Jewish doula and mental health therapist Chana decides to get off medications for depression and anxiety during her pregnancy. This results in a recurrence of both, including pretty severe insomnia and her family strongly encourages her to get back on medications. She gets back to feeling more well for the rest of her pregnancy, but then her beloved grandmother dies when Chana’s 38 weeks pregnant, closely followed by Passover. Chana goes into labor at a large Seder family gathering and goes on to have a waterbirth at a Long Island hospital attended by a doula and Jewish midwife. Then she identifies her daughter’s gender at birth and names her after her grandmother.
Resources:
The Evidence on Due Dates (Evidence Based Birth)
The Evidence on Inducing for Due Dates (Evidence Based Birth)
Rochel Lieberman - South Shore Midwives (formerly with Gaia Midwives)
Gayle Cerlin-Lazerus - doula (now working as a therapist)
Dr. Sabrina Havens, acupuncturist (Long Island – Great Neck, NY)
Payne Whitney Clinic at Weill Cornell (Psychiatry in Manhattan)
Sponsor links:
East River Doula Collective (find a doula, attend our free “Meet the Doulas” event)
Birth Matters NYC Childbirth Education Classes (Astoria, Queens and virtual)
Episode Topics:
Choosing a midwife for her first pregnancy
How Chana got into doula work
Moving to Queens from Manhattan during pregnancy for more space
Lifelong struggle with depression and anxiety, going on meds since around 15
Going off meds during pregnancy (contrary to what she encourages clients to do now)
Struggling with depression and anxiety as a result
Getting an ultrasound at some point to help reduce her anxiety
Feeling anxious specifically about laundry logistics in an apartment building, red flag to her therapist sister
Not feeling happy about being pregnant, feeling increasingly isolated
Going to acupuncture, which helps a bit
Sharing with her mom she was feeling depressed
Insomnia starting and really escalating
Going to a family friend psychiatrist to get a prescription for meds around 6 months
Taking Xanax - quicker acting PRM (as-needed) anti-anxiety plus a stronger sleep medication
Going into midwife to hear baby’s heartbeat with doppler for reassurance
Things start improving, seeing the light
Really feeling like she was enjoying the pregnancy by 7-8 months and having much less anxiety, which felt weird
April 14th due date, touring Nassau University Medical Center
Prenatal visit with her doula
Birth plan
Researching placenta encapsulation and how it aligns (or doesn’t) with kosher rules -- Chinese medicine approach and using vegan capsules, and saving a soul trumps the laws, having it prepared outside her home to keep her kitchen kosher
Grandmother passes ~38 weeks (in Ohio), doesn’t get to go
The day family returns it was time for Passover
Having a modified Shiva and supervisor being really generous with leave
Helping prepare for Passover, weirdly wonderful memories of this mom/daughter time, having 2 seders
April 8th @ 39 weeks she wakes up with a stomach cramp they go to her aunt’s house
Drive to her parent’s house later that day, lots of visiting, doing a belly cast before the seder with her sisters
At around 6pm, just before the seder, she feels a cramp in her back and can’t get comfortable; they decide to leave and go home
Certain she’s in labor once they get home -- trying ball (no good), hands and knees, pacing
Constant back pain
Calling midwife and doula
Vomiting and wondering if she’s in transition
Dale Cook (backup midwife who’s now retired) instructs them to come to hospital
They wait for doula to come, who starts counterpressure right away
Chana is afraid that going to hospital too early, but they go ahead and go once doula encourages Chana to do what she felt was right
In car, needing lots of hands-on counterpressure from doula
Pulling in wrong way to hospital circular driveway
Going to triage for 20 minutes of monitoring before she could use the tub for a waterbirth
Midwife asks her if she wants to know the dilation, Chana says yes -- she’s 10 but not ready to push
When Chana says she’s scared, doula says, “put that fear in a box and put it in a corner because we don’t have room for that now.”
Getting into tub and starting to push and getting the hang of it, lots of groaning
Feeling the burning
Daughter being born and Chana identifies and announces it’s a girl
Realizing her family is right on the other side of a side door, hearing everything
Getting out of the tub and going to the bed after placenta delivery
Named their daughter a few days later - Zoey June (June after grandmother)
Interview Transcript
Lisa: Welcome to the Birth Matters Podcast. Today, I have with me Chana Diamond. Welcome, Chana!
Chana: Hi, thank you for having me, Lisa. This is exciting.
Lisa: Yes, I'm so glad to see you. Can't wait to hear your birth stories. Chana is one of the wonderful doulas in our Doula Collective, and I've just been asking our doulas, does anyone want to share their birth stories? And so she kindly stepped up and she has three of them. So I cannot wait to hear the juicy details.
Introduce yourself
Lisa: Would you please just take a moment to introduce yourself a little bit more than I did.
Sure. My name's Chana Diamond. I'm a labor and birth doula and a social worker therapist, and I work with the perinatal population in that regard. I have three children, my oldest is nine. I became pregnant with her in 2011, and my middle child is seven. I had my daughter in 2012, I had my son in 2014, and I had the baby, who is now three and a half, in 2017.
Lisa: Nice.
Chana: Yeah.
Lisa: And did you mention the neighborhood you live in or area?
I live on Long Island. I live in Merrick, but at the time of having each of my children, I was living in Forest Hills, Queens. And I was with the same midwifery practice for all three. Originally, when I started with them, it was called Gaia Midwifery, and then changed the name to South Shore Midwives.
Lisa: I saw Rochel Lieberman for all three of my pregnancies, though you will hear that she attended my very last birth. Well, she was at one and a half. Yeah.
And for my first birth, I was with a doula who is a dear friend and a mentor. We actually trained together in 2010, maybe 2011, I don't even remember what year it was.
Her name is Gail Cirlin-Lazerus and I don't know that she's attending many births now, but she's also a therapist, and she lives in the Nyack area in Rockland County.
Lisa: And how did you know to seek out midwifery care?
