Interview with Kate Murray, Naturopath and Founder of Mere Botanicals
Video by Kate Murray
What inspired you to launch Mere Botanicals?
It was just something that I had done through my practice as a naturopath. There were products that I was familiar with and used to make for my patients being a naturopath. When I had my second son Lenny, he just turned two last week, I shared on our Darwin naturopathics account, the birth kit that I'd made for myself with all of these little goodies in it. I had this huge response with people contacting me and asking to make the birth kit for them. I realized there was a hole in the market and Mere Botanicals evolved from there. I started making the kits.
We used to sell some of the products in clinic. I was on maternity leave and wasn't working at the time. I needed this creative outlet and that's where it became this new whole side different business. We put a lot of research into our formulas, upgraded all of our formulas, redid all of the packaging because we were just selling them in plain pouches and plain bottles with our own handwritten labels at the time in clinic. There’s a bit of a fine line about being a professional and being able to prescribe what we're prescribing in clinic and then selling things as an over the counter business as well. So we decided to keep the two completely separate. One would be our professional, prescription products, and then one would be our over-the-counter business that we started online as Mere Botanicals.
My sister owns a business as well, so she was really helpful in navigating packaging and things like that because it was something I hadn't done before. I had all the knowledge of the herbs and what I wanted to go into the packaging, but that was a different side of it. It’s been a really fun journey so far and I'm really enjoying it.
I see a lot pregnancy, fertility, pediatrics and babies in clinic so the two are very married together. It’s definitely my area of passion - supporting mothers going through motherhood. It’s just doing it on a different level now and making it more accessible to everyone without having to see naturopath.
How do you balance running your business and motherhood?
I don't. I have a wonderful team. I have Mary, my admin, who works for me and juggles everything. From answering phones to dispensing supplements, she wears so many hats for me, so she's amazing. My kids are really good to me. They let me work when I need to and my partner's really supportive and helpful as well. He definitely gets in and helps pack and dispense things out.
I also keep my boundaries really strong for when I'm at home and when I'm at work. So when I'm at work, I get as much done as I can and then we'll go home and then it's family time. Then when the kids are in bed, I can get everything back out again and get a couple more hours done before I go to bed as well.
I find that the hardest part is not finding the time, it's switching off because I enjoy doing it so much. I do really enjoy picking up my phone and responding to DMs on Instagram and responding to emails. It doesn't feel like work. It feels like a hobby. So it is kind of that “me time”, that escape time that I get for myself, and I'm just lucky that that happens to be my job as well. It doesn't feel like hard work.
Can you share a little bit about your last birthing experience?
My initial birth with my first child was an emergency cesarean. I tried for a Vbac with my second son and ended up with an emergency cesarean again. So when I became pregnant with baby number three, it was strongly suggested that I didn’t try for a Vbac again, as much as I would've loved to. When I went in for my second cesarean, I was starting to rupture already which can be a complication of having a previous cesarean which can be really dangerous for mom and baby. So after being told that on my second birth, we decided that it wasn't worth trying again for a vaginal birth with our third son and I was booked in for a planned cesarean.
We had elected to have him on the 22nd of the second month of 2022, so it was going to be a really easy date for us to remember. I really struggle with the other two boys as their birthdays are quite similar, but just that little bit different. So this time I was like, I'll have that date, thank you. I was booked in four days before my due date so it was really close to when I was going to be due. The first two births, I had gone 10 and 11 days over, so I was really confident that I wasn't going to go into labor before the planned cesarean. I'd seen an obstetrician and I was lucky to have midwifery care as well throughout the pregnancy, even though I was having elective cesarean. .
In Darwin, we have a fantastic midwifery program that people can access so you see the same midwife the whole way through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. You are able to develop a really good bond with them and then one of them will be at your birth. I was just seeing an obstetrician this random day for some iron results and he happened to be the same obstetrician that delivered my first son.
I had actually previously spoken to another obstetrician about a maternal assisted caesarean, which is when the mum helps deliver the baby via cesarean, as you would with a vaginal birth, delivering your baby and putting them on your chest. I'd toyed with the idea but the obstetrician was just like no, it’s not a thing and didn't seem interested. I'd seen some videos of it done up here and the mum was completely scrubbed in and I just felt like it was taking away from that and that immediate skin to skin and at that point I thought that was more important. I'd had that with my second son and I really felt that it helped with bonding having that immediate skin to skin. So I thought having an maternal assisted cesarean that would kind of counteract that because you're so gowned up and I decided that the skin to skin was more important to me and that was kind of the end of it.
