching the background and the science.
Speaker 2:And finally, it's like now, 2015, and I've been doing this for roughly four to five years, and then Gail invited me to be one of her approved trainers. So I went and I did that March of 2015. And I came back just, I really want to teach this around the world. It was starting to become what I wanted to do when I retired from the Air Force. So I started teaching and still I was getting resistance from the nurses. It really wasn't as embraced. I felt so much more embraced by midwives and doulas, but I knew it's nurses that labor. Most of the world's patients Birth is over 90% in the hospital, so we have to get the nurses to understand, and the doctors and some of the midwives yeah, some of the midwives, for sure.
Speaker 2:I had some struggles with some certain midwives Because I was so close to Carol Phillips. She was only three hours away from me and she teaches dynamic body balance. She's the originator of the sideline release and the forward leaning aversion. I was like I have to be in your classes, so I drove up, I took a couple of workshops with Carol and they were so powerful for me, and then I ended up getting orders to Aviano, that's in Italy, and everything came to a halt because I just couldn't go and do workshops overseas like that. So I ended up spending my time studying VASHA and that's how I ended up becoming a personal trainer.
Speaker 2:I felt I was exhausting myself with trying to convince the earth professionals specifically nurses and the doctors that I worked with, and some midwives. I was getting burnt out with pushing and trying and not feeling the passion from others. Some were very passionate and those that were passionate, I taught them everything I could possibly teach. So I started to look at personal training my husband I did get divorced in that time friend and then I met a new fellow and he was a marathon runner. So I decided to help him. He was good, he's won a marathon, he wins 10Ks, 5ks, but he's in a lot of pain and I was like I know a technique that could help you. It's called fascia release. And that's when I really started to study anatomy, trains and structural integration and I started convincing him to get that work done. And while I was putting that both together the personal training, the corrective exercise I started to, since I was at work, use those techniques on my laboring patients and I started to see a difference.
Speaker 2:One of my struggles was sometimes doing a sideline release or forward-leaning aversion. Well, sometimes you can't do a forward-leaning aversion, so I actually didn't do a lot of forward-leaning inversions in the hospital. Sideline was my go-to peanut ball. But then I started to understand that I need to know more about the fascia. As I was learning this and telling my husband or he was my boyfriend at the time to go, he lived in Spain, barcelona oh, hardship Barcelona and I lived in Italy. So I told him to go find somebody, and all I could find at the time that was like structural integration was a rolfer and that is structural integration, it's just a trade name. So he was getting the work done. He was like, wow, this is amazing. And so I started to dabble on some of the patients that I had doing this soft tissue mobilization technique and I saw it making a big difference.
Speaker 2:I got passionate again about birth and I said maybe I had to take, I had to veer down this path. I believe in divine timing, I believe in unfolding and bridges of incidences, and this was what I had to do to become who I am today. So by 2018, you know I'd stopped teaching spinning babies and I started to branch out on my own. I took all the things that I struggled with, like when I was teaching spinning babies, and shifted them to a language that I felt doctors and nurses might be a little more interested in, and I actually made up three names. I had obstructed labor maneuvers, protracted labor maneuvers, dysfunctional labor maneuvers and I sent them out to the doctors that I worked with and I said which one speaks to you the most? And it was dysfunctional labor maneuvers, so that's why I named it that. And then I started with my own workshop, taking the things that I learned. I studied a book called Preparing for a Gentle Birth by I'm not Spanish, but Nuria Vives Perez and a French lady. She had a very French name.
Speaker 1:Let me find it here Nuria Vives Perez. I have no idea how to do the French one, blandine Calais Germain.
Speaker 2:Okay so well, that is this book here and, as you can see, I love it a lot and just learning how we move, how our legs move, how our spine moves, how it make the pelvis do things. But then when I'm thinking about the soft tissue and learning about the fascia, I started to really put things together in a way. That was, we have to obviously understand as birth professionals what we are doing when we ask a mother to move, like, oh, movement and gravity, what do we mean by movement? I don't know. That was how I was like just move, there's no strategy behind it, there's no facilitating carbal movements. Until I read this book Preparing for a Gentle Birth and I was like there's strategy and that's also strategy with peanut ball. Definitely we've got to know the station if we're going to use it really to its full effectiveness. So I started like getting all excited and wanting to learn more and more.
Speaker 2:But when I created the online version of dysfunctional labor maneuvers was due to the fact of COVID In-person workshop. Coming from my perspective, all my extra training that I had with correctional exercise and Carol Phillips and I was planning this in person. I used to test it with some of the nurses that I worked with and I said okay, what do you think? Is this too advanced for you? Are you getting it? Because I know I was really like going into places that we don't as birth workers, and they were following along, ok, and I was teaching some of the nurses personally. So, as a matter of fact, the model in advanced fascial release for labor and the model in the DLM app is a nurse that I worked with and taught this to. So not only did she use it with her patients, she actually got to feel it in her own body and for her first labor and birth was three hours, and so we. It was all like the way it was supposed to unfold. So COVID hit and I thought, all right, so much for that.
