St. Elizabeth’s Midwives: This is Tehama

All seven of Joey and Karli Hurton’s children were born with the care of St. Elizabeth’s midwives. #7 was a leap year baby and one of the last of Pamela’s deliveries at St. E’s

The Comfort and Care of Welcoming Babies with St. Elizabeth’s Midwives

As St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red Bluff, CA, welcomes this year’s spring babies, the goal remains the same—healthy outcomes for each mother and baby. A highly trained team of doctors, midwives, and nurses are eager to help each family have the best birth experience possible. Two members of that team, Sally Cox and Pamela Stuart, certified nurse midwives, have been sharing their passion for the overall health and well-being of local families for decades.

I met both midwives 15 years ago when we had our daughter, and it was great to reconnect more recently. We share many common interests, including a desire to educate families on the importance of physical activity and nutrition. Health problems such as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure are linked to surprisingly high infant mortality rates in the United States, currently 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live infant births. The obstetric and midwifery team at St. Elizabeth’s is dedicated to helping women access all the resources available to beat those odds.

St. Elizabeth Family Birth Center has a wide range of tools to help with labor and birth. Laboring in the shower or water tub can relax the mother, and devices such as the peanut ball can help open the pelvic outlet, all helping the labor to progress as naturally as possible. Sally and Pamela like to encourage mothers to reach down and catch their babies or offer for the fathers to do so. They also like to facilitate immediate skin-to-skin contact. Both women spend so much quality time at the bedside that parents build trust and relationships with their delivery team.

Both midwives shared that the most rewarding part of their careers is impacting lives beyond the birth room. Addressing the needs of the whole person, and even the whole family, brings benefits that go far beyond pregnancy and birth. The entire staff of the Family Birth Center is proud of the continuity of care they offer at St. Elizabeth. For example, Dr. Meghan Leininger is a certified lactation consultant and is available to help address nursing concerns that often arise postpartum.

Sally has been a nurse-midwife for almost 35 years, attending births at St Elizabeth’s for 16 years and working with Women’s Health and Obstetrics in the office for 26 years. She refers to birthing as an athletic event and encourages women to eat healthily and stay active throughout their pregnancies. Sally prescribes lunges, squats, walking, and even dancing to keep moms fit and flexible. She enjoys continuing her education with programs such as Spinning Babies (spinningbabies.com) so that she can continue to bring benefits to her patients.

Pamela, who just retired in March, has worked in a hospital setting since 1998 and at St. Elizabeth’s since 2002. After learning midwifery through apprenticeship and facilitating home births for many years, she feels she has been able to empower more women by bringing the midwifery model into the hospital setting. According to Pamela, “The midwifery model improves psychosocial outcomes and reduces intervention, infection rates, medical costs, preterm birth rates and the number of c-sections.” Working as a team with like-minded doctors and nurses has improved those statistics at St. Elizabeth’s.

Their biggest frustrations have come with increased demands for productivity. Neither midwife likes to spend time charting at their computers. They would much rather be talking face-to-face with their patients, addressing everyone’s needs. They are talking to women, not products, and each woman represents a future family. The overall well-being of a woman can affect the well-being of an entire family
Advocating for active lifestyles is only natural for these midwives who stay very active in their private lives. Pamela hopes to do a lot more backpacking with her husband in her retirement and will perhaps find a way to teach and work with some aspect of women’s health. Sally and her husband just finished painting their 103-year-old ranch house, and she is enjoying spring calving on her remote ranch. Technological advances such as Wi-Fi on the ranch and apps have helped, allowing her to monitor patients and be bedside as soon as necessary.

Midwife means “with woman”. The comforting presence of women at birth is as old as life itself. No phone app or medical chart could adequately measure the impact these two women have had by being that comforting presence in the lives of many of our area’s families.

The ancient word “Tehama” once meant a place where rivers could be crossed. With our county’s rich currents of history, happenings, and hope, this is our crossing place today — where we meet to celebrate our beautiful Tehama County.