Episode 97SN: Her Birth & Postpartum inspired her to find a better way to Postpartum: Kaitlin’s Story, Part I

Today. We have something unusual, I almost never promote a business because I don’t want to sell anything but but today is different because I heard about this miraculous woman on podcast who wants us all to reimagine one of the fundamental, almost rites of passage for a pregnant woman in America. The baby shower. Basically, I heard about her company for women in postpartum. I thought this is genius. And we should all be doing this. And so I’m so excited to introduce Kaitlin McGreyes. I say your name right. Humans got

 

Kaitlin  2:21  

it so close. It’s McGreyes. Okay. My husband and I combined her last name. So it’s actually graph and Reyes but together.

 

Paulette  2:29  

I love it. Okay. So Caitlin, McGreyes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m so excited to hear your personal story and the story of the company. I’m excited to hear it all. So will you tell us where you’re from?

 

Kaitlin  2:42  

And a little bit about yourself? Absolutely. Thank you so much, Paulette. That’s awesome. I am Kaitlin McGreyes. I have three children, seven, eight and 10. I’m from Long Island, New York. And I am a doula turned founder of beer village because essentially I was a special ed teacher. I went through the motherhood experience, the very typical American motherhood experience. And I felt like many of us, underwhelmed to traumatize spectrum depends on the day. And I realized that that was sort of like a universal experience. To enter motherhood, alone, unsupported. And I had this one moment where I sat in my nursery three days postpartum. And I was trying to figure out how to breastfeed trying to figure out which way was up trying to figure out how to take care of this post C section body. My husband was already back at work. Oh my god. I know he didn’t get any time off for that one. So I gave birth Saturday morning at 520. And he was back at work while I’m still in the hospital. And he worked for New York City. It just they didn’t have pay leave then we couldn’t afford unpaid leave. It was a whole thing. So I had a very bumpy entry into motherhood. And I just remember sort of looking around at my apartment and seeing all the beautiful gifts, my perfect nursery, it’s where I it’s where I poured all my time and energy into nursery all the things for the baby. And I neglected to line up any kind of support for myself, and I blamed myself for it. It didn’t I thought wow, I really failed here. You know, I didn’t I didn’t know how hard this was gonna be. I obviously did something wrong. And then I became a doula soon after my second birth, and I started supporting hundreds of women over the course of my Doula career, and I started seeing that almost all of them had that experience that universal moment of being postpartum whether it’s three hours postpartum, or it’s a day postpartum or it’s a week postpartum, they all find themselves alone, and without the care that they need, while they’re trying to care for their babies. And all of us are surrounded by stuff. We have the best strollers and the best baby bottles and bouncers and gadgets and devices and our communities. Our loved one spent 1000s of dollars on us at our baby shower to the tune of $12 billion a year on being crazy. And I thought, man, there’s got to be a better way. To do this. This just feel like we’re not doing this right we’ve got this we’ve have moms totally overloaded with stuff for their kids for their babies, and no support totally left alone. And then you have you know, all all this money getting spent on stuff when when there could be a way to spend that on supporting them and what what is the way that we solve this problem? How do we get these funds that are so generously being spent to be spent on hearing for the actual mother? I started thinking about how do we actually go buy a baby shower gift? You know, like how does that happen? We got a baby shower invite usually have some registry information you go you click a few things and and it’s done. It’s sort of just like a task that you do. And what if we shifted the baby shower registry? What if we created a place where instead of all the stuff for babies we could shower the mother with support? What if we could buy her a doula What if we could get her postpartum here but if we get our pelvic floor therapy or lactation visits or mom you need groups or you know meals and laundry and just the whole the things to sort of like envelop this new family in the care they need, which is so impactful. So I pray to be her village.

 

Paulette  6:20  

I was so excited to get into that. I want to hear your story first. And then we’re gonna save time at the end to walk people through what it looks like. What you’re doing now what you’ve learned from doing it, however long you’ve been doing it because it’s such a good idea and when I read that billions of dollars are spent on baby stuff. I thought a that’s crazy and B I totally understand it. Right. It’s that is what we’re geared toward in a way that completely overlooks the mother who’s entirely critical of the baby, right, or health or Well, being her mental state is so fundamentally important. And we’re like, Ah, here’s a rocker, you know, the mean, and the rocker is beautiful, but when you’re sitting alone, crying while you’re breastfeeding, you know, I’m not sure anything about the rocker.