Speaker 2:But what I did during COVID was I learned as much from Tom Myers as every video he could possibly put out, and then, as soon as we could get back out there again, I started going to in-person anatomy, trained structural integration workshops and I was overseas, so it was hard. I had to find stuff in English because I was living in Germany at the time. I went from Italy to Germany and spent my last five years of my career in Germany, so as I was making dysfunctional labor maneuvers, I started remembering how a lot of people would say I can't make it, I can't drive there, I can't stay there, like all that. Travel is too expensive. I have young kids, I have to work, midwives having births looming, and I thought, when COVID hit and everything was really going online, I found an online platform and started to learn more about that and put dysfunctional labor maneuvers online so it's accessible. And I also started to pay attention that apps were becoming very popular. And one day I woke up and I just put dysfunctional labor maneuvers online around August of 2021. And I did nothing with it because I was still trying to figure it out. And then, by May of 2022, I thought I'll make an app because I made it sound so easy on Facebook and I realized this is not going to be easy. So I hired a company to develop the app with me. It was a lot of work. It actually took me three years to make this app. And I made the app because, for one, it became an easy, fast way to access the how-to videos that I created. Maybe you don't have time to go look at your online training, maybe you don't have time to look something up. So I made the algorithm to build it on a questionnaire Like how long have they been in labor?
Speaker 2:Have they had anything done? Have we done sideline releases? Because one of the things I noticed sometimes is oh well, we did a sideline release and it was like when, oh, 12 hours ago. And one of the things about when somebody is laying in a bed, it doesn't matter if they have an epidural, your soft tissue is going to get stiff. And even though you're moving them turning them side to side, giving them peanut ball stuff they're still getting tight because they're not moving, they're just laying in different positions. So let's readdress it, because some of these things like a sideline release, is a fascia release technique. So that's why you wait at least five minutes while you're doing it, because fascia needs about three minutes to start unwinding. So any release, when you hear the word release, you need to hold it. It's for fascia release.
Speaker 2:Then the other question was like what are they dilated to? Have they changed? Do they have an epidural? Are they in triage? And all of those questionnaires come out. So then, once you give the answers, it just says do this. That's amazing. Do this by video, because I'm a visual learner. I cannot follow an instruction guide Like it kills me to put together an Ikea, because I was like, can I get a video? I thought about that and I thought about wouldn't that be so much easier to access? You don't have to take a class if you don't want to, but you have access to this app. And then I thought about I know I was building it for professionals, but I could not help but think about the families that come to triage in prodromal labor.
Speaker 2:So one of the things I developed along the way of learning how to resolve labor dystocia was also resolve prodromal labor, and I started to come up with this protocol. I would start with a forward-leaning inversion and the reason I started with a forward-leaning inversion was because I knew that was the scariest thing for a mother to do, considering she's never seen or heard of this in her life. So let's get the hard part over with. So we would do a side, we would do a forward lanyard version, then I would do a sideline release, then I would put them in open knee chest with shake the apples. Now I came up with that, like in England, because it was this one time this girl came, she got morphine, rested and sent home. And 12 hours later she came back and it was on my shift at the time and I could feel the sutures of the baby were literally transverse, so I was worried she might be getting stuck in transverse arrest. So I had her do a forward-leaning inversion.
Speaker 2:So this was back around 2013. I was still learning how to do this. I was a little bit scared that the nurses might say stuff. So when they decided that she was okay to come off the monitors, I started doing this work and it was a bit experimental at the time where I put her in forward-leaning inversion and I did shake the apples and I did that out of desperation. I was an hour to ending my shift and I knew if I didn't help this girl, the next shift was not going to because they were not trained.
Speaker 2:I was like we got to get this baby out right Jiggle. And she was like I'm so tired I can't. I said okay, let's get her up on the bed, let's try open knees and some shake the apples. And that was the first time I saw a contraction pattern change and she started falling asleep in open knee chest. And then we were finished and the night shift was coming on and I said can I just check your cervix again just to see did it help? And I felt her sutures diagonal, so that baby turned and I left. And I felt her sutures diagonal, so that baby turned and I left. And I checked up on her a little bit later and they said, yeah, she got it. She went to six centimeters, she got admitted and had a baby. She did get an epidural and had a baby and I was like wow.
Speaker 2:So I realized what we do in triage can really make a difference. So I built this like what else can I do? So I ended up creating a protocol. So forward, leaning inversion first, side line release. Second, open the chest with, shake the apples for 30 minutes because that's what Penny Simpkins said to do and then get up, go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet and then, if you don't have to go to the bathroom, do side lunges. Or if you have to pee, go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet for three contractions or more if you wanted, and then do the side lunging each leg and then lay down. So I sort of blended that mile circuit with it, but with more release work, and I started to see differences Women in labor going from one centimeter to. I've delivered in the triage room just by doing that.
Speaker 2:One girl was. She was like maybe three centimeters and they were like the family was getting very ugly, they wanted her admitted. And they were like the family was getting very ugly, they wanted her admitted and they were like she's only three centimeters and I was like let me just try this kind of thing I'm doing. And then she went to seven centimeters, so she got admitted and we didn't have to worry about this angry family. So those people were in my mind and I said I got to make something for these parents, because they get told you're one centimeter, go either walk or go home. And then they come back and they're still one centimeter. So go home. And then they said these contractions are so bad, how are we going to know what's different at home? And there's no tools and they feel like they're just tossed out. And they feel like they're just tossed out. And so I said this at least, I mean, and I've seen triage where you are literally busting at the seams and you don't have time to do this protocol, but you know what you could tell them about the app. It's up to them if they want to do a subscription. It's a subscription cancel anytime idea, because it's like the only way we could build that. And so they can go home and do all of this, because it is again by algorithm, by how-to videos, but I made this very specific. So when it's a parent option, these videos are done in my home with my pregnant nurse friend, so they can see themselves using their sofa, using their bed, how they could imagine themselves doing that, so they feel like they can. And one of the nice things is the videos have the option to make the speed go faster or slower. Oh, nice, and I do a voiceover, I explain why they're doing it, I explain this is what it's called and this is why you're doing it, and then I'll say just finish that one. And it bumps down to the next video and so they get to do the.
