Stephanie labors at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Florida, in September 2020. She felt frustrated by pandemic restrictions and hospital guidelines. She had a home birth with her first daughter, Cecilia, so she desperately wanted to give birth free of a mask or constricting equipment like she had before. (Photo courtesy of Nick Stamas)
May 21, 2021 | By Julia Mitchem
Stephanie and Nick Stamas first shared a fifth-floor walkup on the corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue, and later, moved a block away to 15th Street. She knew the Chelsea neighborhood well, and she loved it with every fiber of her being.
Stephanie befriended the grocery store workers on her corner and bonded with a homeless woman who sheltered nearby; she was intentional about getting to know her people. She frequented her “staple” Chelsea Bagel & Café and ordered an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese. On weekends, she often went to The Grey Dog for an early breakfast with Nick and their daughter Cecilia. At that hour, the other patrons were mostly parents and kids. She sat back and savored her French toast as laughter filled the restaurant.
Yanni’s Coffee was her go-to spot. Black with just a hint of cream or milk. Still, her favorite was Think Coffee. It was a space where rich and poor came together; Wall Street men interspersed with those up against the wall. Nick played a game in which he tried to find people on Facebook based on the conversations they heard there.
Then there was J’s Pizza, where the entire family indulged in pizza. Funnily enough, the owner of the pizza shop was the brother-in-law of one of the men who ran the elevator in her apartment building. Stephanie found comfort in these connections.
Like many New Yorkers, the Stamases crammed into roughly 800 square feet, a step up from their last apartment, which was half that.
Stephanie loved the windows that let in golden-hour rays that bounced off the nearby glass buildings of Hudson Yards. The light flooded their apartment, illuminating the hardwoods, the hanging plants and scattered artwork and books. From those windows, they even got to see the TV series “Love Life” filming on a nearby rooftop.
Stephanie and Nick were not native New Yorkers, but they felt that they should have been. Their lives were so ingrained in the city. Stephanie even named her fledgling business after her beloved neighborhood.
But suddenly, life came to a screeching halt.
Life turned upside down
The coronavirus brought New York to its knees. Hard hit when the pandemic first erupted, the city that never slept fell silent. The streets turned desolate, eerie even.
Just a few weeks before New York locked down, Stephanie had learned she was pregnant again. Another girl. Her first pregnancy had buoyed her; allowed her to revel in her womanhood. She grew to love her body as it stretched and grew and protected her unborn child.
Stephanie had given birth to Cecilia in their Chelsea apartment. She wanted to do the same the second time around.
But not everything had gone well after Cecilia was born in the summer of 2018. Complications had taken a physical and mental toll on Stephanie, and she had not been prepared for how vulnerable she would feel.
Even though she was a physical therapist and had helped guide hundreds of women through their postpartum recoveries, she grew scared and didn’t know how or where to begin her own journey.
She knew she needed help and reached out to her close friend Jessica Babich, also a physical therapist. That experience led the two women to develop a methodology for bringing postpartum mothers back to feeling safe and secure in their bodies. They called it the Chelsea Method.
She started the business before the pandemic but was still in the throes of planning and bolstering her services when her life changed irrevocably.
Stephanie quit her physical therapy job at a nearby clinic at the end of January. She wanted to buckle down and focus on the Chelsea Method and her second pregnancy.
But then she began to feel sick. Some days she could barely get out of bed. She wonders now if she, too, had contracted the coronavirus. There were hundreds, thousands and eventually millions of New Yorkers who would feel the way she did.
On March 7, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency. A week later, the state recorded its first two COVID-19 deaths. Public schools closed on the 16th, and restaurants and bars shuttered a day later.
Like everyone else, Stephanie was blindsided.
She had a pretty good life in her city. It wasn’t without its challenges, but she was happily married, pregnant and excited to be the CEO of her own budding business. But now, everything would change.
At first, she felt crushing sadness. What would happen to all those mom-and-pop businesses in New York? All those places she frequented? The people she had grown to cherish? She wondered if they needed help or had enough food. She was shocked at how many lives were turned upside down in a matter of a week.
As the days wore on, the grief turned into uncertainty. And fear. She felt confused and suddenly unsure about her family’s future. Her biggest fear was that she would be left without community support during her second pregnancy. Ironically, she had built her life and business on helping women take control of their bodies, and now she herself was pregnant and not in charge of her circumstances.
As an expert in women’s bodies, pregnancy, birth and post-delivery care, Stephanie was feeling worried. The magnitude of the pandemic’s effect on mothers was striking. Worldwide, the pandemic had exerted extra pressure on women with children.
Many of Stephanie’s friends and acquaintances had already left the city, and it was getting increasingly more difficult for Nick and Stephanie to work from home and care for their daughter — and unborn daughter. They knew something had to change.