 

Kaitlin  7:10  

That’s exactly I mean that that is my story. My story is that.

 

Paulette  7:14  

So let’s start off slow here. So do you have siblings in your family? Did you come from a big family?

 

Unknown Speaker  7:19  

I have one older brother.

 

Paulette  7:22  

So when you were younger, did you think I’m going to have a family or did that affect your idea about family?

 

Kaitlin  7:28  

I think I always knew I wanted children. It’s kind of funny. This is like a funny thing to say, Well, I I knew I wanted children and never necessarily wanted to be married. And maybe when I was a 90s kid with divorced parents, so the idea of being stuck in an unhappy marriage was my idea of hell, but I knew I wanted to help kids. I was always very maternal. I was always playing house. I always was loved to take care of my little cousins when they were babies. But I didn’t necessarily imagine that happening with a partner. I just knew I kind of assumed I would live on my own and then do IVF or something. And then I was a special ed teacher in New York City. And the Para, which is like a teacher’s assistant, in the classroom next door. He was really really cute. He was really, really cute. And I thought to myself, he’s so cute, and honestly, he was more than cute. He was hot. But I thought man, he can’t be nice. He’s probably kind of you know, his personality probably is terrible because he’s so good looking. And then I went up and I talked to him. And he told me that when he’s not working with the special needs kids in our school that he’s he works at a puppy daycare. Oh man. He’s everything you know. So I feel very, very, very hard for him. And I ended up marrying him and I just remember this overwhelming feeling of wow, I just want to make humans with you. It was the most was maybe the first step in the primal nature. of motherhood, you know, because on paper, having kids didn’t really make sense. It’s still quite, it doesn’t make that much sense to have kids on paper. It’s expensive, takes a lot of your energy the extra time it shifts your whole life. But there’s this space in my body. You know, this like gut space that just has this urge to have children and to have children with him. So So yeah, so that’s what we do. I’m very quickly went from a single living on my own in the city, going out all the time to living with my partner married and then got pregnant two months after we got married. Wow. So yeah, and then had three kids in less than four years. So when I do things, Paulette, I do them big.

 

Paulette  9:41  

For the sake of be her village, I’m excited to hear that. I’m glad. So it sounds like it was easy to get pregnant.

 

Kaitlin  9:48  

It was scarily easy for you know, it’s like it can go either way. Right. It can be like wow, this is really hard and heart wrenching. But it can also be like, Wow, we just think about getting pregnant. And we all three times it was incredibly, incredibly easy.

 

Paulette  10:01  

Yeah. Okay, so for the first one, did you walk into pregnancy with an idea of what it would be like?

 

Kaitlin  10:08  

No, I was the first person in my social circle. I was only 27 which in New York City is very young to start having kids. I feel like the people I know don’t start think about until they’re like 33 And they’re like, start considering it. So at 27 I was the first person I knew and was already in my circle to have a baby so I had almost no expectation and I don’t know I have this expectation that everything would be really easy. I also I also have this invincibility this like 27 year old invincibility like nothing can hurt me because I you know, tell I know how to tell people to go at themselves. You to like and that will save me which in many situations. Like it wasn’t enough. I remember watching the business of being born. And before I had my first baby and thinking, Oh, I can handle that. You know, I was horrified at what I saw. And I thought I can handle that.

 

Paulette  11:06  

Was it was it? Was it a vaginal deliveries they showed?

 

Kaitlin  11:10  

Well, what they showed on us as being born is a plant homebirth different C section because the baby was breech so she was like eight centimeters and they had to transfer pretty quickly but they they walk you through the cascade of interventions, you know, mostly in the epidural, the stall, the C section, that sort of thing. And, and I just sort of felt immune, I felt like I could handle all of that. So

 

Paulette  11:34  

how do we know today’s the day or you know, the baby’s gonna be born?

