Underground Midwives & Maternity Deserts: Lainey's Story

What happens when the vision you have for your birth completely shatters? 

In this episode of Quiet Connection, host Chelsea Myers sits down with Lainey Stancil—a mom, birth doula, and the founder of the Peach State Birth Coalition. Lainey shares her deeply personal journey of navigating a frustrating PCOS diagnosis , fighting a dismissive healthcare system , and making the radical choice to switch to an unmedicated home birth at 28 weeks pregnant.

But Lainey's story didn't end with her fast, beautiful water birth. After discovering the shocking legal restrictions placed on traditional midwives in Georgia, she stepped into her power to change the landscape for birthing individuals across her state. 

This conversation is an eye-opening look at maternal healthcare deserts , the power of community education , and why every perinatal individual deserves to choose exactly how and where they bring life into the world.

Key Takeaways

• Trusting Your Instincts: Lainey highlights the exhaustion of fighting with medical providers who dismiss early signs of hormonal issues like PCOS simply based on age.
• The Power of True Connection: The stark contrast between a clinical, highly managed OB appointment and the warm, relationship-first care of a midwife.
• Georgia’s Quiet Crisis: The surprising legal reality that makes it illegal for traditional midwives to practice or attend home births in Georgia, creating an "underground" network.
• Maternity Care Deserts: How the closure of birth centers and lack of regional providers forces rural birthing individuals to travel hours just to receive safe care.
• Democratizing Education: Why providing free, doula-led birth education is essential for lower-income families who can't afford expensive online programs.

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

Visit our Patreon to help support our mission to normalize the conversation and end the stigma surrounding PMADs!

Transcript

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Chelsea Myers (00:02)
today I am here with Lainey. Lainey, how are you? I'm good. It's Monday morning as we're recording this. It's not the morning. It's the afternoon. I just did it again. my God. That is where my brain is. This is the second time I've done this. I've been like, yeah, good. It's so early. No, it's like after lunchtime. We're halfway through the day. ⁓ my God. If that gives you any indication as to where we are right now. ⁓

Lainey Stancil (00:06)
How are you?

It feels like the morning.

No, we're halfway through our day.

Chelsea Myers (00:32)
We're moming hardcore.

Lainey Stancil (00:34)
Yes.

Chelsea Myers (00:35)
Lainey, I am so excited to get to chat with you today. And rather than just, you know, hit my bullet points, my listeners would so appreciate it. If you could introduce yourself, let us know who you are today and who you were before you became a parent. In another lifetime.

Lainey Stancil (00:55)
gosh.

Right. ⁓ Okay. So my name is Lainey. ⁓ Currently I am a mom of a little boy who's two. ⁓ I'm a wife and I am a nonprofit founder. So I founded a nonprofit here in Georgia called Peach State Birth Coalition. We focus on birth education.

maternal health policies, advocating for those ⁓ because our state quite honestly sucks for that. then also just building community for moms. And then I am also a birth doula. That's a little bit more of newer part of me. ⁓ It's hard to juggle all three. So running off to births is not always the top of the priority right now, but it is definitely a passion of mine.

Chelsea Myers (01:28)
Yeah

YAH!

Lainey Stancil (01:51)
and who I used to be. ⁓ my gosh. right, way back when, which doesn't, I mean, like it really isn't even that long ago. It was only two years ago, but it feels like light years. ⁓ it's so crazy how like, ⁓ in that instance of like giving birth, like your whole life just changes. but, I had a lot, I did a lot before I was a mom actually. ⁓

Chelsea Myers (01:55)
You

way back when.

Mm.

Yup.

Lainey Stancil (02:21)
I have had multiple careers. I was a medical assistant for a long time. That's kind of what got me into like the healthcare space. And then I left that completely and I was, I worked in the insurance industry for State Farm. So I was an insurance agent for a while. Me and my husband are big travelers. We've traveled a lot. We love to travel.

Chelsea Myers (02:23)
Hahaha

Lainey Stancil (02:47)
and we used to go to EDM music festivals a lot. That has not happened. Yeah, it has not happened in a very long time, obviously, because you don't really get to go to concerts at all when you're a parent.

Chelsea Myers (02:52)
Wow! That is very specific.

I mean, especially not EDM concerts. Can you picture your two-year-old?

Lainey Stancil (03:06)
No, yeah, they're like... ⁓

yeah. Actually, I feel like in some ways at three-day music festivals, living off of one chicken strip that was days old, living in a tent for three days, not sleeping well with loud sounds all around you is pretty much parenthood.

Chelsea Myers (03:26)
Yeah,

that is parenting a toddler.

Lainey Stancil (03:29)
Yeah. So in

some ways I feel like it prepared me.

Chelsea Myers (03:34)
I love that analogy. my god. Yes.

Lainey Stancil (03:38)
And it makes

it feel more fun when you're in, not at a fun music festival, you know, when it's just you and your partner at the end of the night and you're just like, wow, today was something.

Chelsea Myers (03:50)
I

mean, yeah, when you're ever in the thick of it and you are eating that leftover dino chicken nugget, you can just throw on some EDM really loud and pretend, right?

Lainey Stancil (03:56)
from the EDM. Yeah. Yeah, they have those great

YouTube things, you know, where it's like the it's like the live casting of the the festivals. So yeah, I can definitely say we've we've watched a couple of those, you know, to kind of bring us out of a bad day and be like, yeah, we'll just pretend like we're having fun with our friends. Right.

Chelsea Myers (04:06)
Yeah!

Hey, that's self care. That's self care right there. ⁓

my God, I love it. ⁓ So yeah, you lived many lives prior to your parenthood journey. ⁓ There was something you said too that stuck out to me and of course I lost it now. So if it comes back to me, I'll tell you. I mean, it probably won't. My brain just works that way.

Lainey Stancil (04:22)
You

Yeah.

It will. Maybe. In all honesty, it's gone forever.

Chelsea Myers (04:45)
Oh my God, I can't so many times I'll tell you when it happens to and it's a good thing I edit these myself or myself, myself, because literally I'll be mid sentence and like all the tabs close. I need. Right, I don't. Yes, please.

Lainey Stancil (04:51)
There's me.

Sometimes it feels like we need to have multiple selves to do all the things that you do. I don't know

how, like, I'm like, I need like five of me. Like, is that possible?

Chelsea Myers (05:09)
I

need to have like that, what is it, that goddess with like the eight arms or whatever? But I don't want just the arms. want... Just somebody else go do it. Okay, anyway. my God. yes, that's what I want right now. Yes. my God. Okay, now we're just playing Dream Life. ⁓

Lainey Stancil (05:16)
Yes, yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yes. So I can be napping.

A lot of nannies.

right.

Chelsea Myers (05:38)
This is the energy I need on a Monday afternoon, not a Monday morning. It is in fact an afternoon. So anyway, anyway, you lived lots of different lives. You did lots of different things, which kind of like lends itself pretty perfectly. It's pretty on brand for you to be taking on all of these different roles, even in motherhood. So that's exciting. And we're going to get into that a little bit more, but I, I want to kind of take us down the path to

Lainey Stancil (05:40)
Yeah.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (06:08)
your whole parenthood journey and how it started and how we got to where we are today. So ⁓ my least favorite question to ask, but the thing that tells me the most, did you always envision yourself being a mom?

Lainey Stancil (06:14)
Yeah.

I did. That has been literally like makes me like have tears come to my eyes because my journey has been a long one even though I'm I'm very young. ⁓ And I or at least maybe I'm like I am getting older but like I I feel a lot more younger than I am but I still feel really young in motherhood. ⁓

Chelsea Myers (06:27)
Yeah.