Chana: So I have a little bit of a different doula story than some doulas that I know, in that I became a doula before I was pregnant and before I had children. So it was May of 2011 when I completed my doula training, and it was August of 2011 when I became pregnant.
So, I knew through the very first few months of being a doula that I wanted to use midwifery care for my pregnancies. There really weren't many, not that there are even that many now, midwives in Queens, and I didn't want to go into the city. I felt like that would be too complicated. I'm born and raised on Long Island. I felt like it was easier to go in that direction than to go into the city. So I knew of Gaia. They were in Nassau County, it wasn't too far of a trip, so I called them up, and they had like two and backup midwives working for them at the time. One was Rochel and one was another midwife who has retired, whose name is Susan Brockmann.
And I called and left a message, and the midwife who called me back was Rochel and we talked, and she said, you can see me, or you can see Susan, and it's your choice. And I made an appointment to see Rochel, and that was that. she's a religious Jewish woman, and though I'm not as observant as her, I do feel like it's an important piece of who I am and what I brought to being pregnant, what I felt during pregnancy, what I have in my household today.
Chana: So, it felt like a really special connection that she brought that to our visits together to, you know, her care for me as my provider.
What caused her to want to become a doula?
Lisa: That's great. And can you imagine that piqued people's curiosity, at least some folks, the fact that you became a doula before you had babies. Can you elaborate just a little bit on what it was that caused you to want to become a doula before you had babies?
Chana: Of course. I learned about what doulas do through some anti-racism work that I was doing through my social work career. And I learned about abortion doulas and doulas who support people who are having miscarriages or who are having terminations, and I thought it was such an incredible thing. How could that not be? I was like, obviously that has to exist, right? It just made sense that somebody would need unconditional, non-judgmental support through those experiences. and so I asked, how do I become one? And they said, become a birth doula first, because it's kind of like the all-encompassing training and then you can, you know, add-on things to learn to support people in other ways.
So I did, I literally went like Googled doula training or something, you know, back in 2011 when we didn't have social media to guide us through life's big choices. And I found a training on Long Island, and I signed up, and I didn't have kids at the time, so I was like, you know, two Saturdays and a Sunday or something or whatever it wound up being, I was like, no problem.
Chana: And that was that. I'm a very calculated person and this was probably the most spontaneous thing I ever did. To just spend, you know, whatever, I don't know how much it cost then, like $500 to sign up for this training, not knowing at all what it would mean for my life.
I have two older sisters that are very big parts of my life, and my oldest sister had two children already, and her second was a VBAC that she was really, really thoughtful about. She switched care for this pregnancy, she found midwives and she had a really successful, unmedicated VBAC, and it was like, all I knew was that that was like the most triumphant thing I had ever seen. Not knowing any other parts of that or what that meant, but I remember calling her like outside of my apartment, after like day one of the training and being like, you had a VBAC. And she was like, I know! And it was really exciting, like it clicked for me.
Lisa: And for anyone who's not familiar with what VBAC is, that's Vaginal Birth After Cesarean. So no easy feat in our culture, where repeat cesareans tend to be more often the case.
Chana: Yeah.
Lisa: Nice. And I just want to mention that Chana and I have been doing birth work for, in the ballpark of, the same amount of time in around a decade or so. And so many of my clients, students, over the years have just sung the praises of Chana, so I've been referring to her for years now.
Chana: Thank you. Thank you. And mine, the same about Lisa's classes. It's just I love that we get to share this space together.
Lisa: Yeah, agreed. And I also love that we've shared so many birth advocacy and anti-racism spaces together, particularly through the pandemic, as the virtual setting has made it more possible to really get on that and really attend a lot of those things. So I always am so grateful when I hop on and see you're, you're really wanting to make a difference in that way, and use our privilege, however we're able to to improve outcomes for birthing people.
Chana: Yes. A hundred percent. Yes, yes, yes.
Lisa: Alright. Well, do you want to share, I mean, unless you wanted to say anything else about doula work, I would invite you to go into your first pregnancy.
Her first pregnancy
Chana: For sure, so I became pregnant in August of 2011. My husband and I had gotten married in November 2009. We both come from families that, you know, we both have siblings who had had children, we were around lots of babies. We both knew we wanted children, it wasn't really a question, it was just a matter of when. And so we decided to start trying, and very luckily and very, very grateful that I got pregnant quickly after going off of hormonal birth control.
She got pregnant
Chana: So I got pregnant, and I was in disbelief. I don't know if I was in disbelief. I took a number of tests. I remember texting my oldest sister and being like, I think it came back positive and she was like, what do you mean, you think? You know!
And so then I think I was babysitting my nephew that weekend or something. And she was like, here, I left you another pregnancy test to take the test. You know, she was really excited for me. So it was my other sister, my whole family was really very excited. So I immediately found my midwives and then I remember they wouldn't see me until I was 12 weeks. Because most midwives, they're like, I'll see you when you're 12 weeks.
Actually, I had seen an OB in Manhattan where I was living at the time, and I remember I went for the blood work because you know, I didn't feel like anything was confirmed that pee-on-a-stick was not nearly enough for me.
Lisa: Right. It's not, it's never enough for most of us.
Chana: Yeah. So I was like, I need that blood work. And I was excited. We moved to Queens, because we knew we wanted to be there and have more space, move into a bigger apartment. So we moved, and I was working as a social worker, I had a full-time job in the mental health world, and everything was going fine.
I didn't feel nauseous at all. I really felt fine. I think I felt tired in the beginning, but that was it.
Depression and anxiety
Chana: I have always, since I was probably about, I want to say like 15, suffered from depression and anxiety. Saw a therapist in high school and started taking antidepressants when I was in high school, which it was almost, I want to say like a rite of passage on my family. You know, once they said, the nurse practitioner, I think who I saw said, I think we should start medication. My mom was like, well, this is what works for our family, because apparently everybody in my family suffers from depression and anxiety, and benefits from taking medication.
