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While the rising maternal mortality rates in America are both staggering and shocking, we wanted to spend our time with this interview focusing on the people doing work which are actually saving women’s lives. Dr. Katherine Sylvester is a physical therapist that is doing that work. She has created a company, Operation M.I.S.T., providing support to women during pregnancy and after childbirth in a way that is transforming their experience and giving hope back to women and their families for a better life.
Unfortunately, Dr. Katherine Sylvester’s experience during her second pregnancy and postpartum period, is not unusual or the exception. And too many women are suffering from similar and even worse circumstances. She suffered from preeclampsia during pregnancy, which led to continued elevated blood pressure in the postpartum period and multiple visits to the Emergency Department. Consistently taking her away from her children…and just making life much harder to navigate.
She was extremely fortunate though. A colleague sent her a health monitor to try for different research that just happened to be in the early phases of postpartum. She started to see valuable data and information about the state of her body and health. She could get real time feedback for when she was pushing too hard, when she needed to rest, or when she needed additional help or support. Then she realized this could be a tool for saving mom’s lives and turned in to the the start of Operation M.I.S.T.
Please join us for this conversation. Dr. Sylvester is a beautiful force of inspiration who is savings mom’s lives.
Katherine Sylvester is a mother of two, physical therapist, preeclampsia survivor, clinical assistant professor for women’s health, and VBAC-certified doula. She is the founder of Operation M.I.S.T. where she and her team daily and remotely monitor the health of women via a smart device and provide them with the support, data, resources, advocacy and education they need to have healthy pregnancies, catch issues early and between office visits, survive delivery and recover without complications.
Katherine does not believe in assumptions, protocol-driven care or generalized interventions; instead, she believes that women’s journeys are as unique as their fingerprints and should be treated accordingly. She knows that women’s bodies were designed to give birth and that the creation of an internal and external environment where they and their baby can thrive is the best gift she can give them. She finds great joy in teaching women about their bodies so they can trust it, prepare it, and protect it all throughout their womanhood journeys. From the bottom of her heart, she is grateful for every opportunity she is given to shower women with love while empowering them to live!
0:00 Dr. Ginger Garner: Hi, everyone. I have an extra special guest here with me today. We are back for another episode. And today I have with me Dr. Katherine Sylvester, full stop. She is incredible. The work that she’s doing, I won’t waste your listening moments talking about that because she’s gonna tell you, she’s gonna tell you herself. But before we get started, I wanna say welcome, Katherine.
0:31 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Thank you.
0:34 Dr. Ginger Garner: And I want to throw confetti in the air and introduce her first, and then we will talk. Okay, here we go.
Katherine is a doctor of physical therapy, so Dr. Sylvester. She is a mom of two. She is a preeclampsia survivor. She is a clinical assistant professor for women’s health and a VBAC certified doula. Yes! That’s just so fantastic. She is also the founder of Operation Mist, which we’re going to learn about.
She and her team daily remotely monitor the health of women via smart devices and provide them with all kinds of stuff, support, data resources, advocacy, education, everything they need to have a healthy pregnancy. And as a mom of three myself, this is like the heartbeat of my existence on the planet, is seeing awesome stuff like this done.
Because we need to be catching those issues early, and that’s what her passion is all about. I like this sentence that’s in her bio that I’m about to share with you, which is this.
Katherine does not believe in assumptions, protocol-driven care, or generalized interventions. Instead, she believes that women’s journeys are as unique as their fingerprints and should be treated accordingly. Welcome, Katherine.
01:58 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on, Dr. Ginger.
02:03 Dr. Ginger Garner: And so I’m so, um, overjoyed to see the work that you’re doing. And so I have a very easy question to start us off because we, we should have hit record like before record because, we were already talking about some fantastic stuff, swapping quotes. It was fantastic. So I had this question to kick it off. What got you fired up to tackle maternal health specifically?
02:34 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Wow. So believe it or not, so you said I have two children, two precious children. In my first decade, I actually spent [working] in the hospital. So I was able to see how insurance and not having insurance impacted patient care and how discharge and, you know, just different things, a lot of productivity demands ended up dictating what some people got and what other people didn’t. And so I got to see that.
But about year seven into my career, I had my son, and my son is amazing. And I gave birth around the same time as four other women. And about a year after he was born, these women asked if we could go out to dinner. So I was like, sure. And when we got there, they started talking about the things that they were dealing with. One was dealing with postpartum depression. Another had a C-section and then had a hernia behind her C-section. Another one had issues with intercourse, pain with intercourse. And then the other one was dealing with incontinence.
And here I am. with none of these issues. And I thought the only difference between me and them is that I had access to information that helped me get through my pregnancy and navigate it, as well as the postpartum period in an informed way. And so I decided to walk their journey with them individually each for 15 weeks. and see how could I help them and what is common amongst them.
And what I realized was that a lot of women deal with the same things, issues with muscle imbalance, urinary incontinence, sexual fulfillment, internal confidence, and core stability, but that you can’t just look at it through that lens. You have to look at it through the lens of their diet, their exercise, or the way they move, their sleep quality, how they manage stress, their social interactions. And if you can really wrap that service around a mom, then you can get her to a better place and help her avoid some of these issues that she should have never run into in the first place.