Speaker 2:I either call it the triage protocol or the prodromal labor protocol, but they get to do that at home and the app is not made for anybody who is, at least for the parent option, less than 38 weeks. I just didn't want preterm mothers messing with it. Go to the hospital if you think you're in labor first, like it. Just, I just decided to make that a line that I wasn't going to cross, a line that I wasn't going to cross. And in the hospital, as professional users, of course it's doctor discretion, because we're going to have people that are 36 weeks and 37 weeks, but you are already under the care of a provider and that's how I ended up branching out, having one option for parents and actually if a home birth midwife wanted to use that option, they could, because they're in the home. They don't have maybe a hospital bed that you get to touch buttons and make do special things In the parent version. I just wanted them to have that opportunity to get out of prodromal labor if that's what they were experiencing.
Speaker 2:But it is not a prenatal, a birth preparation app.
Speaker 2:This is really just for that labor time and then for birth professionals, like whether you're in triage or maybe they're already admitted and this is a labor dystocia.
Speaker 2:So what do you do with that? And if you've been taking the dysfunctional labor maneuvers either in person or online, you can use the app as a preceptor. One of the things I realized, like even in the doula training like you don't have a preceptor, everybody should have a preceptor. Nurses get preceptors Like we do orientation. We never just get out of school and say, hey, go remember everything you learned. We have somebody guiding us, but we do not have somebody guiding us after we take these alternative type of workshops right. So I felt like that app would also help with if you felt a little bit hesitant about doing your first sideline release. You got the app and I really wanted to make this app affordable and I charge $4.99 a month for the professionals so that it's not too much out of their pocket. You can cancel anytime, resubscribe anytime. I tried to make it very easy, but I didn't want to make it like where you had to choose if you could afford it or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And for the parents. The subscription for them is $9.99, but pretty much they're probably just going to use it once, one day, two days for their labor and then cancel, so it's not an ongoing thing. And then I did offer an annual so you could save some money, you know, if you're always doing this, and the annual cost is $44.99. The idea is to make it easy, accessible, affordable and be this option. It's available in 175 countries at this time on Apple or Android, 275 countries at this time on Apple or Android, and the biggest thing I wanted to have is a global reach. In-person workshops. I love in-person workshops. If you can't tell, I love to talk, but not everybody can make it. That does not mean that they shouldn't have access.
Speaker 1:Every nurse that I know is going to eat this up. I know, and it's so easy If you have a patient today that is laboring and you're helping them with a dysfunctional labor and you pay for the app today and immediately cancel, you still have it available for the next 30 days right, yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So then, it's just like anything. If you don't happen to have a laboring patient, say you're stuck in the OR for that month, you don't need, you, don't use it. But the second you have another laboring patient, you just pay the $4.99 again.
Speaker 2:It's worth that $4.99 to get the patient the outcome that they want. Yeah, and there can be like cost barriers and that's why I could not make this app myself. There were too many things I knew there was no way. I still have to keep my tech team. I still have to pay for the app to be in the app store, like all of that has to still happen.
Speaker 2:I did research how many nurses are there in the world? How many doulas are there in the world? Midwives are there in the world? And I said this shouldn't be a problem. And then the United States alone, like over 3 million births and I was just like you know what.
Speaker 2:I think this is going to definitely work itself out and even though I know people don't know who I am, I am a nurse, like the thousands of others. I have been through the frustration. I have been through the feeling responsible that I didn't do enough and they went to the OR anyway. I've been through the frustration of I know how to do these things but the doctor is not supporting me, and this is why I know everybody has to be on board and I've never expected doctors to learn how to do this what I ask of a doctor is to let us give us the time. I have been told by a doctor you have one hour and I said it takes me 30 minutes just to turn her, and so it's like just respecting that I need time and when you do the fascia work. So the advanced fascia release is for people who are already comfortable with these foundational skills. The release actually continues to work for a couple hours, so you may not see something right away, but you should see something in about two to four hours and if you don't, you have got to go back to the drawing board. We have to do that.
Speaker 2:Ooda loop is what we call it in the Air Force, or the. What is it in the nursing? We call the, where you do something and you reevaluate the nursing process or something like that, I can't remember. And it's like you have to treat it like this. You have to treat it like you just gave them medication or you did an intervention and watch. Did it work? Did it make it a little bit better? When they are lying in bed and not really moving, they lose that mobility which the mobility helps the fascia release progress and do better.
Speaker 2:But when they have an epidural, which is over 80% of women, is that those tissues are going to tighten up again because she came into birth with imbalanced and restricted fascia to begin with. We're just lengthening it or releasing it for the moment that we can, and if things still take a while, it starts to tighten back up. So we have to keep doing these things. We cannot just say, hey, I did it, and 12 hours later why don't we have anything? You have to keep going back, so that would be like.