 

Kaitlin  11:38  

Because the midwife told me it’s time to go to the hospital and get the baby out.

 

Paulette  11:43  

So you do wake up with contractions and you know their contractions

 

Kaitlin  11:47  

know the midwives. Were working at a birth center in New York. There was only one so I won’t name it but you guys can figure it out. They were working at a birth center and sort of saying, Hey, this is midwifery care. But the rules at the time in New York State did not allow midwives to own birth center. So they were actually puppets for an OB run and owned facility. So I went for 41 weeks screaming Wow. And the midwife just said, Okay, it’s time there wasn’t a discussion. It wasn’t true midwifery care. And I’m always sort of careful to say that it was not true midwifery care. They were just a puppet for OB care. And it was a little bit of a bait and switch. And it’s it’s unfortunate because I tried, you know, like I tried to line up and out of hospital birth they tried lining up a midwifery led team, but it’s it made to him. I didn’t like, deep enough, but I think part of that experience was that I was a little idealistic. I was a little bit like my just gonna be my you know like I’m part of I think my deep skepticism the unfolding this as I’m saying it but like, what am I deep skepticism about the existing systems and and how they serve us is due to this like I did all the right things. I checked all the boxes, you know, I planted out of hospital birth I got a midwifery team. I took the childbirth class, I prepared as best as I could. And still, the system just took me in and systematically shut me down, took away choices took away my voice.

 

Paulette  13:25  

So before we get to the hospital, how did you come to the conclusion that you wanted an out of hospital birth? What What made you make that choice?

 

Kaitlin  13:33  

That’s a great question. I don’t really know my mom had a vaginal delivery with me and my brother, and my brother and I and my 10 year old would be correcting me and my grandma was my brother and I, I think I was just it was the beginning. Of when I start considering another human being like my son. I think it was just the beginning of this, like, what could be the best for him and what I was reading was the best is less intervention, the you know, the business would be important. It’s like how do we avoid this cycle? How do we avoid I was just sort of curious that I guess I got led down that path of looking for an alternative and I’m not somebody that has ever wanted to walk the mainstream path. Like part of my personality, so I think it makes perfect sense that I was that I was exploring my options. I’m also somebody that is very intellectual. I like to know as much information as I can it helps reduce my anxiety. So I think just in doing the, the research and looking and going and meeting people and finding out what is the best way to have this baby. That was what led me down this path and I got so close, like some key things that were sort of outside of my control. For you know, that’s that’s where everything sort of went sideways.

 

Paulette  14:52  

So you went to the midwives just for a regular checkup. Was that your intention?

 

Kaitlin  14:56  

I went to the sonogram place for a 41 week sonogram to check on, I guess, you know, just the like normal, non stress test and water levels and whatnot. And it was the hottest day of July, you know, and I was my water was a little low. And I didn’t know I didn’t have a doula. It’s a big part of it. I didn’t have a doula. I thought that a doula would make the experience less intimate. I thought a doula was unnecessary because I thought my midwives had my back. I didn’t understand like the power dynamic that the midwives were working for OBS and I didn’t understand that even if they aren’t working for OBS that they’re trying to exist and give care in a system where they are liable in a system where they need to be covered by insurance in a system where they have to maintain hospital privileges. I had no idea about the complexities of that. So I felt that my midwife would protect me rather than be one of the people that sort of a mouthpiece for the larger system. And so, so I was told my water was low. And I remember standing on the street in Brooklyn, and she called me and said, It’s time to get the baby out. Go to the hospital. Not a question, not an informative conversation just it has been deemed it has been decided. And I remember bursting into tears to figure out why the tears you know, in the moment it’s almost like my body knew how wrong this all felt, but I couldn’t you know, when you’re in that sort of panic stress, you can’t pinpoint it. Years later, and many, many hours of contemplation, but I think I just went into immediate trust mode and I don’t know that I could have figured out well, yeah, because maybe, maybe I wanted to have a voice in my care. Maybe I wanted to be a decision maker instead of a passive participant maybe being told what was going to happen. Didn’t feel good for me and maybe I needed trauma informed care you know, it’s such a subtle thing, but it’s a huge thing. If she had said, Hey, this is what’s going on. And these are our options. Yeah, take an hour, go to lunch, go connect, go get in a room with your husband. I was by myself. Go get in a room with your husband haven’t take you out to lunch and discuss the options you know, just something as simple as that there was nothing urgent about me. You know, my water was a little low. Okay, baby was fine. So something like that would have just completely shifted the experience and and I think that’s where when I eventually become a doula and do all of this work those moments stick with me. It’s not it’s not about how the baby comes out. It really isn’t. It’s not about what medical things happen. It’s about having the space and room to adjust. It’s about having people speak to you respectfully. It’s about having a team that maintains your power your autonomy, your centering in the entire experience. It’s just that birth from that phone call on I was I was just an annoyance to everybody. I was just the thing they had to deal with. And that’s how I felt I felt disempowered and voiceless and powerless. And it I mean, it continues to grow. At first that was the best part of the birth leader was that

