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Episode 84SN: Managing the Feelings of an Unexpected Pregnancy: Kekua’s Story, Part II

In this episode, you’ll hear what Kekua did when her experience really shoved her expectations for her second birth off a cliff.

Today you’ll hear how Kekua manages the many surprises that visit the birth of her second child. The number of things that go a bit sideways almost makes her story sound like a sitcom script, but the way she sticks the landing, in the end is what’s truly impressive. We’ll pick up our conversation where Kekua is talking about the slow return of her body, a body she recognizes after the birth of her first child. 

Longterm effects of Breastfeeding

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40168-015-0104-7

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8567139/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210114111912.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077166/

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/110/2/343/64361/Breastfeeding-and-Infant-Growth-Biology-or-Bias

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953617306202

Crash C section

https://www.webmd.com/baby/emergency-c-section

Geographic distribution of maternal health outcomes

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2022/dec/us-maternal-health-divide-limited-services-worse-outcomes

Maternal deaths and mortality rates per 100,000 live births

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/12/1128335563/maternity-care-deserts-march-of-dimes-report

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2021/oct/severe-maternal-morbidity-united-states-primer

Audio Transcript

Paulette: Hi, Welcome to War Stories from the Womb: In this episode, you’ll hear what Kekua did when her experience really shoved her expectations for her second birth off a cliff……This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition you can find on all kinds of media, to a more realistic one.  It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and release that new person from your body into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls.

Today you’ll hear how Kekua manages the many surprises that visit the birth of her second child. The number of things that go a bit sideways almost makes her story sound like a sitcom script, but the way she sticks the landing, in the end is what’s truly impressive. We’ll pick up our conversation where Kekua is talking about the slow return of her body, a body she recognizes after the birth of her first child. 

Kekua 0:00  

I was definitely none of this. I walked out of the hospital looking great kind of thing. And I stayed. I still look pregnant. She was born December 12. Of course our Christmas pictures December 25. I still look like I was it’s yeah.

 

Paulette kamenecka  0:19  

I remember being shocked that after the birth I still had the belly. I was like, What? What else is in there? go look.

 

Kekua 0:27  

I use Orion huge it was.

 

Paulette kamenecka  0:29  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And did you guys breastfeed or anything? I was sleeping. I was all that.

 

Kekua 0:35  

I did. You know, the La Leche League and lactation consultants come in and ask you if that’s what you want to do. So of course I did. I wanted to do whatever, you know, was the naturalistic most healthy, not to mention

 

Paulette kamenecka  0:51  

the first

 

Kekua 0:57  

engaged learning process, both of you got that she was able to get it, you know, we found our little rhythm. And then after that, it was like, it was like old hat. It was such it’s almost indescribable. Like the, the closeness and the bond that you get to create with your child when you’re a nursing mother is unique. I can’t there’s really nothing that I can compare that to, like when you look down on your baby’s looking right at you and they’re so close. And you’re really skin to skin. And I know a lot of mothers are scared of it because it can be like a strange experience. Once you get over that initial challenge. It’s such a beautiful experience. That was a wonderful wish I had but I didn’t know I didn’t know that I could just not give her formula. So when she was getting older, I got worried that she wasn’t getting enough. Yeah. And so I would supplement with formula. And of course, if you replace some of the meals, that means there’s less physical demand. So then your body produces less so that’s kind of like a cycle. So she ended up weaned off by the time she hit like 11 months, so she didn’t get a full year. I do regret that. I wish I had had her longer. I nursed my son for about a year and a half. His immune system is solid and hers is not so much and there are times when I have you know mother guilt, right? If it goes off in parts of your life, there are times when I’m like, That’s my fault. You get sick because of me. Although not but you know, Mother guilt tells you that everything is

 

Paulette kamenecka  2:53  

your fault. I feel like the good news and the bad news is you feel responsible for everything but you don’t really have control over everything. Once you find the point where those two intersect, it’s a much happier medium because then you don’t feel responsible for her coming home sick in 10th grade. Right? It is more palpable. But so what’s the age difference between the kids?

 

Kekua 3:15  

Almost exactly two years. They’re two years and 13 days apart? Yes, he she so she’s been born on December 12. He was actually born on his due date of Christmas. Oh, wow. Oh

 

Paulette kamenecka  3:29  

my god. Wow. What a holiday season at your house. Good Lord. So you weren’t happy to walk into the first one. Were you were happier for the second one.

 

Kekua 3:37  

I wanted the second one. I loved the her mother’s so much that I wanted. I did not love pregnancy. But like I said from the second she came out. I wanted to repeat that and I wanted wanted a girl because she was so perfect. And just joy is all of those things that I wanted to do that exact I didn’t get. I didn’t get her.

 

Paulette kamenecka  4:04  

We rarely do we really roll the dice you can’t count. So did you get pregnant easily again, the second time?

 

Kekua 4:12  

I think so. I think it was fairly easily when I had made the decision. I I said okay, we’re doing this, like we’re doing this. And he was like okay, and I think he underestimated how much of doing this was going to come along with that because like I meant it when I said I want another baby. Yeah. And I would say it didn’t take but another month maybe it was two months. It was long enough that he started to be like please, please can we stop but you know, we made a deal. We made a deal. This is what we’re doing.

 

Paulette kamenecka  4:50  

That’s the thing trying makes it hard. Right? Once you’re trying that it’s harder in part because you’re watching it so closely and you’re just just harder. So was the second pregnancy easier because you know what to expect or what was that like?

 

Kekua 5:04  

Yes and no so like the first pregnancy, medically speaking, did not really have too many problems. I was not supposed to do as much as I did. But you know, there wasn’t really no choice. Things had to be done and to work and things like that with the second one. It was emotionally much easier. Obviously because they wanted this to happen. I was not supposed to be very active because I had a bit of an amniotic fluid leak. So it wasn’t enough for them to be very, very concerned. But it was pretty consistent. There was I guess a pinhole leak Yeah, so I wasn’t supposed to be up and about it wasn’t supposed to be super active. But again, then I already had a child. You know, the house has to get cleaned. I very, very insistent on everyday had to be vacuumed because we did have dogs. Yeah. My babies to be able to be honest, four dishes of course have to get done you know, have to cook and do all those things. It did not get much assistance from my husband. So you know she should have to get done.

 

Paulette kamenecka  6:11  

So were they telling you to to be active because there was a hope that the the bag of waters would seal itself or they just thought it would leak less if you did

 

Kekua 6:20  

less stuff. So for the amount that it was It wasn’t dangerous, but they were concerned that if I was too active, it would become a larger leak or you know create a rupture or something that then it would require bed rest or hospitalization or something.

 

Paulette kamenecka  6:36  

So that was the only thing you were it sounds like you were watching for your pregnancy and then do you have a different vision of the birth of a second one other than less than 40 hours?

 

Kekua 6:45  

Yes, I knew that I was going to wait until because I knew what it felt like when she was ready. To come out. I remember Surprisingly even though I had an epidural i from the inside I was I okay now now she’s coming down. So I knew that I was going to wait as long as possible because I did not want to lay in the bed. Pretty horrors again. And this time I was having all the false Labor’s the Braxton Hicks and stuff. So I was standing at the table wrapping Christmas presents because it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m having all the Braxton Hicks and I’m like oh man. It’s really it’s close. He’s going to be here pretty soon. But I wrapped up all the presidents and I put him under the tree. And I went to bed. So this was probably along the lines of You know, one or two in the morning because you put the baby to bed first right and then we’ll go find all the things that you’ve been through the house and all of that. So I went and I wrapped them up, put them under the tree went to bed and I woke up around around five something 530 And I woke up because it had gotten enough that I was kind of like oh, man, this false labor. And then I laid there for a little while long and I was like, oh, it’s not false.

 

Paulette kamenecka  8:11  

Because you noticed they were regular or what was the what was

 

Kekua 8:15  

different? It felt not just stronger, but it felt different. And I realized I was like, oh this is not the same that I’ve been having for the last couple weeks. This is actual This is really over and I could feel pressure on my cervix. So not like giving birth pressure but I could feel that as you know everything contracts and pushes down onto the cervix. I can feel that but it was still very early in the morning so my daughter was in bed with myself and my husband so I woke him up. And I said, I’m gonna have mom drive me to the hospital when she wakes up. Then you guys come he’s like, Well, just from now like don’t wake her up. I’m like for what Leah was 40 hours last night. Just just come she’s gonna wake up in a couple hours. So we’re just gonna go ahead and then you guys come in when she gets up. So I went with my mom without their admit me and they do their little pre check. And they’re all you know, is dad involved, you know, all those normal questions and I was like, yeah, he’s you know, baby still sleeping. So they’ll be here when she wakes up. And they said, Well, you know if he wants to be here, he should probably come right now. Wow. Really? So I call him I’m like, Hey, he’s like I was already getting ready. I wasn’t gonna listen to you. So they’re trying to monitor right? So they put the belly band off to kind of monitor contractions. And they don’t like the way his heart rate seems to lessen with each contraction. So they decide they want to you know, after a little while of this they decide they want to put the so there’s a secondary kind of monitor but it’s more invasive where they’ll attach it to the skull and then just kind of focus in they want to monitor him more tightly than what they’re seeing on the van because they don’t like what they’re seeing on the van. So when they broke the water that was it is go time. Oh wow. Water to put that on his. And the moment they broke the water. He was like, Oh, all right. And he wanted to come out. So the nurse had to like hold him in. And because she was doing that. She felt that what was happening was his cord was wrapped around the top of his head, not around his neck, but it went over his head. So each time there was a contraction cord against his skull was being compressed and that was why his heart rate would drop a little bit because the oxygen from the cord would get cut off a little bit. So they couldn’t let him come out because if he comes out with squirt first and that that kind of tangled man who gets stuck somewhere in the birth now most likely that means he’s entangled in it somehow. So they’re holding him in. Literally,

 

Paulette kamenecka  11:10  

this this seems comfortable. Is this how are you?

 

Kekua 11:14  

It was it was yeah, it was something because they had just given me the epidural. Now it’s like look, I don’t like having medication. Who would I remember last time and I would like to collectively have that before it gets bad and it’s hard to give it to me because I don’t want to have any problems with my spine. So they just given like it hadn’t taken effect. Literally this is like moments later. And because she’s holding him in he turned out to be a very tactile sensitive child, because she’s holding him and he does not like that. So he started squirming around so he spins around. And then he is breech. And my God. Oh shit. Well, he can’t come out like this and he’s wrapped up in his cord. So she’s literally holding him in there and the doctor says things are gonna have to really quickly right now.

 

Paulette kamenecka  12:03  

waterworks

 

Kekua 12:04  

because I’m like,

 

Paulette kamenecka  12:05  

oh my god,

 

Kekua 12:06  

this is this is terrible. Something’s going wrong. And they they will move over to the operating room. So this is the crash C section. I didn’t know there was anything called the crash section. And so like I’m terrified the panic because I think I’m going to die and now my baby has been long

 

Paulette kamenecka  12:25  

wait, wait so let’s go slow here. Why does this make you think you’re gonna die as someone miscommunicated to you or have you thought about this

 

Kekua 12:33  

is just my own internal fear like something is going very wrong. Okay. It’s more important for them to move than it is for them to explain to me what’s going on.

 

Paulette kamenecka  12:43  

Okay, yeah, the rapidity is unnerving. I

 

Kekua 12:46  

agree. Yeah. So, so they will be over because I had had the epidural. They didn’t give me any and they also did not have much time to wait so they didn’t give me any anesthesia.

 

Paulette kamenecka  12:57  

Is your mom like holding your hand while you’re flying through the corridor? No,

 

Kekua 13:01  

  1. I cannot remember. Where my mom is at this point of I know she’s she’s somewhere nearby. And I know I remember that. I said things to her but I can’t remember seeing her or I can’t remember what I said.

 

Paulette kamenecka  13:17  

Okay, I’m concerned that cuckoo year is alone in her time of need. This is why I’m

 

Kekua 13:22  

focused on she was she was there about I remember as I went out the door because she couldn’t come in. Yeah, as I went out the door she said I love you. I remember that. Scared me even more. Yes.

 

Paulette kamenecka  13:37  

I’ll never forget you. Thanks.

 

Kekua 13:39  

Yes, that’s what it felt like. Yeah. So so they will be in there and because I didn’t have any other kind of anesthesia. I felt all of it because it happens so very quickly, that it was before the epidural could take effect in my system. Like, like so rapid, everything from the time that they gave me the epidural to the time that they put on his birth certificate was literally like, eight minutes.

 

Paulette kamenecka  14:09  

Oh my god. Yeah. So does that mean you can feel the scalpel? That’s painful. No.

 

Kekua 14:17  

I yeah, I felt I felt I could feel the that you know, like it’s a suturing suturing soldering. Right so that you don’t need all of that.

 

Paulette kamenecka  14:30  

That sounds unbelievably painful.

 

Kekua 14:33  

It was painful, but it was for some reason in the moment, I was able to take my mind away from this because I was running through so many other things. I could feel that it hurt it hurt but I was so terrified of bigger things that the pain did not matter a whole lot.

 

Paulette kamenecka  14:59  

At the moment. Maybe your adrenaline of panic was dampening the effect. I

 

Kekua 15:07  

tend to agree with you. Yeah.

 

Paulette kamenecka  15:11  

So they they take them out and are you communicating? I can feel this or what’s going

 

Kekua 15:15  

on for now. I’m not communicating at all. I’m entirely in my head. I want to say within moments of them, pulling him out, which is the most disgusting feeling I have ever had. It’s weird. Him coming out but then rooting around to get a hold of him. Because you feel all that pressure in your abdominal cavity right so your your guts literally feel like they’re beasts third that was that was the most there was a brief moment where I thought that was gonna make me throw up because

 

Paulette kamenecka  15:47  

is it so I had two C sections and it feels like you’re like a roller coaster. Right like all your all your internal organs are moving around in a way that doesn’t seem right.