Speaker 2:Another nice thing with the app is like going back to say is there, you know, now she's at a minus station, or she started at a minus station Now maybe she's more mid pelvis. The videos are going to be a bit different. That was how I did it. Where's the baby at minus, where's the baby at mid, and then the outlet, I include peanut bowl. If there's an epidural, you will do the videos and then you have the option of different do the videos and then you have the option of different, maybe three or four uses of the peanut ball. So you can choose like you can do this way, this way, because, guess what, they threw peanut balls in the hospital and no training, so a lot of nurses are just saying yeah apparently it's between their legs and it can start off that way.
Speaker 2:I use about four or five different sized peanut balls.
Speaker 2:You can't just have one. But if they don't have an epidural, I have a. What's next if it's working? So it's like what's next? It's like or movement, and then you go like what movement? And then it says by the mother's discretion, let her decide. So there's that. What do I do with this woman who's naturally laboring after I do these maneuvers? And then what do I do with one who has an epidural? So you're going to have both. And I really just wanted to bridge that gap to say it's okay if you don't take a workshop, like until hospitals start making this a standard in their online module training. Nurses are not required to come out of their pocket to pay for this Right. And so if you don't want to take an online workshop or an in-person workshop, just for the simple cost of it In my workshop for dysfunctional labor maneuvers is 9.25 nursing CEUs to make it like worth something. But if you're just like I can't afford that or I don't want to afford that, then maybe you can just use the app and be just fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Right, or a lot of us, at least in our area. I've taken spinning babies twice and then we just started purposeful positioning, which I think was an initiative within our hospital. But it's a lot of information, so you only remember some of it and then you're Googling the rest and trying to find it on the spinning babies website or some sort of YouTube and you forget the names of things and some people will leave a little page with drawings and stuff like that. But just it's still.
Speaker 2:The video is helpful. And speaking of names, I was very conscious of names and I don't use names, I don't use coined phrases, I use what are we doing anatomically to the body? Because when I have asked somebody and I'll ask you, let's just play a little ping pong what is happening when you do a Walters?
Speaker 1:You're moving the, so you're. There's a lot happening. Where do I start? So you're moving the sacrum, You're opening the bottom of the sacrum, you're widening the pelvis essentially, and your legs are going down, so it's pulling the front part of the pelvis so that it's a wider. Instead of like this, it's like this.
Speaker 2:I actually do when I work prenatally with women, because I work prenatal with them, I have them do Walters three minutes daily. Oh really, yes. Now here's the reason why. Minutes daily oh really, yes. Now here's the reason why. When you start to understand where these muscles are connecting, that the rectus abdomini connects to the top of the pubic bone, and then you look at your hip flexors and your hip flexors, like your quads, are attached to what we call this little ASIS on the pelvis and when you bend into a Walters, you are pulling on your hip flexors and your abdominal muscle and if you lay there for three minutes or more, you get a fascia release, mm-hmm. And then the other thing that's happening, which is why I always thought the pinch in the low back. When you look at the attachment of the psoas muscle, it is attached to the lumbar spines, goes through the pelvis and then attaches to a little tubercle on your thigh bone and so when you are in a Walters, that psoas is getting lengthened and if it's not a lengthened psoas and it's stuck short, it's going to pull on the lumbar spine and you'll get that pinch. And that's why I came up with putting my hands on the tibial tuberosities, pushing them in. And I did teach that because I saw like when you put the femur bone back up it releases a bit of that tension off the psoas.
Speaker 2:So when a mother has not done anything, especially if she's natural, so some mothers literally cannot get into a Walters because it's too painful. And that's too painful even when they are not in labor and that tells me their muscles are in the fascia. I always go back to the fascia is in a restricted state, so I actually have them modify in the beginning. If they cannot do it, you can put one leg up and drape the other, so you get length in your, say, your right side. Then you lift that leg up and you drape the left and you get length in that and then see if you can do both and just if you can't do three minutes you build yourself up to three minutes Because then if you need it in labor you're capable of doing it.
Speaker 2:When we have women with epidurals we can do Walters so much easier. But I also work at a birth center and I have witnessed women that are just like I can't, it hurts too much. And so I started to say let's try to modify it, let's see how we can help you lengthen your front line, because that front line that we have is typically short by the lifestyle we lead. And so when you are in a vultures, what you're essentially doing is, yes, the pelvis is in an anterior tilt, but you're also lengthening the tissues Because of gravity and you're laying on your back, the baby gets brought posterior and then the contraction pushes the baby more into this open, anteriorly tilted pelvis, and I actually imagine that I started doing shoulder dystocias with Walters.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yes, because before you want to do a McRoberts Thank you.
Speaker 1:I knew you were going to go there.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's do a Walters. Let's take that shoulder and push the super, not down right, so you're going to. So I would go to the super pubic area, push. Like I would ask the doctor what side is the back on? They said the left. I'm going on the left. I'm going to do that suprapubic pressure and I'm going to actually do a fascia maneuver of sliding across to rotate. Then we're going to pull up into a McRoberts, so it takes that pubic bone and moves it over this newly rotated shoulder and then try to do that release.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so many doctors just want to go straight into McRoberts, but they always forget that they have to straighten the legs first.