And so that started the first part of my journey. But then after my sweet daughter, I had issues with my blood pressure. And my midwife, though, caught those issues before I delivered, but she caught them when my blood pressure was 128 over 78. So, you know, normally, if you look at the way obstetrics are done, you start getting concerned at 140 over 90 blood pressure, right? But my midwife knew that my baseline was 100 over 60. So when I went in and mine was 128 over 78, she was like, Katherine, something is going on. We’re going to figure out what it is.
And so she tested my urine, saw that there was, you know, there was protein in it. I had the swelling. I had all the signs. And she said, you know, what you might have to deliver in a hospital.
And I, so both of my babies, I delivered them at home. So immediately I started crying and she was like, okay, Katherine, let’s just see. Let’s check the baby. Let’s check you. I had never worn a monitor before, but she put the monitor on, baby checked out at 10 out of 10. So she said, okay, do you want to have this baby at home tomorrow? And I was like, yes, yes, let’s do this at home tomorrow. So plans changed, we had my sweet baby at home and it was wonderful.
But she did tell me before she left that I needed to really take it easy, essentially be on bed rest. And you know, the PT in me was like, bed rest? We’re already at elevated risk for blood clots. I’m not gonna be on bed rest, but I will make sure that I modify what I’m doing to match what I feel my body can handle. But you know, it’s not as objective as we think it is. You know what I mean? Like unless you have something that is monitoring you, you don’t know how much is too much sometimes. That’s why high blood pressure is called the silent killer, right?
And so I’m at home thinking everything is fine, but she messaged me and was like, Hey, make sure you’re checking your blood pressure twice a day. And I was like, okay. So at about day six, and by this time I had done a photo shoot at home. I had family in and out. I was still taking care of my older son. Of course I was cooking meals, like just going about life as normal, but I wasn’t waking up at five in the morning. I wasn’t going to bed at midnight. So I felt like the modifications that I made were enough, you know, but when I started taking my blood pressure, I realized that they were not.
And so if I had listened to her and really just took it easy, I don’t feel like I would have ended up with blood pressures in the 160/110 realm and in and out of the ER two, three times a week. And then of course, still trying to take my baby back and forth. But a PT sent me a watch. And she was like, hey, we are heading this…her name is Perry Brubaker. I love her and will love her forever. And she sent me a watch and said, hey, we’re doing a study to see if we can detect COVID using wearable devices. Would you mind wearing one? And I said, sure. I’m postpartum, so excuse the rest of the data. But of course, I’ll wear it. And she said, Oh no, that’s fine. That’s fine.
And so I was wearing the watch and when, you know, I would walk a 10th of a mile. Cause you know, people are told we’ll walk 20 minutes a day. Make sure you need vitamin D. The baby needs vitamin D. At 1/10th of a mile, my stress was through the roof. My heart rate was through the roof. My blood pressure was through the roof and I walked back home.
And I started realizing that some of the foods that I was eating would cause my stress to go up. And they were healthy foods, cucumbers, tomatoes, things that you would not associate with being unhealthy. But I realized my kidneys are not doing very well. Blood pressure is definitely not doing very well. And the provider that I had told me, now I had to swap.
So if things go really well, you stick with your midwife, right? But if things go wrong, an OB takes over. The OB told me, you are black. You spent most of your life in the South. You probably don’t know how to eat well. I’m sure you had high blood pressure that went undetected before pregnancy and your kidneys will not recover. You will be on blood pressure medication the rest of your life. I have had patients like you before.
And so when he told me that, I was like, wow. he’s not going to give me any of the resources that I need because he already has decided in his mind that I’m not going to recover. And he also thought I didn’t have a primary care doctor and I wouldn’t follow up with him if I did.
And so with all of that happening, but with me having the watch, I was like, I can recruit my own team. So I got a kidney doctor on board, a dietician, the PT that I told you about, she continued to monitor me, had an MD who was trained in obstetrics and gynecology, but decided to go a different route. and a pharmacist.
And together, within two weeks, I was off of blood pressure medication. Within nine months, my kidneys had completely healed. And I thought in that moment, I want to do this for other women. What if I had sent devices? What if I had this device on during the pregnancy? Would they have been able to detect the preeclampsia? Would I have recovered better afterwards?
And I felt like the answer was yes.
And at that same time, there was a grant being offered by the people who sent me the watch. And they said, hey, we’re trying to see, can we use wearables in other populations? And so I wrote for the grant, won the grant, sent 40 watches all over the country. And by the time the second watch was on a mom’s arm, I realized that this was going to be a game changer.
And since then have been able to catch things like anemia, low vitamin D, low vitamin B levels, sleep apnea, preeclampsia, a fluid overload, like all of these things between office visits, right? And following delivery, postpartum hemorrhage. It’s just our vital signs can tell us a lot, but I really would not have thought about doing this with women had that experience not happened to me. So that’s where it all came from.
09:58 Dr. Ginger Garner: There is so much in what you just said. I wanted to like cheer and then I also wanted to like cry. And then I felt, you know, the frustration and the flat out anger that you must’ve felt at what to me very much sounds like a sexist, racist approach to someone talking about or trying to give what they were calling healthcare, but actually wasn’t. It was judgmental.
It was judgmental among other things, right?
So I felt all these emotions while you were telling your story and talking about it. I had read in learning about all of your work and doing research ahead of time, I had read about what your OB said to you. And I just was like, that is unfortunately probably the norm, right, of how women are being treated or how women of color are being treated. And you’re such a superstar in this arena. I mean I couldn’t wait to get you on the podcast to talk about these things.
