Brenda's Story

Brenda worked in health care during the years her children were born, so she knew a lot about the choices of hospitals available to her. “The reason I chose St. Joseph’s was because I just felt really comfortable with their nursing staff,” she says. “I had a lot of confidence that I wasn’t getting rookies. They seemed like they knew what they were doing and they’d seen everything.”

It also seemed to Brenda that the HealthEast maternity staff loved their profession and were in it for a reason. “After my babies were born, each time a nurse came into the room they’d make some kind of personal connection with the child or with me,” recalls Brenda. “They would notice little things – like the unique shape of my son’s pinkie fingers. They paid attention to those little details, like they were truly sharing in the joy of the situation, not simply delivering another baby.”

Waterbirth wasn’t an option for Brenda when her daughter Lauren was born in 1998. But when Charlie came along in 2001, Brenda found herself glad that the Maternity Care Center supported that birthing option. “I wasn’t actually planning on a waterbirth with Charlie. I thought it sounded a little too ‘out there’ for me,” she admits. Her first labor and delivery had been quite easy, so she didn’t think she would need it. But with Charlie she experienced back labor and the midwife suggested she try the tub. “Wow!” she remembers. “It was so peaceful. It took a lot of my pain away. I didn’t want any pain medication, so that was a big benefit.”

Brenda agrees that the model of care at St. Joseph’s seems to be one in which they truly try to honor your individual birth choices. She talks about the experience she had with her third child.

“My midwife and nurse knew that I had done two previous labors without pain medication, and that I really wanted to keep it that way,” she says. “When I started asking for it about halfway through with my third, they really worked with me to try to honor what they knew were my strong wishes about staying medication-free. We sort of negotiated, and I ended up getting half the dose. They really were trying to hold fast to what I said I wanted.”

When it came right down to it, it was the experience and compassion of the nurses that drew Brenda to St. Joseph’s for the births of all three of her children. “It just felt like the right place to be.”