Stephanie, Nick and Cecilia would often see encouraging artwork around the city. Over one boarded-up shop, someone drew in chalk a rainbow and a heart with the words “Stay Hopeful, NYC” next to a doodle of a building with two adults, a child and a cat in one window — very similar to their own family. (Photos courtesy of Nick Stamas)
Desperate for help
On a clear April morning, Stephanie began yet another journey. She and her family needed temporary relief, and just one month into the lockdown, no one knew how long it would last. They decided to head to Florida to get some much-needed help from Nick’s family, but they had no intention to leave their city permanently.
Nick left their apartment to fetch a van they had rented online. But when he made the 45-minute trip to pick it up, few cars were available. A lot of New Yorkers were trying to get out of the city, almost haunted by the virus. The sick filled the hospitals; the dead overflowed from the morgues.
Nick called Stephanie, but she was too busy packing the last of their things and watching a hyperactive toddler. So, he started playing random music through their Amazon Alexa speaker and flashing their lights through an app on his phone to get her attention.
It took Stephanie 30 minutes to realize her husband was trying to reach her.
Nick was fuming. He would have to take a vehicle that was available — a small one — and drive it to New Jersey to swap it out for the van he wanted. Then, he would have to drive back for his wife and child. There was no other way.
Three hours later, the couple finally packed their things and their two cats, Pickles and Bella, into the van. Stephanie carried cat litter with one hand and grabbed Cecilia’s with the other as they climbed in. They drove to Jessica’s apartment to pick her and her cat, Fivvers, up, as well as kettlebells and other equipment the two women used for the Chelsea Method. It would become a long and arduous trip; 19 hours southward. But they just couldn’t bear to stay in the city anymore.
They had not gone very far when they noticed a terrible stench in the van. Pickles had pooped inside. They stopped after getting off FDR Drive, scooped up the kitty excrements and threw it on the side of the road. That was their very COVID-19, very New York, way of saying goodbye.
Jessica brought Levain Bakery cookies to Stephanie and Nick in the car to have a piece of their city with them as they traveled. Cecilia happily watched “Puppy Pig,” commonly known as the children’s movie “Babe” and surprisingly happily slept most of the trip.
They drove straight through and arrived in Holiday, a suburb of the Tampa metro area, at 7 a.m. on Easter. Stephanie saw it not only as a fresh start but as a symbol of rebirth.
Stephanie and Cecilia lounge in their temporary home in Holiday, Florida. They spent time here quarantining before seeing Nick’s parents. (Photo courtesy of Nick Stamas)
Building a foundation
At 34, Stephanie had come full circle back to the Sunshine State.
She was born in Riverside, California, but at 3, she moved to Serbia, former Yugoslavia, with her missionary parents. At 7, she moved to Orlando where she would spend the remainder of her childhood.
In front of the Spring Bayou in Tarpon Springs, Cecilia and a pregnant Stephanie enjoy the sunshine in their new city. Stephanie now frequents local spots like Copenhagen Café. (Photo courtesy of Nick Stamas)
Stephanie’s professional journey and passion for rehabilitating women began at the University of Florida, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in athletic training. She worked for a year as a trainer but realized it wasn’t what she wanted to do.
She focused on the rehabilitation aspect and her love for connecting with people and decided to pursue physical therapy. On a whim, she applied to Columbia University and was accepted. Columbia even offered a scholarship.
Stephanie learned about pelvic floor physical therapy, which targets the pelvic floor and pelvic organs that affect functions like sexual arousal, the ability to orgasm and bladder and bowel control. She fell in love with the specialty.
Stephanie drew from her mother’s experiences with endometriosis, which is a condition that causes extreme pelvic and abdominal pain in women. She watched her mother undergo surgeries and developed a desire to be able to relate to women in pain.
Stephanie draws from these experiences when she helps women today. She works with Jessica and Nick through Chelsea Method to create videos, content and services to make women feel less alone.
Nestled in a small, unassuming building right off Orange Street in Tarpon Springs, Florida, Stephanie, Jessica and Nick film a new program for Chelsea Method on March 6, 2021. Her team converted an old doctor’s office waiting room into a professional and modern space. Adorned with hanging plants, weights, a model of a human pelvis and an LED light of the Chelsea Method logo, there is a piece of modern New York in the historical beach town, reflecting the split between their new and old lives. (Julia Mitchem/Atrium)
Letting go of their city
In May of 2020, after being in Florida for a month, Nick and Stephanie realized it was time to permanently say goodbye to their lives in New York. The pandemic stopped looking like a temporary bump and became everyone’s “new normal.”
