PROGRESS: Q&A with Mat-Su Midwifery’s Aubrey Spangler

In the Spring of 2011, I became pregnant with my second child. I was working as a stylist at Selah Salon and Health Spa. It must have been something in the water, because several of us girls became pregnant that year. I didn’t have an established OBGYN at the time so I did what any good stylist would do…I asked my clients and coworkers who they were seeing, where they were going, and one place kept coming up; Mat-Su Midwifery.

I watched a documentary titled The Business of Being Born and I began to question what a positive birth experience would look like. Is it possible? Can woman labor without the drama and emotional turmoil we are presented with as the norm on TV shows like TLC’s A Baby Story?

Often times for a pregnant woman the questions are focused around baby, baby, baby, and the mother gets lost in the mix. This might not be such of a big deal if the pregnancy was hoped for, planned, and supported. But for an expectant mother, such as myself, having unexpected pregnancies at less than opportune times, the extra support was not only helpful, it was downright vital to my well being.

My first encounter with Aubrey Spangler, a nurse practitioner, was at a nutrition class for pregnant woman and their families, offered at the midwifery. The class promised to teach us healthy eating habits and also provided food. So, like any good pregnant lady would, I eagerly attended. We learned about eating whole foods, buying produce in season, shopping and sourcing local food, and how to avoid hidden, processed sugars.

I recently sat down with Spangler to ask her a few questions about how she got started with Mat-Su Midwifery.

What got you started here? You’ve managed to build quite a reputation for yourself as being the go-to nurse practitioner for open minded moms.

Oh, thank you. Well, probably my first pregnancy. So, I was a nurse at the time, and I started coming here for care and I thought, this place is amazing! I would love to work here, so I basically just started to talking to Darcy (a NP at the midwifery) and the other midwives here and told them that I was interested. So then I went back to school and got a job. It was like destiny from the beginning, which is pretty fun.

How many babies have you had here?

Two.

How did you get your focus here? When I think of you, I think of a main focus of nutrition and wellness.

Right, yeah, I kind of like to think what I do here is mostly preventative and lifestyle medicine. That’s just sort of setting people up optimally from the beginning, even starting with the Healthy Pregnancy classes I teach and trying to set up moms, in their pregnancies or optimally even prior to their pregnancies, so that they’ll have healthy children and then we’re going from there.

So, it’s really fun. I do a lot of diet and nutrition counseling and recommendations and I’m a certified Institute for Functional Medicine practitioner now. Through the IFM, they have a lot of food plans, so usually people will leave with a food plan. And there’s all kinds of other stuff; movement, or exercise. I like to call it movement because sometimes people don’t like to get on the treadmill and just walk. That’s what we’ve always done as humans, we move in a variety of ways. And stress. I was kind of targeting nutrition originally, but I’ve sort of brought into what I’m looking at now with everyone and I always have a discussion about stress, because I realize it can be an even bigger player in people’s health. Our children, unfortunately, definitely have a lot of stress these days so I have a lot of resources and we definitely have a conversation about it.

Yes, I know for me, if I’m stressed then my body won’t let me fulfill the nutrition end because it rejects food. It’s all intertwined.

Yes, it’s all interconnected. I mean, diseases don’t fall out of the sky. There’s always a story behind it. It’s a matter of unraveling that story, and I think that’s probably the most fun part of my job is to be able to sit back and listen to people tell their stories, from the beginning, maybe even from their mother’s pregnancy. How was that? How were you born? What was your childhood like? Was it happy for you? Did you have a lot of antibiotics?

It’s really fun to see families. Maybe we see moms for their pregnancies and they like us so they continue to bring their babies to us and then eventually moms come in for women’s health and they’re dragging their husbands and then pretty soon Grandma shows up. You get to see the larger picture of family dynamics and how to help them all.

It seems like people believe they need to drive into Anchorage to seek alternative care.

There’s no one in Anchorage that’s certified in the IFM, so we have kind of a unique place here for it. Here in the Valley, we have three people fully trained and several others going through the two-year program.

What other classes are you offering here?

Aubrey: We have an Intelligent Immunity Class here, which is sort how to boost our children’s immunity systems naturally, and also there’s a discussion with Darcy about vaccinations.

As a parent, I’m overwhelmed with information regarding vaccines and I’m not always sure what to believe so I appreciate having a place I can come and ask questions and get legitimate information so I can then make informed decisions.

Right. And what I tell moms is it’s really important to go with your intuition in addition to educating yourself, continually, because it’s ongoing, it never really stops. Vaccines aren’t a black or white issue. We need to look at the individual baby and how it’s doing, what the family histories of the parents are, and then from there, coming up with a plan with a practitioner that is individualized to them, and safe. So I’m not anti vaccine at all; I believe in individual schedules for each child.

Yes, I like the term Pro-Informed Consent

It’s not black or white, and I think that’s the problem. And that goes broadly for medicine and diseases, too. Everyone comes to their own condition in their own ways. But the good part is you can get people back to their health, using some really simple tools, too. You know, health doesn’t come from a needle. So my part, in that Intelligent Immunity class, is to teach how we can get our kids really healthy from the beginning.

We also do a class called The Lost Art of Fermentation. A lot of people sort of see me as the gut person. I wouldn’t call myself a guru, because I’m always learning, but it’s something I’m really interested in. I feel like if our guts are doing well, then our immune system is doing well.

People tend to be really intimidated by fermented foods so we just have people show up with knives and cutting boards and we turn this place into a big ferment session and everyone goes home with some kimchi, so that’s a really fun thing we do here, too.

Are those open to the public or just for patients here?

Those are open to the public.

What kind of people do best as patient here?

People who are interested in figuring out the root cause of what’s going on. People who are seeking unnecessary medical interventions or drugs are not the best fit. I do better with people who are willing to take an active role in their healing. It’s a relationship. It isn’t me telling them what to do, it’s me asking them What can you do? It’s sort of coming up with a plan together… Actionable steps. Simple, achievable things.