Here’s another quote, and then I have a back end question on top of that. I heard Dr. Jennifer, I think her name is pronounced Mieres, but if I’m mispronouncing it, I’m sorry. She is a black female physician and cardiologist at the Katz Institute for Women’s Health. And she said this, and this was on a gaslighting interview about medical gaslighting. She said, “Many women don’t feel empowered to speak up for their health and wellness. Instead of reinforcing the idea that they be good patients, right? We need to encourage them to push back.”
And that landed with me so powerfully because I think if you’re a woman and you’re in the healthcare system, you’re going to feel that. You’re going to get medically gaslit at some point. If you are a woman in the system and a woman of color, then your risk goes up. It’s a statistic. It’s awful. And here we are dealing with that. So when she said that thing about pushing back, and then you shared your story, and I was like, it required you to basically shed that, you know, that oppressive burden of being medically gaslit and being treated in such a horrible way and say, I’m going to build my own team.
Where did you, what would you say to other women who are feeling that? How do they push back? How do they begin to build their team? Now, keep in mind that they can always reach out, right? Because, you know, we offer these resources, you offer these resources, but how did you find the courage to do that?
Because that must be so emotionally, spiritually, psychologically wrecking every time you experience it. Even though you’re a healthcare provider, you’re a human being, you’re a person. How did you find the strength to push back? And then what are the first steps that you would have moms who aren’t pelvic PTs, what can they do?
13:11 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: I love that you asked that. I realized that, so my mom is not from the United States. She’s from Panama. And growing up, I saw her birth four children. I mean, not saw her birth, which I knew that she birthed for children. She didn’t use an epidural or anything like that. She breastfed all of us. She always taught us to just believe in our bodies.
And then I believe that our bodies were designed to give birth. That’s one thing that If no one remembers anything else from this podcast, remember that your body was uniquely designed to give birth. And so the scariest part for me was actually not the preeclampsia diagnosis. I was like, I think we can manage this.
And my provider, my midwife, she said, Katherine, if anybody can do this, you can. She birthed my first son. And so it took her believing in me. My husband, when I came home and told him what we were going to do the next day, he was like, okay, let’s do it. And it was just very encouraging.
But I think that it was really just going back to my belief that my body can do this. I don’t care what he’s saying or what his staff believes, because while I told it to you back to back, it was really one session after the next. And what I was realizing was when I’m at home, my blood pressure is actually okay. It’s the getting dressed and then going the 45 minute drive south. And then my husband has my baby outside. So then I’m walking back and forth between the waiting room and inside.
And as soon as I get in there, I would do my breathing. I would listen to positive music. I would just like prepare myself and then I would go. And as soon as I got back there, my blood pressure would shoot up and I could feel it. I could feel my veins. I could feel my heart pounding. And it was just like, this place is toxic. And so I have to choose, am I going to wake up and continue to do this week to week so that he can check on me? Or am I going to make a different decision? And so that’s what I did.
And I think that that’s what we have to realize. There is help out there if we seek it. There are other people who can be on our team if we ask for it. There are a lot of resources, but sometimes we feel like we don’t have access to them. And now I realize that there are resources everywhere. And so I would just say, you have to decide that your life is worth it and understand that it really is either a life or death or quality of life or death situation.
And I think that once we realize that that is what’s at stake, then we fight harder. We fight for ourselves. And so for the women out there, choose a team that is for you. Choose a provider who will pause. People try to give, you know, there are a lot of different recommendations for who you should choose and why you should choose them, but what I say is choose a provider who is willing to pause. And then my preference is midwife over OB, just because of the difference in how they’re trained. And it also depends on the woman’s goals.
And so if your goal is to have an uninterrupted, unmedicated birth, or just a birth where you are allowed, because we should not, it shouldn’t even be an allowance, right? What we desire should be the first thing on everyone’s mind. And if you, regardless of where you are in your pregnancy, start to feel like that is not being prioritized, then you go to somebody else. Because at the end of the day, we are dependent on the provider, right?
That whole power differential, that’s a real thing. And we feel very vulnerable during the time when we have to give birth. And so I would say, choose a provider before you get pregnant, just start getting to know them, because it’s hard to get to know somebody during the process, because they’re only going to be in the room with you for 15 minutes at the most, right?
And so if you do that homework beforehand, then you don’t run into as many issues down the line. But every step of the way, check into how you’re feeling and say, Is this really what I want? And then there’s a beautiful acronym, the BRAIN acronym. And I want to make sure that I get it right, but it’s making sure to ask all the questions. And that’s all we do really with Operation Mist is we get women to ask the questions that they need to ask so that they can make informed decisions.
So what are the benefits? What are the risks? What are the alternatives? What does my intuition say? And what happens if I do nothing?