They rented a bright yellow 26-foot Penske moving truck to head back to New York, break their lease and move out of a neighborhood they’d called home for a decade.
A now very pregnant Stephanie, Nick and Jessica packed into the small truck cabin and bumped and jostled the 19 hours all the way back to their apartments.
Even while pregnant, Stephanie took the wheel and drove the enormous moving truck some of the way back up to New York. This would be the last time Stephanie and Nick would see their adored apartment. (Photo courtesy of Nick Stamas)
By 9 p.m. Sunday, all that was left in their former living room was a paper bag, two cups, one bottle, a small box of food and the shoes they were wearing. Gone were the mirrors, blooming flowers, antique clocks and pictures and books of memories.
A painful healing process
Stephanie didn’t always want to be a mother. In college, she was set on not getting married or having a kid. She wanted to be independent. But she found she wasn’t being completely honest with herself.
After a lot of personal growth came marriage, even though it wasn’t always perfect. Nick had engaged in an extra-marital affair, which dealt a blow to Stephanie’s self-image. She jumped past mirrors so she wouldn’t have to look at her naked body.
But through healing and growing personally and together, she forgave Nick. After seven years of marriage, and being a stronger couple than ever, she decided she was ready to have a child. Stephanie got pregnant in 2017 with Cecilia.
During her pregnancy, and after a lot of healing, she felt like she could finally see how beautiful her body was without it being tied to sexuality.
Stephanie wanted to have a natural delivery, to be able to really connect with her womanhood. For her first pregnancy, she ended up having a home birth with a midwife and a doula. She gave birth on her hands and knees on her couch at home.
She was amazed to see the human being her body had produced.
“Who are you?” she kept thinking to herself as she saw her daughter for the first time. She was so excited to get to know her and love her.
But her recovery after her first pregnancy was long, grueling and painful. She had a perineal tear, a tear at the area between the vagina and anus, and couldn’t walk for 10 days. She had a rough recovery even after she could.
At that time, she and Nick were still living in their fifth-floor walkup, and Stephanie found herself bedridden. On the seventh day after Cecilia’s birth, Stephanie walked from her bed to her fridge to pour herself a glass of water and then had to take the entire day to rest. She has been active her entire life. Now she could barely move. She felt humbled.
A rebirth
Stephanie knew her second pregnancy would have to be different. She was due to give birth amid a global health crisis. She also knew she couldn’t have a home birth because she no longer had a home.
Because of COVID-19, Nick wasn’t allowed to accompany her to appointments with her doctor in Florida. She was GBS positive, which meant she had a certain bacterium in her vagina. Stephanie had to be on antibiotics and would have to go straight to the hospital once she was in labor, the opposite of what she had wanted.
She leaned on her community of women from her church in New York. They threw her a virtual baby shower and sent her a gift every single day of the week. A huge bouquet of flowers, a Milk Bar cake, silk pajamas, a candle from Brooklyn and blessings for her daughter.
She went to sleep at night thankful for her friends in New York. She was no longer in her city, but her city was still with her.
In September, when the day finally came for the baby to enter the world, Stephanie dreaded going to the hospital. She knew the whole process would take a long time, and she wanted to labor in a place where she felt safe and secure. So once her water broke, she decided to wait a little bit longer. She ran some errands before she and Nick drove to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater.
That was where Nick was born. She found comfort in knowing her mother-in-law had given birth in the same place.
But delivery amid a pandemic was hardly easy. Stephanie had to wear a mask, was attached to a fetal monitor, had an IV in her arm and could only walk in circles in a 6-foot radius. This was nothing like her home birth when she was unbound and free. She felt claustrophobic. Trapped, even.
Stephanie’s second time giving birth was long and grueling, but the recovery was much better afterward. This time, she even walked a mile seven days postpartum. (Photo courtesy of Nick Stamas)
She was given an epidural and drugs to help induce birth. Stephanie felt exhausted but finally, after 18 hours, she gave birth to another baby girl.
In that moment, the world felt alright. In that moment, the isolation and the pain of the pandemic gave way to sheer joy.
Despite so many people suffering and so many deaths, Stephanie knew their family was going to be OK. They had been lucky. Stephanie and Nick escaped largely unscathed and brought a new life into the world. They had given up their lives and their beloved city, but others had to sacrifice so much more.
Stephanie and Nick named the baby Samara Joy. In Hebrew, her first name means protected by God. She was a reminder that even in grief and loss, life can begin anew.
Today, Stephanie often has Samara on her hip, who makes the occasional appearance in Zoom calls or exercise videos. It has been a year since the Stamases fled New York. They’ve settled into a completely different way of life in a new home in Tarpon Springs, close to Nick’s parents and not too far from Stephanie’s family in Orlando. (Photo courtesy of Nick Stamas)