So I was seeing this obstetrician for these random iron results and he said to me, “Are you interested in a maternal assisted cesarean?”
I explained to him that whole scenario of how I thought I would prefer immediate skin to skin then to be scrubbed in. And he said, “No, we can rip all that off straight away for you so that you're still getting that immediate skin to skin. That really changed my opinion of the whole thing. I know that so many women have to fight for the birth they want, they have to really advocate for themselves; they have to change hospitals and beg and plead and do all the research to get obstetricians to be on board with what they want. And here I was having this obstetrician convincing me to do it. It was amazing.
So I decided to do it and he said he would email my obstetrician. So he emailed him and said, if you are not comfortable with it, I'm happy to teach you how to do it. The obstetrician that I was having on the day was new and Dr. Sly told me that my obstetrician had never done one before. The only person that had done maternal assisted cesarean was him. There was only four ever done in the territory before. He was going out of his way to email this obstetrician and teach him how to do one. It was incredible.
The morning that my cesarean was scheduled, I went into labor spontaneously. I woke up and told my partner that it was time to go to the hospital and he said, “No, you're just anxious.” I thought maybe he was right so I went and had a shower and finished packing my bags. I think he just wanted to keep sleeping. Then I'm like, “No, it's really time to get up now. I'd rang the midwife and they said I definitely needed to come in. We lived an hour away from the hospital at this point.
When we got there, they established that I was in early labor. It was really nice to know that my baby had chosen that date as well because I did feel a bit guilty about choosing that date so when I started going into labor, I felt a bit better about having to choose the date of my baby's birth because he was definitely ready.
I was totally not prepared for labor because I had thought I was going to have an elective cesarean and I wouldn't be going into labor. I'd given my TENS machine to a friend and my head space was definitely not ready for contractions. When we arrived at the hospital, we were only two hours before I was meant to be there for the elective cesarean. I was still very much in early labor, but the contractions were coming every two minutes apart.
Since I was already in labor, it got changed from a scheduled cesarean to an emergency cesarean and I got pushed through straight away. It turned out that the obstetrician I was seeing was working and it was his last cesarean for the night shift. It was the same initial doctor that had organized the maternal assisted cesarean for me and it felt like all these stars aligned. It was just absolutely meant to be.
At first, I didn't know if it was him or not. He had a hat, face shield, and glasses on. I had no idea who was delivering my baby and no one had asked me my birth preferences. Once I'd got to the hospital, it was all pretty quick going through and I just assumed being an emergency cesarean, that now a maternal-assisted cesarean would be off the table.
He walked over to me and said, “Were you the lady that I was speaking to about the maternal-assisted cesarean the other day? Are you still interested?”
I told him that I had assumed we wouldn't be able to do it as it’s an emergency cesarean now. And he's said that we could still do it. He called over all the team and asked if everyone was happy to do a maternal-assisted cesearan. They all said that they had neverdone one, but we're but that they were happy to do it and follow the Doctor’s guidance. And he said, “All right, let's do it.” It turned out to be the first emergency maternal assistant cesearan performed in the territory.
Again, here he was advocating for me, making it happen where I didn't even have to bring it up again and he remembered me. This is in a public hospital, the only public hospital in Darwin, Australia, and he was just absolutely incredible.
I was already anesthetized and had the spinal block done at this point. So I had to scrub in laying down, which was quite challenging and I'd never scrubbed in before for anything. When I was all gowned up and scrubbed in, then I had to stay really still to not contaminate my hands.
It's not like in the movies where you're scrubbing with soap. That's how I had imagined it. For the scrubbing in process, they spray a sanitizer on you that dries quite quickly. I still had to get it all between my fingers and my arms, but it was a quick process. Then they put a gown over me, then gloves over the top of the gown, and big, long gloves over the top of that. Once I was completely scrubbed in, I had to put my hands on my chest and they wrapped that up in a sterile blanket as well so that there was no contamination. I wasn't able to move, which was actually quite nice because with my other cesareans, I had to put my arms on these planks of wood, which was quite suffocating when you're laying on your back. It was really quite nice to have them tucked back up into my armpits rather than the other position.
It was so much quicker than any of my other cesareans. They initially got his head out first and then I couldn't really see what was happening. You're still laying flat so they got my hands and put my hands towards my incision and hooked my fingers under my baby’s shoulders.
It was so slippery and tight in there and when I couldn't see what I was doing, I just couldn't do it. It was really tricky.
