02/27/2026
Friends of ABC, Inc. is a local nonprofit that is focused on making Auburn Birthing Center affordable for women who are low risk and desire a freestanding birth center. Please like and follow their page and support them financially if you are able. We are so blessed by their efforts to support families in our community.
Labor of Love for ABC 💗
Featured testimonial for February 26, 2026.
"Long before my first baby was born, I already knew I didn't want to give birth in a hospital or with an OB. My mother's stories of her own labors as well as my experience as a high risk L&D nurse had me convinced that if I were blessed to be low risk during pregnancy, I wanted no part of the system that I had seen create serious problems in healthy mothers, then offer to "fix" those problems with further invasive interventions. I couldn't have known it at the time, but this decision would profoundly affect the nature all of my deliveries and likely preserved the health of myself and my babies as well.
BABY CHANCE
My first labor was not terribly long, but it was absolutely dysfunctional. At 10 days after my due date, contractions started hard and fast at 8am, and, dilated to 1cm (barely), I made no more than 1cm of cervical change over the course of 7 hours. Stephanie, my midwife, was unable to deliver that day of all days, so Kori stepped in to provide care.
We made one trip to ABC only to return home when it was clear that labor, while painful, was still early. We returned to Auburn for a labor check around 2, where we found I was not making significant change, but I was in a lot of pain and having moderate to strong contractions every 2-3 minutes.
At this point, Kori opened ABC and I was able to soak in the warm water with my husband and doula nearby. That seemed to do the trick. An hour later at 4pm, I was suddenly 3-4cm. Not long after, I was 6cm, then 8. I asked Kori to break my water, and at 6:10pm on July 20, our 7lb 13oz baby boy arrived--ironically, so quickly that Stephanie didn't make it to witness the birth!
BABY SKITTLE
My second baby was born five days past her due date on the last day of the COVID lock downs-- April 30, 2020 --with my husband at my side and Stephanie catching. Her birth was faster, easier, and, thanks to ABC, remarkably like her big brother's.
There were no COVID precautions. No one was masked. No one restricted visitors or my movement. No swabs or testing were required. At 4:34am, our 8lb 14oz girl arrived after a record-breaking four and a half hour labor. In a time when the world was shut down, ABC was still up, running, and providing the same high quality care as they always did.
BABY BAM BAM
Our third baby arrived ten days after her due date in the middle of a severe thunderstorm and tornado touchdowns on March 31, 2023. Our biggest baby yet at 9lb 8oz, she took her sweet time in arriving due to a forebag that impeded her descent, then decided to deliver only her head and one shoulder before my contraction ended, leaving both of us rather uncomfortable and her in a position that mimicked a shoulder dystocia.
Stephanie and Aubrey, ever vigilant, recognized that it wasn't a dystocia, coached me to breathe until the next contraction blessedly arrived, and placed my daughter in my arms at 11:52pm. In spite of her unusual positioning, delivery was atraumatic and this was my fastest recovery to date.
BABY BEAR
When ABC shut down for a few months in 2024, I was devastated to see it close for other mamas who needed its unique approach to care. I wasn't thinking as we raised funds, spread awareness, and posted on social media that I'd be back at ABC to deliver again, but in Novemeber of 2025, that's exactly what happened.
My fourth baby arrived within an hour and a half of our reaching ABC. At only 2 days past my due date, I went into labor earlier than I had expected, but I had every confidence in the women I had chosen to be with me yet again, and this time, I would find myself in need of their help.
My son presented with a shoulder dystocia as I was pushing in the water. Before I could really process what was happening and why, Stephanie and Nicole had calmly helped me safely out of the tub and into the hands-knees position, or Gaskin maneuver, in order to open my pelvis and allow baby to be born. This position change did the trick, and our 4th baby arrived within seconds. It was only as Stephanie and Nicole rubbed my stunned newborn on my back that I realized I had had a dystocia. With a bit of stimulation and skin to skin, Baby Bear perked right up, nursed like a champ, and we proved that even a petite, 5'2" mama can atraumatically deliver a 10lb 6oz baby and walk away calling it her easiest recovery yet if she's got the right team in her corner.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
In a hospital, I know from experience what likely would've happened had each of my babies been born there.
Baby Chance would've been delivered by c-section for failure to progress after so many hours in a dysfunctional labor pattern and no change in dilation, especially because my labor couldn't have been augmented with pitocin. Every delivery subsequently would have been a VBAC or repeat C-section and high risk as a result.
Baby Skittle would've been born into COVID precautions at the height of the pandemic. Her Dad likely would've missed her birth while I labored alone, masked and tethered to monitors.
Baby BamBam's presentation could've easily been misinterpreted as a shoulder dystocia, resulting in trauma for both of us from unnecessary interventions.
And Baby Bear's true dystocia could have been handled with an OB cutting, pulling and/or pushing to bring about delivery, resulting in damage to both of us instead of a simple position change that allowed him to be born safely, quickly, and atraumatically.
Midwives, their title derived from the Old English words "with" and "woman", live up to their name to this day. Even as a labor and delivery RN, I had so many questions during my pregnancies and I never hesitated to ask my ABC midwives, who always took time to address my concerns with evidence and compassion.
When you need your car fixed, you don't call an HVAC technician. Birth is much the same. If you desire a physiological birth attended by the expert in that field, don't hire a surgeon -- hire a midwife!"
-Malinda Pagel, ABC Mom