 

Kekua 15:59  

Which is funny because they’re not moving at all. But the pressure that you’re feeling really feel like everything is beats. Yep, yep, yep. So they pull him out. And I think at this so around the time that they pull him out, the epidural is starting to take effect. In fact, I think it was probably moments before that because I don’t remember feeling. So like when they put in for c section right? Horizontally, but when they get to the layer of muscle we don’t cut a separate a long villain Niantic nigra. There is I don’t remember feeling that part. So it probably was moments before they pulled him out actually with the epidural starting to take effect. But a few moments after they had full came out, which I did not realize and most people don’t realize they actually pull your uterus help kind of wash it and push it back in. And like make sure that the placenta has detached all the way and stuff. And at the moment that my uterus is out on my belly is when they brought my then husband in. He’s expecting you know, he’s gonna go into the labor room and I’m gonna be halfway through pushing and he’s gonna be like, No, he walked in and, you know, some of my guts are out on my belly in the last birth. He just kind of stands there with his mouth open, but he doesn’t know what to do. So yes, you walked in and I’m looking at him and he’s making that face again. And then he stands there for a moment or two. While they’re cleaning. He hasn’t seen my son yet because he’s off to the side. We went down. So he’s just standing there. He doesn’t. She said he didn’t know if I was dying. Because that’s you know, scary. Is he talking for sure the normal to them because that’s just how it works. But I wasn’t ready for that. So that maybe overdue. So, for me to see, by that point exhaustion had started to take effect and maybe they had given me other things that I was too exhausted to realize, but I could see him I saw that he was healthy. He was you know, normal color and all that stuff. And I just checked out at that moment. Like at that moment I was done. I remember them we need to call the recovery. Room. And all I wanted to know was where my daughter was. They hadn’t seen her so they held her up. Now brought on another wave of tears because that was like ruining Christmas. Morning and you know all of these things and I was like before baby girl. And they were like, here’s the baby you know, here’s baby don’t freak out. I saw him and I checked out again and I feel like I was not feel like I feel like because I was my ex husband told me afterwards I was mostly unconscious for at least a whole day after that just asleep kind of recovering from you know, the medical and emotional trauma of all of that. He was like it was great. I watched TV the whole time and there was football in the room you didn’t even know or care.

 

Paulette kamenecka  19:05  

I can’t imagine you’ve had a day. That’s been a day for sure. Now when they whipped you into surgery, do they have enough time to put up the curtain or you got to see all the surgical stuff.

 

Kekua 19:15  

There was a curtain I had wanted to watch. But generally speaking they don’t allow that because it makes people even more nauseated. I remember thinking it to myself, but I did not ask can I see? I think I was the you know, in hindsight, I was probably in a little bit of shock. Because everything was functioning on the inside, but not necessarily.

 

Paulette kamenecka  19:37  

Yeah. Yeah. Holy crap, man. That’s a that was a whirlwind of birth. Yeah, so do they keep you for like a couple of days in the hospital are

 

Kekua 19:50  

aged. I want to say it was three, three days. Regular birth, it’s like 36 hours, at least at that time. And then I stayed there because it was considered major surgery. You know, they come in and they massage to feel like if your uterus is going back to normal size, and if you are able to get baby to latch on and then also because it was major surgery, they can’t release you until you have passed gas. Which was I was like What do you mean? Because when your cavity is open and air can get inside, they’re concerned that there’s air trapped inside of your body.

 

Paulette kamenecka  20:30  

I only vaguely remember that was through some kind of bathroom task I had to complete and I was like, Oh honey, that’s never happening again. I’m not I’m not in that market anymore. I’m not

 

Kekua 20:42  

I did not want to give birth ever again after that. Oh my gosh, I remember having the the little Peasy out of the bottle. Yeah daughter because there had been a little bit of tear it wasn’t enough that I could feel it. It wasn’t like you know devastating of just a little bit. And so I was very relieved that I did not have to also go through that after major surgery with my son. Yeah, because there’s obviously nobody came out down there. And because they had washed the uterus there was very little so one thing that I absolutely did not know even after reading my what to expect when I’m expecting was that you were going to have you know, when you give vaginal birth. Give a period for about a month after that. Yeah, I did not know that after a C section because they wash your uterus out and basically clean off the lining. There’s not so much like there was I still had a little bit but it was not a whole month of a period afterwards. So that was nice. Yeah, yeah,

 

Paulette kamenecka  21:45  

yeah. Did you feel like you figured out how to move around and all that with the giant.

 

Kekua 21:50  

I was because my muscles were not super strong. Like I certainly did not get back to a bikini body after my daughter. I had plenty of weight and plenty of extra skin to which you know those stitches did not get pulled on picked my daughter up. I wasn’t supposed to but what sitting down, I would you know, because that’s upper body. I put her on my lap and for the most part, I was able to function pretty normally pretty quickly. So the turnout was I would say as optimal as could be hoped for if you had planned it in advance. We just

 

Paulette kamenecka  22:27  

plan it. Yeah, I mean, obviously such a great outcome mom’s okay babies, okay. But good lord, that is so unexpected and so shocking, really. Right. It makes sense that you’re in shock and shocking even here, so I can’t even imagine what it was like to go through. Now looking back at that. Would you have any advice for your younger self like is there anything you would have wished you had known going in? I wish that I had

 

Kekua 22:53  

been a little more active in my first pregnancy. I don’t know if I could have because of the nausea like I I understand now, which I did not understand them. But if you move a little bit more of your body adapts to things better when you’re moving than it does when you’re still but the reason that I was not moving was because I felt so ill. So I would like to think that if I could have moved around a little bit more, it would have been a little bit more of a comfortable pregnancy. My body was so sensitive like even laying in the bed. The bed felt so hard on my body when I was pregnant the first time and had the same bed in the second pregnancy and didn’t feel that so you know the hormonal changes are not the same in every single pregnancy. Yeah, in my second one. I don’t think so. When I was pregnant, I had this, you know, vision of I’m a bit of a hippie. I really wanted to have a home birth. Yeah, I wanted it to be as you know, natural and unpleasant as it could be. And I’m really glad that I did not go through with that because that would not have worked out for the for the deliveries that I had. That would not have worked out. Well for us.

 

Paulette kamenecka  24:07  

What changed you from the home birth to a hospital birth.

 

Kekua 24:11  

They didn’t offer it. It wasn’t covered in my insurance. Okay. So hospital was the only option that we had. Yeah. And that felt safe enough because like I said, my auntie was a labor and delivery nurse. So I knew that it was going to be any kind of like, number you know, people care about me. It was a horrible thing to say that you know, there has to be nepotism. You’ll see

 

Paulette kamenecka  24:42  

you and the numbers don’t lie. It’s a it’s an unfortunate thing to say. But here we are staring at you know, higher maternal mortality rate than any other industry. And although there is like a year there was killed in pregnancy, and some giant fraction of those are preventable. So you’re right, like women just aren’t taken care of well enough

 

Kekua 25:08  

after pregnancy. I think in the entirety of the medical industry, that’s probably yes. Right. But yeah, I would love to have had you know, like a happy to be little homebirth waterbirth whatever. And, you know, maybe that was the universe protecting me because it knew what was in store and that would especially with my second child that could have been disastrous.

 

Paulette kamenecka  25:30  

Totally, totally. That is it. That is almost scary to think about only because of the way it turned out right? Because you went to the hospitals featured any sign you imagine 40 hours was really more like two. Yeah, right. So like, nothing kind of went according to your expectation and I feel like based on your daughter, your bar was kind of low. I feel like if you had jibber for less than 40 hours you have thought that anything less victory is mine. Right? So it just it was so off the chart and does does anything about his birth match your son when he was out walking around?

 

Kekua 26:03  

He stayed being tactile sensitive. He did not like being touched. He did not like having his temperature taken. He’s still a little bit like he just he feels you know his sense of touch when he was very small. His comfort item was to like Kleenex is have like the layer of I guess lotion or whatever right to make them soft. His comfort item when he was very small with he would appeal to Kleenex as a part and then he would rub that that was his you know, some kids have a blankies Yeah, that was that was what he liked. He would like to touch that and he stay being sensitive to the touch Middle School. He asked me to stop touching his face because I’m a lifter, so I get calluses on my arms. And he’s like, Oh, it’s so scratchy. Please start touching. He doesn’t like it if I rub his skin you know if I hold his hand I can. I can give a little squeeze, but I can’t rub his.

 

Paulette kamenecka  27:06  

That’s totally interesting. I like it when there’s some aspect of continuity in some of the characteristics of kids that you can see. My second one was a scheduled C section and she came three weeks early. And she is very much on her own time. That’s true to this day.

 

Kekua 27:22  

Oh my gosh, you know, when you phrase it like that, I just thought she got it from me but my daughter is like we are always waiting for her. She is very much when she’s ready then she’s

 

Paulette kamenecka  27:35  

Yeah, yeah. From the very start, right. That’s what she was trying to tell you. This is how it’s gonna be. But we don’t necessarily we don’t always know what information to take from the gym or our children’s shoes to the degree that they can choose it. Well, thanks so much for sharing your amazing story. It is a story of total victory in the end right?

 

Kekua 27:53  

It feels like it somehow I managed to pull it around and raise a couple of wonderful babies and when things are really easy, and then they get hard. It’s kind of it’s way more difficult but when they start out rough, it’s a little it’s a lot easier to deal with all of the other things that come especially when you can just be like you know, you’re alive right now. And I appreciate that and that could have that could have very much not that the case.

 

Paulette kamenecka  28:18  

I totally agree you I appreciate the 3am yelling from the boy who required a crash C section right? You’re like oh, look at that. He’s a lot of singing. Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. Man. That’s a useful perspective.

 

Kekua 28:32  

It really is. It definitely informed my style of motherhood, to just be really, really happy that I have them. Yeah. I very much am aware how close both of them could have come to not to be here.

 

Paulette kamenecka  28:49  

Yeah, yeah, that’s totally true. Well, it’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

 

Kekua 28:54  

Thank you for having me. I love that you you have this because this is such a beautiful thing to share the truth to women because we, you know, we’re so conditioned to not acknowledge our difficulties and our pains and then when we’re so unprepared for them when they come. But I want to remind people that it is not the vast majority, but it is a possibility like that things won’t go the way that you dream. Not to not to panic and think that you’re dying.

 

Paulette kamenecka  29:23  

Just because well, they’re also but part of the problem is like that dream is based off some false story. Right? The truth of the matter is being pregnant and having a kid is an unbelievably demanding enterprise for everyone no matter what. Right? So. So that doesn’t come with rainbows. And and ice cream and butterflies, right that there are parts of it that are like that, but not all of it and the birth lasts for you know 40 hours and the long in the long stretch of it and then you get to have them for many many years if you’re lucky. Right. So yeah, it’s it’s really hard and you know, things are hard to predict. but it’s a blink of an eye.

 

 




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Episode 83SN: Managing the Feelings of an Unexpected Pregnancy: Kekua’s story, Part I

This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the rainbows and roses depictions you can find on social media, and other media more broadly, to a more realistic one (which might include rainbows and rocks).  It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls who had far too many surprises on my path to motherhood.

Today’s topic is one that doesn’t see much daylight, to the detriment of everyone who has kids: the struggle to manage an unwanted pregnancy. There are any number of ways to respond to an unexpected pregnancy, and in today’s show, you’ll hear about an uncomfortable but very real response; one that I’m guessing is not uncommon, but is a perspective we rarely hear because the only culturally acceptable response is Joy; you have to be joyous. But that expectation is wildly unrealistic. Having a child is a life changing event, and on the cusp of such an event, any number of reactions can occur. In part one of my conversation, listen to how my guest managed these uncomfortable feelings.

To find Kekua and her work, click here

Residual effects of Birth Control

https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-post-birth-control-syndrome-5206977

https://www.healthline.com/health/post-birth-control-syndrome#takeaway

Timing of Dropping Birth Control to Get Pregnant

https://www.webmd.com/baby/get-pregnant-after-birth-control

RU 486

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/42/8a/428ab2ad-3798-4e3d-8a9f-213203f0af65/191011-the-facts-on-mifepristone-d01.pdf

Pitocin versus Oxytocin

https://www.verywellfamily.com/ways-pitocin-is-different-than-oxytocin-2758958

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6209192/

Pain and Induced Labor

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982443/

Audio Transcript

Paulette: Hi Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the rainbows and roses depictions you can find on social media, and other media more broadly, to a more realistic one (which might include rainbows and rocks).  It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls who had far too many surprises on my path to motherhood.

Today’s topic is one that doesn’t see much daylight, to the detriment of everyone who has kids: the struggle to manage an unwanted pregnancy. There are any number of ways to respond to an unexpected pregnancy, and in today’s show, you’ll hear about an uncomfortable but very real response; one that I’m guessing is not uncommon, but is a perspective we rarely hear because the only culturally acceptable response is Joy; you have to be joyous. But that expectation is wildly unrealistic. Having a child is a life changing event, and on the cusp of such an event, any number of reactions can occur. In part one of my conversation, listen to how my guest managed these uncomfortable feelings.

P:

Hi  thanks so much for coming on the show. Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from?

 

Keuka: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. My name is Keuka. I’m from the main island in Hawaii, which is called awful with the one with Waikiki and I’m a mom of 20 years to my birth children this year they they just turned 20 and 18. 

 

P: Wow. So let’s go back to the four kids. Did you grow up with siblings?

 

K: I actually on my father’s side my biological father had a total of seven, including me, but we just discovered a couple of months ago, someone reached out who is apparently his birth child that had been adopted at birth. So he’s got a total of eight. And my mother who actually actually raised me who I lived with all my life has one other child so I have a younger brother, who is the sibling that I grew up with. 

 

P: So did you have much contact with the other kids that you didn’t grow up with? Other than 

 

K: not really, because my the, the man I grew up with was in the army, so did not spend most of my childhood or young adulthood here, so I knew them. We would visit them of course when we came back home in between duty stations and things like that, but I did not get to grow up with them in the way that people would typically, you know, grew up with their siblings. 

 

P: Growing up with your brother did that make you think I want a family to or did they have? 

 

K: No, I did not want children at the time that I got married. And at the time that I found out I was pregnant I was it was not an it was not a joyous moment no. 

 

P: So it sounds like it was easy to get pregnant regrettably.

