“When I was young, I wanted to be an OBGYN. I wanted to be there when babies were born. There used to be a show on Lifetime called ‘Birth Day.’ I watched it with my mom, on repeat. I learned all the terms they used in the delivery room. I wrote them down in a little journal. Like, I could tell you exactly what Pitocin was, and how it sped up labor.

“When I decided not to go to med school and pursue nursing instead, I found information about becoming a doula. I was so intrigued by what they do, I got certified at 18. Then I was like, ‘Who’s going to hire me? I’m not a mom. I’ve never been in labor.’ But I started sitting with a lot of moms during the labor process while I was in school. Then I learned about postpartum doulas. Someone who comes home with you after you give birth and is there as frequently as you want them to be. They help take care of baby. They teach you all these new things about this little person, and also about your changing body. So I learned about that, and it just took off for me. I absolutely loved it, and I launched my postpartum business fulltime. I aim to serve low-income moms, marginalized communities, teen moms.

“Also, we talk about social determinants of health and how some children might be more prone to abuse. We need to watch these things. If a child is born into a household where there’s abuse, where mom’s on a fixed income, and they don’t have a support system, then this child will most likely have health effects later in life. So let’s fix it at the source. Somebody be there with mom and educate her on how to make it through these tough times. Teach her how to parent. Teach her how to build a stable household for her child. That will negate some of these negative effects that may come later on.

“My slogan is, ‘Hold the mother.’ Everybody comes over to the house, and they want to hold the baby. But who holds mom?”

— Carleigh Joseph Olivas

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“I’m an introvert. I like my alone space. But you don’t have alone space anymore when you’re a mom. With two kids, that’s something I had to navigate. Especially with my first child. Two months after he was born, I developed postpartum depression. I got severe anxiety. Like leaving the house with him was a lot. Like he had to eat all the time. Everything felt overwhelming.

“I recognized what was happening. But I kind of didn’t want to deal with it. My mother-in-law asked my husband to talk to me. She saw that I was not OK. And he was like, ‘I notice you’re different. What’s going on?’ So I told him. And at that point I stopped breastfeeding, which helped. I didn’t have to be there every three hours. It gave me a little freedom. I also went on antidepressant medication for a while, which made things a little less dark.

“When I got pregnant with my daughter, my son was only 10 months old. And I was terrified. I ended up going to therapy. It helped, to know that how I was feeling was OK. That I’m not the only one who goes through it. Because there is a lot of postpartum depression with moms. We don’t really talk about it. For a lot of people, it’s hard to ask for help. I was in that position with my first child. But with my daughter, it ended up being a lot easier. Everything wasn’t new. I kind of knew what to do. And I joined MOMS Club. That was a big help. It pushed me to get out, to be around other people, to start conversations. It provided me with support. It helped me instantly.

“When we moved here from California, I didn’t know anyone. It’s always been hard for me to start friendships. But I knew if I wanted to build a life here, I needed to find other people to be around. That’s why I started a MOMS Club chapter. We’re all stay-at-home moms, or moms who work part-time. We meet up during the day. We go to the park. We have a monthly moms’ night out without kids. But most of all, it’s support. An adult to talk to during the day instead being alone with your kids.

“Now I feel like I’m better able to help other moms, especially those with younger kids. My advice to them is to take care of yourself. As long as you take care of yourself, you can take care of your kids.”

— Annemarie Padilla

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“I was really young when I had my boys. I got pregnant at 12, and I was 15 when I had the second one. Basically, I was raising my babies while I was still a baby. I raised them while going to school. It was pretty damn tough. But I think I did a good job.

“We have a whole library at home, and I read every single book to them. We had encyclopedias, and every day I would tell them to learn a new word, that they would probably need to know it one day. I’ve always loved to study and to learn. I tried to teach them that knowledge is the most important thing. It’s something that nobody can ever take away from you. Just read and learn as much as you can, from anybody.

“I’m so proud of my boys. My youngest one is 15 and my oldest is 18. He graduated with honors from Lee High School, in the top 10%, and he’s going to UTI [Universal Technical Institute]. He has big plans. He wants to retire when he’s really young. He says, ‘Mom, I’m going to give you the life that you deserve.’

“While it was really challenging raising my boys on my own, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world. It’s so sad to see little kids being taken away from parents or parents giving up their kids. Like, you gave birth to that child. How can you give up so easily?

“I didn’t give up. And look what great young men my boys have turned out to be. I couldn’t be more proud of them. And I’m proud of myself. For being 31, I think I’ve accomplished a lot.”

— Brenda Avila

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“I was 26 years old. It was my first pregnancy. I was healthy. I was athletic. Then it just happened. They told me, ‘Your cervix is gone.’ I had what’s called an incompetent cervix. It can lead to premature birth or losing your baby.