So I had taken medication since I was probably about 15 and I've gone through periods where I went off of it and didn't do well, and subsequently went back on the medication. And so when I became pregnant, I felt like I wanted to try, you know, and looking back, it's so interesting because I'm like, I know all of this, and I tell all of my clients the very opposite. But as a young, very green person, I really wanted to go off the medication and try and felt like the pregnancy hormones would carry me through.
Off the medication
Chana: So I went off the medication. I had a therapist that I'd seen for a couple of years already, and I stayed in therapy, but I went off of the psychiatric medication that I was taking when I was pregnant in August.
And by the fall, I would say October, I was feeling depressed and very anxious, and was really starting to suffer. I was very worried about the pregnancy, that something was going to happen.
I, myself am a very superstitious person, so I was very, very guarded around sharing with anybody that I was pregnant, feeling like it was going to cause something to go wrong. And while I am most certainly a superstitious person in general, and I think a lot of that is tied to a lot of you know, mystical things within Judaism, whatever that means.
Looking back, it took the turn for anxiety where I can see clinically, it was okay, this is no longer like a superstition, this is an anxious feeling.
Anxiety in pregnancy
Chana: So yeah, I started to get anxious about the pregnancy, and that everything was okay. At one point, I did have like very minimal spotting and it really, I went in right to my provider, and they offered me an ultrasound to confirm that everything was fine.
I don't think any of my providers were concerned, but it was helpful for me. And it just kind of got worse from there. I remember at one point having an anxiety about laundry when I have a baby. Like the task of doing laundry in an apartment, you know, as somebody who grew up in a house where there's a washing machine and a dryer right there, and I've lived in apartments for many years now already.
But the idea of doing laundry for a baby, who will generate a lot of laundry, and not having 24-hour access or it not being in my apartment was beyond triggering, right? And I remember texting with my oldest sister, who's also a therapist, and telling her this and she was like, it'll be fine, you'll figure it out. You know, you work through it, it's annoying, but you get through it, whatever.
Chana: And I think, and I don't know if I'm making this up or something, but I think I remember, later on, further down the road, my husband telling me that my sister got in touch with him and was like, this isn't cool. She shouldn't be freaking out about the laundry.
Prenatal Acupuncture
Chana: And I was feeling very depressed, I didn't want to socialize, I didn't want to go out. I was just feeling very overwhelmed with the day to day. I was still going to work, you know, seeing friends, doing things, seeing family, but just it felt very, kind of like daunting and overwhelming, and not feeling happy about being pregnant, feeling stressed.
So I knew I needed to do something, so I decided I would go see an acupuncturist, which is like awesome and great for somebody who suffers from clinical depression, anxiety. I will be very clear, it will not solve that but through that, I did find a really fantastic acupuncturist who I loved, and I still refer people to all the time.
And her name is Sabrina and she's like really, a really fantastic person, and she treats pregnant people.
Lisa: Wonderful, I'll be sure to get her information from you for the show notes.
Chana: Absolutely. And I remember feeling very calm when I went, I would go, and I would have treatments and it was like a very serene experience. And she put, I don't even remember, they were like these little seeds, that are supposed to be on a trigger point, like behind my ear or in my ear. I think it was in my ear, to help with anxiety. And it was great, but it wasn't enough by any stretch. I think I told my mom that I was starting to feel depressed and my mom of course, was you know, upset and scared and worried for me, and we were trying to figure out what we should do.
And between her and I have one of those families where it's you know, once you tell mom, then she's texting, you know, [besides] to my sisters, and then my sisters are texting on the side and then everybody's having a lot of conversations about how to address the problem.
So there was a lot of that going on. I think I knew I needed to restart the medication, even though I really didn't want to, and I don't really know why I didn't want to.
Lisa: That's what I was about to ask.
Chana: I don't know. I think I was really concerned about like putting my stuff on this unborn child, you know. And I think that that was some of it, and not realizing it's better to just not feel this way, you know?
Insomnia Begins
So there was all of that going on, and then my emotions kind of got to the place where I really stopped sleeping well. I was having a lot of anxiety at night, and I had like one or two nights where I had really terrible insomnia.
And it was really, really awful like not sleeping at all. I remember staying in bed was very, very hard for me, being in my bedroom, so I think Josh stayed with me on the couch. I just felt like being in the bedroom, you know, which for a lot of people, that like pressure to sleep like in the sleep space is really, really hard. So I was on the couch, and I think Josh stayed with me all night on the couch. And it was just like having like two nights of this, you know, no sleep.
Chana: And I think at that point it was when I took a day off of work, and I went out to my parents' house, and stayed with them for a day, just because I felt like it was really great to have my mom, and then we knew that I needed to see a psychiatrist, so I didn't have a psychiatrist.
I don't know, if you asked me now, like before I went off the medication, who was prescribing it, I would not be able to tell you. I don't know, but I will tell you this, that in 2011, finding a psychiatrist to prescribe medication to a pregnant person is very, very difficult. And to take my insurance, because otherwise, and it's still to this day, it's like actually an awful thing, to have an intake with a psychiatrist, it will cost you several hundred dollars.
Lisa: I don't think I realized that.
Yeah. Yeah, and I remember I contacted the Payne Whitney Clinic at Weill Cornell, which had at the time, like a perinatal unit. They wouldn't see you unless you would also see their therapist, and I had a therapist, so I didn't want to stop seeing my therapist.
Prescriptions from family friend therapist
Chana: So I really didn't know what to do. And the fallback was that we have a dear family friend who is a psychiatrist and he felt comfortable treating in pregnancy, and you know, I don't recommend to everybody seeing a family friend but, you know, the world is messed up and you can only get prescriptions from people who have prescription pads.
So that's what we did. And this was after I think, a couple of nights of no sleep and feeling very, very anxious and depressed and worried, and a lot of really, just like ruminating thoughts.
