There really aren’t enough words to express how much gratitude I feel for Mary, Nichelle, and the entire Blossom staff for supporting me in bringing my sweet girl into this world in exactly the way I dreamed of. The entire journey through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum with my daughter has been by far the most intense, transformative, and meaningful experience of my entire life. It has honestly turned me into a complete birth junkie.
It’s very apparent by the model of care at Blossom that this is a passion project for Mary, who is a midwife and Nichelle, an obstetrician. They actually took the time at every appointment to get to know me, answer all my crazy first time mom questions, and focus on mine and baby’s overall wellness so that we could stay low-risk and have the safest birth possible. I loved having providers that are both experts in natural birth who TRUSTED my body and my baby, but I also felt comforted knowing that if anything were to go wrong, I already had an OB who could continue my care in the hospital setting if the situation were to arise. I appreciated the fact that everything I wanted for my birth was already built into the foundation of how Blossom does things and there was no fighting for what I wanted in labor.
By the time I reached full-term, I felt SO excited and prepared to give birth. My labor was long and difficult (for me), but I had everything that I needed to get through it. I was able to bring my own comfy pillows and blankets from home. My partner had been educated through our 12 weeks of Bradley birthing classes that we had taken with Frances and was an amazing support system. Jacqueline, our birth assistant, was such a calming presence and was there feeding me scrambled eggs, protein shakes, and berries to help keep my energy up, giving me sips of their amazing herbal labor tea for hydration in between contractions, massaging my legs with the essential oils I had brought, keeping my labor playlist going strong, and generally just helping me get through it emotionally. The giant whirlpool tub was a huge relief and I was so thankful for the freedom to move around and do whatever I felt my body needed. Nichelle, who was the one who ended up delivering Elia, really followed my queues as I started to feel ready to push and gave exactly the encouragement I needed to finally get through that last stretch. Once my daughter was born, she never left my chest. They did a relatively quick examination on us both to ensure that we were doing well, and then gave us those precious first hours uninterrupted to bond as a family and love on our girl until we were ready to go home a few hours later.
Should we be blessed with more babies in the future, we will definitely be back at Blossom. I cannot recommend then enough!!