Yeah?

age

is age is just a number I'll tell you I mean I'm approaching 40 and I still feel like I'm 15 in my head so I don't know that it ever goes away

Lainey Stancil (07:00)
Right?

Well, and I have so many friends, like I have so many friends that are a lot older than me who have kids that are so much older and they're done with parenthood. And then I have so many friends who are my age who started having kids a lot younger than me. So they're like so much farther along in their parenthood journey that like I still feel like I'm 21 and I'm not. But yeah, I...

Chelsea Myers (07:22)
Yeah.

my gosh.

Lainey Stancil (07:29)
I literally always, always wanted to be a mom. I'm the oldest of three. I have a brother and a sister and they are five and ten years younger than me. So I was basically like, I literally got in trouble when I was younger because I would be little mom and like try to parent them and discipline them and all those things. And so I would get in trouble all the like that, that and talking, which I find so funny now. Because I'm like now.

Chelsea Myers (07:38)
Mmm.

You talked

too much. that was that? Yes. Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (07:57)
Yeah, I talked too much. I always

got in trouble in school, in cheerleading. I was a cheerleader. I would talk on the sidelines and get in trouble. I would get in trouble all the time for talking and for being very, like, parenty to my siblings. Yeah, like, sorry. I was literally born into it. But yeah, it's just me. It's just me.

Chelsea Myers (08:13)
This is sounding very familiar. This is an eldest child syndrome. Like, I am the same way. I'm same way.

I can't help it. Yeah, you can't help it. It's just who it's just who you are.

Lainey Stancil (08:27)
But

⁓ so yeah, so I always wanted to be a mom. It was like that was like the forefront of my brain. you know went to college. I wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to help people and that was like a big piece of me. But like the core was always like but I want to be a mom like I would I think I always like kind of said that I would want to have like two kids but like

I think in my heart I would literally have like a dozen if I could. Like I wanted a big family. I was like, I just want all the kids, whether I birth them or I adopt them. Like I just want all of them. And so that was very interesting when my whole life, my family is very, very young. Everyone in my family had kids really young. And so it was told to me, know, like,

Chelsea Myers (08:53)
Wow! Yeah!

my gosh.

Lainey Stancil (09:16)
just wait, like I know you wanna be a mom so bad, but like just wait. And like, and I can appreciate that, cause I watched, you know, everybody in my family struggle with being a teen mom and things. And so I was like, okay, I want, you know, I wanna be a mom and I wanna do this, you know, the right way, if that's possible. ⁓ Whatever that means, yeah. But I was like, okay, cool. So I'm gonna, ⁓ you know.

Chelsea Myers (09:32)
Whatever that means, right? Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (09:40)
wait until I'm a little older so that way I'm more established or whatever you know I was thinking. But what was funny was when me and my husband did get married and we were like yeah let's have a kid like let's do this thing. I was on birth control and I was having a lot of issues on birth control and then once I stopped my birth control and I was I literally had to fight with providers. I went to multiple different providers and was just like

something is wrong, like I feel wrong in my body. And they were like, no, you're fine. Everything's fine. You're young. You're young. And I'm like, okay, great. Well, something is wrong and I'm gonna keep finding. So I literally just kept going to doctor after doctor after doctor. And I finally found somebody who did lab work on me and found out that I ended ultrasounds and found out that I have PCOS. And I don't have, I don't have like one, I being

Chelsea Myers (10:18)
Mmm.

Mm.

Lainey Stancil (10:40)
previous medical background, was like, PCOS, like, I don't really have like any of the like front facing things that like a lot of PCOS women deal with. ⁓ And so I was very confused by that. Like, what do you mean? And it's just that my hormones are completely out of whack. ⁓ And they were like, your levels are all over the board, low and high on different things. And I was like, okay, so I started deep diving in to, you know, what

what that meant, trying to get my body right, because I'm, I very much was like, okay, I want, I know that being pregnant is a marathon and I want to be, you know, my best self before I go into this marathon. ⁓ And at that point we had been trying to have a baby for maybe a year and you know, you get the whole, well, you need to try for 12 months before we do anything. And I'm like, okay, so we get to the 12 month mark.

Chelsea Myers (11:17)
Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (11:34)
and you know then they're still kind of like well you're still really young and you know I'm I got married at 22 so I think you this is 23 24 at this point so they're still just like you're really young you're really young and I'm like I'm so tired of hearing that um because I I was like okay just because I'm young doesn't mean that like something isn't wrong in my body um so when I finally got that PCOS diagnosis um my

Chelsea Myers (11:50)
Yeah!

Lainey Stancil (12:03)
doctor that I was seeing was like, you know, I can give you a medication to kind of force ovulation and you can be pregnant, you know, in the next couple weeks. But then that felt like, it felt like it took the spark away. Like it felt like it took like, making that decision, you know, like I wanted to have that like movie-esque like, ⁓ I'm pregnant and it's such a surprise and everything. like,

Chelsea Myers (12:14)
Whoa.

Lainey Stancil (12:31)
It just took all of that away. It went from being this fun event with your husband to being this timed, scheduled workload. Yeah, and so that was really hard on both of us. And then we ended up waiting to take the medicine. Because I was like, let me just try to get my hormones right and maybe it'll just happen.

Chelsea Myers (12:43)
Mm-hmm. It becomes a job.

Lainey Stancil (12:59)
So we waited another like six months, I think. And then I was like, okay, let's just do the medicine. Like I'm starting, like I started to get like in a really bad head space with like every month going by and it being like my period shows up or a negative test. And then people around me, we were kind of getting to the age where all of our friends are getting pregnant and stuff like that. And so then it was like, it started like really taking a toll on me. And my husband was like,

let's just do the medicine. are you waiting? And I was like, cause and it did feel like a failure. Like I felt like I was like not like my body wasn't doing the right thing or something. So it was really hard to like take that jump to do the medication, but we did end up doing it. And then the first round of medication was not, it was a bust. So that didn't work. So then that was like even more so like, I was like, okay, we're going to try the medicine one more time. And then like, I quit like,

Chelsea Myers (13:50)
Mmm.

Lainey Stancil (13:58)
I'm done trying right now. I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to like not be so hyper focused on this all the time. Like I was, it was down to like what I ate, what I drank, what I, how much sleep I got, you know, like my basal body temperature. So it was like, I am so over this. Like I just want to, you know, not think about it anymore. So we did the second round.

Chelsea Myers (14:13)
Yeah. Yeah!

Lainey Stancil (14:25)
And I was like in full disbelief. Like I was like, I feel completely normal still. I don't feel like anything has changed. you know, it's whatever. So we planned a trip to go to the casino. And, right, yeah. And so before we left ⁓ was when I was supposed to take the test. And so I was like, should I take it before or should I take it after? Like, should I take it before? And then it potentially be negative.

Chelsea Myers (14:37)
Why not gamble?

Lainey Stancil (14:54)
and it may be ruin our trip, you know, like I'll be upset the whole time. Or do I wait until after, but what if it's positive and then I drink? Then I'll feel bad. So he was like, just take it, like just, just take it. So I woke up at like 6.30 in the morning, which I don't usually wake up that early, but I was like so anxious that I woke up crazy early and it, you know, it has to be your first pee and everything. I take the test and it is like positive.

Chelsea Myers (15:02)
No!

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (15:24)
as all get out and I was literally like what it worked like I like bust through the door and he's like half asleep and he I was literally like it's positive and he literally to this day is like I hate the way you told me you were pregnant with him

Chelsea Myers (15:30)
Yeah!

Lainey Stancil (15:45)
And I'm like, he was like, I wish you could have at least just waited until I was like, awake.