Chana: I never was suicidal. I never had any thoughts of harming myself or the baby, or anything like that, but I was just really depressed.
Restarted medication & seeing improvement
Chana: So I went to see the psychiatrist and he restarted me on my medication, which is, you know, a process, because you have to get, you know, to therapeutic dose, and it can be hard in the beginning. He also gave me a prescription for Xanax as a PRN, so Xanax is like a very quick-acting anti-anxiety medication. So you take it, and it works for a few hours and then it's out of your system. And you take a PRN, it's like as needed. And he also gave me a medication that would help me to sleep for the first two nights, like a stronger medication that would really, more or less, knock me out and make me sleep.
And I really didn't want to take it. I work in the mental health field, I know all of the medications, I've heard all of them, and when I heard it, I was like, whoa, no, like I'm not going to take that, I'm pregnant. And he was like, no, you need to take it, and it's fine. He was like, it's safe, he consulted with people that he knew, other docs.
And I said I really didn't want to, and then he said, well, if you don't take it, you're going to wind up in the hospital, because you won't sleep for that long. And I said, okay.
So I took it and I slept, and I felt a lot better.
I was in communication with my midwife through all of this. At this point, it's December, I would say. It was like all of this kind of came to a head like between Christmas and New Year's.
Lisa: And where are you in your pregnancy at this point? I'm probably like six months pregnant, due in April. So I'm about six months pregnant at this point.
So I took the medication and was in constant communication with my midwife and she was so very supportive. And the day after I took the medication that helped me to sleep, she offered that if I wanted to come in and have an appointment, so she could use the Doppler so I could hear the baby.
Chana: And that felt really good, because then I was able to hear baby heart rate and heartbeat was normal, everything was fine. She said, you look great, this is good.
So, I would say that from that point out, end of December, beginning of January was where I felt like I got over that very huge hump, almost like I found the window in the very, very dark room. I was restarted on medication, and I would take the Xanax as like a PRN when I started to feel heightened anxiety. And I still had some days where, you know, I was not feeling great, but it was better. It was better.
Enjoying the pregnancy for the first time
And I think that it was probably around, I want to say, February-March when I really felt like I was enjoying my pregnancy for the first time, and that felt weird. Like I was okay to talk about it. I wasn't great, I never loved talking about being pregnant, I never loved being pregnant. I found generally speaking, even not so much connected, like really being so depressed, I found it really overwhelming, that feeling of anything I do to my body right now, like if I have extra coffee or if I eat something, it's not just me, you know?
I've always been a pretty resilient person, I could deal with a couple of nights, you know, no sleep, not when I'm depressed and anxious, but you know, whatever, in college, when you study all night or when you just like drink too much or whatever. I've always been like, I drink a lot of coffee and I don't drink enough water, but I'm okay. It's my body.
Chana: And that feeling of, it's not my body, you're caring for something else, you're responsible for something else was very overwhelming. And it felt really, really weird. So that was hard for me, but I wasn't as caught off guard. I always felt this pressure, when somebody said oh, you know, when are you due?
It was like, I don't know, in April, but we'll see. It felt like I didn't want to bank on something, it was still so much unknown, something could still go wrong. And I didn't have as much of that, I would say come like February-March. I remember my nephew. Yeah, it was February. My nephew had a birthday party in February, and we went, and it was like a lot of my sister's friends and family and stuff. And I was eight months pregnant by this point, probably 30 weeks. So I had like a big bump, and I looked pregnant, and you know, everybody's like, oh, when are you due, whatever? And I think that was the first time that I wasn't so uncomfortable with it. And the rest of my pregnancy went well. I was very, very nervous about what it would look like when I, had to use time from work, and that was like a constant rumination that I had, how will I manage maternity leave and what will I do when I come back, and will I go back to work full time and all of that.
But in comparison to how I had been dealing with things before, feeling so depressed and so anxious, the fact that I was able to kind of be okay with that unknown, told me that I was doing better. So I stayed on the medication, I stayed seeing my therapist. I think I continued to do acupuncture, here and there, because I did really like it. So my due date was April 14th. Originally, I think it was April 8th or April 9th, and then there was you know, because of your last menstrual cycle, they were able to push it back.
So my midwife was like, well, we'll push it back just to give you you know, some more time, just in case you go late.
Lisa: Nice.
Chana: We'll take the later date, right? So I was like, okay, cool. I was, you know, I thought that was great.
My plan was to give birth at Nassau University Medical Center, which is where the midwifery practice was attending at the time. They have a water birth suite where you can give birth in the water.
Lisa: Yeah, I got to attend a water birth there one time. It was probably about 10 years ago.
Chana: Yeah, it hasn't been in use for a couple of years now, unfortunately. So my plan, I remember Josh and I did the tour, and I remember feeling like, how did these people have a million questions? I have no questions. I don't know, I was a little overwhelmed and in shock.
Visit with doula
And I met with my doula. It was really special because, I should also mention that I asked Gail to be my doula early on, and she was so supportive through all of this. I told her when I was feeling depressed and that I had restarted taking medication and that I was a Jew, and she was the most supportive person you could ask for. She was like, whatever you have to do, you have to feel good, you need to take care of yourself. This is what you need to do. This is how you are caring for your baby already. So that was really helpful.
Chana: So towards the end of my pregnancy, Josh and I went to Gail's house in Rockland County. She invited us to come, and we met with her, and we did our prenatal session. And then we had dinner with her and her family and it was really beautiful and fun.
Lisa: Aww, that's so nice.
Chana: Yeah, it was great. And I remember, I remember talking with her, this is a funny thing. The doulas will find this funny. I remember saying to her something like, well, maybe I'll have a long labor and we'll just get to talk, we'll get to hang out.
Like, that was my thought. I wished myself a long labor, so I could hang out with my doula.
Lisa: I love that. Careful what you wish for.
Chana: Like what, like what?
Lisa: Who thinks that way?