And so if you go and you get all of those questions answered, then no matter what happens, you’re going to feel empowered at the end of the day. And that’s what we’re finding. There are women who, you know, they have prodromal labor. And I think, you know, the funny thing is, I think more people prodromal labor than others or than people think is common. But the problem is, as soon as women start having contractions, they go straight to the hospital. Right. But if they waited for the rule, the 3-1-1 rule, so contractions are three minutes apart, they last a minute, that happens for an hour. By the time you get to the hospital, you’re almost ready to deliver your baby. But if you jump in as soon as you start contracting and you’re one of those women who labor over eight days, then you start doubting yourself. They start listening and monitoring more and it can just result in a disaster. And so it’s never too late. to change your team. I changed my team my first pregnancy at seven months. And it was actually, the provider helped me. I said to her, man, I wish I could have a home birth. And she said, do you know Carlene Allen? And I said, no, I don’t. She transferred my records over to her. It was such a smooth transition. But I really believe that it was because she had my best interest at heart. And I think you can feel that as a woman. Don’t ignore that intuition and don’t be afraid to fight or feel like you have no other options. If you get to the end or even in labor and delivery, you know your body. If something feels off, then speak up and continue to speak up until someone listens to you.
19:21 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah, that’s so important. I did the same. I was similar. I actually went through two practices, three before on the third one, I felt someone where I felt safe.
19:30 Katherine Sylvester: Go girl.
19:31 Dr. Ginger Garner: Where I knew that when I saw, she had a little eight and a half by 11, just a sheet of paper up in her desk area that I walked by one day and it said, I support perineums.
19:45 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Wow. You knew right away.
19:47 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. And when I heard the stories of the Crock-Pot dishes of warm compresses and things that they would bring in and do, and she really did. But I think you and I had, since we had a similar experience like that, it says two things.
One, you can be completely unsettled with your provider and know that you can go find another one. That those resources can be available to you. And if it feels overwhelming, if it feels scary, because I think to probably even for you and, you know, and I being in the system, it’s still scary because you’re stuck leaving one and trying to find another. That, you know, for everyone listening, you can reach out and there are resources that, which we’ll get ready to talk about in just a second, provide to you so that you can feel comfortable walking away from a provider that does not make you feel safe, that does not make you feel heard, because all of those are genuine red flags.
20:48 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Amen. I agree. And you know what I love, you know, when you said, what, what did they do? I was thinking about the last mom who birthed with us and she was having, she wanted to have a vaginal birth following a cesarean, but when she was at home, she felt like something was off. So I said, well, go on in, you know, it doesn’t matter about the 3-1-1 now we need to go in and make sure that you’re taken care of.
And she ended up, you know, mother’s intuition, it did end up being a situation where she needed to have another cesarean. And after she delivered, and even before she delivered, she told them, you know, I’m really afraid because I hemorrhaged with my first birth. So I would really like it if you all would watch me more closely, if you could quantify my blood loss, like she asked about all of the things. And they because of where she lives and she didn’t want to change providers, she just kind of stuck with it and was like, I’m going to advocate for myself no matter what.
So after she delivered, she felt okay, but we noticed that her heart rate was up. It was up as if she was exercising.
So we reached out to her and was like, ‘Hey, how are you feeling?’
And she was like, ‘Oh, I feel okay. But when they tried to get me out of bed, I felt like I was going to collapse. So they put me back in the bed.’
And I said, ‘okay, well, did they recheck your hemoglobin?
And she said, ‘no, they said that everything’s fine. It was seven right after delivery. So I should be fine.’
Now, prior to her delivering, she was 11.4. So she had gone from 11.4 to seven. Okay. And so it is a huge drop. And she was dizzy. And, you know, when they checked her blood pressure, it was low and they did not recheck her hemoglobin. So the next day they were like, well, we’ll give you iron.
And I said, no, no, no, no. You need to ask them to recheck your hemoglobin and let them know that you’re not going home until they recheck it, because I know everybody wants you to leave the hospital. So if you refuse to go home, they will do this intervention for you, right?
And so like, she talked to them and she was telling them, ‘hey, my heart rate’s been up. I’m not feeling good. I’m dizzy, whatever.’ As soon as she said, ‘I am not going home without this, they rechecked it.’
Her hemoglobin was at a 5.9. And so at that point they said, okay, we had to get you a transfusion. We are so sorry. We’re going to make this right. And it’s like, no, you had her signing discharge papers. And so if she had not stood up for herself, can you imagine? And her home is massive. She has 20 steps to get up to her room. Carrying a baby up 20 steps with a hemoglobin of 5.9 and a heart rate in the 160s is a recipe for disaster.
And so we have to start, it’s like you said, like if someone’s not going to listen, tell somebody else. If the nurses change shifts, tell the next nurse. If the janitor comes in, talk to the janitor. We are going to talk to anybody who will listen to us and get us in touch with the people who need to hear what we have going on..
23:42 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. You know, for everybody listening, I just want to emphasize that these statistics are not new. I began to track statistics through the state of the world’s mothers report through the nonprofit Save the Children organization 20 years ago. My oldest will be 18 pretty soon, so it’s been a while. And I got immediately angry. I did two things. I was tracking those reports, and then I read a book called The Price of Motherhood by Anne Crittenden.
That got me into looking at the statistics of what really is a global maternal mortality crisis. And so I just wanted to take a moment because you all, you know, all these things, right? You know, the stats, this is why you’re doing it. But it really is a pervasive problem, particularly in the United States, where we have the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country.
We have the highest first day infant death rate because of the things that you’re talking about, of the exact stories that you’re sharing, where it’s not just impacting the mom. If the mom is carrying the infant and she falls, and there’s infant drop, which happens all the time, then it’s a pervasive epidemic problem that we need to take very seriously. So it might sound like, oh, I don’t need to worry about that. My provider is schooled and educated and they’re gonna go in and they’re gonna take care of me because they’re the ones that have the MD or the whatever after their name, and even PT, right? Well, that’s not the case. You have to learn the questions to ask because this can happen to anyone. Not to fearmonger, but we already have the stats that make it scary, you know.