 

K: It it was unexpected. My then he was my husband. We had been together for let’s say, two years, maybe just under two years. I had not been on birth control because birth control sent me on a wild ride of manic depressive hormonal manipulation. So I had come off with that for probably about a whole year before I got pregnant. So I just thought we couldn’t get pregnant. I didn’t understand at the time that those you know birth hormonal birth control can have several years worth of effect, so it probably just kind of had a residual contraceptive effect in my system. 

 

P: So this is a good question about long term effects of birth control here meaning oral contraceptives. I’ve read before about how birth control can dampen your risk for ovarian and endometrial cancer. And those benefits linger long after you stop taking birth control, but I wasn’t aware of negative long term effects. Apparently this is a bit of a gray area. A contested name for these effects is post birth control syndrome. And it’s the purview of naturopaths in part because the medical community doesn’t view the effects of pill removal as symptoms. They think it’s the body’s adjustment. Makes sense that your body would react both to the initiation of synthetic hormones, which alters your body’s own production of hormones, and the withdrawal of these hormones. It can lead to things like irregular periods or no period for varying lengths of time after the pills stopped. In general this like many topics in women’s health is under studied. 

 

K: So I did not expect to get pregnant after that amount of time. I just thought it wouldn’t happen and I was wrong.

 

P: Wow. Well that’s that is a shocking into that hormone. All right. I also didn’t know that once you stopped birth control. I mean, I guess I thought for like two or three months, maybe it would, it would have some kind of effect on your system, but I would never have thought it would last as long as yours did.

 

K: Oh, yeah, I’ve I’ve since learned that it can actually because it is you know synthetic hormones. That it can affect your own hormone production for up to several years. So you’re on, you know, birth control pills. And you you know that at some point you want to have children, they actually encourage you to get off of those pills. And this may have changed now but between three to five years before you know you want to have children and change to a non hormonal form. 

 

P: That’s totally interesting. I didn’t know that. I’m not sure what advice was given back in the day, but now according to webmd, you may be able to get pregnant within one to three months of stopping oral contraception in fact, on the list of side effects of coming off the pill, the first one listed in most articles is pregnancy. But most women can get pregnant according to webmd within a year, again, your results may vary.

 

So how did you figure out you are pregnant?

 

K: I you know I knew it. I felt it. I didn’t feel right, you know, quote unquote, it didn’t feel right. My body felt off. And I had generally been kind of self aware in terms of my body and I just like my intuition was telling me I was like, this is this is pregnancy and I’m like, no, no, no, it’s not pregnancy. It’s not pregnancy and it wasn’t going away. So we made a doctor’s appointment. And yeah, I was pregnant. 

 

P: Well, that seems really challenging. 

 

K:  it was definitely I knew at that point, that I did not want to spend my life with my husband. And it was it was devastation, because that meant that I would be tied to Him eternally. 

 

P: Yeah, totally. And it sounds like he or maybe I should just ask Did you consider ending the pregnancy or No,

 

K:  I I don’t talk about that with my children. But I did. I asked at that point the I don’t know what they even call it but the the abortion pill was relatively new. But it had been established for maybe like two years at that point. And I asked about it, I knew that I didn’t have what it took to go to DNC, you know, the the medical removal, so I did ask to see if they had the pill and we did not here in Hawaii. We did not have it yet. So I I saw it as I that’s not an option. 

 

P: Okay. I totally remember that. I think it was ru 46 And it was like new on the market.

 

So I went back and look this up. The drug was originally called ru 486. And it was developed in France in 1988. The name you might know it by now is mifeprestone. It’s a steroid that stops the action of progesterone. Progesterone, of course is one of the critical hormones that maintains the lining of the uterus during pregnancy and is one of the two drugs given to stop the advancement of a pregnancy. It was not made available to American women until September of 2000. But as always, when it comes to this charge topic, you had to pick it up at your doctor’s office. In 2001. Only about 5% of abortions were medical abortions.

 

So that seems I mean, pregnancy is hard enough. Even if he wanted desperately. So it seems like it would be extremely hard to get through the first trimester or take us on that journey. like at what point did you feel like any sort of excitement or

 

K:  I unfortunately, I have to say that there was no excitement through that entire pregnancy because I saw it as a chain coming. 

 

P: Yeah, 

 

K: I couldn’t break. Yeah, it was as most women can attest to it, like it was unpleasant. To be pregnant in general. You know, I was nauseated. Most of the time I swelled up like a freaking water balloon. By the time I got to the end of it that what the tops of my feet jiggled when I walked. I have stretch marks on my inner thighs because my eye was so swollen with water. And that’s because if I was not putting something in something, everything wanted to come out. So I did a whole lot of sunflower seeds. 

 

P: Oh, uh huh. 

 

K: Very salty, lots of stuff. So I took in a lot of sodium. I was maybe halfway through or two thirds of the way through when I was like, I was kind of feeling upset with myself because there was no, there was no way out of it. Right. It wasn’t going to come to an end. And I thought to myself, you know, there are women who they they try, they work they spend 1000s to millions of dollars to become pregnant to become parents. And I did not ask for this but I still have it and no matter what there’s, you know, there’s a baby involved in this. And I had tried to convince myself that I should be happy about it because it’s a blessing because you know, that’s what we’re conditioned to. But it was really, it was really difficult to see it that way because it just felt like a life sentence until the moment she came out. Like truly the second she was laid on my stomach. It was it. I was a different person after that. And I have loved being a mother every moment since then. But I cannot lie and say that I was at any moment excited or looking forward to motherhood with the singular exception of when, when she was in me. She did not like being touched. She did not even swear she knew if you were looking at it and I would surreptitious, my eyes when you were looking at my dog was literally the only person who could read to me and she would respond. When you know when I was leaving my cleaner.

 

Of course, you know, a Doberman is a tall dog on the side and she put her head on my belly, and she would move more. So they the two of them are tight before she even came out. And they were tight. All the way up until until my Doberman died. We called her sissy she was the third child or the first child I guess. And they were tight tight. If you didn’t know where she was at, what Where’s the dog, then that’s where she went. 

 

P: it’s so cute to be a dog lover in utero. That’s a good quality, right? That’s a good sign. But the pregnancy sounds so hard for you. I’m so sorry. I can’t even… it feels like the slow moving train of disaster. Because you probably you could probably feel the changes in your body and you’re getting bigger once you start showing that you’re going to have to have conversations of I know, I didn’t have the same path as you but we had medical issues. And once you’re showing the only story people want to hear is it’s so great. I’m so happy. 

 

K: Yeah, 

 

P: that’s like the only thing you can really say, which is limiting and is I think it’s just hard to like misrepresent yourself all the time.

 

K: It’s it’s, I mean, I think that we we do a disservice like how many women come through and they end up with or even before they give birth, you know, they have wide ranging symptoms, and a lot of them do include depression, but like most of the female experience in this country, you’re not allowed to talk about that you’re not allowed to have unhappy feelings like maybe if you just smile a little more, go for a walk, you know, and like, yes, there’s validity in 

 

P: yes 

 

K: smiling and going for a walk but it is not the solution, especially when you are literally be used. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: Your hormones are not your home runs your food is not your food your life is not your life. You know and there are surely there are positive emotions that come along with that but just as surely is there a positive there’s negative stuff too, and sometimes it feels like shit. 

 

P: Yeah, I mean, it’s it is much more complicated than people say it is. I think most people who talk about the second trimester as this glorious time, like in my experience, I thought it was glorious, because I was no longer vomitus at all points. Right. So it’s not like the second trimester. There’s something great about the second trimester. It’s like I all of a sudden don’t want to throw up no matter what the smell is no matter what the food is. And that feels like such a glorious relief that you’re the second trimester.  So yeah, I totally agree with you. So let’s go to the birth. How do you know today’s the day how does that go down? And like what are you picturing from birth?

 

K: I  Well, first of all it for any woman who’s listening start don’t don’t watch all the pregnancy cells on TV. You will it’s don’t do that yourself. I had been watching those and I realized after a couple of months I was like everything on this show is it is a trauma. Everything like these are not like the average birth these are like all of all of the horrible births that go wrong or the last minute changes. And then that turned out to be me.

 

so I wasn’t I was not looking forward to the birth because my husband told his parents that they could come like right at the time of the birth. And I was like in you know, like given give me a little bit of time have them come like a week later or so like, give me like give me some time. And he was like, Oh, I can’t tell them that you know, so I was not looking forward to trying to go through the transition of experiencing birth and then having the baby and having him and having his parents like all at the same moment. And are you guys still together at this point 

 

K: Oh, yes. At that point. Yeah, we we had two children together. This was our first but I fortunately, my water broke. And she came about four days before her due date. So I had a little bit of window of time, but she was a 40 hour labor. So it was over the course of three days that I was in the labor and delivery ward because my water had broken but I did not actually physically go into labor. 

 

P: So lets So let’s talk about that for a second. Where are you when the water breaks? 

 

K: We are getting ready to go to bed I’ve taken just taking a shower, dried off, put my pajamas on and I’m walking to the bed. And that’s it I was like Oh, all right. We gotta go.

I know what that feels like.

 

P: Oh, it’s nice that you got like a Hollywood water break. So they eat like it’s dramatic enough that you know exactly what it is and you’re not so many women are like did I pee myself? It’s unclear. So now you know you have your bag packed. You go to the hospital and are they you don’t feel anything other than the water breaking. 

 

K: Right? I don’t think I even had, you know Braxton Hicks or you know, the false labor. I didn’t have much of that with her towards the end of the pregnancy. She had chilled out a lot and she didn’t move around a whole lot. So there was not a whole lot of movement. Towards the end of it. It wasn’t the whole like, I look like I have an alien, you know, a 20 that kind of thing. So it was it was enough water that I knew that it was it was unmistakeably that not so much that it was like oh my gosh crisis we need to wash the carpets but enough to know for sure that it was time to hit the hospital. 

 

P: And I’m guessing although it would have been helpful Sissy he was not allowed to come. 

 

K: no, She was not No. 

 

P: So you get to the hospital and they treat you like you’re about to have a baby or what’s their what’s 

 

K: they evaluate me really quickly. They made me put a pad on because they want to verify that I didn’t pee my pants and I was like it’s I’m pretty sure I didn’t pee my pants. I think I would know if the different feel but you know, they have to verify. So I had to walk a lot because again, there was no other labor symptoms. So they’re like okay, well, you know, walk around we’ll have you walk when until you know labor actually starts and I did a whole lot of walking and labor did not start so eventually they had put me on Pitocin which is the synthetic form of oxytocin, which is the hormone that we have only ever cramps and stimulates squishing that thing out. 

 

P: And did that. Did you feel that immediately or took a while or I didn’t feel it?

 

K: I did feel that Immediately. I ended up being on that, gosh, I don’t know like 30 hours.

  

So they would continuously raise the dose when my body was not responding. So I was having the contractions because that hormone will create the contractions, but I wasn’t dilating or effacing in my cervix. So, you know, my body itself was not was not doing the labor. It was just responding to the hormone. 

 

P: As kekua says Pitocin is a synthetic version of a hormone called oxytocin. And Its job is to get the uterus to contract and those contractions will eventually do cervical dilation. But there are some important differences between the synthesized version and the one your body produces naturally Pitocin works more slowly and with less affects the natural oxytocin when it comes to cervical dilation, which means among other things, that it could take more Pitocin than it would natural oxytocin for labor to regress to the birth stage.

 

K: And it got to the point where and I was very much against having any painkillers because I did not want I generally don’t take medicine like it’s got to be pretty bad before I do just because that’s how I grew up. So I did not want any painkillers I didn’t want to have you know, I didn’t love the idea of epidural, that’s something that gets stabbed in your spine. I wasn’t super comfortable with that. But I got to a point where you know they put the monitor belt on your belly to monitor your contractions, the strength of your contractions. You got that little monitor next to the bed.

 

And the the level of Pitocin that I was on over the next like day and a half was to the point that it was off the top of the monitor and it did not come all the way back down. So I did eventually have I had two epidurals before she decided to make her entrance because an epidural only lasts about eight hours or at least at the time. So after about eight hours, and I tried to hold out and I was like Okay, it’s alright, it’s been eight hours she’s she’s gonna be ready anyway now and No, she wasn’t. 

 

P: And I’m assuming you haven’t slept now. 

 

K: No, no, I probably could have in the early part of being induced with Pitocin when it wasn’t so bad. But because they were induced the me I thought I had no concept this is going to take you know, 40 hours so

 

P: totally, You’re like any minute now. I want to be up for like breakfast, right? 

 

K: Yeah, I that’s when I figured we were coming along breakfast time. And I was like, you know, at least I’m going to eat lunch at some point.

 

P: Now, that not so much. I’m glad you’re taking the epidural only because everyone says Pitocin is a much more kind of powerful route to birth and it is much more painful. 

 

Okay, so this is a good question. Does Pitocin create more powerful contractions and is it more painful? There are studies that suggest that labor induction is positively correlated with epidurals meaning women who have their Labor’s induced are more likely to use epidurals, but doctors don’t randomly induce a woman’s labor. Something has happened in the course of birth reduction in the US. So it’s hard to tell if epidurals are more common in this set of women, because Pitocin creates painful contractions, or if induction and epidurals together are a signal of a long challenging birth. Having said that, non clinical sites suggest that these contractions are more painful. They are used in a non induced birth. The oxytocin created by your body causes the cervix to slowly stretch and when this happens, pain receptors send messages to the brain which responds by releasing endorphins which counter the sensation of pain, but Pitocin doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier. So you’re contracting yours is not sending signals to release endorphins 

 

K: It’s painful. My dad had told me that at one point, I was twisting the arm on the you know, the arms that come up on the side of hospital beds. And he thought that I was going to break the bed because it was actually like turning in my hands. I can’t I can’t remember that. You know, trauma like yes, trauma puts those pretty curtains. over that. But I do remember that it was excruciatingly painful 

 

P: well thank God your husband’s parents weren’t there for that.

 

K: Oh, he was on the phone with them like the entire time. Well, that’s good. 

 

That’s two birds with one stone. That’s right, like everyone’s busy. That’s fine.

 

K:  It did keep him away. It was very frustrating though when I when I actually needed him. And he was he was just never there. It was always on the phone.

