Pregnancy in Ukiah | Care For Her and Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Experience | Pregnancy Journey

Today we're going to talk about my experience with Care For Her and the Adventist Ukiah Valley Health Center and my experience giving birth there, post-partum there and all of the things. So, let's get into it!

Hi, my name is Kasie Gray, I'm a realtor, Ukiah Expert and I love helping first-time sellers buy their dream homes. But today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about my experience becoming a mom. I got pregnant in 2020 and the first place I went after taking a test was straight to Care for Her. What they do there at your first appointment is confirm your pregnancy and sit you down with a counselor and they walk you through the steps. Explain all of your options and we're super helpful. And then, they go ahead and schedule your first exam which is when you'll do an exam with an ultrasound. And at the time that I was doing it there, you weren't allowed to bring anyone with you. I'm not sure that's probably changed now.

The staff was always wonderful to me the how Care For Her is structured and laid out is there are midwives and then there are several OBs who oversee them. So each time you go to an appointment, that's not an ultrasound appointment, or if you're not high risk then you're seeing essentially usually a different midwife every single time. I maybe got two or three midwives multiple times, and that's saying a lot because of how frequent you have to go towards the end in the beginning. You obviously meet with a doctor and they do the ultrasound for you to see the heartbeat and all of those things. Then you will have monthly or maybe every like two or three-month appointments to go check on how you're growing and walk you through you know what you might be going through.

If you have any questions so on, I would always get too nervous to ask any questions. And I think that's maybe one of the things that having a new midwife every week is it could affect depending on your type of personality like I would have questions in my head and be like- "that's just a silly question I'm not even gonna bother bringing it up" which I probably should have that. But they were silly questions like stuff- "I could just google" and so those appointments are pretty quick.

And then like I said, you're meeting with a new midwife each week which also one of the things that I like about that is maybe one midwife that saw you last week didn't have a concern but this one does. So you're just kind of getting all eyes on the fact that you're growing a child which is wonderful. And then at your 20 weeks you'll do an ultrasound at a separate ultrasound tech office and they'll send your info to over to Care For Her and they'll go with over it with you at another time which is definitely interesting.

We did do the lab test for blood and everything to figure out the gender and any like chromosomal abnormalities out to Care For Her those results were accurate for us. I also did because I'm impatient at home like mail kit were they just pretty much like flip a coin and it's either yes or right or wrong because there's only two different sexes to guess from. So I don't know how accurate that is. Anyways, I definitely loved a lot of the midwives and it's cool that you get an opportunity to meet them scheduling was super easy. You don't have to call and then once you get towards the end of your pregnancy you end up having to go like every two weeks, every one week which is a lot and the appointments are really fast but you do have to wait and you have to go pee in the cup every single time just a lot. But I think that if you're not a high-risk pregnancy or you don't have a lot of abnormalities then Care For Her is a wonderful opportunity to just smoothly go about your pregnancy.

And I know a lot of women that use it and like it I definitely had no complaints about it when I did have to a couple of times I had seen a midwife one week and then the next week they would say you're measuring a little small go to the hospital or we want to check your fluids or whatever it might be. So they'll send you the hospital and the nurses there will take care of you and then they have a midwife and or a doctor on call at the hospital at all times. So, they rotate through who's over there when it came time to give birth I was a little late I was like 40 weeks and six days. When I eventually gave birth and I think that they had my due date wrong and I think that it was like I was 40 weeks like on the dot. But at one of my weekly appointments, my blood pressure was low or high, one of the two, and I hadn't had breakfast yet. So they said can you go to the hospital in 30 minutes and i said you betcha can we make it an hour so I can go get some food and then I went home and curled my hair and got chicken fried steak from the maple. So, you know priorities.