Chana: And I remember Gail being like, well, or we could just hang out at the postpartum, you don't need a long labor.
Lisa: Don't say that.
The birth plan
You know, it's funny, you had said to kind of reread some of the stories and all of that. And as I was looking through my folder, I found my birth plan, which was cute. And, um,
Lisa: I love your word, cute.
It is really cute. I really, I felt very strongly that I didn't want to plan for anything because I really didn't know what would happen. You know, I didn't want to feel like, oh, you're a doula and you planned for this unmedicated birth and you didn't get it. Because I mean, I wasn't afraid to say like, I'm going to get an epidural, but I didn't want to prepare for anything, and then feel like I let myself down.
Lisa: That's logical.
Chana: Yeah, I have it here. It's like one page.
Lisa: Not too long, that's good, right?
Chana: No, not too long. And I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 bullet points. Josh and I planned to discover and announce the gender of the baby. Before we even discussed having kids, and when that would be, we both knew that we wanted it to be a surprise. We loved that, we loved that idea, both of our families had done it, it was never like a thing. Both our parents were like, totally fine, like, you don't know the gender, we don't need to know the gender. So we didn't want to know it.
And then, I guess I heard from somebody, this idea that you can be the one to announce it, and I loved that. So I really wanted that. I wrote, we will delay the clamping and cutting of the cord as long as possible, immediate skin to skin, delay all postnatal procedures, and wait until I've had some more time.
APGARs can be done while the baby remains on me. We planned to take our placenta with us, and don't bathe the baby. So really, I have like a solid postpartum plan, but really not a lot of the prenatal stuff or the labor stuff.
But I really felt like we would wait and see, we'd see how it went.
Placenta encapsulation and Jewish Law
Chana: So another piece that's interesting, that I totally forgot up until now when I'm thinking about it, this was in 2011, I want to say it was like before placenta encapsulation was like as popular as it is now. I mean, it was certainly happening, you know, obviously, it's been happening since the age of time, when people have been ingesting their placenta, but there wasn't as much available. There were not nearly as many placenta encapsulators as there are now.
And as somebody who, you know, we're kosher, I was curious about what that meant, because there are certain rules of Kashrut, of kosher dietary laws, and what it meant to ingest the placenta.
Lisa: I have never thought about that nuance. I'm glad you're bringing it up.
Chana: So I did some research, and I actually got in touch, I think that she moved to Israel, but she was an acupuncturist in, I think she lived in Brooklyn and a religious woman, and she did do some research and talking with some rabbinic authorities around what it meant for somebody to ingest their placenta.
So I was in touch with her and got some information, and I discussed it. My dad is also a rabbi, and so I discussed it with him. I mean, I got a lot of information, in terms of like rabbinic authorities, writing Jewish law and allowance.
And I also discussed it with my midwife, because she knows about this stuff as an observant Jewish woman. And basically, what I found was that to use the TCM, the Chinese method, means that you get rid of all of the blood because kosher dietary laws say you're not allowed to ingest blood.
So you dehydrate enough and get rid of all the blood and then you're dehydrating it, and then grinding it into capsules and making sure that the capsules are vegan capsules, they allowed it.
Chana: Also, there is this idea in Jewish law that anything to save a life trumps breaking any laws. So if this is seen as being beneficial to a life, then it could be allowed, right? It's this idea of what we call pikuach nefesh, like saving a soul.
So I, as somebody who had really been suffering with a lot of depression and anxiety, I felt like this was, though it is all anecdotal, I felt compelled to encapsulate my placenta and do whatever I could to boost my postpartum experience. So I found a placenta encapsulator. Can I ask a question? I just was wondering if you had to get a rabbi such as your father to approve the idea that you were just communicating of like, saving a soul trumps the rules?
Chana: Sure. So that is like a generally-known rule.
Lisa: Uh-uh.
Chana: Yes, there has been some writing by rabbinic authorities that specifically talks about how it is allowed to encapsulate the placenta and for people to ingest it.
Yeah, so I presented that to my dad and I said like, this is what I been looking at.
And just like, as a review with him, I mean, he was going to be like, whatever you want to do, like I don't really care what you do. Like just make yourself feel good, and have your baby, my dad's a chill guy.
So I did that. I also, it was important to me, at the time, I don't know if this is correct, but I was under the impression that a lot of placenta encapsulators would do it in your home.
They weren't doing it in their homes and then like transporting as much. It was important to me that I found somebody who would do it, not in my home because the idea of a lot of blood being in my kitchen, would make my kitchen no longer kosher. So I was specific to find somebody who would take my placenta to their workspace, make the capsules, and then I would get it back from them.
That was also part of it, so I found somebody to encapsulate my placenta. I don't remember if it was this acupuncturist who I had scheduled to do it with, or it was somebody else she referred me to. I'll come back to that though.
Grandmother passed away at end of pregnancy
Chana: So end of pregnancy is fine, I feel totally fine. My plan was to work right up until the very end. I worked for a nonprofit, we got five maternity days to take. I was going to use all my vacation and sick days, and that was that. When I was 38 weeks pregnant, so this was the very, very end of March, my grandmother passed away. and this was my mom's mom, this was the first grandparent that I lost. I was very, very blessed, I had healthy grandparents for, you know, majority of my life thus far. My grandmother, she, you know, was 80-something-year-old woman, she got sick and it all kind of happened pretty quickly, that we knew she was going to die. So I remember, when I was very depressed, at the peak of my depression, my mom had been scheduled to go to visit my grandparents who lived in Ohio. I remember she called them and said, "I have to cancel the trip, I have to stay with Chana."
And I remember my mom telling me that my grandma, I didn't think, oh gosh, she said something like, "of course you do."
She didn't think anything of it just like, "of course you have to stay with her."
So at 38 weeks pregnant, my grandma passed away and in Jewish religion, we do things pretty quickly. You know, she passed away like on a Friday and the funeral was on like a Sunday. My grandparents have four children and are very close with, there are 11 immediate cousins of all of us, and I think we probably all felt like we were my grandma's favorite.
