From Medical Office Manager to Maternal Mental Health Advocate: A Journey Through C-Section and Beyond

Stephanie Dunne's birth story challenges everything we think we know about being prepared for childbirth. With 17 years of managing an OBGYN office and constant access to doctors, midwives, and specialists, Stephanie confidently approached her first pregnancy. Her pregnancy was textbook perfect—what could possibly go wrong?

When labor began, it looked nothing like she expected. The dramatic movie-style contractions never materialized; instead, she experienced persistent back pain that left her uncomfortable but not alarmed. By morning, she was shocked to discover she'd been in active labor for 12 hours and was already six centimeters dilated. But the real surprises were yet to come.

During delivery, her daughter's heart rate dropped with each pushing attempt. After failed vacuum extractions, her trusted doctor called for an emergency C-section. Minutes later, her daughter was born blue and not breathing. Though successfully resuscitated, this traumatic birth was followed by breastfeeding struggles and the baby's dangerous blood sugar drops overnight. Everything Stephanie thought she knew—every advantage her medical background provided—couldn't prepare her for this reality.

"Knowledge isn't power if you don't know what to do with it when you have it," Stephanie reflects, capturing the essence of her journey. Despite professional expertise, she wasn't equipped for the mental health challenges that followed. Her story illuminates how women often measure their worth through external validation rather than trusting their inner wisdom, particularly during the vulnerable transition to motherhood.

Stephanie's powerful testimony reminds us that maternal health encompasses far more than medical knowledge—it requires emotional resilience, self-compassion, and the courage to define success on your own terms. Have you experienced moments where preparation couldn't protect you from the unpredictable nature of birth and motherhood? Share your story and join our community of mothers reclaiming their power.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Maternal Wealth Podcast
• 1:03 Stephanie's Background in Women's Health
• 4:38 Unexpected C-Section and Delivery Complications
• 11:13 Breastfeeding Struggles and Mental Health
• 15:43 Finding Your Own Maternal Power
• 18:16 Sponsor Message: Maternal Healthcare Provider Database

Transcript

Stephanie Theriault: 0:16

Welcome to the Maternal Wealth Podcast, a space for all things related to maternal health, pregnancy and beyond. I'm your host, stephanie Terrio. I'm a labor and delivery nurse and a mother to three beautiful boys. Each week, we dive into inspiring stories and expert insights to remind us of the power that you hold in childbirth and motherhood. We're here to explore the joys, the challenges and the complexities of maternal health. Every mother's journey is unique and every story deserves to be told. Please note that this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your healthcare provider for medical guidance that is tailored to your specific needs. Are you ready? Let's get into it. Today, we welcome Stephanie Dunn. A few months ago, I was looking for a woman who wanted to be on the show and Stephanie immediately reached out. Stephanie lives in Ohio and she has two daughters, a 10-year-old and a six-year-old. Stephanie works to help women turn their purpose into powerful presence. Let's welcome Stephanie to the show. Welcome Stephanie.

Stephanie Dunne: 1:39

Hi there. Thank you so much for having me today.

Stephanie Theriault: 1:42

Thank you for coming. I'm excited to get into the conversation to learn more about you, your birth stories and how that incorporated and transformed your journey to do what you're doing now in helping women.

Stephanie Dunne: 1:55

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to be a pretty amazing conversation, so I'm ready to get started.

Stephanie Theriault: 2:00

Would you like to start off and let us know about your two birth stories and how that brought you to where you are today? Yeah, sure.

Stephanie Dunne: 2:10

So, just to begin, so people don't think, like you know, that I don't necessarily have any experience in the medical world. So I actually managed an OBGYN office for a long time. I only say this because it kind of maybe brings out the realness and kind of that raw feeling of motherhood. No matter how much experience you think that you have or how much you think that you know that we all go through the exact same thoughts and feelings, even those that are in the women's health profession. So I spent 17 years in medical office management and leadership in an OBGYN office. So I managed multiple providers. I had not just a doctor but multiple midwives and nurse practitioners and a physician assistant and an ultrasound technician at my fingertips. So they were there in the office with me every single day to answer every single question that I had. So you would think that I would be very well versed and very prepared.

Stephanie Dunne: 3:20

My first pregnancy with my oldest daughter was near perfect. Growth-wise, she was well. Development-wise, she was well. There was nothing that would indicate any sort of mishaps in delivery whatsoever. Things in my mind were just going to go absolutely perfect. And because I was so well educated and again, I had all of these people to answer all these questions for me, right there at my fingertips. I just thought this is going to be easy peasy in and out. We're going to have a baby, she's going to be healthy, we're going to go home and we're just going to live our wonderful life. First of all, can I tell you too, even all of the patients that I encountered over the years, all of the stories and things that I had heard from labor and delivery, I thought when I first started having contractions and actually went into labor, that it would be a lot more like the movies, and I don't know how many other people thought that. I just thought as soon as I went into labor I would be screaming in agony and it would be the absolute worst thing that I had ever done in my entire life. But I started to have back labor with my oldest daughter and, you know, at first it was just like very uncomfortable to even sit down. So it started, you know, right around bedtime for us, which was like 9pm in the evening, and I just told my husband like I can't get comfortable, I can't lay down, I don't know, I'm just going to like stay up on the couch, I'll watch TV for a little bit and everything was fine In general. I was just having some back pain and it continued, continued, started to come around to my stomach. You know, we stayed up all night long and I'm like I don't know, I'm just so uncomfortable and I was never like screaming in pain and I thought there would just be clear signs. So I ended up at 8 am the next morning. This lasted all night long.