Chelsea Myers (15:51)
kidding me? You wanted to like scream it to the world.

Lainey Stancil (15:53)
I know,

and he was like, I'm so excited, but I also almost crapped my pants because I didn't know why you were screaming at six o'clock in the morning. And so was like, yeah, I probably could have done a little bit more of a gentler approach while you were dead asleep. But I know, yeah, it was very, so of course, ⁓ that was like, it was crazy.

Chelsea Myers (16:05)
my god.

my god, the mental image. Ugh.

Lainey Stancil (16:21)
And my pregnancy after that was great. I did take progesterone, you know, make sure everything was okay, since my levels are a little crazy. ⁓ But other than that, like I ended up having an amazing pregnancy. And then at 28 weeks, I decided to, well, my doctor that I was seeing, she like left the practice and I got like, I literally got a letter in the mail and that was it. So.

I'm like, and she was the one that like finally listened to me. She was the one that like actually like made me feel seen and heard. And so was like so excited to like actually find a provider like that because it's so rare. And then I get this letter in the mail that she's like not going to be there anymore. And I go to my next appointment and it's like this other doctor and I'm like, hey, well like I brought my birth plan and I wanted to go over it. And she like chuckled at me and said,

we already do all those things that you guys want. And I was like, who's you guys? I was like, there's nobody else in this room but me. So I was like, I'm very confused at what you mean. And she was like, I mean, we already do delayed cord clamping. And I was like, congratulations? Like, that's not all I wanted to talk about. Like, there's a lot more to a birth plan than just delayed cord clamping. Yeah, and so

Chelsea Myers (17:22)
Yeah! What? What?

Yeah.

How invalidating and how like,

that's so impersonal.

Lainey Stancil (17:47)
It was

awful and I was just like, I left that appointment and of course I'm pregnant, hormonal, crying my eyes out and I was like, I don't know what to do so I called my husband and I was like, am so terrified. I'm terrified that now I'm gonna end up with a provider who has no idea who I am, who doesn't care about, I'm just gonna fall into the system like what normally happens and I was like, wanted to have an unmedicated birth.

I wanted to try to achieve all of those things and I was like, I just don't see how that's possible with especially this provider. Like she's not even listening to anything. And so he like jokingly was like, well, why don't you just have the baby at home? Like you always talk about. And I was like, I don't know how to like actually achieve that though. And he was like, well, you're, you always talk about it. And I did like, I am that like.

Chelsea Myers (18:23)
Yeah.

Ha!

Lainey Stancil (18:39)
that everybody says is like the little flower child that was born in the wrong decade that like I would always be like on my bucket list. I want to have my baby in a pool in my living room. Like that was like always what I talked about, but I didn't know how to like actually do that. And so he was like, well, my mom's friend did it and why don't you ask her? I was like, I don't know her. He was like, okay, well, let me call my mom. And I literally.

Chelsea Myers (18:51)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (19:08)
in the parking lot went from being having no idea what I was gonna do to being on the phone with my husband then on the phone with his mom then doing a like a four-way call with this lady I don't know and she was like you want to do a home birth my god yes like let's do it let let me call my midwife and then like

Chelsea Myers (19:27)
was just gonna

say, was she a doula, was she a mid-wave? ⁓ okay. Okay.

Lainey Stancil (19:29)
No, she just was a client, but she had a midwife. Yeah. And so she

was like, let me call my midwife. And if she doesn't have any place, I'm sure we can find another midwife. Like we'll work this out. And I'm like, I'm 28 weeks pregnant. Yeah. Like I don't even know like what I'm doing. And so in literally the next day, she was like, my midwife has an opening for February. And I was like, okay.

Chelsea Myers (19:43)
We're running out of time.

Lainey Stancil (19:58)
Alright, I guess I'm doing this." And she's like, can you go do a consultation with her next week? And I was like, sure.

Chelsea Myers (20:06)
Why not? Sure.

Lainey Stancil (20:08)
And so I literally went from like, like it just it moved so quickly. Like it was like whiplash. And so I went to my first appointment with my midwife and it was just I just cannot even like that first appointment like gives me chills just even thinking about it because walking in and like it being such a warm environment and we it's literally a couch. It was it was like the winter time. So she has a

It's just it all set up in like her basement. Just cute little couch and she has a fire burning wood burning like stove to heat the basement. She lives in like an older home and she had like all these cute little like plushies of uteruses and like all these, you know, just cute little things everywhere. And a

Chelsea Myers (20:39)
Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (21:01)
She has a dry erase board that has all the babies that are born in that year and their weight and their names and everything. And it was just so inviting. And then I literally sit down with her and she had two students at the time. And we literally sat there for like an hour and they just talked about themselves, about me, and just like learning each other like as a relationship, not just like a, all right, heart rate is this, all right, have any questions? Okay, bye.

Chelsea Myers (21:28)
Ugh, yeah, yeah, we're all very familiar with that process.

Lainey Stancil (21:31)
Yes.

And so it was just like, I had never, ever been in any type of patient provider space where I had like felt so like seen and heard about like, not like we didn't even talk about like birth the whole time. Like she had chickens and I was like, I have chickens. And like we're talking about chickens. So like, you know, just like learning each other on like a relationship.

Chelsea Myers (21:55)
You

Lainey Stancil (22:01)
⁓ friendship kind of way and I left and I literally like I called my mom I called my husband I called my mother-in-law and I was just like this is everything and everybody was like kind of freaked out because nobody in my family nobody that I knew other than the friend of my mother-in-law had ever given birth at home and my mom was like

I have a lot of questions and I was like, okay, well give them to me and I'll ask her and get the answers for you. And she was able to answer all of them. She had, you know, it had an exact answer for every concern that my mom had, ⁓ every concern that my husband had and any concerns that had come up for me, but I was like fully sold. ⁓ And so it was, it was just so the care like,

Chelsea Myers (22:46)
Yeah, sounds like it.

Lainey Stancil (22:53)
from the beginning of my pregnancy to the end was just so different. it was the, she would do like belly mapping and like tell me where all the parts of him were without even using an ultrasound, like literally just using her hands, which was so cool to me. And I'm like, when I talked to other women who like haven't gone with a home birth provider, they're like, doing what? She did what? Like, and I'm like, belly mapping? I don't know. Like I thought that that was normal.

Chelsea Myers (23:21)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (23:23)
And they're like, I mean, yeah, they like touch around on my belly some, like, I'm like, no, it's like a full, like, it's a full thing, you know? Like, I feel like they're just very hands-on in that way. But then also at the birth, so hands-off, if that makes sense? Like, it's not, it's not what I or anybody had expected, but it was like exactly what I needed. Like...

Chelsea Myers (23:31)
Yeah, yeah.

Lainey Stancil (23:52)
their presence is so calming and like they come into the room and like you feel like that sense of like security that somebody who knows what's going on is here. But at the same time like they're they come in just like so peacefully and quietly and like they do exactly what they need to do in that moment usually just listen to the heart rate make sure everything's good and then they're like do you need anything and I'm like no I'm good.

Chelsea Myers (24:01)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (24:21)
I'll be back. And then they just like, I literally feel like they were just like floating in and out of the room. you know, like compared to when now being in like, I haven't given birth in the hospital, but I've been in the hospital space with clients and like, you know, it's like the bang of the door and the smack of the curtain and the, hey, how we doing? And you're like.

Chelsea Myers (24:41)
Yup!

Lainey Stancil (24:47)
and they're like on the phone with somebody, you know, in another department and then they're like on the computer and you're like, yeah, it's so it's overstimulating for me as like just a person being in there. So I'm like, I just for me, I could not imagine giving birth anywhere else but at home. I know that not everybody feels safe at home, but it was.