So they pulled him out and they just helped me to guide his shoulders out. Then they told me that it was all on me now and then I pulled him out the rest of the way and I held him up. I checked his gender because we didn't know the gender and I waited for someone to pull the sheet down and pull the gown away so that I could pull him down onto my chest.
This made it much more of a birth than a surgical procedure. When this Doctor delivered my first son as well, he got him halfway out and then he said, now I want you to push, like bear down. So it was almost like I got to deliver him as well.
I didn't really know what he meant at the time when he did it. He said, “Alright, we're going to push now and we want you to push too. So I went to go like this to push him out with my hands, like squeezing the side of my stomach. And he said, “No, no push like you're having a baby.”
So even five years ago, when I had my first son, this Doctor was doing things to help mothers.
When you were learning about a maternal assisted cesarean, did they give you any instructions on what you needed to do or what the process was for scrubbing in to prepare you for it?
The only thing that was really mentioned was when I had that appointment with the Doctor, he told me that I was going to have to scrub in, and he suggested some YouTube links to show how to scrub in to get me prepared for it, but that was the only preparation that I had to do for it.
Did you feel like it was a different experience than your previous cesareans?
I definitely found that I bonded better with this baby. The second more than the first when I had direct skin to skin and then my third baby even more being able to deliver him.
With my first they took him and wrapped him, but then they brought him straight back to me and he stayed with us in recovery for the weighing. So that may be the procedure here because I didn't have any birth preferences with the first since I was not planning on having a cesarean. For my second, I did you request immediate skin to skin if I had a cesarean.
Is that common in Darwin? In Northern territory?
I think so. I think a lot of people do request to have that drape dropped and then skin to skin immediately. I had my partner cut the cord for real as well because I didn't realize that they basically cut the cord and then they take the baby to the table and the dad gets to go and cut a little bit off the end where I thought that the whole point was that they're helping separate baby from the mum. So with the last two we requested that he cut the cord for real and we had to get special permission for that.
Wow. That's amazing. So when you brought him to skin to skin and he was still attached, then your partner got to come over and do that.
Yeah. So they clamped it and held it out to him and he got to do it and so I got to see it happen as well.
Did your midwife tell you about that or is that based on your own research that you found?
The first cesarean wasn't planned and I was going to have a natural birth so I'd never even looked at any birth preferences for a cesarean. The second time round, I wanted to put in my birth plan that if I do have a cesarean, these are the things that I wanted. It wasn’t until I'd already had one that I realized that's what happened. We had to have a discussion with them and get permission from the anesthesiologist and everyone had to consent to that. That was quite a big thing as well that I didn't think would be an issue, but everyone had to consent to it.
You personally can see a succession of your births, and the little changes that have happened throughout to give you that feeling like it’s a birth and less like a surgical procedure.
I was really lucky that I had the same midwife for the last two. I know her outside of the hospital and after she had delivered my second son, she organized to be there for the third birth. She messaged me the night before my schedule saying, see you in the morning. And I was just like, you're a legend for coming to the birth. When I went into labor early, I messaged her to let her know that I was going into labor earlier and would be going to the hospital sooner than we thought. It was like 4 o’clock in the morning when I texted so I didn't hear from her. And then just as we were on the operating table about to start, her head pops in and she's like, hello. I started crying. I just love midwives. I advocate for them so much. It's so nice to have a familiar face, even though I had met this obstetrician before, there’s something to having that familiar face and that comfort of having her there,
And that's not common in Australia to have continuous midwifery care?
I'm not sure about other states to be honest, but Darwin is fantastic like that that they have to opt-in for them. It's not like a program that they run, but we have amazing home births up here. They have a whole home birth program that's funded through the hospital. We're so lucky with the care up here. We only have two hospitals to choose from, one private and one public, but I cannot fault the public system up here. It's amazing.
Imagine if there were more obstetricians that were willing to do this, willing to train other obstetricians if they hadn’t done one before, and really advocating for that experience for mothers.
Everyone in the room was really intrigued and was learning and watching with awe. It was just so different to the normal routine. Even on the ward, people would say to e, “I heard you did a maternal-assisted cesarean and were asking me questions about it. It was really nice. Everyone was interested and willing to learn about it.
I think it is so amazing that you are sharing your experience because for people that have never even heard of a maternal-assisted cesarean, it's opening eyes and awareness to the fact that it can be done and it is an option. Which in turn, means people can go to their own obstetricians and say, look, this happened here, can we do something for me?
