Another great spoke for our wheel! - Melissa Lawlor

Melissa Lawlor

Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM

Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP-C)

Lactation Consultant

Fire Commissioner

support Firefighter/EMT

dynamic public speaker

We are so fortunate to have Melissa Lawlor join our team! As Director of Education, among many other roles, Melissa will guide us in creating a ‘Gold Standard’ document that a firefighter can take to their first OB/GYN appointment. This document will ensure that the firefighter and their doctor are aware of the hazards, exposures and physical expectations of the firefighting profession. With this awareness, both the firefighter and OB/GYN can work together to develop a work plan that ensures a safe and healthy pregnancy.

Welcome, Melissa!

There Is a Doctor in the House!

I couldn’t be more pleased to share that Dr. Brittany Hollerbach has joined our team to be the research “spoke” in our wheel of firefighter reproductive health endeavors. We are very thankful to have Dr. Hollerbach and look forward to adding her expertise to our mission of supporting research and providing grants to firefighter families in need.

Dr. Hollerbach

Dr. Brittany Hollerbach is an Associate Scientist and Deputy Director for the Center for Fire, Rescue & EMS Health Research (CFREHR), part of NDRI-USA, Inc. She received her Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Kansas State University and recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Skidmore College under the direction of Dr. Denise Smith where she focused on cardiovascular disease in the fire service. Dr. Hollerbach has extensive experience working with the fire service on a number of federally funded firefighter studies. She recently received FEMA funding as the PI on a project examining firefighter perceptions of protective strategies used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Hollerbach has an interest in firefighter health in general and female firefighter health specifically, given her background as a former firefighter. She also has experience teaching at the fire academy and is well-connected to the fire service community in Kansas City. 

Firefighter Reproductive Health Feature Story from the 19th News

We were honored to be included in a recent article published by The 19th News regarding female firefighter reproductive health. Written by Jessica Kutz, this article sheds light on recent studies that show increased risk of miscarriage compared to nurses with similar shift work, and lower levels of anti-müllerian hormone (which is said to reflect egg reserve) compared to the general population.

Annual Update and a Warm Welcome!

It has truly been an honor to see The Beltane Guild grow into a resource for so many people. Whether it is providing grants to firefighter families seeking fertility treatment across the country, or providing guidance and sample policies to help fire departments rewrite their Family Planning Policies, we are here to help!

It is with much gratitude that I proudly announce that we have a new board member, Stephanie White!

Stephanie White, Director of Communications

Stephanie White is a 19-year veteran of the fire service and has spent the past 17 years as a professional firefighter/paramedic in a metropolitan fire department. She contributes to Fire Engineering through writing and a podcast that focuses on changing fire service culture for the better. 

Throughout her career, she has been actively involved in firefighter health and safety as a personal trainer, cancer awareness educator, and a trained mental health peer. She has been involved in teaching departments how to create reproductive health policies, and raises awareness for the undiagnosed core injuries that many women suffer from after delivery.

We are so excited to have her join us and will be providing you with direct links to her Fire Engineering podcasts. We are grateful to have her as an excellent resource for all things pertaining to female firefighter health!

Many Thanks and Happy Holidays

Happy holidays! I hope everyone is finding ways to partake in the Spirit of the Holidays. I personally love seeing all the Christmas lights around town.

As we wrap up another year I want to thank everyone who has supported The Beltane Guild. We have been able to award nine grants in two years and have made amazing progress on writing a new “gold standard” Family Planning Policy that will hopefully soon be adopted by fire departments around Washington State. Special thanks to Stephanie White of Fairfax County, VA, who’s policy was the foundation from which we built ours. I’d also like to thank the 20+ firefighters and our doctor friends at NDRI-USA who have participated in meetings to help shape our new policy. It is truly a reflection of many voices and covers topics such as pregnancy, miscarriage, fertility treatment, adoption and firefighter reproductive health.

As always, if you’re looking for a way to give back this year, your donation would be greatly appreciated. We still have firefighters standing by for grants and any amount helps to support them with the financial hardship of fertility treatment.

On behalf of The Beltane Guild, we wish you a happy holiday season and a fantastic 2022.

Maia Brown, President of The Beltane Guild

Here’s a map of how far our grants have traveled across the country!

Back at Work with Six Month Old Twins!

After four months of maternity leave I decided to return to work. In order to do so I had to pass a Fit For Duty Physical evaluation that included pulling hose, forcing a door, taking a hydrant, throwing and moving ladders, and completing a “Vent Enter Search” scenario. I also had to complete multiple intubations in the Operating Room at our local hospital to be cleared to return to work as a Paramedic. Additionally, I rode in a “third-person” position for forty hours to brush up on my paramedicine before being cleared to work by our Training Division and Medical Control Doctor.

Returning to work has brought unique challenges to my marriage but has also created some amazing growth for us both. My husband cares for our twins full time while I am working my 24 hour shift and when I get home I try to do most of the childcare so he can return to his full time job as a Realtor.