 

Paulette  18:05  

this is this is something I hear often from women and the fundamental question is Were things done for you or to you? Oh, they were done to me. Right because you had no choice but that’s that seems to be what it turns on. You know how much control you have. So you’re crying in the street. What happens next you call your husband.

 

Kaitlin  18:25  

I call my husband and I call my mom and they meet me at the hospital or my mom like picks up my husband and I don’t remember exactly we all meet at the hospital. And, and the midwife needs to be in triage. And so the thing to know about this situation, too, is that this birthing center was always in flux. I don’t know the workings behind the scene, but I know as a patient and then as a doula when I would have patients there. They they’re just sort of constantly in flux. So at the time, they had privileges at mammography. So I went to my mother’s hospital in Brooklyn, which was incredibly far away from my home and my parents home. We were trying to have birth center birth and that this was plan B. But the other thing that had happened is that there was this like shifting of all the midwives on the staff, and only one or two of them had like five or six had privileges at the hospital. The sense I got from the midwife who’s now a home birth midwife in Brooklyn, was that she was exhausted. And didn’t want to be there. And I got the overwhelming sense she wasn’t happy in the position she was in which is fine but it definitely bled into my care you know, she dropped me off in triage. I got an IV in my hand. I remember hating the IV so much. And then now get this pull that you’re gonna die. I was set up for a Cytotec induction in the C section. recovery room. Yep. So I was lying there, eating a sandwich. Not allowed to get up. I didn’t know you know, this is like this is like another me not allowed to get up not allowed to move. Getting double doses of side attack because the first couple didn’t work. Surrounded by semi conscious moaning women. Oh my God, who had just come back from a C section or waking up from anesthesia. Whatever it was like it’s surgical recovery room on the OB floor. And the midwife who I’m sure is overworked. His that she’s the only one you know, that has hospital privileges. It just, she was in her own place. She’s like, okay, by all means Call me if you feel like you need an epidural. That’s not midwifery care. By the way. For anyone who’s listening. That’s not midwifery care I was getting. I was getting OB care through the mouth of a midwife. Call me feeling an epidural. Call me if you feel like you need an epidural. It’s actually what she said. Cool.

 

Paulette  20:56  

Thanks. So I got it from here. Thanks. Anyway.

 

Kaitlin  21:00  

Thank you so much, you You’re the worst. So I Yeah, so I the the Cytotec kicked in around 11pm

 

Paulette  21:08  

Is that Pitocin so it was it was like Is it attack is a cervical ripening

 

Kaitlin  21:13  

or it’s an off label use. So it there’s a lot of controversy oversight attack. It has its uses. I’m not this is not an anti Cytotec podcast. It’s just that was what I had, but incredibly effective. It’s also it’s the abortion drug, it causes intense uterine contraction. Oh, so it’s an off label use there’s something like it’s for ulcers. It’s an ulcer medication that the OB is used to induce and also to control bleeding and also to I believe it’s the abortion. I don’t know though.