 

P: Yeah, you know by my side. So once you’re it sounds like you had this flip. Switch once the baby was born.

 

  

K: I did towards Well, obviously at the very end they started talking about, you know, we have to consider alternate methods of birth, you know, meaning C section. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: My auntie was a labor and delivery nurse. She actually worked at the hospital where I was giving birth. So they came in and they said a few things. And I looked at her and I was like, you need to do something about it because they’ve already had me in here for 37 hours. We’re not cutting now. You they need to figure it out. 

 

P: Yeah, yeah. 

 

K: And which is not necessarily wise because you don’t want to stay in that condition. But I was already in such a messed up mental state that I was like, No, you lost your chance to cut you figure it out. You figure figure out what you’re doing. Like how do you guys not know what you’re doing? Like I was aggravated. So she came in and she even though she was not working Of course. She you can’t work your own relative but she started working. And she had me turned side to side. And immediately immediately they turned me on my side and she went oh, here we go. It’s time. 

 

P: Wow

 

K: And oh, knew it. I was like, oh, okay, she’s ready now. And they checked me and they were like, and I was finally like effacing and dilating. And but they still thought after all this time, you know, it’s gonna be another couple hours and I was like, No, I think she’s ready and they didn’t take me seriously because, you know, they do have more experience so their previous experience suggested that I was wrong. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: But I wasn’t. So within 15 minutes. She was like, they were like, oh, we need to stop pushing. I was like, I can’t stop pushing. This is not my decision. She’s.

 

And so when she came out like I said that we’re not expecting her to pop out that fast. Everybody was still in the room. My mom’s here. My dad’s here. My brother’s here like everybody here because they’re like it’s don’t worry about it. You have time. Oh, no, didn’t have time. So when she’s like, you know, just a little heads popping out and they’re like oh, hit the doctor call button please. And my dad does this little panic dance. And he actually hits the code button on the wall. 

 

P: Oh my god. 

 

K: So so like they bring the crash cart in and the NICU comes in and like suddenly the room fills with people. I don’t know that he has hit the crash. I’m, I’m like, Oh my God, what’s going Why are there so many people? And she comes out and they lay her on my belly. And she’s kind of blue. She’s a very light. I can see even in the dim lights. I’m like she’s blue. And I look at my husband and I’m like why is she blue and he’s just staring at me. And then you know, so they cut and then they take her over so because the NICU had Brandon with their all of their equipment. They they take her to the NICU cart. I mean, you know, just there’s so many people I can’t see what’s going on. So I’m saying to him because he’s standing right there. I’m like, what’s going on? And he’s just standing there and I’m like, what’s going on? Find out what’s happening. And he still just keeps looking. I’m like, go over there and find out what is happening. Because the second like I said the moment they laid her on me and I put my hands on her. There was absolutely like you said like there was a switch and an entirely different person filled up my being because the second she came out that was my number one priority. And it was like I don’t know if there’s a way that you can correlate that to some other experience where people who’ve never had that experience could understand it. I don’t know any. All I know is that the second I actually became a mother to a living, breathing baby. I was a different person. 

 

P: That’s awesome. And it is true that every birth you’re creating a baby no mother right at that moment, so that seems to me like that makes sense. Does she does your girls still like to make an entrance is that what was going on?

 

K: She’s she very much in her infancy was similar to as she was in the womb where she was fairly quiet. She would be animated when she was doing her thing. But if something came along, she would kind of not that she would freeze but she would stop whatever other things she was doing and she would just be very observant. So she might you walk in the room and she would just look at you.

  

And her eyes would follow whatever was going on. If you oh man is so I have so few pictures of her smiling as a baby because the second she saw the crank camera, she would focus on it. And like her eyes would go large and her face would go slack and she just like stare at it.

 

So it was really hard to catch her off guard and get a picture of her like giggling or anything like that. But she was not so resistant to others as she had been in the womb she was perfectly happy to go to her grandmother, her grandfather or you know, all of the rest of it changed. But she was I mean I don’t know what else to say it was she was a delight. I fucking loved every moment.

 

P: That’s awesome. Whenwe last left her she’s blue ICU guard. Did they just warm her up or what happened? They warmed her up.

 

K:  She had been not deprived. I don’t know what’s the proper word but she had her cord had wrapped around her neck, but her arm was underneath of it so her one hand was crossed over her face. So a part of her neck was getting a little bit squished with the cord but not entirely. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: So she was breathing but she hadn’t been breathing wonderfully, especially for the amount of contraction that she was under because of the level of Pitocin. So it was probably, you know, not a oxygen rich environment for that past day and a half but not enough to create any kind of damage, no long term, you know, problems or anything like that. She was she did come out as a healthy child who was just a little bit under oxygenated. So you know they rubbed her down they gave her a little bit of oxygen while they kind of stimulated her for a couple moments. And then she came back to me nice and pink. And did what was what 

 

how long do you sit as before and what is postpartum like?

 

K: Oh gosh, postpartum was physically it was miserable because I had laid on my back for you know, so many hours because I couldn’t move and you know, you’re not supposed to lay on your back because of all that weight on your spine. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: So my back was very sore, especially the spot where the epidurals had gone in because you know that it is a wound that’s healing after that. So that little spot in my back stayed sensitive, probably. Probably about a year. 

 

P: Wow. 

 

K: If I bent the wrong way, or if I hinged, you know, in a certain way it would kind of like, like it would just hit a nerve. It wasn’t, you know, a permanent weakness or anything like that, but my body was in rough shape. For a couple of weeks after that. There was definitely none of this. I walked out of the hospital looking great kind of thing. And I stayed I still looked pregnant. She was born December 12. We of course our Christmas pictures right December 25. I still looked like I was pregnant

 

 You

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai



 

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Episode 82SN: Episode 82: A Doula (and Mother of 5) offers Miscarriage Support and Much More: Aliza’s story, Part II

This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition you can find on social media, and other media more broadly, to a more realistic one.  It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls.

In this episode Aliza shares ways to manage contractions…she also talks about some important strategies to help you get a birth closer to the one you want; everyone who has been through birth knows that it’s really the baby who is driving the process, but there are things you can do to potentially impact your experience, and Aliza talks about some of them here, as well as other doula secrets.

You can reach Aliza Said here

C section rates in Brazil and Uruguay

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/why-most-brazilian-women-get-c-sections/360589/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4743929/

C section rates in hospitals in the US, a Resource

https://www.leapfroggroup.org/news-events/first-ever-national-release-cesarean-section-rates-hospital-finds-more-60-percent?gclid=Cj0KCQiA2-2eBhClARIsAGLQ2RnkoaX7v0k-0LjuYYv0QqjRo_wk5UTO-Vcd6-IaZGXFTCVwtczEafkaArknEALw_wcB

Audio Transcript

Paulette Kamenecka: Hi. Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition you can find on social media, and other media more broadly, to a more realistic one.  It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls.

In this episode Aliza shares ways to manage contractions…she also talks about some important strategies to help you get a birth closer to the one you want; everyone who has been through birth knows that it’s really the baby who is driving the process, but there are things you can do to potentially impact your experience, and Aliza talks about some of them here, as well as other doula secrets

We’ll pick up my conversation with Aliza where we left off last week. She’s been in labor for a long time and very little was happening. The doctor just entered the room and suggested that a C section is imminent. And what follows is Aliza’s response.

Aliza  0:17  

So anyway, the doctor came in, but after six hours of being an eight centimeters, he was like, Okay, we really tried giving you as much time as we could, but that’s it in 10 minutes. There’s nothing new. We’re starting Pitocin and I looked at my Doula, and I’m like, no Pitocin going on. Here. Within 10 minutes my baby was out. Yeah. And I in that moment and she was like, giving me this like guided meditation to really watch my baby coming out and like really imagine it and talk to my baby and, and I really worked on in those moments, those things that were blocking me. And as I blocked as I took away all those things that were blocking me, my baby came out. And yeah, it was a big learning experience. And I remember my Doula telling me then, every baby comes in a completely different way, because they’re coming to teach you something completely different. And they’re gonna live their lives in a completely different way. And each child teaches you something so different. And even now as they grow up, I remember that so much like the fact that I did something with my older, with my older children. One way doesn’t mean that my younger children are going to need the same same kind of thing. Yeah, so that was my second child. 

 

P  1:33  

Wow, that’s also kind of an amazing story because you’re so present for all of it. And so self aware about what’s happening in your body, which I think is a an amazing ability to have and remarkably useful. The thing I can relate to is the resistance. Because I remember the first couple of contractions, took my breath away, but were not painful in part because I didn’t know what was going on. And it didn’t, wasn’t my immediate reaction to resist them. But once I started to resist, because I was worried about it, then became painful, then it’s like a fight.

 

A  2:08  

Right? I see many times with my clients even like, as a doula I see it many times that when they don’t know that it’s the contraction. It’s not painful. Yeah. But when, when all of a sudden oh my gosh, it really it hurts so much. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t think I’d like to really understand that. Even when my Doula told me that in between contractions, nothing’s happening. You’re not in pain. Like there’s nothing that’s causing it. To me that was completely like this epiphany like, Oh, it’s just working with each contraction. And really being present in each moment. And I will say, it’s something that I learned it’s not something that I that I was completely living before I had my babies, but I feel like birth is really something that allowed me to learn all these lessons for my life and it really changed how I could be present with my children. I use the same Hypno birthing techniques with you know, pain and other things actually have to go through like this dental work now that I’m going through and I use the same Hypno birthing techniques to like let go of pain. And it really works. You know, like when we’re able to not be in resistance to what’s going on. around us. We can ride the wave.

 

P  3:19  

I want to try that at my next dental appointment. That’s good advice. So the second one’s back and home and how are things with two little ones now? Now you have two under two, right?

 

A  3:31  

I have two under two and here’s where it starts getting complicated. Now I noticed they that I probably also had postpartum depression that I wasn’t willing to admit at the time. And now that I look back, there are many things that I see that I’m like, oh, okay, that’s probably what it was. It was really difficult also, because my my second child, he was a completely different baby than what I knew, I thought and I had all this haughtiness after my first one, that when you’re a calm parent, then you have come kids, but then I had my second one, and he was the farthest thing from calm, which is funny because today He’s very calm, but as a baby, he probably had some food like allergies and things that were bothering him in his stomach. And he was he was crying constantly, like even from the also he always wanted me like it was something unbelievable that from the minute he got out of my belly, he only wanted to be with me and he like knew to smell me the day after if anybody else would hold him he would cry. Unbelievable. Yeah, like something. I remember my mother in law saying like, I’ve never seen a baby at this age that anybody else takes him and he starts crying and only when I would hold him, he wouldn’t sleep. And he would cry. And I just felt like I was I was home with two two kids under the age of two. My husband wasn’t home most of the time. And it was really difficult, really difficult. I felt like I was crashing. I didn’t know at that time to also say that it was probably a lot of postpartum depression. And I fell into a really big, deep pit, like really bad. Also, at that time, we decided that we were going to go and move for a few years to Uruguay. We went to go work in the community there and it was in the midst of all that when I wasn’t completely aware yet of what was going on with me. He was six months old when we got there. And here I am in a new country, new language so much going on. And I really had to learn how to slowly take myself out of that pit and that was a big, big learning that I had

 

P  5:45  

so much. Yeah, that’s so much transition in a short amount of time. Right. So now in about two years, you have two kids new, you know, moved house which is a big deal to a different country and it sounds like you’re not a native Spanish speaker. And that’s a lot right. And now you’re not with your family or not with your friends. That’s a big move.

 

A  6:09  

Yeah, it was a lot and we were also in a very demanding position that my husband wasn’t home a lot and he was going through his transition of being in this new role and I was doing it was a lot. Also we felt like we have the strongest connection ever. Nothing can break us down. And all of this really like completely like shattered us up so that we could rebuild ourselves in a completely new way. So in those moments, again, it was really difficult and we thought we were gonna come back and we felt that we were just gonna give everything up. And then we were able to really like after completely breaking down to be able to build ourselves back together piece by piece by piece.

 

P  6:50  

So that’s amazing. So a third child is born in Uruguay, right? Yes.

 

A  6:55  

So a third child is born in Uruguay. And in Uruguay, like many South American countries, that the C section rate is very, very high. There’s like a lot of childbirth myths going on there. Like so much misinformation. And the hospital where I was supposed to give birth because that was my insurance. The C section rate was 90% Oh my god scared me. Like, really scared me. I felt like couldn’t even think of what was going to happen. So I started researching and searching for some doctor who was going to be able to be with me and encouraged a natural birth because it was really important to me. And I found the only doctor who was willing to go with me and but the like they know in the hospital that when he comes everybody takes a step back because they know that he does it completely differently. And it was the most beautiful experience ever. So I had a friend who really really wanted to talk to me for a long time and I kept saying, I’m not having the baby until I talked to you. And like I said it as a joke. But then I was ready to have the baby and I was like you know what, maybe because I haven’t talked to her yet. I’m not happy with the baby. So I invited her to my house and we were talking until again. Again another birth that started with late night talks. We were talking until like 130 in the morning. Then she went home and again at four in the morning contractions started and I called my doula. my Doula came we were I was in the bath a little bit and she saw that it looked like I was really moving forward. And she said she thinks I should probably start going to the to the hospital. So we call the doctor and he was on his way as well. And we were just like really in this bubble that we were able to create. Again, I want to say it’s also because we were after this, this period of time of transition and transformation that we like rebuilt ourselves. And we were in and I really feel like we were rebuilt before that and we came to this bird link in a beautiful united and connected way. So we were just like swaying and swinging again and singing and and really just enjoying and we get to the hospital. Now. Uruguay is an atheist country and you can see me your podcast listeners won’t see me but I am an orthodox do. I wear a head covering like I’m kind of odd there they you know I’m like the I mean all my neighbors knew me and they knew that I was the odd one but you know for the when I walked into the hospital they were like, what is this going on? And anyways it was very weird because there they have never seen the the nurses that I was with. They said they have never seen a woman who chose not to get an epidural or not to get a C section like a woman that chose to come and have a natural birth they’ve never saw that before. So And here I was coming with my with my music in my hand. And and but we were just singing and we were singing in Hebrew, also in Uruguay, singing Hebrew songs and bouncing on the ball and just like completely blissful. And when we walked in, I said to my Doula, I was like, How many centimeters Do you think I’m at? Later, she told me she thought I was at four and I said, I’m telling you I’m six centimeters. And the doctor came and he checked me. He was like, okay, the six centimeters was like, Okay, great. Let’s go. So we walk into the into the room, and he asked me if I wanted to be checked anymore. And he said, you know, let’s just go with it. And the whole time I was so connected with what was going on in my body. And he was so enabling to really be in that belief. You know what to do with your body? Like I would ask him Okay, now what? And he’d be like, You know what to do? You tell me like it’s your you know how to birth, which was amazing. It was really, really amazing. I mean, he was there watching me the whole time. It’s not like he was but it was very empowering. And so we were just like, really enjoying there and, and he would ask me like, Okay, how are you feeling? And I, I’d say to him, now I feel like my baby needs a little more time to come down. He’s still not all the way down. And then finally I said to him, Okay, I think I think the baby’s down and he checked me. And he said, Yeah, you’re fully dilated. Do you want to do you want to start putting anything? No, I’m not having a contraction yet. I laid down and I my contraction stopped for a few minutes, which is a beautiful secret that many birthing mothers don’t know that our body naturally gives us this resting time before we push many times. We don’t see it when we’re in a medical environment. But our body gives us that sometimes it’s three minutes. Sometimes it’s not a long time, but it gives us this time to really regroup and give ourselves that energy before we go to the last phase of pushing.

