Birthing Stories

Mothers’ birthing stories are worth telling

Sandpoint women share their birthing experiences – of joy, gratitude, excitement, concern/worry, pain, peril. Their stories represent the quality of maternal healthcare we had, what’s been lost, and what is still needed in our community.

Amy’s Story

  • I have three beautiful sons, all of whom I gave birth to at Bonner General. My first-born son was delivered by Dr. Bowden. Dr. Algoe delivered my second son, and Dr. Conner delivered my third son. Dr. Huntsberger provided me with incredible prenatal care, information, and constant reassurance through the pandemic while pregnant.

    Dr. Gilbert and Dr. DeLand were my pediatricians growing up. They are also the pediatric docs that did follow-up care for my children and have remained their pediatricians all these years.

    For me, it was so much more than a place to deliver my babies. Some of the nurses are the moms of the kids I grew up with, like Marilyn Becker. Much of the other staff and doctors are my friends and colleagues.

    Bonner General is a place that felt safe and familiar to me. This is a loss that is far greater than what is on the surface. This is a family that our community will not be the same without.

    Amy

Ana’s Story

  • My daughter was born in January of this year. Throughout my pregnancy and into my delivery, I felt so safe in the arms of the OBs and nurses at Sandpoint Women's Health. Dr. Morton coached me throughout pregnancy, and hers were the first hands to hold my baby in this world.

    There could have been complications with my pregnancy and delivery, but everything went smoothly due to their attention to my daughter's and my well-being. I had always been afraid of hospitals, but this experience changed me for the better. I couldn't have asked for a better experience at BGH.

    I will tell my daughter for years how loved she was in the hands of staff at that hospital. I had planned to encourage others, for years to come, to trust the women at BGH to deliver their babies, too. I'm heartbroken knowing our story will be a thing of the past.

    Ana

“I had always been afraid of hospitals, but this experience changed me. I will tell my daughter for years how loved she was in the hands of staff at that hospital.

I had planned to encourage others, for years to come, to trust the women at BGH to deliver their babies, too. I'm heartbroken knowing our story will be a thing of the past.”

Andrea’s Story

  • I am 38 years old. I'm at my home in Sandpoint, Idaho where I'm currently breastfeeding Delaney, my 14-week-old baby. I've had five pregnancies, almost one per year for the last five years. I have two beautiful children, so I've had three miscarriages. My first two pregnancies coincided with my husband and I opening a business here in town. Super stressful times. Lost both pregnancies back-to-back. One at eight or nine weeks and the next at ten weeks. That took a huge physical and mental toll.

    One of the only ways that I was able to persevere was with the support and care of our providers at Sandpoint Women's Health. Lots of appointments, lots of disappointment and sadness. And then of course, hope, every time that you get pregnant. Our first babe, Connell Patrick Hope, who's now two in a couple months, was our third pregnancy. He stuck around and we're ever grateful. Really long birth story for him, 30 hours with an inducement resulted in a healthy baby boy, a vaginal birth delivery. Over the course of almost two full days in the hospital, I saw multiple OBs, because they do long shifts, but apparently my labor outlasted some of their shifts. Dr. Huntsberger and Kristin Algoe were my two OBs present for Connell's birth. After 24 hours, and after five hours of pushing, I couldn't imagine having done it without them there. Every time I see these individuals I just am brought back to the safety and care and joy that I felt that day even though it's really hard work.

    My second birth story is Delaney. Her birth story is a little bit different. We had faster labor, no inducement, went into labor on New Year's Eve after attending a small gathering and heading home because I wasn't feeling so well. Was dilated in six to eight hours, pushed for four hours and got nowhere. Ended up with an unplanned cesarean section. Hans Brugger and Morgan Morton were my doctors and I remember Dr. Morton letting me figure out on my own that a C-section might be the best bet, even though I was healthy, and the baby was healthy. We were hitting a stall, and I was totally depleted of energy after almost 13 hours of labor and no progress. Amelia Huntsberger joined the surgery - my first major surgery as an adult. I guess I never had any surgery as a kid either. A surreal experience to be able to chat with your doctors while you're going through what is a major surgery, unexpected and unplanned. And I just remember them making comforting comments, explaining diligently what they were doing. And then, of course, as everyone does when they see Delaney, commenting on the size of her adorable cheeks when she came out. We attribute her inability to get in the birth canal to her cheeks and that's now her nickname. One of the first things I heard the doctor say when she came out was wow, look at those cheeks. Their participation in her birth lives in our house every day because her nickname was the first thing they said out loud.