“They kept me in the hospital, head down and feet up, for two days. I was almost at six months. If they could get me to at least seven months on bed rest, my son could be born and possibly still live. But he would run the risk of cerebral palsy and some other things.

“I’ll never forget. After that conversation with the doctor, I was lying in the hospital bed and watching a Lakers game on TV. And I prayed. I was like, ‘God, I’m not sure if I’m strong enough at this point in my life to deal with a child with special needs. If my baby is going to be that, I don’t want him to suffer. So just do what you have to do.’ An hour later, my water broke and I went into labor. I delivered a beautiful 1-pound, 10-ounce baby boy. He breathed for just a moment, and that was it.

“It was heartbreaking. Initially, it was hard to come to grips with. One of the things I did was write about it in a poem called ‘Only Begotten Son.’ And when I would share things with people, they told me how much hearing what I had gone through helped them. I ended up publishing that poem in a book of poetry.

“Because of losing my son and other things I’ve gone through in life, I’ve been able to speak to other women and breathe life into other mothers. My son made me who I am. It’s a daily struggle. But it’s a beautiful journey.”

— Raquel Segura

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“I was born premature, three months early. I weighed 1 pound, 11 ounces. Doctors said I had a 50-50 chance to survive. And that if I did survive, I would have all kinds of health issues, like physical ailments and mental problems.

“It was a very challenging time for my parents. They were young and scared. They didn’t know what was going to happen with me. But they told the doctors, ‘No matter what’s wrong with her, do whatever you need to do to make sure she survives.’

“I was in the NICU at The Woman’s Hospital of Texas. I was born March 27, 1989, and I didn’t leave the hospital until June 19. My mom took me to follow-up appointments. She made sure that I took certain vitamins to help with my development. But growing up, I didn’t really ever get sick or anything. No health issues. And I’m perfectly fine today.

“In the community where I grew up, they call me the miracle baby. We’d go to church when I was a kid, and people would say, ‘Oh, there’s our miracle baby.’ They had been praying that I would be all right.

“My grandmother was a teacher at Travis Elementary for over 30 years, so she wanted me to go there with her. It’s funny. Even the teachers I had at Travis remembered me. They were like, ‘Oh, you’re Kristine. We prayed for you five years ago.’

“To this day, people still bring it up. I just smile and reflect on how amazing it is that even as a baby, my life made such an impact. Like I have some kind of energy that people gravitate to.

“I feel like it was a miracle, a blessing. The fact is, I don’t have to be here today at all. But God has me here for something. I’m still trying to figure out what it is I’m here to do. I don’t have all the answers yet. But I do feel like I’m here for a reason.”

— Kristine Singleton

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“When the initial shutdown began in mid-March, I was seven months pregnant, and my sister was due to deliver her first baby any day. It was a time full of excitement, of course, but also a lot of uncertainty — the uncertainty of what was going on with my body and the baby inside, and the uncertainty of the virus.

“My biggest concern was to do whatever was necessary to keep my newborn niece, parents, in-laws and unborn baby safe. Luckily, my company instituted a work-from-home mandate, so I really didn’t have to go anywhere other than doctor’s appointments. My husband, Ben, went to all the appointments with me until he was no longer allowed. Even then, he would either take me or meet me in the doctor’s parking lot for support. We even FaceTimed during our final ultrasound.

“My sister also surprised us with a drive-by/Zoom baby shower. Thank goodness for technology.

“Fast-forwarding to the arrival of Nora on May 4, we couldn’t have any visitors at the hospital. But it worked out for the best because we had a chance to really bond with her.

“Although the feeling of uncertainty has never gone away — are we doing this parenting thing right? is she eating enough? what is she thinking? — Nora has brought us such happiness.

“I just feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to work from home and spend so much time with her, when I wouldn’t have been able to in a normal year.”

— Alyssa Linares Reilly

The post First-time mom performs balancing act in pandemic appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“When my husband and I walked into labor and delivery, I knew our lives were about to change forever. But I had no idea the world would be shut down when we left the hospital with our girl.

“Sloane Pepper was born on March 16 and has quarantined with us ever since.

“As if becoming a first-time parent isn’t scary enough, we now had to raise her during a global pandemic. Not being able to invite people to meet her, worrying about access to, and inventory of, newborn-essential items, and the fear of getting sick were all daily, emotional challenges. All of this on top of adjusting to being a mom: Is she eating enough? Why won’t she nap? Why is she napping so long? What day is it?

“The silver lining of it all was the amount of uninterrupted quality time we got to spend together as a new family. Watching Sloane grow has been the highlight of our lives. I’m selfishly glad we got to keep her to ourselves for so long.

“She has met only a handful of people, and we’re not sure what the new normal holds. But I know the sacrifices we’ve made and continue to make during this pandemic, albeit challenging, will ensure she will have a healthy, happy future when the virus is in the rear view.