And then after I went to the hospital my blood pressure was fixed because obviously I had eight and so they monitored me for a little bit and then sent me home. They were full of people giving birth and so I went home and stayed home and then they scheduled me to be induced for the next day. We showed up at eight a.m, I was in the room by like nine. I was getting pitocin at like 10 and then by 12. I wanted some sort of pain reliever and they gave me a drug that I highly recommend against. I think if you're gonna go for drugs, just go straight epidural and don't get any of whatever else they have to offer you because that made me feel ten times worse but the nurses and the staff and everybody was super lovely you have a couple of nurses managing just you. And then you have the midwives that are coming to check on you and see how dilated you are and everything and I had never met the midwife that was at the hospital that time.

I had met the midwife that saw me the night before and they all have very different personalities and I think that's one of the things about Care For Her that you kind of have to be willing to be flexible on how you communicate with people because they all have very different personalities. So if you want to find somebody that fits your exact communication style and way that you would do things then that's something that you need to think about beforehand but I was pretty flexible when it came to as long as somebody started to catch a baby. I don't really care eventually after going through labor it was about 5:36 and it was a shift change and I was like essentially very close to giving birth. And the midwives had to switch midwives on me and also they the doctor was on call and not at the hospital so they called her in because I was having some complications. So in between like about to be giving birth, I stopped and then had to wait for a new midwife and the doctor to come into the hospital and to oversee essentially the midwife did everything and the doctor just hung out in the room to make sure nothing went wrong but it was a lovely process even with all of the issues that I was enduring. The baby's heart rate kept dropping and I had low fluids and the nurse took out the catheter monitor, to monitor the baby's heart rate or contraction. So and I had an epidural, so I had no clue when I was having a contraction and we no longer had a monitor they handled it with grace and eventually she came out healthy and happy.

I think that last phrase when the doctor is like okay two more pushes and then we have to do a C-section really gets you through it so I think if even if you aren't at your last two pushes just let your doctor know they should give you an ultimatum and you'll be able to get it done. Because why not? I mean most people anyways childbirth is a wild experience but that's my experience with Care For Her. I loved using it if I were to get pregnant again, I would probably use it again. I had no complaints other than like I said if you want to find somebody with a personality that you really drive with and can get to build a relationship with your doctor or provider then a different primary provider would definitely be an alternative for you but that's not an option for a lot of local people and there are a very limited amount of doctors.

So after I gave birth we were only there for like 24 hours and 30 minutes we were really pushing to get out she passed all of her tests and I gave birth at like 8:30 at night and then we left at 8:30 at night. The next day, the beds were so uncomfortable, I hated it, i hated everything about being in the hospital. They woke us up at like 5:30 in the morning to move our car from the expectant mother's parking for a covid clinic the nurses were good there's not a nursery in Adventist Health Medical Center. So your baby stays in your room the entire time which I was 100 okay with I wouldn't have even sent her if it was an option. Then the nurses were helpful but not super helpful, they do have a couple of nurses that were like lactation consultants but I really didn't receive a ton of help. I don't know if that was the lack of giving it or me asking for it we essentially left and I had no clue how to breastfeed. I had no clue you know how to do a lot of the things and um they even once said they tried to come in at like five or six and we were all asleep and they were like saying our names and we didn't wake up and I was like that wasn't like a concern for you guys. I don't it was interesting to experience it wasn't bad necessarily it was just interesting like I can't imagine that's how I would handle things if that makes sense I did bring some nurses or I did bring some gifts for the nurses. And like I said, they were all super helpful it was just like an interesting time to be giving birth it's coveted everything. So you know it was like a 7 out of 10 experience for me if we're including the beds like 5 out of 10. Definitely bring your own blankets, your own pillows, your longest charger, shampoo even a towel. Maybe their towels are not good I'd love to do a hospital packing bag. I think I have some footage that I took.

If you guys are interested in that, please drop a comment down below. Obviously there are some things that I would change maybe I could watch what I recorded and review it. But hopefully this is helpful insight to you if you're pregnant in Ukiah area and looking to find a provider. I recommend Care For Her, worked out well for us and like I said, I'd probably do it again.

Good luck, congrats and if you have any questions Care For Her let me know or if you have any experience you'd like to share I'd love to hear it down below or any experience regarding the Adventist Health Center, we'd love to hear that too!