Page 18 - North State Parent April 2020

this is tehama By Kate Hiller
THIS IS TEHAMA
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.
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 ba- bies, 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 possi- ble. 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 ac- tivity and nutrition. Health problems such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are linked to surpris- ingly 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 dedi- cated to helping women access all the resources avail- able 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 devic- es 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 immedi- ate 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 impact- ing lives beyond the birth room. Address- ing 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 con- cerns that often arise postpartum.
Sally has been a nurse-midwife for al- most 35 years, attending births at St Eliza- beth’s for 16 years and working with Wom- en’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 appren- ticeship and facilitating home births for many years, she feels she has been able to empower more wom- en by bringing the midwifery model into the hospital setting. According to Pamela, “The midwifery model improves psychosocial outcomes and reduces in- tervention, infection rates, medical costs, preterm birth rates and the number of c-sections.” Working as a team with like-minded doctors and nurses has im- proved those statistics at St. Elizabeth’s.
Their biggest frustrations have come with in- creased 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 bed- side 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 mea- sure the impact these two women have had by being that comforting presence in the lives of many of our area’s families. Ó
Kate Hiller felt an innate need to gather many women around her while pregnant with her only daughter. Both Sally and Pamela were involved, and local nurse Ruth Ann Rowen joined in for a very memorable birth at St. Elizabeth’s.
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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