So everybody went to the funeral and I remember, I was like, okay, I'll be there. And because my whole family was driving.
Lisa: I was going to ask, because you couldn't probably fly at that point.
Chana: Yeah. And they were like, no, you're not, you cannot drive with us at 38 weeks pregnant to Ohio. You will not be coming. Which obviously, I mean, I can't even imagine what that would've been like.
My mom was distraught because she didn't want to leave me, because my sisters were also going, she was like, nobody's in New York with Chana, and we knew they're gone for like maybe two days. But I was really devastated to miss the funeral. Actually, it was me and one other cousin weren't there, because she was also pregnant. And we both named our daughters after her, which was very special.
Passover
So they went to the funeral and then they came back and sure enough, the day they came back, it was like Passover was happening that next day or in the next like two days. Which is, like Passover for people who observe, it's a lot of preparation, cleaning, and getting everything ready.
Chana: So my mom, who always does a lot and my parents host a lot of people in the community, it was very overwhelming. Meanwhile, my mom had also just lost her mother.
Lisa: Yeah, I was just thinking amidst that grief.
Chana: It was really hard. So what wound up happening was, my mom came back from Ohio and had to prepare for Passover and also was doing like a modified Shivah, which is when like, the mourners, the people in direct relation to whoever has just passed away, sit Shiva in the house, and people come to visit during specific times. And the mourners aren't supposed to cook or provide meals for themselves or anything like that, you're really supposed to cater to them.
So my mom did like a modified Shivah, she's probably the worst person to sit Shivah because she hates attention, she hates anything, she wants to be the person who's doing everything. She doesn't want to be the one who is sitting there.
So what I wound up doing was, my supervisor at the time, at work, was a wonderful person and knew what I had been dealing with and, you know, she was like a really wonderful person to be my supervisor. She said, you can use your, I don't even know what they call it, like when somebody passes away, that time, you know, specific time for if you suffer a loss, because she knew I didn't want to use my vacation time because I was about to go on maternity leave. So she said, I'll put in for that, and you can go be with your mom and help her.
So I wound up taking three days off of work, and I went out and I stayed with my mom and I was able to help her. And I'm 38 weeks pregnant at this point, and I was able to help her prepare for Passover, cleaning up.
Time with mom at end of pregnancy
Chana: I remember we went and we got the car washed together, and like, I just remember like all of these little things where it was like in the middle of the day, like on Tuesday, you know, afternoon. I haven't spent time like this with my mom in like how many years. On like a random Tuesday where she wasn't working, because her mom had just died and she was still technically sitting Shivah, and I was off from work, we just hung out together and had a lot of fun, I think in this really weird time where it was like, I could give birth any moment.
it was just really, it was like a weird special time. And I think we both still think about it as just like the stars aligned in a weird way that we got that.
Lisa: Yeah.
Chana: We have such fond memories of one of my sisters being over and making like this chocolate cake, like this flourless chocolate cake, which is like, you know, a lot of people eat on Passover and it uses like a spring form pan.
And we're all in the kitchen, and like my mom putting the cake in and she went to pick it up and like the spring form wasn't attached, and the whole cake fell through the bottom. And it was like chocolate batter everywhere, and we were all just laughing and crying and like, what the f*** just happened?
Like where are we, what's going on? And we still just like talk about it, like with the, you know, the flourless chocolate cake in the spring form pan. So, it was a weird time.
So Passover came, my husband and I usually split holidays. We're lucky enough, like his family does holidays big, my family does holiday, it's a, you know, a lot of, and nobody's mad that we split and we're very lucky in that sense.
Seder
Chana: So we did the first Seder. We have two Seders normally, we did the first Seder at my husband's aunt who lives in Queens and his family was there as well. It was fine, we had fun. I sat in like a really uncomfortable folding chair.
Everyone treated me like I was a queen, you know, we left early. We'd left the Seder early because I was like, I'm tired. I want to go home. We went home, and then we had planned, we were going to come back in the morning to my aunt's house because everybody still goes to Synagogue in the morning and then has a big lunch, and then we have another Seder that night. So we planned, we would go to my aunt's house and go to synagogue with our family there and have lunch at my aunt's, and then we were going to drive out to my parents on Long Island for this second Seder. So that's what we did.
That morning, I woke up, it was a Sunday morning I guess, April 8th. I woke up and I remember having like a stomach cramp. Actually, I didn't remember this, but I read it in my birth story, and so now I remember it. I had like a stomach cramp, but it went away and I remember thinking like, maybe it was just like matzah, you know, like indigestion and everything's being pushed around, I'm 39 weeks pregnant.
Family visiting
And it went away and then we got to my aunt's house and Josh went to Synagogue and I stayed home at my aunt's house. And I remember my cousin making me coffee, which was great, and just sitting. And at my aunt's house, she has four boys and we're close with them and their wives. I've been doula for many of them, when they subsequently had children.
Lisa: The way it should be, family supporting family.
Chana: Right, totally. And slowly people would be waking up and coming and sitting down and hanging out and reading the paper or whatever. And then people came home from synagogue, and we had lunch and it was like, like fun, like straight fun.
And then we got in the car, and we drove out to my parents', who were about an hour out East, on Long Island. And I fell asleep in the car, and I had a great nap, and then we got to my parents' house and my parents actually had some friends, who were old family friends that stopped by for the day. We visited with them. And I babysat for them, like when I was in high school for their son who was now in high school, and they loved seeing me so pregnant and it was just like, like really fun, just lots of laughter and smiles through all of this.
Belly cast
Chana: And then, my sisters and I had planned to do a belly cast. So we had planned to do it the weekend before, but they were all at the funeral in Ohio.
So I brought the belly cast and I was like, let's do the belly cast. And they were like, okay, like before the Seder started, when my mom was having like you know, 20 people over. So we were like, let's do the belly cast.