25:41 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Yeah. Absolutely.
25:43 Dr. Ginger Garner: So let’s talk about Operation Mist a little bit because you’ve You’re saving lives. You are, what’s the proverb? And we can swear on here a little bit. It’s not really a proverb. It’s kicking ass and taking names. A little bit of a cliche here. But we can say that because that’s what it’s going to take to stop moms from dying. To stop babies from also dying because of poor care, poor access to care, not being triaged appropriately, just like in the story that you told.
So I read this about your Operation Mist, pulled that right off the website. So here it is. I want to read it to everybody. It says, Operation Mist has helped women modify their lifestyles to have healthier pregnancies, detect issues between office visits, which is huge, avoid unnecessary medical interventions, advocate for necessary ones, and recover following delivery without complications.
That is everything the world needs today. So talk to me a little bit about Operation Mist.
26:49 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: I love, I love Operation Mist. I love the moms in Operation Mist. You know, the thing of it, in terms of Operation Mist, so we monitor women’s health data remotely. So we send them a smart device. And every time they open their app, their health data goes to a cloud. So by health data, I mean blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen, like how their body’s managing oxygen, their sleep quality, all of those things go to a cloud. And then they come to the computer screen of health care providers, and then it’s graphically represented. And we’re able to see when a woman deviates too far from what is normal for her.
And so that’s the key. Everybody is different. And so if we can see that someone’s blood pressure was 100 over 60, and now it’s 120 over 80, we can tell them, hey, you need to go get checked out. And that’s how we actually caught preeclampsia very early in a woman who came on. She was only two weeks on our dashboard. And she told us in no uncertain terms, I do not exercise. I never exercise. I am not exercising. But she was moving around and things like that. But it was really good that she was honest.
And so when someone comes on, We do about an hour long conversation just to get to know what does your day look like and don’t change anything for our, you know, for our benefit, we need to really know what you’re doing. And then from there, see how it’s impacting your body.
And so she told us that she didn’t exercise. So when we saw that her heart rate went down, her stress went down and she spiked about 25 and 60 minutes. It looked like she was exercising. We reached out. So we just shot her a text message and said, hey, is anything different? And she said, well, yeah, I’ve been swelling a lot. Actually, my legs feel like they’re like elephants and I’ve been peeing, like I’ll go use the bathroom and I have to go right back. And, you know, so she’s just all the signs.
And I said, well, are you having a headache? She was like, no. I said, can you take your blood pressure for me? Her blood pressure was a little over 120 over 80, but her baseline is actually 90 over 60. So I said, you really need to call your provider. She said, I called them. They told me to put the blood pressure cuff on the other arm and just kind of relax for the next couple of days until my appointment.
And I said, ‘well, but are you going to relax?’
And she’s like, ‘well, no, I mean, I have to go to work. I have to pick up my, you know,…”
It’s a good idea, right? In theory, I guess, to try to relax. But if your blood pressure is still high, you’re still having the swelling, you’re still going back and forth to the bathroom, and you’re going to still go to work. You need to go in and be seen. So I told her, I said, don’t worry about it. Just go into the ER. If nothing is wrong, then they’ll send you back home. But at the end of the day, you’ll at least be checked out. So just go.
So she went within two hours. Her blood pressure was 143 over 93, and they admitted her with a preeclampsia diagnosis. And so, you know, when we’re able to see what’s different for her, then she’s able to, like you said, get triaged appropriately because she can self, you know, self-refer. And, you know, sometimes it’s not that.
Sometimes it’s just, you know, we had a mom and they told her she was going to have to have a C-section. She was at 39 weeks. She went into her appointment. Her blood pressure was through the roof. Now, I have to tell you, we had agreed at the beginning of her pregnancy that because Olive Garden shot her blood pressure up, that she was not eating Olive Garden for the whole whole pregnancy. So she is doing well, vitals looking great. And by almost the end at 39 weeks, right before her appointment, she goes to Olive Garden.
And so when she got there, they were like, oh no, your blood pressure is uncontrolled. We need to go ahead and just get this baby out. You’re already at 39 weeks. We can just go ahead and have a C-section. So of course she calls me in tears after the appointment. She was like, oh my God, my blood pressure is up. They said I have to be scheduled for a C-section.
And I said, well, tell me about your day. How have you been hydrating? What did you eat? You know, just kind of trying to talk her through. How did you feel you slept last night? Did anything stressful happen? Because she was also one where sleep quality was impacted by the house she stayed in. So when she stayed with her boyfriend, mattress was not as good as you know, when you stay with your mom. And so her sleep quality was often impacted. So we were just talking through our day. And when she told me she went to Olive Garden, I said, girl, you better drown yourself in water. Call your doctor in the morning, like take your blood pressure, call him, let him know what your blood pressure is.
She went on to carry to 41 weeks and delivered her baby just fine. But it’s like, sometimes we just need that reminder. As moms, we’re not gonna get it perfect every day. We’re going to want maybe to have a snack or not move one day. But if we can look at our data and see that, wow, on the days when I sleep nine hours, my body actually, I have a high body battery. My stress is really low. My blood pressure is better. It’s just, a navigator, you know, it’s like a GPS for your life, but it’s on your wrist. And if you’re not following the GPS, you have somebody who will lovingly reach out to you and remind you that not all complications that occur are because a doctor is ignoring you.