 

Paulette  21:45  

Just a quick note, here, Caitlyn is right. According to medical websites, Cytotec aka visa protocol, not sure if I’m pronouncing that correctly, is also a drug that’s used off label by OBS for various things including inducing abortion. It’s one of the two medications used in the abortion pill. There are links in the show notes if you’re interested in details.

 

Kaitlin  22:07  

So I get that it’s incredibly effective. I started having essentially transition level contractions every three minutes deep, deep, deep contractions, and it is almost unbearable because the nurse Wendy is now in this surgical recovery room. She’s taking care of 20 women and me who’s laboring and she won’t let me quote unquote, let me because I didn’t know I didn’t. She wasn’t allowed to not let me write. Wouldn’t let me get up she kept saying well, I have superior commanders. She would make me live not even just lay but lay flat on my back. I had those the things that go on your legs. Like clap preventative thing. I had blood pressure cuff. I had the flippy thing on your hand, but I was essentially strapped down. Even though technically not shackles really felt like it. And I remember just she was forcing me to lay the waves were so intense and so fast. And I remember saying I need an epidural I started vomiting. I started shaking uncontrollably, which is all now like now I know it’s all part of like I was dilating I was now I know I’ve actually been incredibly fast labor my body. So the baby when it’s ready, so good to know, but my body took to the induction, I think a lot faster than anybody expected it to. And I remember asking her if I can get out to the bathroom and she said to me, Well, no, you really look like you’re in charge. I can’t let you get up and she made me use a bedpan How humiliating how dehumanizing. I was conscious. I was not an epidural. There was no reason I should not have been allowed to get up out of that bed. I shouldn’t walk to school. There’s a lot of shoulds in the story, but it’s part of why I’m so passionate about everybody getting to let says this is the foundation of my work right now. It is this. I was like a trapped animal and not in a good way. I was like an animal, my spiritual unmedicated me back to you, but like a wonderful, primal, beautiful goddess animal. This was like being in a cage and I remember I was I was throwing up I was shaking. She was trapping me and honestly, I don’t know how much time I gave birth to 5:20am Voc section. This started at 11 I don’t think that much time has really time doesn’t exist in labor. You know, it felt like 10 years to me. And I remember my husband and I had prepared with childbirth classes and it’s his role right to kind of support me and not wanting to throw. My mother and him weren’t allowed to touch me unless they had cold rags because I was so hot and I couldn’t take the touch. They were like deer in headlights. If there’s ever a reason to have a doula it was just the look of their faces. The eyes not knowing what to do with me. And I remember saying out loud, I want an epidural. And he looked at me and he was like, really, you know, and I feel for him because he does his job. Right. And we think it’s our job to talk people out of epidurals. It is not our job to help people. It really isn’t is our job to offer other alternatives. But epidural always has to be on the table. We need to listen to women and I’m so adamant about that because because he listened to me in that moment. And I needed him to listen to me because he was like, Are you sure? And I looked at him and I said, not like this. This is not it’s so far gone. You know, I talked about going down an epidural. I was talking about like, you know, with a flower crown and a birth center or anything. Like obviously, I just imagined it being so much more wholesome and holistic and centered and I was able, you can’t say no epidural and then take away every other tool they have to cope. Suffering. And so he understood that and the funniest thing happened. Well, it’s not really funny. I said to her swinging, I said to like an epidural. And she said the strangest thing. She goes, Are you sure you want an epidural? That means you’d have to go into a labor and delivery room. And I was like, What do you mean I could get my own? Okay, yeah, no, I want that. Like no, I want it more. What do you think is the weirdest weirdest thing so the residents run and check me because I spent so much time as a doula talking people through the conversation about getting examined and what what pads do go on and this and that, and we really slow down the labor around these points, the cervical exams being a big, big one. And I remember it was just like, checkmate, whatever. I’m just I mean, after all, I don’t care if you check me or not, but I was checked and in retrospect, I was four to five centimeters and that was like two hours or so after. Wow. Look, I was rocking and there was a reason why I was in so much discomfort. So they gave me the epidural or they hold on to the head. So they get me over to l&d. And the l&d nurse is worse than Monday. She was so just didn’t want me to be there. She didn’t like me. She hated her job. You can just tell when people hate them. And I think too, as a birthing person or a birthing moment you press especially sensitive to energy because you have to see who’s a danger to you. So I think I’m already pretty sensitive to people’s energy. But I was really quite sensitive that night. So I remember going into the bathroom and wiping and there was blood, mucus and blood like I was opening really beautifully. And I remember sitting on the toilet. This is right before I’m gonna get my epidural. I remember sitting on the toilet and thinking I could do this What am I doing? But it’s because I was sitting on the toilet I was right. I was able to sort of release it was a completely different experience to sit on the toilet and labor versus being strapped to the bed and labor go figure go figure that was different. So I didn’t know that at this point. You know, I mean, really, I just needed a way out of the school scenario. Everyone was so awful there and I’m getting a C section that I had that this ended it was not the worst part. The C section was the way out of being surrounded by I’m so vulnerable to people who were disrespectful and who couldn’t care less about me. So I get back in my my one fear actually, you know, you asked me that question before about why I went and will say and I just remember the answer, because my biggest fear about birth was not giving birth. It was about getting a needle in my spine. So I was trying to avoid an epidural. And and my fears were founded because this anesthesiologist was female anesthesiologist came in and she gave me the epidural and I remember feeling the needle go into my spine, and it was uncomfortable. It hurt. It was like getting a needle in your spine.