 

P  11:39  

So when you say many people don’t feel is that because if you had an epidural, you wouldn’t feel it. Right? You

 

A  11:45  

don’t know when you’re having your contract when you’re having contractions or not. And also many women at this at this stage, they’re already if they’re in hysterics, they’re in hysterics in between contractions as well and some some women you know, feel like they’re losing control, which is also another way to birth, which is a beautiful way to birth as well but complete lot to lose your control. And then you won’t feel it either. So but if you’re connected and you’re, then you’ll be able to end it doesn’t always happen but many times usually I see with my clients as well. That there is this kind of resting time. So I said to my to my doctor, I he’s not ready to come out just yet. And I lay down and we sing like another two songs. And then I got up and I was like Okay, I’m ready. And I actually have a video that my my husband said to me, how are you doing? And I was like I’m so great. He was like have what stage or yet was like I’m fully dilated. He’s like, Yeah, you like you like having a baby. It was like, Oh, I highly recommend it. It’s so beautiful. Like I was again completely drugged endorphins. And then I squatted and within two pushes he was out. Wow. And when when he came out, he was like complete. He had these huge eyes. And he was like looking at me and I said to the doctor, he’s not crying. So the doctor said to me if you had a birth like that, would you cry? And it was really just beautiful even a week after that. A friend of mine had a baby also in the same hospital and they found out that she was Jewish. So they’re like, Wait, do you know that Jewish woman that had the baby last week, and she was seeing the whole birth? We’ve never seen anything like

 

P  13:24  

that. So funny. A lot of Jews in Uruguay is what I’m hearing.

 

A  13:29  

No, there’s actually not so many. So when they find them, it’s kind of a novelty.

 

P  13:33  

It’s so funny to me, like do you know the other one?

 

A  13:36  

Well, I have, you know, clearly do it. They seem that

 

P  13:40  

that is super funny. So that’s another fabulous birth and what’s the what’s the age difference? What’s the gap between number two and number three? Two and a half years? Okay. Okay, so now you have three under four. Yeah.

 

A  13:56  

All right. My oldest was four.

 

P  13:57  

Yeah. So that seems like a lot or we’re all good.

 

A  14:02  

You know, going from two to three was so great. I mean, I think after after having my second baby who taught me like you don’t have control and you don’t really know what’s going on, and you know, have some more humility in your parenting. I think I was ready for whatever. And again, I was blessed with a really calm baby. And he was so easy and just really helped us in the transition, I guess. And it was just a really fun transition. We really enjoyed having another baby and watching the sibling dynamic is so emotional. I like even like until today all the time. I like see the dynamics between them. And I feel like there’s no bigger gift that I could give them then than this. You know each other. Yeah, that’s yeah, so yeah, so that was really special as well.

 

P  14:54  

Now, the first two babies you had an Israel Yeah. So there are there dramatic differences between other than the high C section rate between Israel and Uruguay that you were like, Oh, this is so different. Well, the

 

A  15:07  

hospital stay was actually very nice nearby because every gets their own room which in Israel is like not heard of. That’s one hospital that you would like pay extra. But there’s no such thing. I guess it’s also because of the high birth rates here in Israel compared to your right. There are many more birthing moms here. And also it was just like, kind of like a hotel but I don’t know there was like something very, very nice about the hospital there and the stay there. And also the duck because it was a private doctor and the whole system works very differently. But because it’s a private doctor, so you get to choose like, he said to me, tell me when you want to leave if you want to leave today if you want on tomorrow. Tell me when you went outside you like it was just very, that was very nice. It was very different than I wasn’t with my family. We were far away from family and that’s very different. We were very, very fortunate and lucky that a lot of our family did come a week after the birth but yeah, but going through all of that without family is also different. Yeah, yeah,

 

P  16:07  

that’s a little hard. Okay, so then or do we leave you’re away for the fourth.

 

A  16:12  

So I got pregnant, you’re going with the fourth. And that was also like when my when my third was about a year and a little bit and then when we came back to Israel, we were a few months after we came back I had my fourth and that was a homebirth a waterbirth a homebirth which was also really really beautiful. It was a Why do you

 

P  16:36  

that you’ve had so much success with the doula midwife Doctor model? Why are we changing it to home births, so the fourth one,

 

A  16:44  

okay, so I did have success and I didn’t have bad experiences. But for example, the second birth I felt that if I were at home for longer, I wouldn’t have gone so long. And I would have felt more comfortable and more oxytocin. You know, able, in my own home in my own environment without feeling threatened without feeling like I needed to always be like on the watch of what somebody was going to do to my natural birth, you know, which I want to say before I say anything about home birth. I believe that a woman births from herself, so it doesn’t matter where you’re at. You could be at a hospital, you could be at your home, wherever you are. You can have a beautiful birthing experience and I think that every woman has to make her own decision. Not because of some kind of societal, whatever. Every woman should do her own research and every woman should make her own decision. I don’t judge anyone for their own decision, and we shouldn’t judge anyone for their own decision. And it should just be something that you know, each woman is empowered to make that choice. So the fact that I had a home birth is not dissing the beautiful hospital births that I had. Well, I did I decide I did I did feel like I was at a place where I needed that privacy where I felt like that was I felt confident enough in myself that I was able to have a beautiful home birth and also I did more research. And I I wasn’t afraid like I was I grew up very afraid of home births. I always thought that it was women putting their own personal experience over the health of their babies. And I learned that it’s not about that at all. It’s about paying attention to the health of the mother and the baby. And it’s not about the experience. So I just like learned a lot about it. And it felt very right. My husband was Argentinian. All of his family were were born via C section he like for him this whole thing was very new. And for him it was a very scary thought. So I said to him, Look, let’s go to a midwife. We’ll talk to her. Ask her all the questions you have and then we’ll make a decision. Like I wasn’t. I wasn’t like completely. That’s it. Let’s do it. So we went and we went to speak to this midwife, and I chose a midwife who I knew she had a lot of experience. I think she was 20 years in the hospital and 12 years out of the hospital. Okay, so we went to go visit her just to like, go talk and ask her some questions. And my husband asked her all these questions, and he was very nervous about the whole thing. And after we left, I said to him, so what do you want to do? He was like, Yeah, let’s do it. Like, this is what we’re gonna do. So yeah, there’s a lot of prep that there isn’t when you have a hospital birth also, I I love hosting people. And I love people feeling comfortable in my house and I felt like if I’m having my doula and my midwife and I don’t know who’s gonna come after, I want there to always be like, really good, cooked nourishing food in the house. So like I felt like this. This pressure to always have like food in the freezer, and lots of like different options. So I always was like, packing the house with the food. And the kids were very much a part of the process because the midwife was coming to her house, and they would help her find the heartbeat which was super emotional and super exciting. And that was a really fun part. I didn’t want them to be a part of the birthing experience because I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to be in my bubble if I was being worried also about them like if I was thinking about you know, their needs, if it’s okay for them to be be at every point like if I was thinking about them. And caring for their needs, I wasn’t going to be able to completely go into my birthing bubble. So I didn’t want them to be at the birth they were also pretty little at that time. I did my

 

P  20:26  

totally fair and like if they don’t understand it, it could be scary. And I yeah, that all that makes sense. Right? So I decided

 

A  20:33  

that I didn’t want them to be with us and my parents who lived pretty close to where we were living at that time. They were going to come and take them. So it was actually a weekend, the second weekend that they went to my parents, and we were but we were like on a honeymoon vacation. We felt like it was really nice to be just the two of us without any kids. Since I don’t know when and we were just we lived in a place that was like in the middle of of the forest and it was like kind of raining the whole day and we went out walking the whole day and I started feeling a little bit of contractions in the morning and then played started coming on and then towards the afternoon. A little bit more. And then towards the evening. I felt like okay, this is really real now. We started tracking my contractions, which is the first time in my life I can track contraction because I needed to tell the midwife when she should come out to us. So we started tracking, tracking the contractions and I sent like the screenshot to my to my midwife, and she said look, it doesn’t look like it’s real labor yet because you have like every seven minutes and then every format, and then every five and then three and like it’s not so consistent. But here’s a really good thing that every woman should know every woman is different and like we said it doesn’t all go according to the books. And I knew that my body never was consistent, I guess kind of consistent with my personality. I’m not such a consistent person. I like to think to go with the flow. And I knew that with all my groups it’s it never goes consistent. So I said to my midwife, you know with all my books, it’s it’s like that and I feel like I’m in real birth. So she’s like, okay, you know your body the best. So she came out to us. And when she came she checked me and I was seven centimeters. Wow. Yeah. And again, music. It was actually the festival of Hanukkah of Hanukkah. Wow. So we had the lights burning and like it was like this beautiful, kind of divine kind of environment, feeling and ambiance and it was just

 

P  22:30  

this sounds cinematic for sure. It was it really was

 

A  22:33  

like we dim the light. We also had like the life that you could like dim in all different levels. And so my husband like played around with the lights to make it beautiful. We had music playing and it was it was really beautiful. We we blew up the pool in the middle of the house. And my husband was in charge of the hot water the whole time. And he and he was in charge of that as I as the contractions kept coming out. I said I’m ready to go into the pool. I got into the pool kept on breathing a little more. And it was just really fast and kind of I think it was like in total three and a half hours. I like touched she my midwife said to me, you you test like you tell me when you’re ready and you can you can feel which was so cool for me because I never really felt like it was my third birth. My doctor said here put your hand and try and feel his head and I couldn’t because of the way I was squatting or I don’t know what I couldn’t feel him. But this time I like really felt him coming out. So I like was able to feel his hair in the water. Wow. And as I was in that moment, my husband was filming me it was important for me to send a video to the kids like during the birth or whatever. So he was filming me in and I’m like telling them the baby’s coming you coming? Really really soon you’re gonna meet your brother soon. And then and he sent that to the kids and like he wrote to my mother we we feel the head or whatever. And then within like 10 minutes the baby was out, which was amazing. It was it was really beautiful, like so blissful.

 

P  24:09  

Like that birth was physically easier in the water and at your house.

 

A  24:14  

I think so. Yeah. I definitely think there was something very I don’t know the word enabling is coming up again like just enabling and given making space for be vulnerable in whatever way you want. And there was something very, very calming in that that allowed me to birth in a very calming and beautiful way. Like I wasn’t afraid of anything around me. I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it. So that was really really amazing. And the water was great. It was really great. Also it was freezing cold at that time also so being in warm water it was amazing. And then having a baby and crawling into your own bed is like unbelievable. That sounds like comfortable and

 

P  24:57  

especially when

 

A  25:01  

your other choice is to be

 

P  25:02  

share a room with someone else. Right? Right.

 

A  25:05  

Right. So it was unbelievable and my midwife also she did all my laundry at when I was like nursing the baby she’s like started cleaning the whole house and she did all my laundry and she like left the house with with like all different she left me all these different herbal tinctures and all these different like aromas in the house that I should have. And it was just like, I felt like I was in a spa like in my own home. So it was beautiful. That sounds awesome.