    So grateful for their care, and kinship, really. It's a special relationship you have with your OBs. My experience could have been incredibly different for both deliveries. I had one additional miscarriage between the two babes. With the number of appointments over the past five years, if I had to drive 100 miles round trip to Coeur d'Alene, I can't even tell you about the impact on me as a business owner, a working mom, a mom in general, and our family. So, it's not just about the day you have your baby. It's about all the visits, and ultrasounds, and check-ins, and how much time. Accessibility matters, especially for those who are less fortunate. I feel grateful that I was able to have both of my kids here in town and definitely won't be having any more kids if I have to drive to Coeur d'Alene. They [the OB-GYNs] will be greatly missed and the impact is beyond our understanding at this point, in my opinion. Last, I just can't believe that lawmakers who think they're supporting families are pushing people into a place where they can really consider having kids or afford to traverse to the doctor's or put them in emergent circumstances while in labor driving to Coeur d'Alene. I wish they would stick to roads and bridges and stay out of the labor and delivery room.

    Thanks to my OBs and their entire team of nurses and technicians. They helped us make our family and we're so lucky to have had them in our lives.

    Andrea

Jen’s Story

  • If something needs done, my husband and I can usually scrape together the skillset to handle it ourselves. Thus, when I got pregnant, it stood to reason that we could DIY that, too. Our family and friends fretted about our choice to home birth, but we felt confident that all would be fine. I was strong and healthy, after all, running chainsaws throughout my pregnancy. There was nothing my body wasn’t capable of.

    When I went into labor, everything progressed perfectly. I was able to walk through the woods during the day and pace the wood floors after dark. The moon shone through our cabin window. Candles were lit. I was home, at peace.

    And then my labor stalled out. I should have felt the urge to push, but instead there was nothing but pain. So. Much. Pain.

    Twenty-four hours later, when my labor was still an excruciating kind of stasis — with my consciousness dipping out toward a place less painful — we made the decision to drive to the hospital. It was the longest 40 minutes of my life. Thank goodness another hour was not appended on that journey.

    Once at the hospital, the staff gave me Pitocin to try to move the labor along, but to no avail. Dr. Dr. Huntsberger gently but forcefully recommended a Cesarean — that dreaded procedure I was dead-set on avoiding. I wearily acquiesced. No good would come from toughing it out.

    Upon administration of the spinal block, the world swam back into focus. As Dr. Huntsberger leaned over me before surgery, I looked at her face, and with all the force a grateful heart can muster, I declared, “You have the most beautiful eyes!” Because she does.

    Sylvie was born shortly thereafter, a dent in her forehead where it had caught on my pelvic bone. It turns out that Cesareans are not the worst outcome. In fact, the procedure saved my baby and me. BGH is the reason we’re here today, my body still capable of so many things.

    Jen

“For me, it was so much more than a place to deliver my babies. Some of the nurses are the moms of the kids I grew up with. Much of the other staff and doctors are my friends and colleagues.

Bonner General is a place that felt safe and familiar to me. This is a loss that is far greater than what is on the surface. This is a family that our community will not be the same without.”

Jessica’s Story

  • I had both of my daughters at BGH. Isabella was delivered by Dr. Honsinger, the same doctor who delivered my little sister 16 years earlier. My younger daughter, Etta, was delivered in the same room.

    Etta’s labor and delivery went smoothly. She was born apparently healthy. Three or four hours after her birth, the nurse came in to check on her. Phyllis. I’ll never forget Phyllis. She calmly started doing tests that I’d not seen done with my older daughter. Cool as a cucumber, Phyllis took my baby, put her on oxygen and called the doctor. Etta was born with transient tachypnea; basically, her lungs were still trying to breathe fluid. Her oxygen levels were in the low 80s, and she was suffocating.

    Etta spent three days in the hospital nursery on oxygen. Had we been at home, she would have had permanent brain damage. The maternity ward — Phyllis, especially — saved my baby.

    Jessica

Jonell’s Story

  • Advanced. Maternal. Age. Duhn-duhn-duhn. I was a late 37-year-old when my spouse and I decided to try to have a baby. It was a difficult and well-considered choice. I worked hard to prepare my body to host and grow another being. But pregnancy did not come easily for us.

    When all the basics had been covered and I still wasn’t pregnant at 39, I decided to look into further treatment, and my first stop was an OB at Sandpoint Women’s Health. She recommended we flush my fallopian tubes to rule out any blockages, and we scheduled the procedure two weeks out. What a relief that I didn’t have to consider taking an entire day off work to travel to CDA for this appointment.