“As I reflect on the last nine months of parenting in a pandemic, I feel extremely fortunate for our health and proud I provided our extended family and friends a bright spot in the year 2020.”

— Leah Linares Abbate

The post She’s raising her first baby during pandemic appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“They tell me I was born in 1942. That makes me 78 years old. The night I was born, there was a storm. My dad drove to Liberty County, to Dayton, Texas, to get the midwife. But he didn’t make it back in time. Somehow, my mother delivered me all by herself. I was born, and she was critically ill. Later, the doctor told her that if it had not been for the baby licking on her face, she probably wouldn’t have made it. The baby was looking for some milk. That sucking sensation, that’s what kept my mother going, what saved her. I loved my mother dearly, especially after she told me what the doctor said to her. That was amazing to me, to think that I helped save my mother’s life.

“The day she died, I thought I helped save her again. Everybody was saying, ‘Connect her, connect her.’ I said, ‘No, no.’ She didn’t want to be connected to any apparatuses. So we went to the little chapel to pray. While we were praying, the doctor knocked on the door and said, ‘You don’t need to pray much longer. Your mother has passed away. She’s with the lord now.’ That was a relief to me because I didn’t want to see her connected to a life-support situation. She didn’t want that. I saved her from that.”

— Sherman Gray Jr.

Sherman is the long-time pastor at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of McNair. His mother was Etta Pearl Gray.

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The post As new-born baby, he helped save mother’s life appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We didn’t know what to expect. They told us it might be a stillbirth. I had a C-section at about seven months so he wouldn’t have to struggle any more than needed. And Oliver was born on March 20, 2019. It was a really beautiful morning. He cried, and I was like, OK, we’re going to make it. We are the exception. We are that very small percent of babies that make it. But then his lung collapsed. His heart rate dropped. He got intubated while we were still in the delivery room, and he was taken to the NICU.”

What followed was a medical odyssey over nearly three months, with more bad days than good. Baby Oliver received several forms of dialysis in an attempt to save his failing kidneys. He also was treated for infections and other complications. “There were times we thought, oh, we’re good. But there were so many other times when we thought, he’s not going to make it.

“On that last day, we got a call. ‘Hey, his heart has stopped beating several times now. How do you want us to proceed?’ The hardest thing for us was that there was no black or white. It was not defined. We didn’t know what it would mean in terms of his developmental growth later as a child. Is he going to have learning delays? Is he going to be able to play with our two healthy children? The doctors calculated he would need like three kidney transplants over time in order to have any chance of a decent life. It didn’t hit us until he was dying, really dying, that you know what, that’s not a life we want him to have. We realized then that the do-nothing choice means we’re going to save him from being sick for the rest of his life. So we made the call, this decision no parent should ever have to make: cut the ventilator. He was six days away from being three months old.”

— Marilyn Heredia

Oliver passed away on June 14, 2019.

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The post ‘We made the call: cut the ventilator’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“As a social worker, I work for a state agency that helps elderly people and adults with intellectual disabilities who are dealing with abuse. In order to see a lot of my clients, I had to go into hospitals while COVID-19 was raging. Some places had put in security precautions, but others hadn’t yet. At the time, we didn’t have totally clear guidance from the state. Everything was kind of up in the air. And I was really scared. I was thinking, am I going to be able to keep doing this? Because getting coronavirus while you’re pregnant, you don’t know what’s going to happen. I was extremely concerned during the last two months of my pregnancy.

“She was born on April 29. Her name is Alexandra Catherine McMillin. Since bringing her home from the hospital, we’ve taken a lot of precautions. My husband is the only one who goes out. I don’t really go out unless it’s a doctor’s appointment. We’re just trying to be as safe as possible. People usually have a lot of visitors for their first born. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, so you want to show her off. But the only person who’s actually stepped foot in our house since the baby was born is my mom. She was quarantining the second she heard about the coronavirus. She said, ‘There’s nothing stopping me from seeing my grandbaby.’

“I worry about the effects this all might have on her as she grows up. Typically, a newborn has contact with others besides the mom and dad. So I kind of wonder if she’s going to be behind in some way because she didn’t have that early socialization. Or maybe, is she going to be ahead because she’s so close to her mom? You just don’t know what the outcome of that is going to be.

“Years from now, I imagine she’ll be reading about all of this in school. And I’ll say something like, ‘Well, when you were born, we were right in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Your mom and dad had to change all their plans, and nobody was able to see you until you were older.’

“It’s been a struggle. I’ve cried out of loneliness a couple times. But it’s also been kind of nice with it just being me and her a lot of the time. Really, it makes me love her even more. As difficult as it’s been, there is something special about it being just our little family.”

— Catherine Hunter-McMillin (with husband, Matthew, and Alexandra)

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