Chelsea Myers (24:55)
It's just all over stimulation.

Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (25:14)
It was everything that I could have dreamed of. Thankfully, my birth went very well and I didn't have any issues. I had a very fast labor for a first time mom. So yeah, I had my son and I think it was like right at nine hours. So it was very fast. yeah. So first contractions that I recognized, yes. But I think I was having them

Chelsea Myers (25:26)
wow.

Wow. From start to finish, from like first contractions to delivery.

Yeah, wow.

Lainey Stancil (25:42)
like earlier in the day. ⁓ But I think I just was like not realizing that's what it was, you know? But like once they got like rhythmic enough for me to be like, I think that's something. Yeah, so that was about like around like 11 or 12, like midnight. And then he was born at two o'clock the next day. Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (25:48)
Yeah.

⁓ Something's happening. Yeah.

⁓

gosh, did you get the water birth? was it in? Yeah, so you got exactly...

Lainey Stancil (26:10)
Yes, yes, I did get the water birth.

We did decide to do it in the bedroom instead of the living room just because they were like, you're gonna want to be like more like, ⁓ like, you want to be like cozy when you're in birth, you know, when you're giving birth, like you want to be like cozy and like feel warm and she was like, you need to be close to a bathroom. And so I was like, true, true. ⁓ And I didn't want to have to waddle down my whole hallway.

Chelsea Myers (26:24)
Posey, yep.

Mmm.

Makes sense.

Lainey Stancil (26:39)
So we just decided

to do it in the bedroom, which honestly was like so cool too though, because like I literally had him in the birthing pool, was able to get out of the birthing pool, step right in over and get in bed and literally get to lay in bed with my newborn and you know, my husband who looks like he just went through war and like.

Chelsea Myers (26:52)
Ugh.

Hahaha

Lainey Stancil (27:01)
I'm like, and he's like, I'm exhausted. And I'm like, I bet you are. I know he's so silly. He's just, he just likes to play with me. But he was like, I'm just, yeah. He's like, he was like that was, and he was also very upset because he wanted to catch the baby. And I, and like, they told me they were like, okay, you're doing so good. Do like

Chelsea Myers (27:08)
The audacity of that man.

I'm just kidding too. I'm sure it was stressful.

⁓

Lainey Stancil (27:29)
five more hard pushes like that and I literally was like no I'm done this is the last one and they like thought that I was you know just being like you know sick of doing it but no I pushed him out on that one and nobody was ready for him to come out so I just like grabbed him

Chelsea Myers (27:43)
Whoops!

⁓

my god.

Lainey Stancil (27:48)
And so my husband was like, whoa, I didn't know he was coming out then. So they were ready, but not fully ready for him to come out. So then I just kind of grabbed him and hulked him out the water.

Chelsea Myers (28:01)
Visuals lady the visuals in this episode

Lainey Stancil (28:05)
I actually have some

great video and photo, which of course my husband is like, let's not, like, cause I do post like some of my photos for the nonprofit or for my Dua page, like I'll use them. ⁓ But they're obviously pretty explicit. And he's like, I really don't know if that's the best thing to be on social media.

Chelsea Myers (28:27)
I I don't know. Again, it's 100 % up to you and your preference, but I feel like there is becoming space for that. There's becoming space for... Because it's...

Lainey Stancil (28:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

There is, yeah, there is. there's, and

like for me personally, like I, and like I do wish that I had better photos and videos. They were, they're like really grainy and like shaky because it was like my doula who was trying to like also help me and like, you know, they're like, everybody's kind of moving around and stuff when he came out because they weren't expecting it. So like, it's kind of like everybody's like kind of moving a little quickly. So they're not like the best photos and videos, but like I even look back at them and I'm like,

Chelsea Myers (28:58)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (29:06)
This is so cool. It doesn't, it feels, yeah. And that's literally when I pulled him out, I remember looking up and it's almost like you come out of like this other place. And I literally just looked up and I saw my mom and my mother-in-law and I said, where's the baby? And they said, you're holding him. And then I literally, they were like, you can sit back now. Cause I was like kind of like squatted up and they're like, you can sit back now. And I like sat back and I was like, I did it.

Chelsea Myers (29:08)
Yeah, like you did that.

⁓

Lainey Stancil (29:35)
I did it.

Chelsea Myers (29:38)
Yeah, that moment of realization, right? You're like, ⁓ yeah, I did that. I did that.

Lainey Stancil (29:40)
Yeah, I freaking did it. Yes.

Yeah, it was it was, ⁓ it was an incredible high, I will say. Some of like my girlfriends that I've met, like through the home birthing community, like we've even said, like, when you do birth, like, in that way, it is almost like an addicting high. Like, like you're like, I even though yes, birth is so painful, like it is like

Chelsea Myers (30:02)
Mmm.

Lainey Stancil (30:09)
do not get me wrong. ⁓ But at the same time, like, it was so cool. And I think I'm just so fascinated by like, I could nerd out on some like anatomy and physiology stuff. So I'm like, I don't know if it's just that like, I like was like literally like nerding out while simultaneously giving birth because I could like, I knew what was like happening. And that's like cool to me. I know where some people could be like really grossed out by that. But I was like, no.

Chelsea Myers (30:18)
You

No, I think it's very

cool.

Lainey Stancil (30:37)
It was so cool. So for me, it was like really, really cool to like feel the movement. Like I know that like the baby turned so like I could literally feel him turn, which was really cool to me. Cause I'm like, okay, like I knew in my head, like, okay, I felt like I felt the turn. I felt him go down. Like he's going to come out soon. So it was really cool. I, I, I thoroughly enjoyed it while also both being in a lot of pain.

Chelsea Myers (30:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that you acknowledge both. also like, my god, it is real. It is real. And the Ring of Fire, I don't know if my because I had an epidural and then a c-section for my second vaginal for my first c-section for my second but even with a even with an epidural Ring of Fire is real. They're like, that's not gonna stop that you're gonna feel that.

Lainey Stancil (31:06)
The Ring of Fire is no joke. Don't get me wrong.

Yes, they will tell you. Yep. Nope. It doesn't.

Yep. Everybody gets the Ring of Fire unless it's a C-section.

Chelsea Myers (31:31)
⁓ all that aside, whoo, unless

it's a C-section and then it's a whole different ball game. ⁓ like all of that aside though, like there's, there's so much to your journey that, ⁓ what's the word I'm looking for? It really encompasses that duality that I like to talk about a lot. like you.

Lainey Stancil (31:38)
Yeah, right, exactly, exactly.

Chelsea Myers (32:01)
Like you said, you always envisioned yourself having kids. You wanted kids, you wanted all the kids. And then the emotional toll and the psychological toll of it not happening in the way that you envisioned it happening. While simultaneously being dismissed by doctors, which people who are born female are just accustomed to. ⁓ Doctors just saying you're young or

Lainey Stancil (32:27)
Yeah, unfortunately. Or

Chelsea Myers (32:31)
drink more water. Yes!

Lainey Stancil (32:32)
just take birth control. But I'm trying to get pregnant. That doesn't make sense.

Chelsea Myers (32:37)
Right,

right. And especially with PCOS too. There again, I've learned a lot about it. ⁓ And I'm and I like I said, I'm 37. I'm in my late 30s. I didn't know all I thought PCOS was just that you got like cysts. And that was it. And that is so not even close to it.

Lainey Stancil (32:53)
Right.