If we can show up to pregnancy healthier, show up to delivery healthier, then when we say, no, I want to go ahead and carry, I don’t want to be induced. They can look at your vitals from the last nine months and see that, yeah, she’s tolerating this pregnancy really well and continue to let you carry. And so I feel like sometimes the fight is the fight that we have within. Most women, when they’re told don’t drink during pregnancy because it can harm your baby, they’re like, okay.
What I’m finding with Operation Mist, because we have monthly meetings too, so we meet once a month where we educate women about their bodies. That’s all that this is really about. Know your body. You are with you every day. It does not matter how much you love your provider. They do not know you as well, and they have a lot of other people to get to know. So we have to take some of the onus on ourselves and show up healthy, right? And get the help that we need onto our team when we’re asking for things for our baby shower.
If we know we don’t have anybody in the house to help us follow in delivery, why don’t we put sponsorship for a postpartum doula on there. Now we have someone who we know will take care of the house, will take care of the baby, so we can take care of ourselves. Like, we need to start asking for different things instead of asking for onesies and walkers, right?
We can be asking for things to help us support breastfeeding and to rest well. And even, you know, sometimes moms toward the end of their pregnancy realize with their data that their bodies are truly stressed. They cannot afford to drive back and forth to their job that’s, you know, an hour away and work for 10 hours and then drive back and then take care of the children. So what they do is they take maternity leave a little bit early. Why? Because their spouses or their grandma has decided we’re going to sponsor you for that two months that you have to be out of work. Because we see what it’s doing to your body.
And so it’s just, how do we empower ourselves knowing that the system has not yet caught up to our needs? And so that’s what this watch really helps women do. And then also, you know, you think about it. So one of our moms post-delivery, we always tell them, check your blood pressure. Blood pressure is going to spike within those first six days. It’s what’s killing moms. And so if we know that this is going to happen, but it depends on the extent of the person, right?
So blood pressure is going to get higher, but you had preeclampsia before, you had chronic hypertension, or you have two children to take care of, and your husband drives trucks out of town. So when you go home, you’re by yourself. Let’s set ourselves up for success. But if we run into an issue, let’s have a backup plan. Because I think that for me, being separated from my child, from my daughter, was the thing that scared me the most.
And so I told my husband, if I’m going to be going to and from these appointments, I need you to bring her with me so that I can come out, breastfeed her and have that reprieve. But I think also just understanding the risk. Women don’t know that their kidneys are going to work 50% harder and their heart is going to work harder and their you know, everything is being displaced to take care of this child. They don’t realize that it’s really a marathon.
And if you go a marathon and don’t have any water, you’re going to collapse and give out. And so I feel like the stronger we are, the more knowledgeable we are, the more empowered we are. And so it’s really all about education and women knowing their bodies so that when they stand up for themselves, they don’t regret it. You know, because the worst thing that can happen is that you are so afraid of the system that you push back when you actually need to have intervention done. Right. And so I think the best way to do that is by having objective information to support how you subjectively feel.
35:32 Dr. Ginger Garner: That’s everything that we need in the system. And you mentioned two really important pieces. There’s like two pillars here. One is making sure that the system provides what moms need, because historically it’s, well, at least the baby is healthy. Not how is mom doing and is she going to be able to take care of herself, take care of the baby? So it’s the system being able to properly care for moms.
And then moms knowing what they need, to know what to ask for, and to know how to properly take care of themselves. I once heard a similar story to what you mentioned of someone talking about the greatest gift you could give a new family: is to support mom in being able to take care of herself during that first year or two, particularly in those preschool years.
Because we know postpartum rates of depression are skyrocketing. The highest risk factor for mom in those first few days, weeks, and months is not what we think it is. It’s not hemorrhage. It’s suicide. It’s all of these heartbreaking statistics that clearly sound the warning signs that we’re not doing what we need for moms.
You read about maybe ancient practices where moms had 40 days and they were well taken care of and nourished. That all went out the window when this kind of false narrative was created that families function independently and they don’t all, you know, live, you know, even near each other anymore. And people move and jobs are taken and we are in a very mobile society, but I think one thing that we have lost is that that support system that is still required.
We’re still giving birth in the same way, you know, and yet the support isn’t there. And our healthcare system has not evolved to take care of us as moms. So moms out there, if you’re feeling like crap, if you’re in pain, if you have postpartum depression, goodness gracious, please take away from this podcast that it is not your fault.
37:43 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Amen. That’s right.
37:44 Dr. Ginger Garner: It’s not your fault. There are there are resources out there reach out to and one question I have for you is, you know how women can be involved in Operation M.I.S.T. and what they can do. But yeah, moms, know that it’s not your fault. The system is not where we need it to be.
There’s lots of advocacy efforts going on for that. I will put in the show notes a link to look up your Congress member to ask them to support the bill that we were trying to push through Congress and Academy of Pelvic Health. So please look for that. It’s simple. It takes two minutes and every congress person that hears from a mom that says, please save mothers lives and help this bill get passed. That’s a no brainer. It’s not partisan. It’s not political. It’s not any of that. It’s just good common sense that supports the future of our world really in the next generation.
