It was 1982 and 3-year-old Alice Proujansky was hurrying across High Street with her mother. Her younger brother was about to be born at then-Franklin Medical Center. Then again in 1987, 7-year-old Proujansky hustled across the same street for the birth of her younger sister.
The memories are still vivid for Proujansky, who grew up just a short walk from the hospital.
Most recently, these childhood memories drew Proujansky — now a New York-based photographer whose work has been featured in the New York Times and National Public Radio, who once got her start at Northfield Mount Hermon School — back to the area for an assignment from cable channel Lifetime, sharing women’s stories as told by women.
Proujansky turned to her old newspaper, the Greenfield Recorder, for story ideas and stumbled across a 2017 article about pregnant women on maintenance medication for opioid addiction. That was it; that was going to be her story, shot, essentially, from her old backyard.
She came back home to interview Sandi Cardaropoli, who was featured in the Recorder story. But while at the interview, Proujansky learned of a second compelling story: the natural birth program run by the midwives at Baystate Franklin Medical Center.
A midwife who was teaching her about the hospital’s program, Sarit Shatken-Stern, also happened to be pregnant herself and was expecting anytime. Luckily for Proujansky, Shatken-Stern agreed to have her document the birth for the Lifetime piece.
The online photo essay on Shatken-Stern’s natural birth ran online for Lifetime in March, as did a separate video on Cardaropoli and her son, Colton.
It wasn’t until six months after Shatken-Stern gave birth that she looked at Proujansky’s photography of the August day, for the eventual Lifetime piece.
“I couldn’t look at them. Some of them hurt, yet some of them are so beautiful and meaningful,” Shatken-Stern said. “My husband was really good labor support. The first birth I had, it was him and my mom. This one was just him, so it was a lot more intimate.”
She jokes that now that she’s caring for two children, it’s good to see these photos of her husband helping her with birth because, “you don’t always remember to thank him, but the photos remind me how appreciative I am of him.”
Getting to this moment, where Shatken-Stern wanted to give a natural birth, was a long time in the works, though. She had always been into women’s rights and liked to work with her hands, eventually pursuing nursing as a career before going back to school to become a midwife.
After working as a midwife in New York and Vermont, she and her husband, who’s a cardiologist at Baystate Franklin Medical Center, moved to the area for the jobs.
“At Baystate Franklin, the midwives are running the show,” Shatken-Stern said. “We’re the first call and physicians are the backup. It’s very cool and unusual.”
The natural birthing unit in Greenfield is somewhere between the regulations and the freedoms she experienced in New York and Vermont.
“The valley is a good place to be a midwife because people are into natural. There’s a lot of support and interest in it,” Shatken-Stern said. “I was definitely drawn to this area because I knew I’d be able to practice with a fair amount of autonomy.”
Likewise, Proujanksy felt like Baystate Franklin Medical Center was an ideal setting for her photo essay, aside from wanting to get back to her roots.
“They really listen to women and educate women,” Proujansky said of the hospital. “That’s something that is rare in health care.”
When Proujansky came to do a story on the natural birthing unit at the hospital, Shatken-Stern was expecting her second child and was hoping she would give birth while the photographer was there.
“It was really special to see a midwife give birth like that, seeing that someone who is really educated in this chose this (way to give birth),” Proujansky said. “It’s evidence-based. It’s culturally responsive.”
She didn’t have any hesitations to have her birth photographed, either — well, aside from a brief moment of regret, thinking, “Are people going to see my vagina when they Google me?” Instead, that regret quickly dissipated and she ended up feeling overwhelmed by the idea that her story was a worthwhile story for Lifetime.
“It feels a little embarrassing to have all the attention when all I did was have a baby,” Shatken-Stern said.
She hopes the Lifetime story can take away some of the Hollywood stereotypes of what birth is like. And while she encourages the idea of having birthing options, the midwife doesn’t necessarily advocate for everyone to have a natural birth.
“It’s not so much that I want people to go natural, but I think it’s really important to give women a lot of different options and a lot of autonomy,” Shatken-Stern said. “We support your choices.”
In a place like the Pioneer Valley, where natural births and midwives are more plentiful, she said it makes it safer for everyone. In locations where hospitals discourage natural births, she said, birth becomes more dangerous because there’s less backup help for the few midwives.
Now that she’s back at work, Shatken-Stern said her birth has helped her learn about not only herself, but her patients as well.
“We’re all going through the same stuff,” she said.
Proujansky also went through with her original focus: interviewing Cardaropoli about her own pregnancy experience as someone on maintenance medication for opioid addiction.
When the Lifetime video showing her and her 2-year-old son, Colton, went live online, Sandi Cardaropoli didn’t know what the feedback would be like.
“I felt really scared. I can take comments about myself,” Cardaropoli said. “I was more worried about someone saying something negative about Colton and he was substance-exposed, calling him a drug baby. That was my fear.”
But Cardaropoli knew her story was important — a story that Proujansky wanted to tell to audiences nationwide.
She switched over to the medication-assisted treatment model while pregnant under the guidance of Baystate Franklin Medical Center.
“Anytime I put my story out there, anytime I put anything out there, my number one goal is for it to reach at least one person,” she said. “If it helps at least one person know they’re not alone …”
The story, though, only brought her warm feedback.
“There wasn’t even one hate comment,” she said. “It’s just been so encouraging that there’s been a lot of love and support.”
It’s a story showing just quite how normal you and your child can be, and in fact are, with this model of care.
“Just because I was on methadone, he wasn’t going to come out with two fingers and toes, Cardaropoli said. “He’s incredibly smart and full of life.”
With this treatment, her child is not “born addicted” as some people might assume, but rather a child can be born physically dependent, although not necessarily.
Having her story told by Proujansky helped to share that message with an even larger audience.
“A lot of the work that’s on the cutting edge that’s confronting this issue,” is done here, Proujansky said. “People say, ‘Oh, this is a small town in the middle of nowhere,’ but that doesn’t mean it can’t have really smart and successful public health.”
The exposure from Lifetime — something that left Cardaropoli, “wicked surprised,” because it’s “always kind of cool when any big time stuff comes out to your little town that’s barely on the map” — brought in new people to her Facebook group, MAT Moms (Methadone, Buprenorphine, Vivitrol). The page brings together mothers on maintenance medication to help them learn they’re not alone, creating a support system for them.
“It was a real privilege to highlight some of the really forward-thinking and successful work going on in Greenfield,” Proujansky said.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264