One obstacle I did not anticipate was the difficulty in finding time to express milk at work. I often found myself only able to express at bedtime due to high call volume, training, and other duties around the station. While I am still breastfeeding, my supply has significantly decreased over the past two months.

In other news, and perhaps most importantly, last week 21 firefighters from 11 different departments from the Seattle area met in person and via Zoom to discuss how to write the optimal Fire Department Family Planning Policy. We were honored to have two doctors from the National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI) as well as a Captain Paramedic from San Francisco Fire Department join in our discussion. We identified the areas of importance that need to be included in a policy and shared our personal experiences with pregnancy, fertility treatment, adoption, breastfeeding, pumping at work, maternity leave, uniforms and more. Our goal is to reconvene in the next few months to further our efforts in writing what we hope is a “Gold Standard” Family Planning Policy that can be adopted by all our departments.

As I reflect back on In Vitro Fertilization, pregnancy, my scheduled cesarean section, postpartum recovery and return to work, I am relieved with how well it all went but also more inspired than ever to help every department adopt a policy that protects, informs and provides support for its members. The story I’ve heard over and over this year is “I got pregnant and my department asked me to write/update our Pregnancy Policy.” It shouldn’t be up to each individual pregnant women to undertake the challenge of writing a comprehensive policy and I look forward to working with this amazing group of women we have assembled to write what is hopefully a Gold Standard Policy.

Life on the other side

We made it! We had a scheduled cesarean section on Friday, February 19th, 2021. Our twin babies weighed 5.12 and 6.14 pounds. More to share later but right now we are basking in parenthood and frankly, I’m too exhausted to write much more!

6.17.2020: Ramping up for Egg Retrieval

To my knowledge, I have never been pregnant. My cycle has been as consistent as the moon’s monthly trip through its lunar cycle. This was always a good thing..until last year. An exquisite man proposed to me who wanted a family just as bad as I did, and suddenly I was begging my body to not be quite so consistent.

As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, it’s hard to say for sure what has caused my fertility problems. Is it my job? The stress, the toxins, the cleaning products, the smoke? The intermittent sleep? The adrenaline rush when the tones go off during a REM cycle? Or is my age? Or the fact that I was an egg donor twelve years ago? Or because I work out almost every day? It’s impossible to know, so instead I choose to control the factors I can manipulate. Thanks to a supportive fire department, I was able to work modified duty throughout my entire IVF cycle. This allowed me to be able to control sleep, stress, exposures.

To catch you up from my last post, the cysts FINALLY dissipated, and about two weeks ago we were able to start a cycle of IVF. I did do a round of egg retrieval last summer, but since we want to have a few children our doctor recommended another round to ensure we had enough embryos to work with going forward.

The egg retrieval process involves daily injections of medications (for me, Menopur and Gonal-F) that stimulate multiple eggs to mature in both ovaries. On day 6 and 9 of stimulation medication injections, you go to the clinic so they can perform an ultrasound to check that your uterine lining is remaining thin, and to count and measure how many follicles (what eggs grow in) are developing in each ovary. They also do blood work to determine how well the medications are working and to make sure they don’t overstimulate you, which can lead to Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome, which has symptoms as mild as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, to severe symptoms like blood clots, shortness of breath, severe abdominal pain and severe, persistent nausea and vomiting. Additionally, around this time they start you on an additional medication (in my case, Certrotide), which is an ovulation antagonist, meaning it prevents premature ovulation of the eggs, and keeps them safely stored in the ovaries where the medical team can retrieve them during the egg retrieval procedure.

Since all the eggs are maturing at different rates, they use your ultrasound and blood work to predict what day will be best to perform your egg retrieval. When the day of your retrieval is determined, they count back 36 hours, and precisely at that moment, they give you another medication referred to as a trigger shot that contains Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG), which is (thank you healthline.com for describing it better than I could):

“With IVF, the trigger shot is used before egg retrieval to help facilitate a process called meiosis. In meiosis, eggs go through an important division where its chromosomes go from 46 to 23, priming them for fertilization.”

The big black circles are a few of the eggs maturing in one of my ovaries

Once you’ve taken the trigger shot of HCG, the meanest, most cruel joke is played on every woman and her partner the following morning when you have to take a pregnancy test to ensure the HCG absorbed properly. I cannot describe the feeling of seeing a “positive” on a test when you have NEVER been pregnant before.

And then, before you know it, it’s egg retrieval day! It’s surgery. No eating or drinking after midnight, take all your jewelry off, and get ready to take a lovely nap under general anesthesia. I was so excited, I hadn’t been sleeping well so I asked the anesthesiologist if I could stay under a while longer but he very seriously said “absolutely not.” Killyjoy.

The procedure itself only takes about twenty minutes, and before you know it you’re waking up to some sweet nurse with a box of apple juice and a single graham cracker, and your doctor comes by to tell you how many eggs they retrieved (9 this time). You’re able to walk out about a half an hour later and before you know it you’re home and resting with some mild abdominal pain for the rest of the day…I might add that it would likely have been more painful had I not taken the Hydrocodone prescribed, as I discovered later when I tried not to take the pain medications.