Yeah,

well and I thought that like when they told me I had it I was like that doesn't make sense I thought that people with PCOS had issues with being overweight and I I mean and Now that I have fixed a lot of those things. I have lost a lot of weight, but it was but like

Chelsea Myers (33:04)
Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (33:13)
It wasn't what I thought. like, I don't have, ⁓ like the male hair patterns. I don't have that. So I was like, I'm confused. Like, I don't have any of these things. So how could I have PCOS? And they're like, well, then it like opened the can of worms of what PCOS is. And there's, there's so much, like, there's so many different things that it can affect.

Chelsea Myers (33:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah. And then like, I mean, I'm just, I'm kind of summarizing, but the points that I want to like emphasize are, it wasn't an easy process for you. And it must have, I'm not going to assume, but it must have taken such a toll on this vision that you had of yourself, especially like you said, like your family around you.

This is gonna seem like a horrible term, but my family is the same way and they call themselves all fertile myrtle. Yes! Yes! My family is the same way and we said they're all just fertile myrtles.

Lainey Stancil (34:02)
Fertile Myrtle.

Yes. Yep. Fertile Myrtle.

Everybody's Fertile Myrtle. Everybody, you know, I was literally told like as soon as I, I feel like as soon as I could even, you know, be, you know, a normal conversation, obviously not like a little kid, but like as soon as I was in like middle school and that was like, you know, when your parents start talking to you about those things, like they're like, oh, you need to be on birth control. Like I got on birth control when I was 14. Was I having sex at 14? No, but like...

Chelsea Myers (34:33)
Yeah?

Lainey Stancil (34:36)
my mom didn't know and my mom just was trying to you know she was trying to break the cycle and like and you know obviously like she's even when I found out that I had PCOS she was like did I do this to you was it because I put you on birth control and I'm like no mom like it's like honestly the the birth control probably helped for at some point but then it was masking so much that I couldn't I didn't know about it so then I couldn't do the right things to get my body ready and and so yeah what

Chelsea Myers (34:42)
Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (35:06)
I probably ended up on birth control regardless. Yeah, was it probably a smart thing? know once I did get older that I was on birth control? Yeah, it was because that would have been bad.

Chelsea Myers (35:19)
I think

it's the first time that I've ever used that term on the podcast, but I'm just seeing the mirroring so much. That's all the women on my side of the family. Right, and that's what you assume. You're like, okay. And there is this thing, we're not taught. When we're in middle school and we're in high school and we're going through sex education, I don't even know what it's like down south. I'm in the Northeast, so we're much more liberal, but still, it's like, you have sex, you're gonna get pregnant, so don't have sex.

Lainey Stancil (35:23)
Yes!

And that's what I assumed.

Yeah,

yeah, basically. Or you're gonna get an STD and they show you like craziness. Yeah, all the things. And then they're just like, all right, good luck. Bye. Yeah, don't die.

Chelsea Myers (35:50)
right? And don't get an STD. ⁓

all the things.

Yeah, have fun. Bye. Put all this in the back of your... Yeah, don't

die. ⁓ Don't do drugs. Don't get an STD and don't get pregnant. Don't have sex. The end. But, and then when you realize like, okay, well that's not what's happening for me. ⁓ What the heck is that all about? And then to take it further, when you finally do get pregnant and you find a provider that listens to you and then you lose that provider,

Lainey Stancil (36:07)
Don't do drugs, don't have sex. Yeah. Yeah, basically.

Right.

Great.

Yeah, I have no idea where she went.

Chelsea Myers (36:33)
I know this would this will be one of those like where are they now like Hello, ⁓ Laney's provider. Where did you go?

Lainey Stancil (36:37)
Yes. And I honestly at this point forgot her name. Like I don't

even remember what her name was. ⁓ She was a nurse midwife. I do remember that. She was a nurse midwife. ⁓ But I don't even remember her name at this point. But.

Chelsea Myers (36:52)
Yeah, but it led

you to this entire other side of the birth realm that you didn't even know existed and now is like your life.

Lainey Stancil (36:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

It is my life and through that I found out like because when I met with my midwife, know, she had to explain to me ⁓ explicitly that she did go to school to be a midwife. She, you know, has all these credentials. She continues to do education even to this day. I work very, very close with her now with my organization. ⁓ But she, you know, is giving me all of these credentials, which I've never walked into a doctor's office and they've told me even

told me where they went to school because I guess they don't you know they assume that it doesn't matter but she get you know told me where she went to school and all these credentials and everything and she was like but the state of Georgia does not recognize any of this and I am not licensed in this state because it is illegal for me to be licensed in the state of Georgia is that okay with you and I was like

Chelsea Myers (37:37)
Bye!

Lainey Stancil (37:56)
I don't care if you're a Martian from another planet, you are better than any provider that I've ever had, ever. And I can't imagine having birth and having anybody else be my provider. And so...

Chelsea Myers (38:08)
Talk to me

about that a little bit. Why is that? Why is she not able to be licensed in Georgia?

Lainey Stancil (38:11)
Yeah. So

that's kind of like where the wheels slowly started turning because I was like, what? But then I'm, you know, at the end of my pregnancy and like trying to have a baby and everything.

Chelsea Myers (38:22)
Yeah, you had other things on your mind.

Lainey Stancil (38:24)
Yeah, I had other things

on my plate. I, you know, I kind of was just like, that's odd. And like, you know, it was kind of like in the back of my mind, but obviously it was like, okay, cool. Gonna have this baby, blah, blah, blah. So fast forward to like about like nine months postpartum with my son. ⁓ She, my midwife, there's a group called ⁓ NACPM. That's like the national CPM organization. And then there's state organizations. So the Georgia NACPM was doing like a little ⁓ like

Zoom meetup for home birthing clients or everybody's clients. ⁓ And so I was like, cool, like I haven't had any adult human connection in a while, let me hop on a Zoom. And so I like hop on the Zoom and they were talking about how...

Chelsea Myers (39:07)
you

Lainey Stancil (39:13)
We don't have ⁓ midwife licensure here in the state of Georgia. So nurse midwives can be licensed here in the state of Georgia, but any other midwifery track, like CPMs, traditional midwives, any of that, they are not licensed and are technically illegal in the state of Georgia. ⁓ It's not illegal to have a home birth, but it is illegal to have a midwife present at a home birth. Yeah, make...

Chelsea Myers (39:39)
Which makes no

sense. Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (39:40)
Make that make sense, Georgia. ⁓

Yeah, so it didn't really make a lot of sense to me and I was like, what? Like, why? What? Like, what can we do about this? And she was, you know, talking about how Georgia NECPM and some of the other midwife organizations are, they were at that time creating a bill that was going to go into the House of Representatives. ⁓ And they were trying to ⁓ raise money for lobbyists and doing all this stuff at the Capitol building. And so ⁓ she said, you know, what we would really love to have is like a

consumer group and I was like, okay, ⁓ you know, I'm just listening at this point. My kids like being, you know, a baby and I'm just like on mute listening and she's like, I need somebody who is like, you know, like ⁓ a strong leader, not afraid to talk to anybody, you know, wants to get the word out and like really cares about this and just something in me I unmuted and I was like, that kind of sounds like me.

Chelsea Myers (40:41)
You

Lainey Stancil (40:42)
And she was like, okay, Lainey, I'll send you an email after this. And I was like, okay. Like having no clue what that meant. ⁓ And literally hopping on that meeting and then like getting more connected with her is what started Peach Day Birth Coalition and really opened like kind of my eyes to not just that, but there's so many gaps in Georgia. We...

are one of the worst states for birthing moms. Like, it's awful. Our stats are horrible. And it's so disheartening because I feel like a lot of the times ⁓ when you're even just when you're not a mom yet and you're just, you know, thinking or dreaming about being a mom one day, you don't think like, I live in one of the states that it is the most dangerous to give birth in. ⁓ Especially for black and brown women, which is so scary.