 

P  25:29  

That sounds totally amazing. And now why the fifth one is not in your house. Right? Right. So the fifth one was not in my house. We had

 

A  25:37  

moved and for technical reasons only. I couldn’t have my fifth one in at home. But this is the proof that it doesn’t matter where you are if you are in your body you can be empowered in your connection with your body and with what’s going on. Because the fifth birth I decided that I was going to choose a hospital according to which hospital would allow me to have a waterbirth so I chose which hospital I was going to go to we needed to drive a little further to we came it was actually in the middle of a crazy rainstorm here that it was like kind of a hurricane but not exactly a hurricane. And it was pouring rain. And the contraction started at night I called my mother the teacher come and be with the kids. She came and she was with the kids and contractions were already coming like every two minutes, but I felt that they weren’t so strong yet and that they were I was like still in the beginning and I said to her Don’t worry, we’re still in the beginning. She was like no, you’re gonna have the baby in the parking lot. And I was like, no, no, I’m telling you. I still have to I’m still in the beginning. So we go into the car and it’s pouring rain like crazy, crazy rain. And then we park the car and there was like a little bit of a walk until the entrance to the hospital and until today my husband laughs at me about this. Because we started walking to the hospital and a contraction starts and I’m like, Okay, come here. Let’s start swaying. Like pouring rain. There’s thunder lightning and here we are dancing in the rain and holding a wall, holding the pool to blow up when we walk in. So here we are in the rain holding was local. And we walk in and I was like, Okay, I think I’m like in labor. And they check me and they’re like put your four centimeters, which I thought was important for me to come earlier because I wanted us to have enough time to blow up the pool and fill up the pool and everything for that and they were they said that we needed to have a perfect monitor if we wanted to be able to be in the pool. So I said okay, let’s do a monitor. Meanwhile, my Doula came and she was unbelievable. didn’t keep her hands off of me at all for one second. She was like massaging me the whole time and she was amazing. And I would pull on the ball, just singing waiting waiting for them to open up a room for us to go in. And we were again singing having a really great time. I was like dedicating songs to our family and sending messages look here we are having the baby and I’m singing this song for you. And then after like an hour and something they said to us, okay, the room is ready, you can go into the room, but there’s a little bit of a dip in the monitor. So you’re not going to be able to go into the pool yet. You have to have another perfect monitor. When you get into the room. We walk into the birthing room and I feel like things are getting much more serious. And I looked at my doula and I was like okay, like things are coming here. And I walked kind of barely to the to the room. And when I came in, they’re like, Okay, let’s check you again. And they checked me. And they said five centimeters. And I looked at my doula and I was like, huh I had these, like two voices inside of me. I had one voice, okay, it might take longer than I expected and I’m gonna let go of the control and that’s okay. And it’s okay if things are going to look completely different and I’m okay with that. And I had this other voice telling me my body is not at five centimeters. I am totally so much farther ahead than the doctor left after he checked me and I stood up to like try and get the pool started. I said to my husband, don’t blow up the pool. We’re not gonna have time for it. Because I stood up and I felt like I was already pushing and I said to my doula and my husband, I said, I’m going to break my waters right now and the next contraction and she’s going to come right out. And they’re like, Okay, like the midwife that heard me she was like, Okay, I don’t want your expectations to be so high. And I hear the monitor now. I’m a doula already. So I already have eyes on other things in the birthing rooms. And I hear that the monitor is beeping that the monitors that her heart rate was going down. And the next contraction I pushed because I was feeling a need to push already and I see that my water broke and I looked down and I saw that the water was a little yellow. And that’s why her heart rate was going down. And the doctor started coming in not just one doctor a few doctors because they see that the heart rate is going so much is going with with the so the yellow is meconium

 

 

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Episode 81SN: A Doula (and Mother of 5) Offers Miscarriage Support and Much More: Aliza’s Story, Part I

This is a show that shares true experiences of pregnancy to help shift the common cultural narrative, away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition to a more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka, I’m a writer and an economist and a mother of two girls. In this episode, you’ll hear advice about managing miscarriage or a woman who has experienced numerous miscarriages intermingled with the births of five children, and she’s a doula. She also shares how each experience taught her something valuable. Today, you’ll hear the first part of our conversation.

To connect with Aliza, check here

Audio Transcript

Paulette: Welcome to war stories from the womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of pregnancy to help shift the common cultural narrative, away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition to a more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka, I’m a writer and an economist and a mother of two girls. In this episode, you’ll hear advice about managing miscarriage or a woman who has experienced numerous miscarriages intermingled with the births of five children, and she’s a doula. She also shares how each experience taught her something valuable. Today, you’ll hear the first part of our conversation.

Let’s get to this inspiring story. 

Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from?

Aliza:  my name is Aliza Said and I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I am a mama marriage coach. I’m also a birth doula actually, and this podcast is very relevant. I’m a mom of five and I live in Israel. My main passion is helping moms who are feeling really overwhelmed and as I like to say feel like they’re drowning in dishes and dipers to be able to reconnect to themselves and to the people around them that they love. So that’s what I that’s my main task in this world now.

P  That’s awesome. And, you know, my sense is that the Senate moms you’re talking to are all of them. Five kids, you lucky duck. That’s awesome. Oh, yeah.

A  1:42  

Yes, very lucky.

P  1:44  

So I love to start us off before the kids before Did you know growing up that you wanted a family? Do you have siblings? Was there something else that kind of sparked that interest?

A  1:55  

Yeah, so I come from a big family as well. We’re six siblings. And from the time I remember myself as a little girl, I always had a doll with me. I was always like mommying something. I always wanted like a chimpanzee pet just so that I could be a mommy. Like I always wanted to be a mother at every age like so it was definitely something that I always dreamed about. I really wanted. I was able to see really empowered moms around me. And that’s just who I wanted to be. So that was really special.

P  2:32  

That’s super cool. So I’m imagining that the first baby came before you became a doula or is that not right?

A  2:38  

Before before I only became a doula before my fifth baby. 

P: Okay, okay. Yeah, I will have a right yeah, 

A: so actually, the first birth is what sparked my desire.

P  2:54  

So for the first one, did you get pregnant easily?

A  2:57  

I mean, what’s easily?  To me. No. And it was really hard for me because I thought, and this is what I saw all around me that people get married and 10 months later that they have a baby. And that didn’t happen to me. And we also had a miscarriage a few months after getting married. And that to me, nobody around me ever spoke about miscarriage. I never heard about someone having a miscarriage. That was like, completely heart wrenching for me like I’m also not pregnant right away like everybody said, now having a miscarriage and I felt like a failure. I felt like my body wasn’t working. I felt like everybody was able to do it and only I couldn’t and that was really difficult. Now I noticed that it was one of the biggest gifts that we were given as a couple and me as an individual because it definitely made the mother that I am today but in those moments, it was really tough. we actually had an appointment to go start in fertility treatments. And we decided that before we start, we were gonna go on a vacation and we found out that we were already pregnant. 

P: Oh, wow. 

A: Yeah. Which was very, very exciting. But yeah, it was definitely a journey. And I now say that I’m so grateful for it, even though it was really really difficult and those moments

P  4:22  

Now age is not the only thing that can affect your, your journey. But how old were you for the first one?

A  4:28  

So I was really young, we got married very young. I always say I needed my husband to grow up like I needed to get back and really on, because we needed to grow together. I was 19 when we got married, and I had my first baby 21 and a half

P  4:45  

So like today we say that’s young because people are having babies later and later but historically that’s not super young at all. That’s like right in the wheelhouse. Right, it’s when there’s when your body knows to be pregnant.

A  4:56  

Right? And I remember even the doctor saying to me like when I had the miscarriage she’s like, well, you’re so young and healthy and like I ate really, really healthy and I was exercising like, super healthy. She’s like, you’re gonna get pregnant really fast. And then it didn’t happen. So like it doesn’t always go according to the books. And I think that that’s also part of the beauty of it, that it’s kind of the gateway to go into parenthood. It doesn’t all go according to the books and there’s this element of learning to let go of control and to be able to, you know, ride the wave.

P  5:32  

Yeah, it’s such a it’s such a good lesson if that’s the way you interpret it because it’s totally true and everything you know, parenting will teach you whether you want it or not that you have no control. But this is a very good lesson that and I think most of us grew up even if you I live in the US and even if you didn’t grow up here, most of us grew up in the US. Okay, well, you grew up thinking I will have sex and I will be pregnant. And that’s how it works. And that’s not really how it works. That’s not that’s how it works. Sometimes right? That’s not that’s not really a thing. So how was the pregnancy?

A  6:04  

So the pregnancy Well, I just want to also say to what you just said right now, that also it doesn’t always happen like that and also miscarriages happens. And I like make it a point to talk about I had two miscarriages probably another one in the middle over there. And I talk about it a lot. And I think that it’s so important to talk about it and like I say it’s kind of like awakening this silent tribe of women out there that we’re all in this together. So how was the first pregnancy the first pregnancy was beautiful, blissful, amazing. We were just like so in awe of the miraculous thing happening. And it was really beautiful. Like I felt amazing. I was really just every minute of it.

P  6:48  

So take us to the birth. What are you envisioning? And then how are we doing today is the day

A  6:57  

so what am I envisioning? Well, once I became pregnant, I was like, Okay, I’m going to do this in the most empowering, beautiful way that I can and I started researching and like really learning everything I could and reading a lot and and I found hypnobirthing. And I would like watch these home births and I was like, that’s what I want. And everybody around me said to me, just wait it’s your first birth. You’ll never survive without epidural. It all sounds nice and everybody around me was saying all these different things and I was trying to believe it could be beautiful

A  7:37  

My husband was at a party. He was working in education, and he was with this student until like two in the morning. They have this party. He came back we were like we were like talking until late and then four in the morning. I started feeling like period cramps. I was like meaning I think something might be starting here. I put like a warm bottle and we were just like kind of soaking it up. We put on our music and my playlist that I got ready. And we started just enjoying the day and the wave started coming and the contraction started. We went out for a walk to go see the beautiful view and I was like it’s gonna take time. So the first birth and we were just having a lot of fun together. And I wasn’t counting contractions or anything because I was like it’s gonna take time, but my mother kept calling and she was like, okay, that were two minutes in between contractions like you gotta go. And we were just I was not in pain at all. I was completely like riding the wave, like I said before, and just really breathing through it like swaying with my husband and going on a walk in nature. The doula came to my house. And I said to her, I think we should start going out because we lived kind of apart from the hospital. And I said, I’m a little nervous because when there’s contractions, and I’m breathing, I feel like something’s coming out. Okay, let’s go so we finally got to the hospital and I walk in and I’m like, swaying and swinging and singing to myself and the doctors let the midwife who who was there when we got there like Okay, first birth, it’s going to take time I see that you’re excited, but then she was like really not acknowledging that I was far along. And then she checks me and she’s like, you’re fully dilated. 

P: Oh my gosh. 

A: And she was like, completely shocked. My husband started hysterically crying and we were just like, so excited. And she was like, Okay, I’m getting you a wheelchair and I don’t need a wheelchair. I’m gonna walk. So I walked in. I walked into the laboring room, and I was like, Okay, now what? So the midwife was like, Okay, start pushing, even though now I know I was not ready to push at all. I did not feel the urge to push at that point. But I was fully dilated and she said to push so I started pushing.

P  9:55  

So I put three hours well, let me only stop you there for a second. Yeah. Do you know how push have we taken a class like what happened to the homework? That seems like that flew out the window?

A  10:06  

Well, that at that point, I wasn’t gonna have homebirth yet. I only had at my fourth grade. I had like a real journey with each birth. So the so I knew how to put we did like a course with with my doula. We kind of spoke about pushing, but I was in such an endorphin bubble, that I was just completely blissful. Like the midwife asked my husband, what did she smoke at home? I was really just enjoying every moment of it, and we were singing and we were like, completely enjoy it. And it wasn’t even like aware of things I was saying, like I opened my eyes and I know that everybody’s crying around me, because I was like, pouring out my heart and I was like, I was completely drugged on endorphins. So in I mean, now I know to say that I did not need to push for two and a half hours, but in those moments, I was really enjoying it. We were singing all the doctors there was like a line outside of the room because they all wanted to come in and see the beautiful spiritual experience that was going on in the room. So I remember the doctor said to me, you know, we need to put up a big screen so everybody can see how it could happen. So after two and a half hours of pushing, she finally came out and it was just a beautiful moment like unbelievable. It was really blissful. And yeah, so that really was what started my journey and understanding what an unbelievable power we have as women and what we can birth into this world. second birth was completely different.

P  11:40  

We’ll get there that so that’s awesome. That is such a lovely story. And I can imagine if that were my first birth, I’d have five kids also. Because I’d be like, I always just want to do this more. Right. That sounds great.

A  11:54  

Absolutely. I say some people like to go bungee jumping. I like to have kids.

P  11:59  

Yeah. Yeah, they’re I think there are some people who have like, the just so physiology and all that and so it’s awesome to meet one of them. Thank you for coming on. So that sounds lovely. That sounds amazing. And then how’s the how’s the fourth trimester fine, and how does it go?

A  12:17  

So yeah, so also that like we were completely blessed, I’m telling my first story, but hold on for a second. Like it sounds too perfect. That’s alright. Life gets real, but the first one was very blissful. Also, she was the easiest baby ever. She completely like made it so easy for us to do the transition. She slept when we wanted her sleep. She didn’t like she was just you smile when when she was awake. Like she was the easiest baby ever. All right now she’s, you know, teaching us what kind of parents we need to be. But, you know

P  12:49  

And she’s still have like that character.

A: No.

A  12:56  

I mean, what’s the character like? 

P: Is she really easygoing

A: She suddenly like easy, you’ll have a lot of power in her. Okay. Okay. Like, I mean, she has all of that but ya know, she has a lot of a lot of inner fire.

P  13:09  

Good. I like to hear. So now let’s get to the second one and ensure you have this first one and how old is the first one were you before you think oh, let’s have another. So

A  13:20  

we were really thinking I was on birth control. But it didn’t wait. I was on birth control and then I had a miscarriage. And then that was again, not so easy. But even though it was a completely different experience, going through it with my baby on top of me. That was when she was around seven months old. And then I got pregnant again. Then I went to like, I also went to like a natural doctor and someone who was actually a traditional midwife, and then she went to go there in Chinese medicine. And we did like acupuncture and herbs and lots of different things, which was a very good healing process for me. And then about a few months later, I kept telling her I want to start trying to get pregnant because once I start trying, it’ll take me like a year and a half at least, like it takes me time. Like, let’s give me the time and she kept telling me no, no, give yourself time to heal yourself and to heal. And then I think it was my daughter’s first birthday. She’s like, okay, you can start trying, but like on a low burner. And then I got pregnant right away, which was like really miraculous and really amazing. So I also want to say in parentheses. There are many people that wait much longer, and like my story is, you know, a small little time that we needed to wait and this was the journey we needed to go through. And I just want to say that I send so much hugs and empathy to anyone who’s waiting much more than me less than me and I feel like those months gave me the ability to understand and have much more compassion towards women who go through that, like I really, I’m very lucky I didn’t have to wait so long. But I it was such a significant part of who I am. Because it gave me that compassion to all the women out there even though I understand only a tiny bit of what they’re going through. So I just want to say that

P  15:17  

that’s nicely said Wait, let me ask you one thing before you go on in your journey of the five kids. You had two miscarriages total or you had more

A  15:27  

two probably three but we didn’t really like two, two official.

P  15:31  

So as a as a doula and someone who’s in this space and maybe you didn’t do for yourself because you weren’t there yet. But do you have an idealized ritual that you would tell people to do or something you wish you had done? Or, you know, something you’ve learned both from your personal experience and your experience as a doula that you might want to share with people about you know, I have found this is particularly helpful in miscarriage.