While the egg retrieval is taking place, my other half was in another area of the clinic providing a sperm sample, and as soon as we’re both done with our procedures those kids (eggs and sperm) are all meeting in petri dishes to say hello and get to know one another.

Based on the development of your embryos, your nurse or doctor will call to say that your embryo transfer will take place either three or five days post egg retrieval. Stay tuned to hear all about our ‘Day 5’ transfer.

Hello baby...

Baby cyst. Hello baby ovarian cyst twins to be exact.

Today I had my Suppression Check ultrasound appointment. After taking birth control for ten days in order to allow Seattle Reproductive Medicine to “take the reigns” of my cycle, today was the day we used ultrasound to check for follicles, cysts, and observe the uterine lining. Unfortunately, two cysts were observed in the right ovary.

one of two cysts found in the right ovary

This is not what you want to hear at your Suppression Check. After the cysts were found, a blood draw was performed to measure the level of Estrogen in my blood. Some cysts produce Estrogen, some don’t. If they do produce Estrogen, it can interfere with follicle development when you start hormone injections for IVF. In order to start an IVF cycle, Estrogen levels need to be less than 70 picograms per milliliter (pg/mL). Results from my blood draw confirmed that my cysts are the type that produce Estrogen. My Estrogen level was 199.4 pg/mL. A no-go for IVF.

Next steps are to continue birth control for the next four days, and go in for another ultrasound exam next Tuesday. The hope will be that the cysts go away on their own, but in the case that they don’t, we have to wait for me to have a period and then start the process over from the beginning.

I’m choosing to keep a positive attitude until my appointment next Tuesday. After that, I make no promises that I won’t drown my sorrows in a couple margaritas if we have to put off IVF for another month. If we do have to delay, the sorrow will be temporary and then we’ll dust ourselves off, get back on the IVF horse, and charge forth for another round of Let’s Make a Baby.

We're Ready to Help!

Happy New Year everyone!

It’s time to follow through with our mission. As President of the Beltane Guild, I’d like to thank everyone who has supported The Beltane Guild in the almost one year we have been in existence.

Thanks to the generous donations of our friends, family, and community, we are ready to help a firefighter family in need. It’s not much, but it’s a start. We have (2) $500 scholarships available for firefighter families requiring fertility treatment.

If you know of someone in the fire service that has been struggling, please send them our way. They can use our website’s online submission form to contact us.

In the meantime, please consider linking your Amazon shopping account to us at smile.amazon.com. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit and by doing this a portion of your purchases will go straight to The Beltane Guild.

Pineapple Paradise was a HUGE success!

“We’ll just host a simple lemonade stand".” That was our original plan, but with the genius minds of Heirloom Cookshop and The Beltane Guild team, our simple lemonade stand took on a life of it’s own and became a craft honey-infused ginger lemonade for purchase with the option of a sweet reusable tumbler. If that wasn’t enough to entice participants of the festival to pay us a visit, we also had a balloon dart game for the chance to win some amazing prizes. Special thanks to our sponsors, Browne Family Vineyards and YETI coolers!

Overall, we raised over $1,000 in one day, just selling lemonade, so thank you to everyone who contributed to our cause!

The Beltane Guild is going to Pineapple Paradise!

The Beltane Guild is excited to announce our partnership with Pineapple Paradise, a full day yoga festival in Snoqualmie Ridge! Look for our hand-crafted, chef-inspired lemonade stand!

About the festival:

Pineapple Paradise is a yoga festival filled with all things magical... beginning with a rainbow themed 5K run through the gorgeous streets of the Snoqualmie Ridge neighborhood. Expect all things colorful and glittery during this magical festival showcasing live music, specialized classes, workshops and seminars all throughout the day. Enjoy a bite to eat while you see what's available from our many wellness themed vendors. Sip on a cocktail in our VIP lounge while the kids play in the Kid's Zone. Take a crystal course or learn about essential oils. Try a new type of yoga, barre or mindfulness technique. Learn about our training, retreats and upcoming community programs. Experience a Sound Bath, a Meditation, or perhaps a Chill Flight class...truly something for everyone at Pineapple Paradise!

The Beltane Guild’s first official FUNDRAISER!

Win prizes for donating to a great cause. For every milestone during our fundraiser ($100, $200, $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000), the donor who pushes us past each goal will win a prize specially donated by local business. There’s no limit to the number of times you can donate. Help us to better understand the effects of firefighting on fertility and financially support firefighters receiving fertility treatment.

Donate here: thebeltaneguild.org/takeaction

Thank you to our sponsors for these amazing prizes!

(prize awarded!) $100: Gift certificate for a one hour massage

(prize awarded!) $200: Long Shadows Vintners - Tasting for four in Woodinville, WA

$500: (2) Regular Season Sounders Tickets

$1,000: (2) Regular Season Seahawks Tickets

$5,000: Husky Tickets and Boat Charter to Tailgating for (4)

$10,000: Grand Lodge Getaway - 4 day, 3 night stay at a picturesque lodge on Lake Quinault

photo credits: wac.net, people.com, healthline.com, Jan Jewell, Long Shadows Vintners