No one should go into a hospital and wonder like am I gonna come out of here with my baby or is my baby gonna be going out by itself or with its dad or you know who knows or not yeah exactly

Chelsea Myers (41:48)
neither of us coming out of here. Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (41:52)
And so I started working with Georgia NACPM ⁓ and kind of just learning more. then for Peach Day as a whole, I was like, OK, a lot of people have a weird taste in their mouth about home birth here in the South. I don't really know why. Like, literally our tagline is to eat their peach. Do what you want. ⁓

Chelsea Myers (42:12)
I had no idea.

I love that. my God.

Lainey Stancil (42:16)
Yeah,

like, and my organization is not to sit here and tell people like home birth is the way to go. Home birth is the way to go if that's where you feel comfortable.

Chelsea Myers (42:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (42:27)
And for the women who feel comfortable at home, we deserve the right to choose home birth. Just like if somebody wants to choose a birth center or choose a hospital. And so it's not necessarily saying that home birth is this end all for every woman. It's just saying that like this choice has been or has been taken away for a really long time. And it's actually what women have been doing for however long we've been here.

Chelsea Myers (42:55)
Yeah,

mean, pre-hospital, the hospitals haven't been around that long in terms of the existence of humans. And that doesn't take away from the fact that childbirth is dangerous. Childbirth, like pregnancy and childbirth is not a health neutral state whatsoever. ⁓ But just like you're saying, like the choice should be yours. Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (42:58)
Yeah, that long. Right, exactly.

Right. Yes. No. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And

also midwives are not going to take on, you know,

of high-risk client. you know, like, but even just having the choice of like, I think I would be interested in Home Birth. Let me, you know, find out more information about it. It's literally like an underground drug ring trying to find midwives in the state of Georgia because they have to be hush-hush because they're getting cease and desist orders. They have to be, you know, changing their names on social media so that people can't find them. They have to have their websites, you know, their websites are always like kind of weirdly worded.

Chelsea Myers (43:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Lainey Stancil (43:55)
to

not say that they're a midwife and so people who are not in this realm or are new to this realm of birth work and home birth they are very like this is kind of weird you know like I don't know what you know and then it's like it's

Chelsea Myers (43:58)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (44:10)
it starts to get like, well, I don't know who I'm talking to. I don't know if I feel comfortable. So I'm just going to go with the hospital. And then they're not getting to actually choose what they wanted to do. So it's just kind of like a weird time in this. And, ⁓ and it's been like this for a really long time. ⁓ A lot of the midwives, they've been working on this legislative stuff for 10 years. And there were midwives before them that were working on it for years before. ⁓ So it's been kind of a

Chelsea Myers (44:20)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (44:40)
long process, but within this last year, have had a lot of, you know, people actually listening, ⁓ meetings and things ⁓ at the Capitol building with legislators who are actually starting to be like, okay, I kind of see it. Like, I see it. I get it. ⁓ I see how midwives, you know, could also bridge the gaps here in Georgia. We have a lot of maternity care deserts. I mean, we have huge areas that are up in like the North Georgia area or the South Georgia area.

Chelsea Myers (45:04)
Mmm.

Lainey Stancil (45:10)
if you're not like kind of in that big city, the Senates, you might drive two hours to get to a hospital. And you don't always have two hours to get to hospital. If I mean, even sometimes first time moms don't realize that they're in labor, or if you're a fourth or fifth time mom, that baby might be coming out. And so like, what do you do get a hotel room at?

Chelsea Myers (45:21)
No.

Yeah.

That

was exactly what I was thinking. like, do you just like, be like, okay, it's close to my due date. guess I'm a book a hotel stay. you can't, what if you can't afford that? You can't afford that or yes, yes.

Lainey Stancil (45:38)
stay in a hotel for the

Yeah, or go stay in an Airbnb. What if you have more kids?

So yeah, it's like, are they

supposed to do? And midwives in the area, you know, could be able to come and kind of triage and assessed and make sure, you know, like, okay, yeah, it's safe for you to travel, you know, the two hours or, you know, travel with them even in the car so that they have somebody there with them. ⁓ So there's so many other ways that midwives can help that it's not just about homework. Midwives can also do GYN care for all these women who live in these areas that have no OBs. ⁓

Chelsea Myers (46:03)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (46:18)
and or no L &D or so there's just so many other things that Georgia could really benefit from it and I think that people are kind of starting to see that because we finally got three birth centers because one just opened in Atlanta ⁓ sometime this past year. ⁓ I don't remember exactly when it opened and then they decided to close down the one in Savannah. So now we only have two birth centers and they're in Atlanta.

Chelsea Myers (46:45)
Yeah, in the biggest city, right? Like, yeah.

Lainey Stancil (46:46)
and like our state and our

state is, I mean, you can drive for four hours in Georgia and never leave the state. So it's like, it's so crazy.

Chelsea Myers (46:55)
Yeah. I know. When we make

our trek down the East Coast to go to Florida, we're always like, God, we're going through Georgia. Okay, hold on. It's so long.

Lainey Stancil (47:04)
It's so long. mean, obviously,

obviously Florida is much longer than us, but it's still a really long state. Yeah, like.

Chelsea Myers (47:09)
Well, yes, but it is

it takes for New York and Georgia are always we're like, my god, we're going to be in New York forever. my god, we're going to be in Georgia forever. But yeah, but like what you're saying, though, especially when talking about these birthing centers is with these maternal health care like deserts. Yes, that's great that you have birthing centers, but they're not where they need to be. Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (47:18)
Yes. Well, and then our traffic sucks too, so that doesn't help.

They're not accessible, yeah. I

mean, they are for people who live in Atlanta. But like, I mean, for me, like, I live, I mean...

Chelsea Myers (47:40)
Right, right, but not...

Lainey Stancil (47:47)
What I feel like is like feels far out but like really isn't that far from Atlanta. I could probably get to Atlanta if there's not crazy traffic anywhere from like an hour and a half to two hours. But like I mean if you're in North Georgia you're not getting like or even South Georgia you're not getting to Atlanta like you're not that's not a possibility for you. So a birth center is out of the question. So people are like you have so many options hospital birth center home birth and it's like okay well home birth is you can have a home birth but you can't have a

Chelsea Myers (47:58)
Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (48:17)
or you technically aren't supposed to have a midwife present. So then that makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable that either they have to choose free birthing, which not everybody is comfortable with, or you have to choose to have a midwife with you and then some people aren't comfortable with having a midwife who's not licensed. And so that's an issue. And then it's like, well, you could do a birth center birth, but there's only two birth centers and they're in Atlanta and you live in Macon.

Chelsea Myers (48:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (48:46)
So you're screwed. So then your

Chelsea Myers (48:46)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (48:49)
only option is to go to the hospital and and then I mean considering that there's only

so many hospitals and all of these women all over the state of Georgia in these maternity care deserts there's women traveling you know there's all the women that live right there in the area that this hospital or OB is at and then there's women traveling two hours all over to come there because that's the closest one so now this doctor's overflowed and they're you know seeing 40 plus patients in a day which is insane ⁓

Chelsea Myers (49:15)
Yeah.

It's

so I'm so glad that you're talking about it because even like these are stats and things that I know. But up until like even even this conversation, they were just stats for me. Like I knew the numbers. I know that that Georgia always ranks like

Lainey Stancil (49:36)
Yeah.

Thank

Chelsea Myers (49:42)
so

low. think Alabama is the lowest of every of all the states. ⁓ If I remember correctly, but like Georgia and Alabama and a lot of the southern states always through March of dimes, like

Lainey Stancil (49:45)
Yeah, I think so too.