  

I remember being moved and I think I remember being like, oh and I moved and I screamed and she was so

 

Kaitlin    

I don’t know the word for it but but this day and she was like, is it pain or is it just couldn’t believe I was reacting like that and I was like it’s even in getting the relief. I couldn’t get relief from the from the game so awful and looking back at it wasn’t even one of those patients. You know, the one we all fear being the one that like to be honest, I wasn’t even that I was so docile, but I think the morale at that place was really rough. So I got there. And I finally got released and it did its trick, which is great because it doesn’t always work that way for people. So it did have that full relief. But then I was resting as close my eyes and every time I opened my eyes, everybody was still in the room and everybody had really big eyes and my mum looked terrified. And I realized that they were worried about the heartbeat of the baby, that they were watching midwife the midwife had returned. She helped me through the epidural. And you know, it was the worst part about that is that she was actually incredibly comforting. She was very good during the epidural and it would have been a different labor if she stayed if she had to work. I deserved a midwife and I said, So I realized that they were concerned about it and I, I opened my eyes and I looked at midwife and I said, what’s going on? And she said, well, so my baby was going to tack a cardiac instead of radical artic. So the biggest party wasn’t going along. It was actually going to really high up. Which after taking care of strangers, newborn resuscitation protocol, that’s just as dangerous. That’s just as bad of an indication. So there was a heart rate issue. And in retrospect, what happened is essentially his head was a little asymptotic. It was just like a little off. I think it would be opening so quickly, and then the epidural, I’m sure opening me. I think he just got jammed in and stuff. And he just struggled a little bit. So I remember looking at the midwife, and she said I still hate him. We would she said they were all clearly worried about it. They were describing something that was scary. And she said I’m gonna call them the OB and the OB will come in at about 45 minutes. Oh my god. And I want to just like preface this by I said this about me and I would never say this to a pregnant person. I said, Okay, I just want to help the baby. Just get me healthy baby. And I say that because it’s incredibly toxic to say at least the unhealthy baby enters a healthy now that’s not true. I matter. But at that moment, everything I had desired about this birth was so far out of the window, right? What I meant if I had the capacity to speak in a full thought, What I meant is you’ve ruined all of this right? This has already been destroyed. I need to help the baby at the end of this.

 

Paulette  7:30  

I’m going to end my conversation with Caitlin here for today. I so appreciate her sharing her experience of the postpartum period, which I think is regrettably common. Many of us leave the hospital or birthing center to return home are met by our new job that requires work around the clock or that we often do alone and work that we do when we’re exhausted at a time work.

 

Next Friday I will share the rest of this inspiring story.