Lisa: Cram it in!
Chana: Right, so we did this belly cast, and it was fun, and we laughed, and I remember it was really lopsided because she was like really all on one side at this point. And my nephew would come in and out. He must've been, Owen, was born in 2006, so he was like, I don't know, six years old at the time, and he would come in and out and want to like lay a piece on my stomach. And it was fun.
Cramps in my back
Chana: And then, around six o'clock I was sitting on the couch at my parents' house, people are starting to come over around like 6:30 and at 6 o'clock I felt like a cramp in my back. And I was sitting next to my, I have two older sisters, so my middle sister, I was sitting next to her on the couch, and I was like, oh, I can't get comfortable. I feel like this cramping in my back.
And she was like, is it coming in waves? And I was like, I don't know, I don't think so. It was just like a cramp, and I remember moving and I couldn't get comfortable. Like, no matter which way I moved it wouldn't go away.
And I told Josh and he was like, well, do you want to go home? And I was like, I don't know, we were going back and forth, and I didn't want to have to leave in the middle of the Seder where it would be like a thing, you know, where it would be like, I need to go home, and then everybody would be like, Chana's in labor, you know. Like I felt like it would be more of a scene.
So I was like, let's just go. If it turns out to be nothing, then oh well, we missed the Seder. I don't really care. Or we come back, it's no big deal. Okay.
So we get in the car, and I called Gail to let her know that I was maybe in labor, I didn't know. So it took an hour to drive home, and I was sitting in the front seat, and I remember just really doing a lot of twisting and turning.
Confirming labor has started
And I think by the time we got home, I knew I was in labor. And so all I remember really is, trying to bounce on the ball and not feeling comfortable on the ball at all. I paced a lot in the apartment, just kind of walked around and would go on hands and knees every now and again.
Chana: We tried to time contractions, but they were constant back pain. I didn't have any type of surging back to front. I didn't feel anything in the front. It was constant in my back. It was intense. I couldn't really talk through much. So this started probably about 6 o'clock, and I told Gail and Gail said she was on her way.
She lives probably about an hour away from me.
And I remember we called, so at this point, Rochel wasn't attending births when it was a holiday or when it was Shabbat, like on a Friday night or Saturday. She had backups.
So the backup midwife was a midwife named Dale Cook, who's now retired, but she was a midwife on Long Island for many, many years.
So we called Dale and Dale told Josh when I have three contractions in 15 minutes, to let her know. And I was not timing them, they were not timeable, so we just kind of ignored that and then I somehow wound up in the bathroom, and I threw up like twice and I felt a lot better.
Deciding to head to hospital
And in my head, in my doula brain, I was like, you're throwing up. That could mean you're in transition. You can't be in transition, you've been in labor for like maybe three hours, this can't be. I had not packed a bag, so I was telling Josh what to pack. I don't know what I told him.
Chana: And we called Dale again. I think Josh called her and told her that I had thrown up and she said, "I think you should come to the hospital."
So we said, okay. And I said, I want to wait for my doula to come. I wanted her to meet us at my apartment.
She said, "okay, that's fine, when your doula gets there, come to the hospital."
I said, okay.
Doula arrives
We called Gail and I think she said she was just getting off the exit. I remember her showing up, I remember being in the bathroom and her walking through the bathroom door, and still with her coat on, probably still with her bag on, and she immediately started counter pressure on my back. And I said, I want to go to the hospital.
Chana: I think she probably said like, what do you want to do?
And I said, I want to go to the hospital, but I'm scared.
And she said, what are you afraid of?
And I said that it's too early.
And she said, "you know what's right for you. You have to trust what you trust."
And so I said, okay, let's go.
So I don't think Gail even took her jacket off when she got to my apartment, and we just went and got in the car. And I sat in the back with her, and she provided counter-pressure the whole time. And I just kept saying pressure, pressure, pressure.
And I don't know, I don't think I was feeling pressure. I think I just wanted her to keep providing that counter-pressure, because I had so much back labor.
Arriving at the hospital, going through triage
Chana: So we got to the hospital, it was probably like a 25–30-minute drive. And there's like a curved driveway to pull in, and Josh pulled in the wrong way, like totally against traffic, like psycho, like classic first dad, pulled in the wrong way, we got out.
I remember saying we have to go to the third floor. I remember feeling like everyone was looking at me like lady having a baby, total spectacle.
We got to the third floor and went to triage. And I think at that point, Josh went down to move the car and check me in and all of that.
Chana: And Gail stayed with me, and they said, you have to get on the bed so that, you know, with the waterbirth room. They knew my plan was birth in the water if possible. Most people, you know, who choose the practice and want to go there, if they can, they want a birth in the water. So you have to get like a 20-minute read on the monitor to make sure baby looks good, and everything's good. They said, you have to lay on the table so we can do all of that.
And I was like, no, I can't lay on the table.
And Gail was like, you can, it'll be okay. I remember looking at the table like they asked me to climb Mount Everest.
Like, what do you mean, "Lie on the table? Do you see me?"
So I did, and they did all their stuff, I don't remember them doing blood work or blood pressure cuffs or monitors or anything, but they did it. And I remember Dale saying to me that she was going to check me, "did I want to know a number?"
And I hadn't thought about that. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, if I'm not far along, I will feel really disappointed, because I don't know how much longer I can do this. But I was like, I need to know. I remember feeling like, if it's not far along, then I don't know how much longer I can do this, so we'll deal, you know, whatever.
And so I said, yes.
Chana: And she said, "you're 10, but you're not ready to push."
I said, okay. I said, "get out."
And I said, "fill up the tub."
So they said, "it'll take some time to fill the tub. For now, we're going to bring you into the room."
Moving to the birth room
Chana: So they brought me into the birth room. She said, "I want you to go in the bathroom and sit on the toilet and don't push but sit on the toilet while we fill up the tub."
So I said, okay. So Gail came with me, and I stayed on the toilet, and I said to her, "Gail, I'm scared."