38:40 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: I love that you said that. And, you know, that’s where we have to fight both battles at the same time. Right. We have to be figuring out how do we change the system. And then we also have to create the environment that we know like our we have a pledge that on our honor, we will strive to serve moms and their babies to monitor faithfully, intervene meaningfully, and create an environment where both can thrive.
And there is this mom, I just have to tell you her story. She reached out because she had preeclampsia with her first pregnancy, and it was just, you know, scary and disastrous. And obviously I had gone through it at the time that she talked with me. And so she decided that she wanted to become a part of Operation M.I.S.T.
And within the first couple of weeks, we got her off of her blood pressure medication because it turned out that she was running 30 minutes a day. But she didn’t realize that her preeclampsia had impacted her kidneys. And so when we think about the kidney’s role in managing blood pressure and everything, we just changed up a few things, referred her to a cardiologist. She, like I said, got off her blood pressure medication. She lost 30 pounds.
She was initially told that she had PCOS, it’d be hard to get pregnant, but she lost that weight, ended up getting pregnant. And all throughout her pregnancy, she made decisions for her baby. First of all, she did not work. Her husband was like, we will make it work. You will stay home. We’ll make sure that you can rest. So they did that. But halfway through the pregnancy, their provider started talking about, you know, you might not be able to have a vaginal birth. We want to go ahead and schedule you for a C-section.
They changed providers, found a wonderful provider who, when she walked through the doors, he said, I see in your chart that you had a C-section. I want you to know that here we push for VBACs. So if that’s not your goal, I can find you a really good surgeon. So they ended up moving so that they could be closer to family, closer to that provider, her sister, her cousin, her mom.
Everybody lived in the area so that when the baby was ready to come, there was no issue about where to put her older son, who was going to help. She ended up going to the hospital, laboring the way she wanted to labor. It is the birth of her dreams, but it’s because she made the decisions day to day. Her husband, he took her on a vacation. And you know how normally you want to make the most of the vacation? He would check her data every day before she woke up.
And if he saw that her stress levels were higher, that her body battery was low, he would write her a note, take their older child out and bring her breakfast and let her know, hey, I checked your data. I need you to rest today. you know, Nikki J, that’s her older son, Nikki J and I will be back and we’ll, you know, see what your dad is doing. And that day they may just stay in the room and watch movies.
Or, I mean, it was just the family coming together and deciding this experience is going to be different, even if it means that we uproot and move in the middle of a pregnancy. That is the determination that we have to have. And then the communal, like, if it’s not husband, then who is it going to be? Friends, church members. It doesn’t matter who it’s going to be, but somebody is going to say, let’s prioritize mom.
So like, I just, I love the M.I.S.T. Moms because I watch them and their determination and their belief in themselves. And I have never had a mom say, I regret my birth. That was the thing. When I was listening to birth stories after I had mine, I felt empowered. I did not feel defeated. I felt like, I want moms to feel like I did, that if they have no option, they make options, right?
And I get to experience that every day. And so when we were putting the website together, I remember, I don’t really like to do things like marketing or websites, things like that. But I told the lady who was designing it, if I can see the moms that we’ve served every day when I wake up and open my computer, That will make me happy. And the moms all got together, did testimonials, videos, made the whole website happen.
And now I’m like, yeah, this drives me every day to be able to have women, regardless of the outcome. The outcome is not always going to be what we want it to be. Unexpected things are going to happen. But if we can walk away from that experience feeling empowered and knowing that at any point we can reach out to other providers, we believe in having social workers, chiropractors, doulas, OTs, PTs, like whoever needs to be on the team, we’re going to recruit it. We are going to pay for it. We are going to figure it out because it’s not a one man show. And everyone on the team has to be team mom, period.
And so how do they join? So if they go to the website, they can fill out a form. And it’s something where we talk so that we can see. It’s like schedule a consult. The consultation is completely free. We talk and see if it’s a right fit for them.
Because just like that VBAC doctor said, hey, if you really don’t want to have a VBAC, I can show you the way. It’s like sometimes it may not be a match. But for 98% of the time, it’s a beautiful match, but it’s just a chance for women to be able to be seen, heard, loved, and valued, whether they choose to become a part of Operation M.I.S.T. or not. Because I don’t, I believe that every woman should be monitored, every woman should be valued, but not every woman is going to sink her watch every day, right? And that’s okay.
You just become a part of the family, get the education, and that’s enough for us. But yeah, they schedule the consultation, and then from there, Once they get signed up, then we just send them their watch. But the watch is between 70 and 90 bucks, typically, because I tell them to get it on Amazon. The main thing that helps is the app. And so the watch that they need, though, we point them in that direction. And then monitoring is $100 a month during pregnancy. And so that’s how it works.
44:36 Dr. Ginger Garner: That is fantastic. Thank you. Your story, you know, just that touchstone of empowerment. I was like holding back tears when you shared that story. So I’ll get those tears out later. They always come, right? You can’t just push those back.
But basically, you know, it was so uplifting and inspiring and moving because when I was a new mom, I made some assumptions that were wrong.Or as a new mom, you know, expecting mom and that was that this is number one myth, is that my provider knew best and whatever they said, you know, they would be right about.
And I quickly realized that the more education that I got myself, even being in healthcare already, the more I realized that wasn’t true. And the more I realized that in order for things to change, I was going to have to take the first step. I was going to have to make sure that I was making good lifestyle choices and that that would mesh with my healthcare provider and their philosophy and what they believed in birth.