A  15:57  

Yeah, well, I’ll say two points that I find is really important, from my personal experience and from the women that I work with. One is to really give yourself permission to grieve debris. And it doesn’t matter how many weeks you were pregnant it doesn’t matter if you wanted the pregnancy and, and it happened or if you weren’t expecting a pregnancy and you happen. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. Allow yourself to have this time of real grief. And I feel like today we’re so quick to go back into life. I just spoke to a friend who went through a miscarriage many more weeks than I was she was almost halfway through 

P: Wow. 

A: She felt like a need to go right back and she’s a dance instructor and she like uses her body a lot and she went like right back and and after a few weeks she completely crashed and she said I didn’t give myself that time to like, really just sit with it and be okay with it that this is what my body’s going through and to give myself that time and to go through all the feelings and and sometimes it’s all different feelings and sometimes they’re scary feelings and sometimes they’re contradicting feelings, and all of that is okay and give yourself that time for that vessel. When I think that that is super important. Then know how to contain that vessel and go from there, but I feel like there needs to be more of a permission slip to all women out there to go through that. 

And the second point that I want to say is to really recognize how different the way that me and my partner are going to grieve. Many times it can cause a lot of friction, it can cause a lot of resentment, a lot of blame a lot of a lot of things. I think that recognizing that we both go through this in a very different way. But we’re both going through it is so important and to be able to open up and talk about it and to be able to know how to listen to the other person. And even though it’s my body that went through it. My husband also went through a loss and to be able to also recognize that and to be able to really go through it together and not just expecting him to be able to see what I’m going through or this is something I see a lot with my clients, whether it’s miscarriage and also birth, you know also in a birth, a husband is also going through all of these things, even if it’s not his body, but really recognizing that we’re both going through these big transformations here. And being able to recognize that and know how to really work with that instead of working against it.

P  18:33  

Yeah, those are two really good suggestions. I wish I wish in American culture we had a well defined set of rituals for miscarriage like we do for the funerals of people who have been alive a long time or even or even babies right we have a whole set you know the Irish have a set of rituals Jews have a set Indians have a set so many different cultures have a way that they process those feelings. And the step by step this of it is really useful when you’re in the deep emotional well of sadness and grief. And I wish we had something like that for miscarriage, which you know, or I guess our process is to ignore or move on. Right? That’s our ritual, but that doesn’t seem very satisfying or useful.

A  19:16  

Right. And also, I feel like when we’re able to do when you expand your heart to feel the really hard emotions, then you’re also expanding your heart to be able to feel the good emotions, you know, in such a stronger way. So yeah, I I I encourage everyone to do their own ritual and to do whatever I mean, there’s so many different things. I don’t want to share personal stories of clients this Yeah. Permission to share their own personal but there are so many things that people do as you write as Jews we have our own rituals that we do after and yeah, it’s definitely very really soul encompassing like it kind of gives you this you know, place to really go through it.

P  20:01  

Yeah, that’s totally Well said Aliza. So your point about you have to feel the bad to fill the gap. Right it’s it’s a continuum and you have to open the door to feel at all so but I interrupted you on our on our second baby. So now we’ve passed two miscarriages, we get pregnant again. We’re so excited. 

Okay, go…then what?

A  20:19  

Again. Pregnancy is beautiful, amazing. feel amazing. Have a baby with me, but really enjoying every minute of it. My baby was home with me. I mean, she was she was home with me. Yeah, at that point. She was home with me, and I’m just really enjoying. Then I was really ready. At the end of the pregnancy. I was like feeling really ready. Okay, let’s go. Let’s get this happening. We went on a really long walk. We lived like in this mountainous desert area. And we went like, climbed up mountains and came back. And I was like, I just want to wash the floor. I started washing the floor and as I watched the floor Park I heard it like burst my water. My water broke. It was a good thing. I was washing the floor because it was like

A  21:11  

yeah, I was like okay, I guess it’s it’s starting but I wasn’t having any contractions. 

P: I’m down here already

A: Now I was already going into this birth was like a lot of expectations because after the birth that I had, I would like I’m probably gonna fly through this one. It’s gonna be beautiful and I like I was still kind of a perfectionist at that point. Now I’d say I am a recovering perfectionist, but then I was still kind of a perfectionist. And to me, you know, okay, I had a perfect birth and here I am gonna have it again. So it started with the water breaking and that kind of got me nervous already because I knew that having your water break, you know, there’s probably more of a chance that anything can happen from there. If if nothing starts if that you know too much time passes, and they’re gonna have to start intervene. And I didn’t want all of them I was I was like, Okay, this is how it started. Let’s get the contractions going.

P  22:05  

So, so just to interrupt you for a second. I think what you’re saying is once your water breaks, the clock starts right because you need to because of fear of infection, or you need to get things moving. So so now you feel like things have to happen.

A  22:20  

Exactly. There’s a wide range of how long that clock is. I mean, there’s some hospitals here in Israel. There’s some that is 24 hours, some 48 hours. I know I also had a baby in Uruguay and there it’s called hours. So like it really varies where you are. I actually heard of a place of 72 hours. It really depends. So anyway, I knew that my clock was ticking, and there were no contractions at all. So we decided that we were going to send my daughter to my father in law because I wasn’t gonna eat my car. I came to pick her up and bring them bring her to their house. And we were like, Okay, let’s just make an oxytocin kind of kind of environment. So we turned off the lights and we put on candles and we started singing and dancing and just putting like good, good aromas in the house that I liked and just tried to really bring out good energies and then contractions started coming. And when they started coming at a good pace, we’re like, okay, maybe we should start going out because, first the first birth went kind of fast for our first birth, maybe the second will be even faster. I’ll just say in parentheses, it was not. It was the longest birth ever. So at one contraction, like I had a whole lot of water coming out and I felt like maybe I felt something and I was like, Okay, maybe we should get in the hospital, get into the car and go to the house. So we get into the car and really as we left the house and started driving towards the hospital, the contractions completely stopped. Like nothing, nothing at all. And we spoke I spoke to my Doula on the phone, and she said, Well, maybe go back home. See if we were in far from the house and she said maybe you know, try and bring it on again. And then you guys could go so we went back home started again. And again, the contractions started coming. And again, we leave and again the contractions are like almost met. And it was so clear to me that I was that I was kind of like blocking. Like I was nervous what was gonna happen and the whole time I was very aware of what was going on inside of me and how much it was really affecting the way that the birth was going on inside of me and how much it affected me. So we get to the hospital where

P  24:28  

the first one was so well like why what what’s bringing on the nerves that you want it to be as good as the first is that what the what’s going on for you?

A  24:36  

Okay, there were a lot of things going on. One was that that I had these really high expectations. Second, I was like the poster girl of birth like I had to bring back this beautiful story so that everybody could see how beautiful birth could be like I felt like I had huge pressure on me. I also was at the time we were like not sure if we were moving, not moving. My husband had given up his job because he thought that we were moving and then we decided we were like we were in this like really really turmoil kind of time that just wasn’t sitting on me well and there were like a lot of stressors in my life at that time. And I wasn’t like I wasn’t coming from a settled peaceful place. Like I was the first time.

P:  Okay. 

A: Also I was really nervous that maybe I was gonna have to go to the bathroom. This is like a real fear that I have and a lot of my clients also have, I was so afraid that we’re gonna have to go to the bathroom during birth. So I was like holding myself every time that I had a contraction. So then we get to the hospital and I said I still don’t want to go in I’m not in my bubble yet. Let’s walk around in the in the parking lot. Now it’s freezing cold in the Jerusalem air and it was freezing and here we are walking around in the forest. For about two hours. We were walking around and I was enjoying every minute of it because I was like swaying during my contractions. And I felt like I was bringing them on in a good way. My doula and my husband told me afterwards that they were freezing cold and they like, but they just wanted to be there for me and they were then we finally go in and I was six centimeters. And I was like Okay, good. We’re enjoying. We started actually playing backgammon haven’t really played back at me my husband at that at that time, and then contractions kept going. And then I got to eight centimeters. And I got stuck for six hours at eight centimeters. And it didn’t matter what we were doing. I put my foot up on a chair. Maybe he was the wrong position. I tried doing like all these different exercises with my doula and nothing and every time they would check me and again eight centimeters, eight centimeters. And at that time, I said to my husband, I know that these things are bothering me, like I gave him a list. And that’s why I’m not able to completely let go. And I like I’m not. I’m not completely relaxing and I know that I’m holding it up. And I was like aware but at that moment, I couldn’t yet let go. And then a doctor came in after six hours. And he said to me, Listen, we gave you a long time. And also I want to say that this time. It was painful, like this time when I wasn’t able to let go it was very painful and I like knew now what they mean when when pain when pain can be really real in childbirth. And that was new for me because my first and thank G-d my others were not. So I knew what it was and I really felt like it was when I was holding myself then it was painful. And then the Dow employment and so

P  27:38  

So it’s like resistance is the issue. 

A: Yes.Yes. Like when you work with your body. It doesn’t have to be painful. You feel a strong power and a strong surge going through your body. But it wasn’t painful at any moment. Like even our at my first birth a doctor came in. I wasn’t aware that I said this only told me afterwards that a doctor came in and to call the other doctor that was there because somebody wanted an epidural. And they told me afterwards that I said No Tell her not to get the epidural. She doesn’t know what she’s missing out on. Like I was just so enjoying. I don’t judge anyone that takes an epidural who ever needs an epidural. Whoever wants an epidural? You know? No, no shame to that at all. Not because that’s not why I said it. It was just like in that moment. That’s what I was feeling. So anyway, the doctor came in and after six hours of being an eight centimeters he was like okay, we really tried giving you as much time as we could, but that’s it in 10 minutes. There’s nothing new. We’re starting Pitocin I looked at my doula and I’m like, nope, what’s going on here?

P  28:43  

I’m gonna stop my conversation with Aliza here. In a second. It was very much and up to this point, mirroring the beautiful and easy birth like she hoped it would. On the one hand, it’s easy to relate to these a stress feelings about trying to walk footprints left by Erzberg at the same time to vaccinate. And he’s gotten almost science fiction feel to Yes, of course you can do things to reflect your own state of mind and relaxation and those who’s getting pregnant and being birth is often early parenting. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, if you learned something or felt connected to or just appreciate these stories of real please go over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you’re listening. It helps we’ll be back next Friday with the rest of my conversation. She shares how his second birth went down and talks about her other

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Episode 80SN: An IVF Journey that includes repeated miscarriage…and pregnancy: Amy’s Story, Part II

This is a show that shares true experiences of pregnancy to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition to a more realistic one.  It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls. In this episode you’ll hear more advice about things to think about on your fertility/ivf/pregnancy journey–knowledge that just might make the often challenging process of fertility a little easier to bear (and maybe also things to help you to keep hold of a bit of your sanity, as her book title suggests) from the former writer who covered the “fertility beat”, before such a thing existed, for the New York Times. What follows is the second part of our conversation.

Fertility Statistics

https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2014/03/female-age-related-fertility-decline

https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/having-a-baby-after-age-35-how-aging-affects-fertility-and-pregnancy

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8237340/

Tongue-Tie

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tongue-tie/symptoms-causes/syc-20378452

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/tongue-tie.html

Audio Transcript:

Paulette: Hi, Welcome to war stories. This is a show that shares true experiences of pregnancy to help shift the common cultural narrative, away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition to more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and deliver them into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and a mother of two girls. In this episode, you’ll hear more advice about things to think about on your fertility/IVF/pregnancy journey that just might make the often challenging process of fertility a little easier to bear, and might help you keep hold of your sanity in this process. This story comes to you from the former writer who covered the fertility of you before such a thing existed for The New York Times what follows is the second part of our conversation. 

Why is it so constricting of your time other than like the windows were like, Oh, we, I guess I don’t even know what the windows look like what?

 

Amy: So let’s say you have to go in on the first day and if you don’t know when you don’t know when you don’t know when you first see is you don’t know when you hit. You’re not supposed to be drinking. Usually I’m not a doctor and so I’m not giving any medical information but a lot of people don’t drink and let’s say don’t even do drive through or whatever they want to ruin their psychology. You know, marijuana can cause firm documents. So do not get in. Let’s say you go in the first day of your period and if you go the third day and the fourth day seven planets around your work, then you have to see how your body then you’re taking medicine to increase the egg while you’re doing an IUI or an IVF. Medicine so you don’t know how the medicine might keep you up at night. You might be sleeping, it might be bloated. Then you have to do a retrieval which is like a half a day off but you don’t know if you could go away you don’t know is there going to be on day 14 or 16 if I got am i doing a transfer my cancer the embryo back to me and am I gonna guess take it easy those days that I have to wait two weeks or a week and a half to find that out or not? And then I might be a little bit pregnant, and then I might be not pregnant. So I mean, I don’t even taking over your entire life.

 

P  2:32  

Yeah, yeah, that is dramatic. When I remember about my experiences that I felt judged not by my doctor, but by the process. The idea that as a woman you could or should be having babies and so it’s culturally reflected back to us in 100 different ways. And when your personal machinery to make that happen, they’d be feeling you. It’s hard to feel as though you’re doing something right. It almost felt like like a moral condemnation. Oh, you know what am I going to save my ovaries not working. You’re not fit to reproduce, or it just it felt very personal in a way that some issue with my with my appendix with them.

 

A  3:10  

I mean, I hope that the doctors are better now than they were then. You know, you’ve dealt with women at the clinic. But then you’re like on Facebook at a meeting about someone else. Oh, I only got 20 eggs and you’re like what I got three eggs. And then there’s that competition is rife with so much disappointment. Like once you’re the thing Oh, I only got 20 eggs and only kind of fertilized and only five minutes day three and the only one ready for transfer. So there’s just you know, this law of diminishing returns on your disappointment. But there is for anyone who can’t get pregnant right away. Just this notion that we all thought it would be easy, and it would be quick and it would be simple. There’s that whole disappointment of like my body’s failing me I’m not doing what I thought would be easy to do.