And she said, "what are you scared of?"
And I said, "I'm scared of pushing."
And she said, "I want you to take that fear and put it in a box. And then you're going to put it in the corner."
And I said, okay. And that's what I did. And I still use that with clients. When they tell me that they're scared, I say, "we're going to put it in a box and we're going to put it in the corner, because we don't have room for that right now." So that's what I did.
And then at some point Josh came back. I don't know, they had me registered as like a 52-year-old woman. It was like, I don't know, NUMC is like a really disorganized place, so none of it surprises me now. When I look back at all my stories and how much disorganization there was.
But eventually, he came back, and I think he had called people because from what my parents tell me at that point, when he told them I was in labor and I was 10 and I was getting in the tub, my mom and my sisters cleared out. They were like, "we got go!"
Chana: And I don't know that it was ever my plan to have my entire immediate family at the hospital, but that is apparently what happened.
Laboring in the tub
Chana: So I got into the tub, and I labored for a while, and I wasn't ready to push for a while. I remember at one point hearing, feeling like a pop, and my water had broken. And Gail was on one side and Josh was on the other side and Dale, the midwife and a nurse were at the foot. And Dale had like a flashlight and a mirror, and every now and again she would just stick the flashlight and the mirror in the water and look and just be like, okay, you're doing great.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.
Pushing
Chana: And then I guess, at some point she told me it was time to start pushing, and it took me a while to get the hang of pushing and what that felt like.
But I did, I was groaning a lot. I groaned through this entire thing, like a lot of just deep, guttural, animalistic noises. And eventually, I mean, I wrote on my birth story, I remember feeling like, you know, she said, "I could see hair."
It's a girl!
Chana: And then I felt like a burning, and then she was out. And she came up and she came right to my chest, and I opened her legs and I said, "it's a girl!"
And I remember I wrote it in my birth story, I didn't remember until I read it, but I remember towards the end of my pregnancy, I felt much more like it was a girl, but I never wanted to say it. I don't know, because like what if you're wrong? But when I discovered that she was a girl, it wasn't like a surprise. I remember it feeling like, yes, she's a girl, I knew it. Like I knew what I was expecting.
The secret door
And then it was funny because we're in the tub, and then there was like a door, from my recollection, to my left. And in walks my mom. Apparently, the way the birth suite is, it's like the waiting room has this like secret door.
Lisa: I remember that, yeah.
Chana: Right. So I'm like,
Lisa: Oh, there's the family!
Chana: You were right behind that door! So my family, at this point, my dad and my mom and both my sisters heard the entire thing. They were like, hon, you were groaning so much, we were so worried. Like they heard the whole thing through this secret door, that apparently is not soundproof.
They said it was also so weird, because One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was playing on this very eighties television there. We still have jokes about when I was in labor at the hospital. It's still like a thing.
So my mom came in first, and she gave me a kiss, and she had taken a lipstick from my grandma. And because it's like just one week after she passed, at this point. So she had taken a lipstick from my grandma, and she put the lipstick on, and she gave each of us a kiss and she said, this is a kiss from Grandma Betty.
And then, I don't remember if it was before or after I birthed the placenta. Gail said, turn your head to the left and give me a cough. And I coughed and the placenta came out.
Lisa: I have not heard that trick before!
Chana: Yeah, I don't remember pushing it at all. She said, "just cough."
Felt so normal
Chana: Then eventually, we cut the cord. They took the baby, and then they were like, okay, you can go to the bed now.
And I was like, I just, I can just get off? And they were like, yeah.
And I remember I just got up and they, I mean, it was gross, and they hosed me down, you know, it's like a jacuzzi tub with the hoses that come out and they hosed my legs down, and I just walked to the bed, and I just felt like that was the coolest thing, because I just felt so normal.
Lisa: Nice.
Chana: I was like, okay. And I just went, and I sat down, and they gave me back the baby. And then my sisters came in and we all laughed. And as soon as they gave you the baby back, she pooped everywhere.
And they were like, oh, let's go clean her. And I was like, no, no, no, it's fine. I'll hold her, it's fine. And that was it.
And then it was just like people came in and then eventually my dad came in, yeah, it was like a clown car, I was like, who else is back there?
My two brothers-in-law stayed at home and they cleaned up the whole Seder because as soon as my family booked it, they were like, they told everybody, all the guests over there, they were like, you got to go.
Lisa: Get out!
Chana: got to Chana's in labor.
And so my brothers-in-law stayed and they cleaned the whole Seder up. My parents and my sisters were there. And then everybody's, you know, said goodbye.
She was born at 12:51 AM. So technically it was April 8th, 2012. She was 39 weeks though, I think she was probably 40, because they gave me that extra week.
Move to postpartum
And then they said, okay, we're going to move you to postpartum, and I remember asking if I could walk there. They were like, no, you sit in the wheelchair.
Lisa: Not going to allow that.
Chana: Right, I was like, okay. And then we stayed in postpartum, and it was weird because it was Passover and they kept being like, you want Passover food? And then they gave me this whole big tray that was said, like certified kosher, and it had a breadstick, like on Passover. We had like endless jokes about all of it. It was really funny. And that was it.
And then we named her, she was born on a, technically it was a Sunday, or I guess, yeah, Sunday or a Monday. I don't remember.
She was born and we didn't wind up naming her until in fact Thursday, because I wanted to be there for the naming, when I could get to Synagogue. So we named her that Thursday. We named her Zoey June. June was my grandma's middle name, my grandmother was Betty June, so we named her Zoey June. And her Hebrew name is Batya Chaya, because my grandmother's Hebrew name was Batya. So it was very special. In Judaism, it's very special if you can, if somebody goes a very short amount of time having passed, to when they have somebody who's named for them.
So I felt really great that I was able to name her so soon after my grandmother passed away.
Lisa: That's so beautiful.
Chana: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome baby Zoey! Thank you so much for sharing.