Speaker 2:So this is just trying to take it.
Speaker 1:I have a hard time even getting them to straighten the legs. A lot of people just want to go straight back and I'm like no, you have to restitute the pelvis before you do that, yeah, I think if they had a little more insight to what the bones and anatomy is doing.
Speaker 2:When I've worked with I do also like body work on the doctors that I worked with they were often surprised of, like how much they didn't know about the anatomy and I was like this is where we all have to learn more about the anatomy and we have to learn that so we do the right things at the right time. And that's why in the app, I need to know is it a minus station, is it a zero station, is it a plus? And if it's for the parents, I have the option that I don't know, they didn't check my service, because that could be a reality too, where you haven't gone in and you haven't been checked at the hospital, or you have a home birth midwife and they don't check, or a birth center they don't check the way hospitals do too. You can just say I don't know, and then it's just going to give you more of the let's do some release work first and then some maneuvers and go with that, but in a hospital setting and we know the dilation but really we need to know the station right. So, knowing the station, then knowing what moves and, like I said, the app has got space for it to grow.
Speaker 2:I want to add the advanced stuff in it, but I have to let this app roll out first. I have to find the glitches. So if anybody did find glitches, just to contact me so I can contact my tech team and get that fixed. The app of it running so smooth is such a priority to me. I don't want you to be in the middle of a labor going this damn app Like. I just don't want that. I want you to be like click soon.
Speaker 1:Magic yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, if you have been watching the videos and you're like I kind of I know it, but let me just check, you can double time the speed you do not have to sit there. I love double speed, me too.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So I was like, can you guys put that in there please? And so I just try to make it as convenient and just enjoyable to use. The colors of it were important to me, so they're aesthetically beautiful. That was just something I really thought was important. I do have a demo. I don't know if you could share screen to show a little bit of it.
Speaker 1:Let me see. Okay, I think you have a button down at the bottom.
Speaker 2:There's an arrow up.
Speaker 1:I think you can share screen there. Okay, I think you have a button down. At the bottom there's an arrow up. I think you can share screen there. Okay, and while we're at it, do you have a video of Walters? Because I don't know that all of my audience knows what Walters is, and since we're talking about it, I have a picture or a picture.
Speaker 2:Actually Walters is in the app. So yeah, that's what I was thinking. Actually, I do have some videos, so let yeah that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1:I was like they can look it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually I do have some videos, so let me, especially since you get to, I feel so honored that we get to preview your app. I love showing it. No, I'm honored. I'm honored. Okay, so we got a couple here, so let me, okay, I'm going to pick one and I don't want one that's too long. Okay, this one's for the parents, so that's like a sneak peek. If you're not 38 weeks, you get a little sneak peek into it, but you don't get to use it.
Speaker 1:Oh nice, so you teach them how to do side lying release at home.
Speaker 2:This is for the parent on the app. That's to show you can speed it up.
Speaker 1:Like that. So for those of you watching at home, this is what we do for side laying release. But this is at home. In the hospital it's going to be different, especially if you have an epidural. You'll have to have a nurse next to you, because if you can't move your own legs, somebody has to be there for safety. Yes, for sure, that's really cool.
Speaker 2:And here's like maybe a hospital, one Triage, new admit patient already admitted. Do they have an epidural? No, what's their contraction pattern? Have they changed in dilation? What is the dilation? And then, where's the cervix? And now we got the stations. Personalizing your experience. My developers thought of that. I love it. And what I did with the sideline release was I broke it up into three videos how to set up, how to do it. And then what do you do after? Because I do some stretching after a sideline release for the hamstring and the hip flexors because I think of all the soft tissues that are connected to the pelvis and address them. So this was just a version of the hospital.
Speaker 1:That's really great. It's all the stuff that you know. It's like we remember the parts of side laying, release, that the leg dangling and holding the patient. I think sometimes we forget to like have them lean and stretch yeah.
Speaker 2:And when I get into advanced fascia that I don't just I honestly I don't cross and sit there, I'm like doing soft tissue mobilization on that. This works good, it just you can advance it, because for some people they really need it, some people don't. What is actually really important to me is I'm just not about statistics. In my experience, I was the one in three that had the C-section. That was my experience and I matter when you're like this person didn't need it, even if that maybe out of the five laborers you have, they all did great. Nobody needed anything but that one lady. Her whole life is changed by it and that's what matters to me. Not statistically right. Everybody's an individual. Nobody wants to be treated as a statistic. A doctor doesn't want to be treated as a statistic, midwives don't want to, nurses don't want to. Well, neither would a laboring mother.
Speaker 1:She, well, you were mentioning earlier. I mentioning earlier, I think it was when we were talking before we hit record. But when you're in the hospital doing these things and you don't have the way to record it, it's really hard to show the results. But I know that I can't remember the last time I had to go to the operating room from labor. I will be assigned to the operating room for patients that are scheduled for reasons beyond my control.
Speaker 2:Well, and I got to that confidence too, but I see some people they are very scared to try any of this, so I do have the videos, okay, so let's do the vultures you want to people. Do you want them, let's see. So I have two options. Right, I showed one option. I'll just speed it up a little bit. Of somebody without an epidural. You don't need to break the bed down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't even anymore. We just push it down and then we'll put the sides up, the side footrests up and have them hang their legs around the footrests so they have space.