Chelsea Myers (49:56)
So, but these were just numbers to me and to hear. So I, like I said, I live in the Northeast. I'm up in Vermont. Midwifery is an everyday thing here. We have midwives, we have doulas. We even have like legislation for Medicare to cover doulas. ⁓

Lainey Stancil (50:13)
right?

That's something that we're also

like kind of just looking into and seeing if that's like a potential thing. ⁓ Something that Peach Day as a whole is trying to figure out as well since we don't have that. We have so many people in these rural communities who don't have a lot of money and don't have the money to afford something like a doula or a midwife. So Peach Day is wanting to try to start doing like sponsorships. So we're going to try to find funding ⁓ from private funders and things like that so that we can offer.

Chelsea Myers (50:38)
Mmm.

Lainey Stancil (50:44)
these moms the option to have a doula when they probably couldn't afford it because they're on Medicaid or something like that. hopefully we can, hopefully our legislators can figure something out to help.

Chelsea Myers (50:57)
bridge the freaking gap.

Lainey Stancil (50:59)
Yeah, yeah, so

Chelsea Myers (51:00)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (51:01)
it's so crazy and that's what like a lot of us here in the state of Georgia are like there's a lot of states where midwifery is there's only 13 states where midwifery isn't legal. So every other state it's legal, they're practicing, they're living life and doing everything as normal. It's just a normal everyday thing and we're like we don't understand why it's different here.

Chelsea Myers (51:12)
Yeah.

Well, that's

why that's why I brought it up at all. Because even as you were telling your story of meeting your midwife, to me, in my mind, I'm like, yeah, that's a beautiful story of how you met your midwife and how you had this home birth. But it's so much more complex than that. And I think for a lot of people who don't live in states where where you you have these barriers, it isn't real until you hear it, right? It isn't real until you hear it.

Lainey Stancil (51:48)
Yeah, I was incredibly lucky. Yeah.

Yeah, and I was incredibly lucky to happen to know somebody who knew a midwife because otherwise, like if you go on Google or something, like there's no way to just find midwives. Like you have to know somebody who knows somebody who knows a Facebook group, who posts in the Facebook group and hope that somebody drops a midwife in there. And you have to know the right Facebook group for people to actually put accurate names. So it's like, there's like, you know, if you don't know all of those steps or you don't know somebody or you're not like,

Chelsea Myers (52:15)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (52:23)
immersing yourself in the community and finding all these people, then it can be really hard to find midwives. And then it's like, it's very discouraging. And then there's only so many midwives in the whole state of Georgia. And so then they fill up really quickly. And then if they don't have any spots, I mean, now they all have like the biggest hearts in the world. So I feel like it's very rare that I have somebody say that like, yeah, I reached out to that midwife and she didn't have a spot for me.

Chelsea Myers (52:52)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (52:53)
because

they'll just work themselves silly and see as many moms as they can. ⁓ But it shouldn't be that way because they're humans too and they're moms too. I don't, I I think.

Chelsea Myers (53:03)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (53:06)
pretty much all of them, at least the ones that I know, are also moms or grandmas or, you know, maybe their kids are older but they're still moms and they still have, want to go to the holidays or be there on their kids birthday and a lot of them miss a lot of that stuff because they're at births helping other moms become moms.

Chelsea Myers (53:14)
Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, I'm blown away because even I feel like it was a curveball for me. And I kind of knew going into this. I knew what you, I knew what Peach State was all about. I know what you do, but even it just isn't something that's in.

my realm of thought because it doesn't make sense as much as it doesn't make sense to you it doesn't make sense to me and I do love that you also acknowledge and that and that your organization acknowledges and and supports

birthing in a way that feels safe, whether that means, like you're gonna support people, whether that means birthing in a hospital, whether that means birthing at home, ⁓ because that is a choice that you should have unless it is a medical emergency or a high risk pregnancy. ⁓ So I'm right on board with you. And I don't think, I mean, I think as empathetic human beings, you can't really argue against that. Like you want people to feel safe. So.

Lainey Stancil (54:23)
Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (54:26)
to kind of like wrap us back around a little bit, I wanna just, I wanna make sure that, how do I even wanna word this? I think if you could sort of sum up, because your journey, I feel like we barely glossed over, and I feel like there's so much more there, but the passion that you have for the work that you're doing, I feel it, I feel it, and I want,

Lainey Stancil (54:46)
Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (54:55)
I want others to feel it and I'm sure they do, but if you had to kind of like sum up what you're doing and what's most important to your mission right now, how do you think, like what would your like little blurb be about Peach State?

Lainey Stancil (55:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we recently kind of like reconvened and you know, tried to figure out like, okay, what is a tangible thing that we can do to start making change here in the state? Because unfortunately, that bill that the midwives had written, it got thrown out this session, it did not get pulled for vote. ⁓ Even though we had over 100 people reach out to the legislator who was in charge of that in the matter of like a couple hours, like we threw stuff out there and like, hey, reach out and try to get our bill pulled for vote and they

Chelsea Myers (55:36)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (55:41)
flooded and which is amazing and just like feels like really good to know that there's all those people you know that really want this but unfortunately the bill did not get chosen ⁓ so that means we have to wait until next session to kind of they're gonna have to rewrite a new bill ⁓ and kind of like restart and so me and my board met up and we're like okay what can we do that's like a tangible thing to start making change and fortunately enough for me it just so happens that me and both of my

board members that I currently have ⁓ are doulas. So I was like, I feel like the biggest thing that made a difference for me in my labor as a first time mom was that I had really good birth education. And my vice president, she actually saw that in her own clients over the last couple of years. The first year she said that she did not make birth education a requirement. The second year she did make it a requirement and she saw drastic changes.

in her c-section rates, in her unmedicated rates.

and things like that. And so was like, okay, well, we're all doulas and ⁓ education is, you know, a good thing that we could kind of explain to people like, hey, this is what we're doing so that, you know, we can hopefully get funding for it as well. ⁓ And so I was like, okay, let's do that then. So right now our big focus is trying to have free birth education classes that are done by doulas. ⁓ And we are hoping to, right now we're just trying to find locations

Chelsea Myers (56:58)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (57:15)
⁓ living out in a little bit more of like a rural area. There's not like a ton of event space. We have a coffee shop that is nearby that's slightly large enough for something like that, but it's we want it to feel homey. So we're trying to work with maybe some of like the counselors in the area who have a little bit larger of a space who have a little bit more of that like homey space feel because we don't want it to feel like a gym class sex ed. We want it to feel like

Chelsea Myers (57:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, no!

Lainey Stancil (57:45)
like

you're learning about like a life changing event that's gonna happen to you and something that, you know, so that they can feel empowered and feel like they are going into this and know what's gonna happen to them, what questions to ask, what they can say yes and no to, their rights as a birthing mom. And so we want to be able to do that kind of in the specifically in like an area where I live and the other areas that are these

⁓ maternity care deserts and lower income areas because most moms who are on Medicaid or don't have the money for a $500 birth education course that somebody's selling online or something like that.

Chelsea Myers (58:31)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (58:33)
And so that's kind of our goal right now is to kind of get that started. It's probably going to start here in our county for right now. I'm just where I am just because that's easier for me to get to and easier for me to find connections, you know, with friends and family who are in the area. But our hope is one day that we can expand it and we can have free birth education classes over the state of Georgia and so that moms can actually getting good education before they go into birth and they know like

Chelsea Myers (58:44)
Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (59:03)
you know, what's going on. Because I've met people who didn't even know that they had a placenta. I mean, it's just not like what I think is common knowledge is not always common knowledge. It's not, you know, something that people know. So ⁓ that's kind of like our big like thing that we're working on right now. And then obviously trying to make

Chelsea Myers (59:10)
Yeah. Yeah!