Stephanie Dunne: 5:35

At 8 am the next morning I called the physician assistant at our office because she was typically the first one there and I just said are you at the office? Yet Like I just have so much pain and I don't know why, like I'm not having any other concerns, I'm just in pain and I don't know. Can you like check me? Can we get a heart tone? Just see what's going on? I met her at the office. She checked me and she was like I mean, I would call you, you're definitely at a six. Like you are dilated in labor, you need to go to labor and delivery. And I was like you're kidding. And she was like how long has this been going on? And I said well, about 12 hours now. And you know, it was not obvious to me even that this was just it was time.

Stephanie Dunne: 6:27

So we went down to labor and delivery straight from the office. I got there and everything again was just seemed to be perfectly fine. I had the anesthesiologist come in and they asked if I wanted an epidural. I was not one of those people that wanted to try to do a natural birth, necessarily. I am a pretty small person in general and I just thought I don't know if this baby's seven pounds or so, I'm just going to go with the comfort. And that was again just one of those decisions. That was a decision of mine. I heavily applaud people that can give birth naturally and that's amazing. But I opted for the epidural. You know we went through all of that 315 or so.

Stephanie Dunne: 7:04

In the afternoon my water still had not broke. So they came in and broke my water and you know we immediately just kind of started pushing. Well, throughout the day my baby's heart rate had dropped several times and I didn't necessarily I don't think that they necessarily told me every single time that it did, for fear of just kind of making that anxiety worse and not sure. You know, I wasn't sure what to expect. So you know they were like we're going to go ahead and we're going to start pushing. So I did and immediately my baby's heart rate just dropped. So we stopped. We tried several times. You know her heart rate would come back up and I would try pushing again and it just immediately dropped. We went through obviously a series of different things, different positions, and they were like we're just not seeing any progress at all. So they had me try to push one more time. They could see the baby's head at that point but heart rate was dropping quickly. They tried to put on a vacuum, tried it three different times and failed and the third time that it popped off.

Stephanie Dunne: 8:18

I remember my doctor who I had worked for for a very long time, somebody that I trusted so much and his expertise and just his ability to remain calm in emergency situations. That's why I wanted him to deliver my child in the first place. Her heart rate just tanked at that point after that last pop off and he was like we're going to the OR. I was in there into the OR within a minute and a half and I think that first incision was made within like three to four minutes of him saying we're going. I remember the assistant physician yelling in the OR that you know she needed help.

Stephanie Dunne: 8:59

The baby had flipped so they had tried to pull her head out and she flipped before they could get her head out and they were able to finally together get her out. But she was blue, not breathing, and at first like completely scared me because obviously you know, you expect that your baby's just going to come out crying and everything is going to be fine. And then I heard them call for the resuscitation team and fairly quickly after that they backed the resuscitation team off. They never had to intubate her. They were able to stimulate her to come around. But you know her in anybody that knows and anybody that's had a baby, you know her first Apgar was a one and it's just a concerning number for a mom that expects.

Stephanie Dunne: 10:01

I've had this healthy pregnancy. Everything has been great. What happened? Where did it all go wrong? And because I was so educated and I knew that things went wrong, I knew that I should be able to expect the unexpected and I knew what all the unexpected were, that I thought there is no way that I can go into this and not come out with a perfectly healthy child. So everything was fine after that and when I say fine, like she was breathing, she had gotten her color back, things seemed good.

Stephanie Dunne: 10:40

They took us back to the room for recovery. She came back with us. We went just through all of those normal post-op C-section recovery steps. They're checking in. They let family come in because it was so late in the evening at that point in time and I said, you know, I just want my parents to come back. So they allowed my parents to come back to see the baby, and it was just them and my time. And I said you know, I just want my parents to come back. So they allowed my parents to come back to see the baby, and it was just them and my husband. And then, as the evening went on, they were like you know, we're going to go ahead, we're going to let you get some rest. Baby's good, everything's fine. We'll come back in and we'll check on her in just a little bit, but she's good.

Stephanie Dunne: 11:14

So I fell asleep. It was pretty late at night, obviously I was exhausted just from the C-section, and I woke up. I remember it was about four o'clock in the morning and I saw my husband sitting beside me but the bassinet was gone. And I said where did she go? And he said well, they came in in the middle of the night, you were sleeping. They said that she was a little bit limp and just not super responsive. And immediately my heart sank. Like what do you mean? And my husband's not in the medical field, he doesn't know always I would say the right way to explain things, or like maybe in the most comforting way, but he was like I don't know.