So thank you. Thank you for bringing this service to women, to people giving birth, to moms. Thank you for bringing hope and enthusiasm to really dismal statistics right now in our country about how moms, and particularly women of color, are being treated during pregnancy.
So if you’re listening, let me make sure I get the, oh, it’s operationmist.org. We will put that in the show notes. Please go visit that website. If you are going to be expecting or expecting, or you care about or love someone who’s gonna be expecting, because what a great gift that would be. I know if, I was much younger, I would be already signing up for that and putting it on my baby shower list. That’s for sure. Because it should be a mom shower, not just a baby shower.
46:44 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Yes. Yes. Say that again.
46:49 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yes. For the ones in the back row, make sure it’s a mom shower. It’s a mama shower. It’s not just a baby shower. Yeah. All right, Katherine, I have a couple of rapid fire questions that I’d love to kind of shore up.
OK, one, because I set this silly little goal and I don’t know if I’m going to make it this year. I think I got sidetracked with stuff, but I try to read 50 books a year and I don’t know where I am, but I’ve got to work on that. But is there a book you’re reading or books you’re reading right now?
47:20 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Oh, yes. So have you ever read the book Babies Are Not Pizzas, They’re Born Not Delivered? Okay, I would say read that just because of what you’re doing in this space and you may decide to recommend it. Down Came the Rain is, have you read that? It’s about, so I know that we care about women dealing with postpartum depression and Brooke Shields gives her story in that book. It’s amazing.
The Best Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The Best Yes by Lisa Turkhurst. And it is essentially, you know, there are some things that are good, but what is best for us, if we can just choose that, then as women, we can prioritize. So those are three great books that I love. But the book I’m reading now is The Blue Zones Project. And oh, girl, are you okay? So yeah, so that’s what I’m reading right now. And I’m really loving that.
48:13 Dr. Ginger Garner: That’s awesome. Yes, I picked that up. It’s actually in my kitchen. Because all my kids are middle school and up. And so I leave all of these little notes like that.
48:24 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: So smart.
48:25 Dr. Ginger Garner: There’s one on blue zones. There’s one I carry a with a People Forget to Die in Greece. It’s a blue zone to Yeah, that’s a good it’s a cookbook.
48:38 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: So I’m writing it.
Yeah, books. And yeah, I just leave the books that I’m reading in the kitchen. Because the kids can kind of osmosis them or something like Okay. I’ve got one more question for you. What is your fail safe thing to do when you need a chill pill?
48:54 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Like when I need to relax?
48:56 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. Like when you just got to exhale.
48:59 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Okay. I like going out. So I have a forest behind my house and I like going out into the forest and just sitting. Yeah, that’s what I would say that that’s the least expensive answer. The most expensive answer is a massage and I do get those very often because I feel like they’re necessary and I don’t take a break unless someone forces me to take a break or unless my monitor reaches out to me and says, Katherine, what are you doing over there? So I still have someone monitoring me. She is the best monitor ever. But yeah, I like to be in nature and it calms me and resets me and grounds me. And I even exercise outside. I do almost everything outside. And that really helps me to just slow down and enjoy life.
49:54 Dr. Ginger Garner: Oh, I so agree. I spent almost a month doing that this summer living outside.
49:59 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: No way.
50:01 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yes. Yeah, I camped my way across the country with my kids and my dog.
50:07 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: That is so good because my kids are everything. And I realized that, you know, for some people, not everything, but I love them so much. And the one thing that calms my nervous system when I was post delivery was my daughter laying on my stomach and my son laying on my shoulder. And I just think there are few joys in the world, like having children. And I think that what bothers me about the maternal health crisis is that you have women who want to have that bond, but because of the experience that they had, their children are either literally taken from them, so they’re in the NICU or they’re somewhere else, or their babies pass. And then for me, I see these women and we get to support them, you know, but on the anniversary of that baby’s death or the milestone.
So we had a mom who lost her baby at three months and she was never told about having her baby sleep on her back. And someone reached out to her and told her because she was sleeping with the baby every day. She just felt like she needed to. They were like, you know, that baby’s going to get spoiled. You need to put her in her crib. The night that she put her in her crib, She passed away.
And so when we got to month three with this baby that she has now, we celebrated so much because can you imagine like on the watch, I’m seeing her anxiety go up. I’m seeing her heart rate go up. And I know it’s because this is month three. This is when her last baby passed away. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
And I know when we were off camera, you know, we were talking about that quote, and it was that, you know, women are not dying because the deaths are not preventable. They’re dying because society hasn’t decided that they’re worth it, that their lives are worth it. And so I am grateful to you. I know you’re closing out so people can find me, but people need to find you. You are bringing awareness to this issue that is so important. And I think the more people who hear it, the more people will decide where they can fit into the solution. So thank you, Dr. Ginger, for doing this because it’s necessary.
52:32 Dr. Ginger Garner: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Everyone, please check out Dr. Sylvester’s work. I didn’t expect that at the end, but I think that speaks to how much value there is in the lives of mothers who are raising the next generation and who are experiencing incredible things, incredible ecstatic experiences when things go well, and then the exact opposite. And we are mom’s biggest fans. We love all of you out there. We want you to have the birth and life of your dreams. And we’re going to put all these resources that we’ve mentioned for you in the show notes.
So thank you again, Dr. Sylvester for being with us here today with me here today. Thank you so much.
53:50 Dr. Katherine Sylvester: Thank you for having me.
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