Amy Perry
speaker
71 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Amy Perry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
I was fighting an RSV virus that was going around, so I was going to be home not doing anything.
I manage a Facebook group for local birth workers called Placenta Squad.
I'm coming up on eight years. Yeah, I've been a doula for a long time. I've attended over 100 births now, and it's been a ride.
It just made sense for me. I could make my own hours. I could work around my health. I could have my own business. I could be here when my kids were little, and it made a lot of sense for us. I'm the child of two parents of chronic illness. I've grown up taking care of people, and this is very natural for me.
We really spent most of that day on phone calls. She told me that she had earbuds in her ears so she could be hands free and that her phone was just in her pocket. And, you know, I was honestly in the same situation, just walking around the house, phone in my pocket, kind of puttering around, doing some cleaning while I was coaching through contractions.
Well, coaching through a stillbirth really isn't much different than coaching through any other delivery. When the contractions start, you know, we remind them that she's safe, that she's in good hands, that there's people here to help her, that she's not alone, that she's going to get to hold her baby soon.
We used the name Eden, both of us regularly. She would say things like, I'm going to get to hold you soon, Eden. You were brought into my life for a reason. We're going to get through this together. She would say things like, you're going to be so beautiful. I would remind her that, you know, she's a good mom, that she's doing the best thing that she can do.
There was a moment where she questioned whether she could call herself a mom, and I reassured her that, of course, you can call yourself a mom. This is your baby.
Well, it took us a little bit to actually figure out what actually happened. And to be honest, I still don't fully have those answers.
We always were asking why. I mean, from the very first moment, I wanted to know why. So it's a long story. Settle in.
Yeah, I mean, it sounded exactly like a contraction. It had a buildup. It had a high point. It had to come down. They were well spaced apart. You know, there are some very subtle signs as birth workers that we can see that made sense to us.
The way her voice just got a little in her chest when she was feeling crampy or when she would tell me the different positions she would find herself just naturally going into through the contractions. She would tell me she was on her hands and knees or that she was squatting. That she was sitting on a yoga ball.
But after quite a number of hours of this, I asked, like, do you specifically want to lean into this? Like, do you want the tips and tricks to like really get this rolled over into an actual active labor? I was really coaching on how to move her body through the contractions.
I was really focused on things like making sure her mood stayed as positive as possible because we know that that negativity just works against us through the labor process. So we were making jokes. We were building a rapport. We sort of learned kind of quickly we have the same sense of dark humor. We
We're making comments about our families, and she was asking questions about me and getting to know me, and I was doing the same with her.
The one thing that really stood out to me that I was tiptoeing very carefully around when talking about getting the labor started was some of these more like pseudo-sexual type ways that we can move labor along. I was very informed from the beginning that this was a pregnancy via assault.
When we're dealing with a loving couple, it's not all that weird or awkward to talk about how things like nipple stimulation or masturbation or pumping can move people over into active labor. She asked me specifically if nipple stimulation and pumping or masturbation would help. And I never would have offered that information in the situation, but she asked the question.
So I answered, I was honest and I said yes. And that was when she told me that she was doing some of those things through contractions And I'm a doula, like it's, this is normal for me in these situations. I was a little shocked that someone who had been through something like that would be okay with moving in this direction. But, you know, she had told me she was, so that was where we went.
We were getting to a point where contractions were getting stronger, where they were getting closer together and longer, more powerful feeling through what I was listening to over the phone. And I said, you know, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable with the fact that you're at home. And I think we need to start getting you over to a hospital.
But let's figure this out. I'd rather you be there alone than be at your house alone. And she right away was like, yep, I'll grab my keys. I'll get in the car. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, you're not driving yourself to the hospital. I'll call a cab for you if you can't make the call. I'll help you set up an Uber.
Showing 1–20 of 71 · page 1 of 4
Next →