    As luck would have it, I got pregnant before I went in for that procedure. Yay! But now, at 39 years old, we had another big decision to make. I’ve always looked at all sides of every coin, and with health care I walk the fence between Western medicine and more holistic and natural approaches. Knowing that my due date was likely after my 40th birthday, it was a tough decision whether to go with the perceived safety of a conventional birth or to follow my heart for a home birth. I split the difference, choosing a birth center a mere five minutes from the hospital, should any complications arise.

    The stars aligned and I had a textbook birth, in a tub, on my terms. But I NEVER would have made that choice if I didn’t have access to BGH’s OB care as a back-up. In fact, I likely never would have tried to start a family knowing that all my prenatal appointments were over an hour away. Working in a male-dominated industry was a big reason I delayed pregnancy in the first place, and I would not have felt supported to take so much time off work for appointments, nor felt safe having to travel 71 miles from our home to the hospital.

    Jonell

“Upon administration of the spinal block, the world swam back into focus. As Dr. Huntsberger leaned over me, I looked at her face, and with all the force a grateful heart can muster, I declared, “You have the most beautiful eyes!” Because she does.

It turns out that Cesareans are not the worst outcome. In fact, the procedure saved my baby and me. BGH is the reason we’re here today, my body still capable of so many things.”

Julie’s Story

  • I am 42 years old. My birth story began in a positive way. My water broke when I was at dinner with my family, and I thought it was the beginning of a very healthy birth that I'd been preparing for with my midwife. I labored at home for about 10 hours thinking that I was getting very close to the transition phase of my labor, and I went into my birthing center with my midwife who checked me out. It turns out my baby was the wrong direction. I had not dilated at all. I was potentially septic because there was meconium inside of me and from that moment it became an emergency.

    Luckily the emergency room was two minutes away. So, we immediately went to the emergency room to get on antibiotics and get the medical attention I needed. Then at the hospital for about 20 more hours, we tried to create a situation of a natural birth, having the baby turn, potentially getting to 10 centimeters of dilation. When that didn't happen after two and a half days of labor, I went in for my cesarean section which was a great experience. I had Dr. Morton and Dr. Algoe who were friends of mine. I knew them in the community. I felt very safe and my healthy baby boy, Grady, was born. And after that, we were in the hospital for a few more days as he had jaundice, and I was recovering from labor and the cesarean section. And this had all been a situation I was hopeful would be a natural labor process in a birthing tub, at a birthing center.

    I think about what could have happened had I been further from a hospital with my situation. What could have happened to both me and my baby? It so quickly turned into a life-threatening situation for both that I don't know if I would have gone with a midwife and chosen to be at a birthing center without the comfort of knowing an emergency room was literally around the corner from our birthing center. I am forever grateful for the OB-GYNs at Bonner General Health, and I have now coached their children in soccer. Our kids are best friends at school and the fact that they're leaving the community is devastating because they saved my life and they're in and out of my life. I'm forever grateful that they were there two minutes away during my life-threatening situation.

    Julie

Kelli’s Story

  • I had two births at Bonner General Health. My first was in 2018, Ryder. We found out we were pregnant and started prenatal care at Bonner General immediately and were met with just amazing care from all the physicians. Pregnancy went smoothly, but around the 37th week we went in for our final ultrasound and found that Ryder had stopped growing. We were met with a lot of difficult decisions. They wanted to monitor me closely, so I ended up going from a smooth, uneventful pregnancy to a really scary one where I had to check in with a doctor every day or two and do tests to make sure that Ryder was still progressing and alive. It was terrifying. After a week and a half of that, around 38 and a half weeks, the doctors decided he really hadn't grown much and the best thing to do was to set up an induction date and so we did.

    We set a date for Monday. This was Friday. They said go enjoy yourself. By Monday you're gonna check in and have a little baby boy. So that Saturday night we said, all right, there's a bluegrass band, Sam Bush, playing at the Hive, and let's go dance this baby out. So we go to the Hive, and sure enough, my water breaks. It could not have been a more fantastic experience. I danced the night away. He ended with the song Midnight Rider, my son's name. We had already chosen that name, but it was just so perfect. And then we said, well, we're just going to hop in the car and drive the three blocks over to Bonner General.