Speaker 2:See, when I first started doing this I wasn't telling my nurse colleagues. I was petrified they're going to come in and see what I was doing. This was how I started, even with an epidural, and then, as I got a little more confident and more people were doing it, then I did start breaking down the bed and the handrails too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the patient can hold on to the handrails or the push rails. And the other thing is what we don't see is are you putting the roll underneath the hips? Are you rolling up a?
Speaker 2:No, because I have them on the edge Right, so it just gives that. But at the birth center we don't have this option. At the birth center I have to find a way to get that arch. So we do, we do. I actually use a bolster, a yoga bolster, because the beds aren't that high, they're just, they're like beds that like sleeping beds. Right, it's a birth center.
Speaker 1:The. The other thing I love about it is like when you are able to get that good arch and the baby is farther down and the mom can finally breathe. I like to do massage up here because that's been stung tight for so long.
Speaker 2:I do whenever I have a mother in Walchers, either doing it prenatally and they're doing it with me, or in labor. I'm actually doing soft tissue mobilization to that area above the pubic bone, on the hip flexors, right at the ASIS and then down the leg and mothers with VBAC scars or cesarean scars. I do scar tissue release.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish I'd known about that. I had my appendix out when I was 21. Yeah, and both my babies were transverse, go figure.
Speaker 2:Right. That was why I started to fall in love with fascia, because it explained so much that we need to know right and the work I try to make, at least for the advanced fascia pretty simple. It's pretty hard because you're looking at a whole body. So you say, okay, how can I do something right now, in this moment, so that I can release fascia but not feel overwhelmed with how much body surface area that I'm dealing with? Right, because that was, for me, my overwhelming, where I was like, where do I start? So I started to say, here's the pelvis, here's what's directly attached to it, and we will just move out globally up and down on the side, front to back and that's like it. Right, that's all you do need to address, otherwise it would feel so overwhelming you just won't do it right.
Speaker 2:That's a typical response when we have too many things to do. We just don't know where to start. So when they're in sideline release, it's moving down the lateral side of the thigh, the ribs, the hips, especially around the iliac crest. The muscles are typically so fort and then just going into, when I finish the sideline release and I'll put their leg on my hip to stretch their hamstring Like passive stretching is so lovely.
Speaker 2:Like when you don't have to hold anything and somebody's stretching your body, god, that feels good. And even when they have an epidural they're like, wow, this feels good, like they still feel that. And then when I do the hip flexor stretch, they're not so happy because that's usually where they are so tight, because we sit, and when we sit it shortens our front line of fascial. It's called the superficial front line and it's basically from your sternocleidomastoid down your sternum, your rectus abdomini and then the front of your shins and your feet. Then it wraps around your toes and then it starts the superficial back line. When I started to see all the myofascial meridians that Tom Myers teaches, I was just like where do I start? Because I only got them in labor, I only got them for a few hours. I don't have them for a few months. But that small amount of work really adds some power to all the other positions and releases. So it's like maybe some people don't need it. And when you touch enough bodies, you're not hurting somebody.
Speaker 2:And when you touch enough bodies you start to know, oh, this is really sticky here, actually, even though, like in the app, it's do it for this many times or that many times, because people need structure and guidance. But when you really know this work, you'll feel one side and you're like I'm just going to spend five minutes here. Flip them to the other side and that's where you'll find where you need to spend 10 or 15 minutes. So it's not even Stevens, because the body just doesn't work that way. But when you're first new to touching tissue, it's okay that you don't know how to do everything, because the more times you do this and I've had some where I've done a simple sideline release and her leg was just out like a stick and I was just like are you?
Speaker 2:relaxed and they're like well, I'm relaxed, I'm like your fascia is not so we're going to obviously have to sit on this side a long time. So you start to see when there's like length in the tissues and when there's not, and then when you start touching you'll start to feel when there's like a sticky feeling and then you know like the fascia is very restricted. I had a patient. She had an epidural. She was a diabetic already, so she had that glucometer in her thigh and she was very overweight I think over 300. And the doctor was like we really have to do a vaginal delivery on her. She's not a good candidate for a surgery. It's diabetes and the obesity.
Speaker 2:She was stuck at seven centimeters and the doctor was telling me how it feels like more off to the side, and she'd been waiting for me to come on shift because she was like Mariah and I said OK, let me go see what we got. This really brought me a very like awareness. I felt her cervix and there was more on her right and then I did a sideline release on her left and then when I did the other side, on her right, and I knew she had the little auto glucometer in her thigh. I knew that. But the way her tissue felt was so different. It was cold, it was hard and I realized how much this one innocent little thing is breaking the integrity of the fascial system. So I worked a lot more on that side until it softened, it warmed up and then she was complaining.
Speaker 2:We had a baby, but these little things that we have implanted in us disrupt the fascial system and then the communication it just doesn't flow. You can feel the difference in her legs, but until you touched you didn't realize. So once I released and got that flowing going, she really went to complain. We didn't take one to push at all, it was very quick. And that reminds me of some of the things I've learned about fascia that fascia is a. It's a system in our body and our nervous system and our circulatory system all flows through that. So when I thought about dysfunctional labor patterns or women struggling to get into their own spontaneous labor or having strong enough labor, I was reading a book called the Oxytocin Factor. Like love that book. At the same time I was on a fascial summit.
