Introducing Erin Snell and PosyBox — Our Orange Rose Campaign floral partner
Erin Snell is VP of Marketing for PosyBox, our Orange Rose Campaign floral partner. We asked Erin about our partnership and about the impact motherhood has made on her life and career.
Shop the Orange Roses from PosyBox here.
Every Mother Counts: Erin, almost everyone has a motherhood story that comes from the heart and makes our mission personal. It might be about becoming a mom, their own mom or maybe, someone else’s mom. Tell us your “mom story.”
Erin: I’m the mother of two little girls. Ruby is two and Lucy is five months old. Having two-under-two is a little crazy, especially since I work full time, but they’re wonderful and I love being their mom. Lucy’s birth was a real eye-opener for me about the things that can go wrong, even with a healthy pregnancy. She weighed more than 10 pounds and I had a vaginal birth but I knew right away that she wasn’t crying the way a normal newborn does. She’d breathed in some meconium and had a partially collapsed lung so they whisked her away to the NICU. During delivery, I spiked a 102 fever. Even though I was on antibiotics, they wouldn’t let me into the NICU to be with her for two days and they wouldn’t let her come to my room. My only source of contact was through my husband who split his time between me our older daughter and our newborn in the nursery. It was awful, especially when I was discharged from the hospital but Lucy wasn’t. I camped out in the NICU and an empty hospital room, but I developed a sharp pain in my side and a really bad headache. I’d been crying pretty much nonstop since Lucy was born because of the stress and being separated from her. I figured the headache was due to that. I mentioned it to the NICU nurse but since I wasn’t a hospital patient anymore there wasn’t anything she could do. She advised me to go to the emergency department to get my blood pressure checked and to call my doctor. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d only just gotten out of the hospital and all I wanted was to sleep. She said I should go home and let her take care of Lucy for the night so I could rest. That sounded like the best plan but on the way home, I asked my husband to stop by the grocery story so I could use the automatic blood pressure machine. It registered 153/95, which is really high for me. I called my doctor who told me to go to the hospital right away. They did some tests and admitted me with postpartum preeclampsia. Usually, if you’re going to have preeclampsia, it resolves after delivery but in rare cases like mine, it actually develops during the postpartum period. I had to get a magnesium sulfate drip to prevent seizures. I kept asking my nurses, “What happens if this IV doesn’t work?” They answered, “Well, it will work.” “Yeah, but what if it doesn’t?” “It just will,” they said. Basically, I felt like there was no back up plan. They were right though. It did work and I was fine but it was a really difficult time.
EMC: How did you connect with Every Mother Counts?
Erin: PosyBox is a brand new company and we reached out to a PR firm who knew Debra Duffy at EMC and that’s how we made the connection. I’d never heard of the organization before, but after I reviewed the website, I was really stunned at how many women die during childbirth. It definitely resonated, especially after what happened to me. The more I learned, the more important the issue of reducing maternal mortality became to me and our company. It was an honor to be asked to participate in the Orange Rose Campaign.
EMC: How has motherhood affected your life, community and business?
Erin: My mother is a real inspiration to me. She worked as a dental hygienist throughout my whole life and was an example that women can work in a career they love and also raise their children well. She was a great mother to my brother and me and I aspire to be like her in that way. I want my daughters to see that I am their mom, but I also have my own identity and career. As far as the business goes, a large part of our customer base is mothers. We’re always sending flowers for baby showers and birthdays and, of course, on the big day itself — Mother’s Day. The association between flowers and mothers is really important to us.
EMC: What impact do you hope the Orange Rose campaign will make?
Erin: We really hope it’ll help raise awareness, which is where change always starts. It’s ridiculous that women are still at such risk for injury and death during pregnancy and birth. If we can help people learn about that and maybe even inspire them to get involved, well, you can’t do better than that.