Mm-hmm.

Lainey Stancil (59:29)
doulas and midwives more accessible to women as well. ⁓ It is just hard with the midwives because they are

It is so hush hush. don't, you know, we don't want to put anybody's name out there and then them get in trouble. So it is a little bit easier to kind of start with the doula front because it's like, okay, well, if you can get connected with the doula, most doulas are connected with midwives. And then, you know, you can kind of like work the system backwards. And if you choose to have a hospital birth or a birth center birth, doulas are an amazing tool. Like I am so thankful every day for my doula. Like I don't know what I would have

Chelsea Myers (59:41)
Right, right.

Yeah.

Lainey Stancil (1:00:07)
done without her. ⁓ And now being one and like having clients say the same thing to me like it like warms my heart.

Chelsea Myers (1:00:15)
I always

say, so Quiet Connection, we don't promote things, we don't push things, we are a no judgment play, but the hill that I will die on is that we love a doula. I did not have doulas for either of my births because I didn't even know what a doula was. The most I knew about a doula was from Gilmore Girls, ⁓ because I am an elder millennial and they...

Lainey Stancil (1:00:27)
Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (1:00:41)
just I thought it was all like crunchy granola hippie like yeah and it's not what it is but learning about doulas working with doulas talking to doulas that is the one thing I will say is please learn about doulas please get in touch with a doula

Lainey Stancil (1:00:45)
Yeah.

Yes. Yes. And that's what we started like doing.

We do, ⁓ we turn to it a couple of times a month, but me and ⁓ usually at least my vice president, we go to the local coffee shop and we post it on Instagram. And we're just like, if you're a mom, if you're a birth worker, if you're somebody who's interested in birth work or is interested in becoming a mom, like we're just going to be at the coffee shop, having coffee, chit chatting, come, come talk to a doula.

like come pick our brains because it's so hard to like, I feel like some people are like scared to ask questions or like scared to talk. ⁓

Chelsea Myers (1:01:24)
Yes. Ugh.

Lainey Stancil (1:01:35)
you know, and the DMs or whatever. So I feel like it's, it's, you know, just making it like accessible. And that's why I love the idea of like doulas being the ones who are doing these birth education classes, because not only are they getting good birth education, but then they're also learning like what a doula is. And maybe it wouldn't be like so scary or maybe it wouldn't. I don't know if it's that like people are like scared of doulas. I think it's just like, I don't understand what the purpose is.

Chelsea Myers (1:01:37)
Hahaha

Exactly.

I don't think that people know, I don't think enough people know what a doula is. ⁓ And we've had doulas on the podcast before, and I'm really hoping that that changes. I hope that this is a step towards that. And that's why I love that you're doing this so much. I'm going to bring us home because I could talk doulas and I could talk birth and I could talk all of this stuff all day, but

Lainey Stancil (1:02:19)
Yeah.

same.

Chelsea Myers (1:02:26)
I actually

can't in real life because I'm a mom. ⁓ And I have, I have responsibilities. No, no, mean, responsibilities. I don't want them. ⁓ Laundry, the, the oldest is going to get off the bus here and a minute. And then I have to, yeah, turn it all back on and the three year old and whoo, all the things anyway. So, ⁓

Lainey Stancil (1:02:29)
I feel that. I know. Unfortunately. No, I'm just kidding. Responsibilities. I know. No. Laundry, vacuuming. Don't want to do any of it. Yeah. gosh. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Chelsea Myers (1:02:55)
We're doing things. We're doing this kind of experiment with how we end the episodes now. And it's a little woo woo, but bear with me. ⁓ So we're bringing it back to the days of there was no texting, there was no like, if you wanted to get a hold of somebody and they weren't there, you either had to hope their parents didn't answer the phone or you had to leave a message on the answering machine. And maybe you're too young to remember those days, but I remember them very well.

Lainey Stancil (1:03:04)
I it.

Yes.

I know I do slightly

I do slightly I I I am like what's considered like I think like a zillennial yes yes so I'm like that cusper or whatever cuz I'm 98 so I'm like literally right in like the cusp which is like I very much more identified with the Millennials I'm like please accept me

Chelsea Myers (1:03:32)
is that like a zennial? Yeah, you're okay. All right. Okay. Okay.

We'll take you. We'll take you. I mean, I don't speak for

all of us, but I'll take you. I'm a proud millennial. I think we're pretty cool. ⁓ But with that said, so you have no idea who my next guest is going to be. You don't know if they're going to be a mom, a dad, a birth worker, ⁓ what their experience is, nothing.

Lainey Stancil (1:03:52)
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, please accept me.

Chelsea Myers (1:04:12)
But you called Quiet Connection today and they weren't here to answer. They weren't here to answer the call. So you have to leave them a message and you can literally interpret that in whatever way you want. It doesn't have to be profound. doesn't, just, however you feel like leaving a message for them. The woo-woo part comes in where you have to listen to the episode before yours to get your message.

And I want to see, like, I'm going to be checking back in with guests and be like, Hey, did that message hit or was that a total miss? Like, right? Like I want to see if the universe is aligning us, but

Lainey Stancil (1:04:46)
Alright, I love it. Do I hear the

one first or do I just like go first?

Chelsea Myers (1:04:55)
No, you know, so when the episodes come out in season seven, you'll then you hear it. Yeah, it's a waiting game. It's a waiting game. So yeah, you don't know who my next guest is. I actually don't even remember who my next guest is. I have to look at my list. ⁓ But you got to leave him a message. What message would you like to leave them?

Lainey Stancil (1:04:58)
⁓ then you hear it. Okay. ⁓ gosh. Let's do it again. gosh.

Okay. Hmm.

Hmm. Let me think about it. I feel like the message that is just like always like I feel like is like my message that I give to like anybody I guess like in my ⁓ realm or anything is just like just be yourself and be yourself and

Chelsea Myers (1:05:19)
You

Lainey Stancil (1:05:40)
And just another thing is why not? That's my big question always to myself is like, why not? I, I at nine months postpartum started a nonprofit because I was like, you know what, why not? and so I'm like, I think that yeah, be yourself and always ask yourself why not? Why not me?

Chelsea Myers (1:05:48)
Yeah.

What?

I love it.

love it. I'll tell you, I never get the same answer twice, which is one of the reasons I love it. ⁓ yeah, we'll see if that you're gonna have to hold on. You're gonna have to wait and see what your message is. my goodness. ⁓ Lainey, I needed your energy. I now am aware that it is the afternoon. I now feel like I can function until my husband gets home from work. So thank you. also...

Lainey Stancil (1:06:12)
I know, ooh I'm excited!

Bye.

⁓ I know.

Mine just texted me he's on his way. I was like, yes, thank God. He got off early.

Chelsea Myers (1:06:31)
⁓ God, I still have a couple more hours. my God.

⁓ I also just am so thankful for the work that you're doing and for even educating me on things that were just numbers for me. And now they're real. And I appreciate that. They are real people and they're real experiences. And it's a reminder to myself that for as long as I've been doing this, there's still things, I don't know, still things I need to learn.

Lainey Stancil (1:06:46)
Yeah, they're real people.

Yeah,

I love that.

Chelsea Myers (1:06:59)
So thank you

for what you're doing and thank you for sharing space with me today.

Lainey Stancil (1:07:04)
Well, thank you for having me. I had so much fun.

Chelsea Myers (1:07:07)
I'm so glad. Okay, I hit stop.