Speaker 2:And it was the second time I was reading that book, so I really understood what I was reading. I was just reviewing refreshing. But while I was on that Fascia Summit and Tom was talking about fascia and all the intricacies of it and I started to think we have to release a hormone from our pituitary gland that has to travel a long way down to its target organ. When fascia gets in this restricted state, it also inhibits circulatory flow. So what if the amount of hormone starts off as enough but because of all the restriction it does not get the amount it needs to this target organ? And then the body struggles. And then because when I'm at the birth center I do fascia release, the first thing women notice is these are really strong now. But I don't think they're strong. I think they're where they're supposed to be, but because they weren't getting that they were very prodromal.
Speaker 2:They were not getting as much, but the contractions were still kind of strong and irregular and they feel that difference. And so when women have epidurals they don't really tell, but sometimes they can too. And it just got me thinking what if we learn how to do fascia release better and maybe do that before we try augmenting with PIT right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's try to see if the body can flow better. And then how is the body doing a couple hours after the work? Because I think it's important to savor Pitocin for after the birth if we need it for the emergency. So if we don't need it in the birth, let's try not to use it. But we have to. We can't just say don't use it, we have to find another way. Yeah Right, one of the things about being in the Air Force and being in leadership is you cannot go to someone in leadership and say we don't like this without something to say. Let's try that. You have to bring the solution. Or they say that's nice, go figure it out and come back and tell me what you got.
Speaker 2:And that's what I feel like we do with birth is we want to change something but we don't have a replacement for it. And this gets me thinking of what if we try these, like I said, that whole standardized of everybody getting this same training and having these tools to try and see if we could change? And if women understood getting really good fascia work by a role for a structural integrator in pregnancy maybe they don't quote post-dates, maybe their baby isn't malpositioned Then they don't need our specialties in either spinning babies or DLM or whatever right, they just come in labor and have their baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it is that just it's got me like opening in that whole new idea. This is like something I came across, maybe about two years ago now, where I started to say I really want to see this as a possible. I feel like things are impossible to study in birth Like where you said, like when you said I feel like things are impossible to study in birth, like where you said like when you said I know I went in and I know I did this and I saw this go from this. When we see that oxytocin is flowing in the body the way it should be, the body responds in kind, and that was something that I always got something on my what's next plate and that is something that I'm exploring because that would change.
Speaker 1:So I always have doctors or midwives that'll be like get in there, go work some magic before I take this Exactly. That's exactly how they say it. I don't know what you do. You have to burn sage, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Like over a decade ago they weren't saying that to me. So you see, like things have really grown and we have broken through some areas, but there's so many hospital systems that are into it and the thing is like me being in the Air Force I didn't work in a bubble, I had to move every two or three years and start over and realize how many people weren't getting the information I had Right. So in a civilian hospital, like some of these nurses have been there for 30, 40 years and so they've not seen anything outside of the hospital so they don't get the exposure, and that that's where we will be like my hospital does this and my hospital does that, and you hear that on labor and delivery, nurses rock like all the time. I was really shocked when Post said pharmacy is now starting to mix our bags 30 and 500. Who's doing that?
Speaker 1:I was like I saw that post and I was like I don't understand. I was like, is this 2010?
Speaker 2:I don't understand. I was like is this 2010? I don't know. Maybe we think people are getting information but they're not. Or they don't process it or they don't feel comfortable or confident.
Speaker 2:I had a nurse. She was a friend, I worked with her. She'd been a nurse for 30 years. She never heard of spanking babies and she definitely never heard of me. I was teaching nurses and stuff and I think it was a little bit hard for her to say I guess I should learn some of this even though I've been doing this for so long. But she's open to it. She one day surprised me and I got a text from her and she said oh my God, I did the sideline release and we had a baby. And I was like do you see how good that feels? Right, I used to get I would come on shift and it made me feel bad because these are my friends Like they're not just nurses I work with, but to be told that thank God you're here, I'm so glad you came, because my work is so different than who was their nurse before and I don't know what to say to them.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to tell them. Not everybody gets this training. I'm just like a little weird oddball. I don't want them to think anything bad about other people because they don't understand that this training is not available to everybody. And so hearing that and then just understanding that some people are very timid to try the I'm a bold person, so to me it felt very easy. Like I watch something on YouTube and I'm out tinkering, thinking I can fix my car, like I just I'm not afraid. So sometimes I don't understand what it's like for those who are. I have kept that always in my mind of why aren't they doing it? Is it a time thing? Is it a confidence thing? Is it maybe they don't believe in it?
Speaker 1:Well, I'll add another one, and this is the resistance I got from, not that I was doing the class, but I was excited for the class and some of the nurses that have been there the same hospital was doing the class, but I was excited for the class and some of the nurses that had been there the same hospital for 30 plus years. It was just another class for them, just another thing that took them away from their time off or whatever it was. And how impactful have those other classes been?
Speaker 2:Like all the stuff where, like the drill like what you do in an emergency and you're the ones that are pros. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I was like, no, this one's going to be different, I promise. And I feel like it was, and I feel like I think I remember, like you said, the nurse coming out and saying this is stuff I could do in triage, and I'm like, yes, yes, this is the difference between you sending somebody home feeling powerless and somebody going home and feeling empowered.
