A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

The midwife replies, “Yes, of course. Meredith spoke of you often.
Good things only. I’m Jeanette,” she says, shaking my hand.
“Meredith and I worked together on occasion.”
As a doula, Meredith worked in a variety of settings. She worked
home births, often with the help of a midwife. She worked in
hospitals. She went where her clients went, whether they gave birth
in a bathtub or a hospital bed.
Bea is in the middle of telling Jeanette what we learned from
Jason Tebow. “He said Meredith was their doula. It sounds like
something went wrong with that birth, but he wouldn’t say what. He
suggested some animosity toward the obstetrician.”
“Dr. Feingold,” Jeanette says, nodding thoughtfully. “Nobody likes
him much,” she says.
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“He doesn’t have the best bedside manner. He can be
uncompromising. He wouldn’t have appreciated Meredith being
there, questioning him, undermining his decisions. To Meredith,
clients came first. She didn’t care who she pissed off in the process.”
She explains to us the role of a doula: to be there for emotional and
physical support, to empower the mother, to ensure the labor and
delivery were the best experience they could be. “Meredith is a
wonderful doula. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her clients,”
she says. “We talked a lot about our clients, even those that we
didn’t have in common. Labor and delivery can be overtaxing. The
long, unplanned hours, the physical and emotional fatigue. It’s heady
and exhilarating from time to time, but also the kind of career that
can run someone into the ground. We relied on each other for
support. Meredith is a good friend.”
“She is,” I say, thinking of all the times Meredith had been there for
me. A thought comes to me. “Why would Shelby see an obstetrician
like him, if he’s so unlikable?” I ask.
Jeanette says, “Shelby was already late into her pregnancy when
she started seeing him. Very few OBs like to take a patient on that
late in the game because they don’t have a full knowledge of the
patient’s history. But Dr. Feingold did. Dr. Feingold was also one of
the few who didn’t already have a full practice, which should have
been a red flag.”