    The birth was scary just knowing that Ryder was really small and that he couldn't withstand a lot of birth trauma. I wanted to just have a c-section. I want him out, I want him safe, I want to hold him, and I just want to see him. But the doctors talked to me gently, laid out my options and said listen we're here for you. If things go south, we can do a C-section and we can have him safely in a matter of minutes. But we want to give you the chance to deliver him vaginally. I'm so grateful that they gave me that strength and that ability to safely have him. And I did. They were there with me. They were joking with me. And they let me play my music. And they let us eat food. And they let us do everything. And it just felt so special to talk to our nurses and our doctors and make connections with, oh, you like to go hike here? And it was a very personal birth. And it was fantastic. Everything about it was just beautiful.

    Ryder was born really small. He had jaundice. He wasn't gaining weight. We had to stay for three nights, four days longer, and it was really difficult. We had to juggle a lot of things at our house. My second birth was at Bonner General. I was nervous because of my first birth experience. I was scared that something else would go wrong, that it was going to be small or that we were going to have to stay in the hospital for an extended period and juggle childcare. We were lucky that we were able to just go to the hospital five minutes from our house and my husband was able to leave me in the care of the doctors and go home and check on our oldest who was staying with my mother-in-law who was visiting. We're thankful that he was able to bounce back and forth.

    I think [not having labor and delivery here] is going to be a huge change in the character of the town. We're not having any more kids, but if we were even thinking about it, I think it would push us to the side of not having kids. We wouldn’t be able to afford the drive to Coeur d'Alene for our prenatal visits. We wouldn't be able to afford to take time off to be in the hospital for that long. And I can't imagine a young couple wanting to move to this beautiful town and then hear we have no women's healthcare here. You cannot deliver a baby here. You're going to have to drive 45 minutes to an hour to get care. I think it's going to shape our town in a negative way. And I think we're going to see a lot of maternal health risks as a result of it, too.

    Kelli

“The closure of Sandpoint's hospital and access to proper medical care through pregnancy and birth has completely altered my birth plan. I have to make some hard decisions. And it's added a bit more complexity to everything.

This is going to have a ripple effect. It's going to ripple into how babies come into the world. It's going to ripple into the support systems that new moms or new parents need after they have a baby, and that's going to ripple into who moves here.”

Lauren’s Story

  • I am 34 years old. I have a two-year-old daughter who was born in Oregon, and I am currently carrying our second child.

    The closure of Sandpoint's hospital access to medical care through pregnancy and birth has completely altered my birth plan. My first birth with my daughter was at a birthing center about 15 to 20 minutes away from a hospital. That gave me so much comfort because I knew if anything went sideways at the birthing center, we were within driving distance to get to a hospital where we would receive care. My plan with our second baby is to have a home birth because I love the journey of being able to have the midwives come to the house after the baby is born. Not moving after you have a baby is nice because after you have a baby, your whole body has been turned inside out, and not having to drive an hour to get checked out a couple days after birth and then a week after birth really helps with the postpartum care. It allows you to drop in to your journey with your new little family, your new little baby.

    I am on this journey of having our second child. I must make some hard decisions. And it's added a bit more complexity to everything because I just figured I would give birth at home with a local midwife. Sandpoint does have amazing midwives. They're doing all they can to find solutions in terms of how to handle situations, such as emergencies, if they do come up. But there's only so much you can do. One of the options is something called air flight - you would have to be taken to the local hospital, Bonner General. Then you go to the ER and then the air flight picks you up at the ER and they fly you down to Kootenai. That's just not very practical because that will take just as long to drive down there. I'm exploring my options of what to do and I know I'll find a solution, but it's very frustrating.

    I'm very fortunate that I have the time and a supportive family and supportive partner. There are a lot of people out there that don't have that same support, or the resources to have the birth that they want, or even be able to explore options. This closure of our birthing center and access to women's health care is detrimental to all families but mostly to those that don't have the resources to get adequate care.

    This is going to have a ripple effect. It's going to ripple into how babies come into the world. It's going to ripple into the support system that new moms or new parents need after they have a baby and that's going to ripple into who moves here. Sandpoint is booming, but not being able to give birth here in a hospital setting, will not make it appealing to people to move here, because having a hospital that can handle birth and women's rights is standard and expected. I understand why they had to close. I think that it's a message being sent that women need access to proper health care. This whole closure is very frustrating and sad, and I really hope that we take a hard look at what we value in Idaho. Thank you for listening.

    Lauren

“It's not just about the day you have your baby. It's about all of the visits and ultrasounds and check-ins. Accessibility matters, especially for those who are less fortunate.

So I feel really grateful that I was able to have both of my kids here in town and definitely won't be having any more kids if I have to drive to Coeur d'Alene.”

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