Just people knowing it's an option. All of those things. They think that just because they're having a cesarean, that you don't have options, but you do. You can put music on and your partner can cut the cord and you can have that drape dropped and here you can deliver your own baby these days.
It makes me really sad when I hear stories of people, when they tell me, I ask my obstetrician, and they said, no, just outright. No for anything. And that's not even just a cesearan, that’s for normal births as well. Like they've told me I have to be induced or they've told me I can't do this or that. It just really breaks my heart when people don't get their choice or they feel like they have to have something done to them.
I wanted to ask a little bit about what happened, post birth and then your recovering and healing journey.
After I delivered my baby, he stayed on my chest. He did take a little while to cry. So in the whole video, you can see my partner starting to panic. I could see him breathing. I could see that he was awake. He just wasn't crying. But in the background, my partner's starting to panic. I had to rough him up a little bit. I was blowing on his face. They brought a towel over, but I knew everything was okay. I wasn't panicking at all, but it did take him a little while to start crying. Then he started crying and he stayed on my chest skin-to-skin and they didn't take him away or wrap him up. They just put a towel, like a blanket over him and he started feeding straight away. I was still laying down and he was having his first feed. I don’t know how he was doing it at that angle, but straight away he was put on the breast. Then he stayed like that until we got to recovery. He was right next to me in the recovery room. They sat me up, got me a bit more comfortable, wrapped him up, weighed him, but my partner was right next to him at the same time and it was happening right next to me. We were probably only there for half an hour or 45 minutes. It was quite quick.
I had that amazing midwife with me who was kind of keeping tabs on everything. While we were in recovery, I was getting a little bit more uncomfortable at that point. My mouth was just so dry and I was quite shaky and cold. So I was having little sips of water, but I wasn't allowed to drink too much. We did another breastfeed and then we went to the ward and my partner stayed for a couple of hours and then he had to go back to our other children. With COVID, he wasn't allowed to stay too long. I was in hospital only for 48 hours and then I was home. I felt really good. I recovered really well from all three of my cesareans. I was really lucky I think.
Has anything stood out to you in terms of what has helped you the most in your recovery? Just postpartum, like in the weeks, I mean, you're still in the very early postpartum days. I know 12 weeks, but I'd say that's <laugh>.
I think nutrition has been played a huge role, and being prepared. I did lots of meal prep getting ready for baby, and just stocked our freezer. I made sure I was taking the right vitamins and minerals, and then used all of those herbs for postpartum healing. At Mere Botanicals we have bath soaks and postpartum healing soaks, sitz baths, creams and perinium spray, which is designed for a vaginal birth, but you can use it for cesarean, scar healing and other things like that. And just resting as much as you can. It's so important for all types of birth, not just a cesarean.
Do you think having a maternal assisted cesarean impacted or benefited your emotional and mental health in postpartum in any way?
Yes. I think for moms, it’s more about, not necessarily control, but having an input in the decisions that happen. So that it's not just happening to you. You are the one that is making the decisions and you feel a bit more in control. I think that makes such a difference in mental postpartum healing. It took me a long time to come to terms with my first cesarean and then having that failed feedback. It's emotional enough having a baby with your hormones going crazy and sleep deprivation, let alone recovering from surgery, and then having that disappointment of feeling like you've failed giving birth as well. So having that control makes such a big difference.
Technically you should be the most important person in the process. A lot of times it's just following protocols and hospital regulations and what they already have in place instead of actually doing what is going to be most beneficial for you as a mother. It’s patient-centered care that's for sure.
What advice would you give to other mothers who are planning a cesarean or who end up having a cesarean?
I think definitely talk to your care provider about what options you do have available to you, do some research around what options you have, ask all of the questions, the pros and the cons, because I had kind of put maternal-assisted cesarean aside and decided that it wasn't for me until, I'm just lucky that it, it got brought up again. Asked all of those questions of what's possible and what your options are. So even if they one thing's not an option, is there another alternative that they can suggest you don't have to have all the answers, but question your care providers of what are your options and they can give you those options and help you navigate what you want.
Your story's so amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story. So incredible and inspiring, and I know that the more people hear it, hopefully that your story just plants that seed of information into other healthcare providers and mother's minds and that we slowly change, what is the standard.
…And it becomes the new normal. That'd be nice. There were only four maternal-assisted cesareans before me in the territory and on the day I gave birth, he told me I was the first emergency maternal-assisted cesarean.