Speaker 2:And I'm absolutely like the biggest fan of Simon Sinek. He taught me to start with why. Why is this important to you? So I tell the doctors why is this important to you? Let's say number one maybe you don't have to do an operative delivery. Now I was in the military and it wasn't a money thing for us. So I guess I'm a little like unsure about that. Is the C-section really driven by money? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't think anymore because there's so many initiatives to try to avoid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it, just it wasn't my world. We're all there, nobody's getting paid extra. We all know like when people feel supported and cared for to the best of their ability, the likelihood of them coming back at you is lower because they felt like you really did do everything. And so I learned this from one lady in particular. She'd had two C-sections. She wanted a V-back and she was like floating around our hospital in prodromal labor and the doctor on call was like I'm not doing a vaginal delivery for a woman with two C-sections. She got off and a new doctor came on and that doctor said yeah, sure, I'm comfortable with that. So we admitted her and her first two babies were seven pounds and six pounds. This third baby was like 11 pounds. They didn't know that, it just wasn't really caught.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we had a very gnarly shoulder. Dystocia Baby was okay though, it was just really rough. The midwife was delivering, couldn't get the shoulder, called the doctor. There was a lot of things going on and when I met her postpartum because I did LDRP I talked with her and this was her perception of the whole issue. I'm so thankful you gave me an opportunity to have this vaginal delivery because I want to have five kids. I don't want to have all these surgeries, so I'm so glad I had my vaginal delivery. And man, that doctor that wouldn't let me get admitted, that's who she was angry at. She wasn't angry about the shoulder, that wasn't even traumatizing to her.
Speaker 1:Because you were doing everything that you could to give her what she wanted.
Speaker 2:She wanted that vaginal delivery because she's thinking future and I talked to. His name is Dr Douglas Wood and he, where is he at? I have to remember he himself is designing this Foley catheter that has a disc instead of a bulb, trying to minimize what space we take up in the birth canal. And he was telling me like where he works they literally have accretateens because of how bad it's getting. The more C-sections women are having, the higher risk they are for accretas, and women getting that primary C-section have no idea that this is a possibility in their future.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of like nonchalant about you can just VBAC. No, you can't. Not every place supports it and I get that in my DMs they won't do it here, they won't do it here, or they didn't know it was an option. So here they are, three C-sections later, trying to figure out how to have a vaginal delivery, because to them it is just something they feel they need and it is not for us to tell them no, you don't. So like, preventing the primary cesarean for me is my priority, but I know it might not be the priority for the doctor. So let's find there.
Speaker 2:Why would this be important to you. What is it that you feel? Maybe a shorter labor? That would be great because they are working a lot. Or for the nurse? Why do you want to spend this much time trying to work on a patient when you're trying to juggle two of them? What is your why? Why would this be important to you? This was important to me because of my birth story, the way I got treated, the way I ended up in a C-section, the way my son yes, he's ADHD and he is autistic, and that's not in my family and I'm the only one with a C-section. So I dig a bit deeper about it. I've read a study that came out in 2024. They were measuring Pitocin in rat pups over a certain amount of time.
Speaker 2:That is increasing the risk for this rat pup to show signs of the autism spectrum disorder in the males, and so I'm interested in that because it is something that where are all these high rates of autism coming from? And then we've got our things like asthma and the processes that babies are missing from a vaginal delivery being considered not important. They are.
Speaker 1:They are, and I think what the difference is, if it's a true emergency, risk versus reward, right Right that we're treating it so nonchalantly and just inducing it when it's for malposition.
Speaker 2:I feel like that can be preventable. We may have to start early in pregnancy. More women may need to have this awareness of what their soft tissues are like, the state they're in, and everybody has an important role. And, yes, sometimes when you come into labor it may be a bit too late, no matter what we do. But what if you knew this information before? And that was how I felt as a mother. What if I knew this before? Would I have been different in my pregnancy? Would I have done things differently? Would I have realized that this is actually really important that I get this done? And unfortunately a lot of bodywork type of stuff is not covered by insurance. But if we can keep pushing and keep going that way, that could make a change. I mean, when I first started, doulas were not covered in insurance, and look at the strides they've made right, so things can change.
Speaker 1:The more you can prove good outcomes, the more likely and the less you cost in the long run. And the more you can prove good outcomes, the insurance company will be on board.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's funny, you know, an insurance company will pay for a C-section but not a rolfer. It doesn't even make sense. Nope section but not a rolfer, it doesn't even make sense. So, yeah, so those are like a lot of things that go into who I am. Why did I make all of this stuff, like, why is it important to me? This is my why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I feel that and I think a lot of moms, especially moms that have gone into some of these helping other moms in labor, it's the same. It's the same for me. That's why my deliveries could have been improved or I could have understood what was going on a little bit better. Yeah, I love that I could talk to you all day.
Speaker 2:And I can talk all day. Trust me, I work with at the birth center. As soon as I walk in, she'll be like okay, I have a lot of charting to do, so I'm going to have to do all of that and then, you're allowed to talk.
Speaker 1:That's hysterical. Yeah Well, Mariah, thank you so much for joining us. I am going to share your app with all of my colleagues and I can't wait to be able to show this on my YouTube videos so that people can actually see your app. That's exciting.
Speaker 2:I have chills like at this opportunity.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