Stephanie Dunne: 11:54

They were really concerned with her. So they took her to the nursery and he said that they did some blood work and her blood sugar levels are really, really low and the pediatrician had apparently been following her through the night. They called him in, they got her stabilized, they hooked her up to an IV. He said you know, she's down in the nursery, she's doing fine, but they're going to have to keep her there until they can see what exactly is going on. Why are her blood sugar levels dropping?

Stephanie Dunne: 12:23

So we went down and I was met down there early in the morning by one of the lactation consultants and she was like you know, we would like for you to go ahead and try to breastfeed her. We had to give her something because, one, you were sleeping. Two, her blood sugar levels tanked so much we needed to figure out a way to get her stabilized. So she has had a bottle at this point in time. But if it is your desire to breastfeed, we want you to try that and I tried to breastfeed her. She would not latch for anything. We tried for days to get her to latch and I think they hooked me up to different pumps. We tried different ways of expression, we tried knee pumping, we tried, like so many different things and it just was a struggle.

Stephanie Dunne: 13:09

And I think you know, again, I went into all of that thinking I'm a, you know, healthy. I'm a healthy 28-year-old woman. I should be able to fairly easily breastfeed my child. I have no major medical issues. And again, I just thought I'm so well-educated on all of this and I have all of these people at my beck and call I should be able to do that, and none of it worked out the way that I thought it would. So I look back kind of on that. My daughter now is happy and healthy and growing and she is the most amazing kid in the entire world.

Stephanie Dunne: 13:51

But I think even the most educated, well-prepared women who give birth aren't necessarily equipped with the necessary tools to overcome when it doesn't all go perfectly, because one thing that I've realized with my own birth story, with my oldest daughter, is that knowledge really isn't everything. And I say now a lot of the times, like you know, we go through school even thinking like the more you know, the more power you have. But knowledge really isn't power if you don't know what to do with it when you have it. And that was the whole thing is that I had all of this knowledge. I had all of this kind of secondhand experience from other people, but I didn't learn or grow from any of it until I was faced with it myself.

Stephanie Dunne: 14:48

And I think the biggest thing that I was afraid to talk about because I was in a position where I should have so much knowledge was my own struggle with mental health after I had my daughter. And I think that that is not just for women who do have knowledge, but for all women. I think that it has become a struggle to really talk about some of the mental health challenges that come with even the most perfect of pregnancies. It's what happens after you come home, and all of those things that you are not just afraid to ask for help with, but you are afraid to handle them in your own way, because we look so much to other people to give us that power that we already have within us.

Stephanie Theriault: 15:40

Us that power that we already have within us. We pause this episode for a quick message from our sponsor. At Maternal Wealth, we aim to ensure that you have access to the best and the most appropriate care. That's why we created a Maternal Healthcare Provider Database. Maternal health providers can easily create profiles to promote their services and business, helping to increase access for those seeking their care. This is a one-of-a-kind database that offers a new and exciting way for women to search for and find maternal health providers near them and tailored to their specific needs. Profiles feature badges that highlight various services, such as TODAC-friendly practices, all-female practices, lgbtqai plus inclusivity, language options, access to vaginal breach services and more. Additionally, be sure to check out our Not your Average Birth course. In this course, I discuss the variations that exist in hospital practices based on policies, staffing and budgets, all of which can directly affect your birth experience and outcome. When you say we're afraid to handle it in our own way, what do you mean by that?

Stephanie Dunne: 17:16

I think, if we looked at a lot of the roles that we play in life, we are externally directed much more than we are internally led. So we have so much frustration, we feel so stuck in so many of the roles that we play in life because we are constantly looking to be validated from external circumstances, especially when it comes to motherhood and maternal mental health. We compare ourselves a lot to other moms, to other women. Are they handling it better than us? Did they lose the weight faster? She seems happy. Why am I not?

Stephanie Dunne: 17:51

And then we have all of these people around us that are telling us well, this is just how motherhood is.

Stephanie Dunne: 17:56

You're stressed and overwhelmed 99% of the time, but this is what you signed up for and we're not necessarily given the tools to look at the possibility of like what if this isn't how it's supposed to be?

Stephanie Dunne: 18:12

And I think that frustration comes from the fact that we cannot get ourselves from who we are to who we're meant to be, because we're giving other people the power. We're waiting for the tools from other people to be able to build that bridge. We're not putting that power into our own hands. So when I looked at my own motherhood journey, I think I immediately thought to myself what did I do wrong? Why couldn't I deliver this baby the way I wanted to or the way that you're supposed to? And you know, unfortunately there are these mom groups and stuff all over and influencers that we're following on social media that are telling women that you're less of a mom if you have a C-section, if you don't deliver vaginally like that's the way that it's supposed to be, and if you had a C-section, you took the easy way out and you don't want to let those things affect you. But we are so conditioned to believe that our achievements and all of those things determine our worth and our value, and at the extreme level, when we're looking at maternal health and