 

P  3:59  

As me suggests it would be super easy to get pregnant. idea that felt like a threat before I was ready to have kids and a taunt once I was ready and couldn’t get pregnant. But I don’t think that I did matches up with the numbers. So here’s some of the numbers. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, also known as ACOG. You had your maximum number of oocytes or immature eggs when you were a 20 week old fetus, which was six to 7 million by your birth to down to one to 2 million. By puberty, you have 300,000 to 500,000 by age 37 with 25,000 and only 1000 By age 51. This is a sight on here but I thought this was pretty funny. I was telling my daughter about these numbers and she said that’s fine. It’s not like a little What 25,000 Is what I’m 37 So the issue with that is that not always xx will be chromosomally normal, otherwise known as euploid. Sperm mature over a period of about two months. Eggs mature over a period of decades. It sounds like there’s a lot of stops and starts they mature to a point and then they wait and then the next trigger happens and then they continue to ensure it’s not like these miniature eggs are active for the whole period. And it’s important this very long maturation process that scientists think contributes to the much higher rate of chromosomally abnormal eggs that’s firm. By the way, male fertility also declines with age but less predictably. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine reports that while women under 30 have about a 25% chance of getting pregnant naturally each cycle, that chance it drops to 20% for women over 30 Forget estimates by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine by 40 the chance of getting pregnant naturally each month. It’s just 5%

 

A  5:45  

you know, just like you need medical medical, you didn’t think you would, you know you just thought you’d get up at the doctor for when you’re pregnant. But you didn’t think like this basic bodily function is not you know, I think like a third of IVF patients are under 35. So it’s not a matter of needs a lot of young women going through this Ludhiana Linda. So it’s not like oh, I’m too old and I waited too long, but also like oh my god, I’m so young and all my friends are getting pregnant and I can’t that’s such a hard feeling.

 

P  6:16  

Yeah, that was definitely a hard feeling. It was definitely a hard feeling. But I agree with you that it this is like a cultural perception of what men expect your body to do and what it means if your body can’t do that. And it’s not necessarily accurate, right, your body can still do a million other things.

 

A  6:33  

I’m sure though people who have diseases might be mad at their body to you know, yes or no.

 

P  6:44  

So I’ve always been issues in cancer and I can, I can attest that at least in my experience, there is this sense of failure of like, how did I you know what did I do wrong to get to this spot, although that also and pregnancy are less than this. You don’t have that much control over your right. We imagine that we deal with but we don’t really

 

A  7:06  

  1. You know, right? You don’t know how your body’s going to deal with anything. In life. That’s the truth.

 

P  7:14  

So you did all that and had miscarriages and then he did, did you say nine cycles of IVF? Yeah. How many years does that take

 

A  7:29  

it was three years until I was pregnant with my daughter. So it was four years until I had my daughter because it wasn’t like once I had my daughter, I knew she was going to be my daughter for i for all intents and purposes, I was never sure she was going to be born either. You know, so that fourth year was brought during her pregnancy. Well, because pregnancy after it’s good after IVF but also after a miscarriage is very fraught like my doctor said to me, you’re not going to be happy until the baby is in your hands. Because I was like, why am I not happy? He’s like, because of what you’ve been through. Yeah, that’s,

 

P  8:07  

that’s a hard road. So did you enjoy the pregnancy at all? Were you able to?

 

A  8:12  

I think I had a moment in my second trimester. You know, there was a moment in my second trimester where I was like, we went on a baby man and everything but I think that I was very, a little bit dissociated from it. In the whole time like my heart we had a rule because we have a whole heartbeat monitor because like I would go to the doctor I would get everything would be great. And then by the next day, I was like, I don’t know if I you know, cancel a baby. So my husband we put a cap on it that I was allowed to check the heartbeat once a day on the home heartbeat monitor, and even that and my husband used to do the state, like you need cream to put it on the ultrasound jelly. And he was let me try it without jelly. And like I would still you know, I would still lose my mind in that moment before I felt the heartbeat. So when I was like nine months pregnant, and I was dealing with you know, at the end of June and July and everything I felt pregnant, but I never like allowed myself to leave in full for like I talked about this in the last chapter in my book about you know, pregnancy after miscarriage pregnancy together. IVF and there’s a school and this is you know, for everything. Electrification like Oh, I’m happy, you should be happy. And like, I hate the word. Like you shouldn’t be happy, okay, you know, my body. Don’t tell me how to be like, I’m nervous and I’m understandably nervous and I can’t be happy. You know? I’m sad that IVF and more repeat miscarriage do not ruins but robbed me of that experience of being you know, the happy go lucky. But that’s just what a lot of people have to go through.

 

P  10:05  

Yes, yeah. Amy talks about the complicated feelings that accompany pregnancy after repeated miscarriage. She writes that if you’re like me, and so many other women who grow to motherhood was as wealthy as a bouncy castle, you might not exactly have the pre pregnancy always dreamed up. You may no longer have the desire to post Tietze but in the oven gift on social media, have a gender reveal party with a pink or blue cake or endlessly debate baby needs. First of all, you might not want to do all of that sensitivity to all your friends who are still adding second, you might be too nervous. I myself have been pregnant so many times that at first I couldn’t believe this fifth pregnancy was the one that was going to stick. And then she writes with a heartbeat came relief but only momentarily. A few days later, I’m back to worrying again. After all I’ve heard a heartbeat once before and after this he ended it because I hadn’t been paying enough attention now I was paying attention to every swallow twinge flutter. always nervous while I wasn’t feeling anything in particular pregnancy was so so tense. Even when I pass the in utero blood test for major diseases and move into my second trimester. I still couldn’t relax. I couldn’t be happy not for longer than two minutes. I was having what I later realized was infertility PTSD. I can’t imagine you’d be any other way after your experience. Right? I mean, then

 

A  11:26  

people you never know. You know? Some people on IVF people are not. Well, some people like a pregnancy anyway. They hate every minute of it. They also have to deal with oh, why are you healthier? You should be happier. You don’t have happy hormones. It’s gonna ruin the baby. You know, almost expectation. It goes I mean for fertility people it goes farther back with like, oh, you should be happy for her. Why can’t you be happy for her? You know, your best friend’s pregnant your sister’s pregnant? Your brother in law’s pregnant and you should be happy for them. You know, it’s funny like in the last 10 years, so much has changed, like fertility has got better and more people have done it but sitting on all these Facebook groups, which didn’t exist when I was going through it, but like, it’s still the same emotional journey. You know, like people just complaining that their mother is yelling at them. They’re not acting happy for their sister. Or you know, things like that. It’s just an expectation about how we should feel is ridiculous. And I don’t know if you can explain it. You know, I always tell I always say that. I went through so much with infertility and still when I was pregnant and I had some that I kind of understood finally why other people want you like to share that joy. So I do it from both sides of the aisle. But we can’t expect anyone to like have feelings for us. They have their journey and we have Arthur.

 

P  12:50  

It is it is hugely complicated. And I remember going to the gynecology office when I wasn’t yet pregnant, surrounded by pregnant women, you know, waiting my turn to do the IUI or whatever, you know, just overwhelmed by the sense of like they’re making it look easy. A lot of pregnant people out there is this is true. You seems hard to me somehow.

 

A  13:11  

I mean, the nicest thing I always say this, my oldest friend was growing up. The nicest thing she said to me was she had four kids and her oldest was eight. So I had assumed she was like totally done. And I was trying to hear about something. And she said, Amy, I have to tell you something. I’m like I don’t know. And she said to me, I just need to tell you that I’m pregnant. And but you don’t have to be happy for me. I just want you to know that. This still makes me cry because I’m always like, that is the nicest thing anyone ever said. Like just letting you know, you don’t have to monitor your reactions for me like you could just be who you are.

 

P  13:48  

Yeah, I agree. I agree that I would imagine you feel seen when someone says yeah, because it is like a recognition of all the things that you’ve been hurt. Yeah, for sure. Amy has a chapter in her book about managing your feelings about other people’s pregnancy in the face of your infertility. I’m going to share another excerpt here. She writes, how culture can often perpetuate the myth that female friendships are Ride or Die through thick and thin Sex and the City girls etc. Reality lose friendships are rough, especially during life changes and extra especially when one of us is pregnant and one of us is not but desperately wants to give it to someone else to make room for their infertility feelings, or your pain or your fears for the future. And that’s a relationship where it’s safe. Because through the delivery of your daughter, I don’t know though. were you imagining you know, a water birth or you know, home birth or something like that,

 

A  14:44  

or what did that look like? You know, just it’s funny so I had all dated during my journey I went and all these alternative journeys as well. Like I went to baby healer who told me I had locked maternal energy. I went to the

 

P  14:59  

stop right there. So I’ve been to a Reiki healer as well. What do you think? Were in the moment where you’re like, Oh, this feels better?

 

A  15:07  

What was your reaction? I think I went twice so it must. I can’t What did I think I thought okay, I’ll try it like to think that I have very bad association with motherhood given my own family history, and I don’t have a good energy for motherhood and I have to connect to like the positive energy for motherhood.

 

P  15:33  

super interesting.

 

A  15:35  

Probably not really relevant to my journey. You know what I mean? Like it’s it didn’t solve any of my issue.

 

P  15:43  

Okay, totally interesting. So let’s go through that. I’m totally interested in the that once the conventional things don’t work, all you have left is to try all the alternative.

 

A  15:51  

Exactly. So I went to I went to the Jewish ritual bath, which many religious women go to every month after their

 

P  15:58  

bed. And what’s the what’s the theory behind that?

 

A  16:01  

Why is that supposed to help? Well, religious women go through actually something that’s very good for fertility basically, I don’t know if people know this. But they are not allowed to have the week of their paid and a few days after. So they’re basically abstaining from sex for the first 12 They’re basically having sex in the most fertile window. Their cycle if their cycle is normal and not normal, then they have a lot of trouble. So they could have the ritual bout themselves. There wasn’t something I was ever planning on doing. So some people go there and they say, they blessings and everything like that. And I just, you know, it’s one of the things I was doing making that kind of thing I was there. But one of the things I did after the Reiki healer, which was you know, not only it was also try to picture the picture, you know, lying on the table Q hospital scene of the woman screaming in pain, I mean, I always knew I was gonna have drive like after my journey, I’m like I but I always try to picture labor and kind of picture picture picture. I was like my, you know, law of attraction moment like picture giving birth. And it didn’t happen that way. Because the closer we got to Brenda, I was 40 What I really wanted and I was trying to avoid a C section at 40 weeks. My repeat miscarriage specialist by Amy I really liked you to know you’ve been through. I’d really like you to give birth. I was like just getting you to 41 He wasn’t even my, my maternal fetal medicine doctor. He’s like, he’s like, you can’t have 41 Like you work too hard to get here. So I just was like, No, my dad is going to come out. She’s going to come out now that I know her. And I know that she’d leave like her father all the time. And I think I sat in there for 14 So 14 and a half years. And at that point, I realized that you know, despite all my imagery of radicals, neighbors, friends, I was kind of like on the fence. I was like, I just like I don’t care their way of doing. I know what happened. When we started. We did the epidural, and they said that the baby was not taller. It wasn’t like an emergency C section. They just said she wasn’t tolerating it very well. So we’re gonna move into a C section. And I crazy. In the last month of my pregnancy, I had this crazy itchiness and it wasn’t due to any. Sometimes it has to do with like a liver problem, but I was just like praying for the baby. That’s when they gave me an epidural. I was like dying from fussiness and they gave me this massive dose of Benadryl. That’s kind of out of it. For the C section. There’s a little bit out of it, and I haven’t C section and my plan was not followed at all. I was still mad and my husband didn’t. I want I didn’t want her to be. I wanted her to have her right away. I’m still kind of upset about that. But I was on the fence at that point. I wasn’t going to ask for like a scheduled C section but I was like to do it.

 

P  19:17  

And so they did the C section and then they you get the time with the baby on your chest and how did you feel when you actually had her in your arms?

 

A  19:27  

I was super out of it because it was Benadryl. I was happy. It was beautiful. It was like it at NYU downtown overlooking the water. Like we had that picture. It wasn’t like oh my god, I finally have the baby. My whole infertility journey was over. I can just relax now it took a while. You know, and I don’t know I don’t know how like a woman who wants to be home. I feel like I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare to but there’s definitely like, I was definitely more nervous and I think if I would have just had a baby, like just straight. You know, I was like, nervous. I was always checking if she was awake. I was checking her heartbeat monitor and I know that a lot of newcomers. But I was that’s not my personality. It definitely is fertility made me a lot more overbearing and nervous than I would have been. And I think that there was like, you know, and then, of course you know, it’s so funny like when you’re not fighting but like when you ran a marathon. Then after the race you like, you want to have your medal, you know, and then you can relax. But after we have the baby, you’re like your baby breastfeeding and everything else that comes with it. So it wasn’t like you have time to go and do things like the first six months. I think it wasn’t like I didn’t have trouble bonding with her. But I don’t think I felt like I can release that breath. It took me a while to be separate even while figuring out breastfeeding, which is like the second part of the world after infertility.

 

P  20:57  

Well, you took four years to wind you up. So I can’t imagine you round down you know, immediately so that totally makes sense to me. And the extra attentiveness once the baby’s born also makes sense given that IVF kind of opens this, like pull the curtain back to show you what it looks like when things don’t go well. Medically. Right. Which is

 

A  21:20  

right, correct for a lot

 

P  21:21  

of us because we’re relatively young and we have kids. You haven’t seen that before. And it is a little bit shocking, right?

 

A  21:28  

I mean, I think I read a statistic that many women never send in the hospitals giving birth. Yeah. And I think I was also one of those people who just believe everything’s going to work out. I mean, I moved to New York City at 39. I moved to the Upper West Side and I met my husband. So that’s takes a kind of optimism that make the fire.

 

P  21:50  

That’s awesome. And so it sounds like the fourth trimester for you was challenging like it is for a lot of people. Yes. Did you get the hang of breastfeeding or how did all that

 

A  22:00  

go? No, I had to have my daughter’s tongue tied. Because she was I was pumping. I was explicitly pumping and she was not getting anything out. And then finally lactation consultants told me to, you know, get her time steps.

 

P  22:20  

According to the Mayo Clinic, tongue tie is a condition in which an unusually short thick or tight band of tissue connects the bottom of the tip of the tongue to the floor of the mouth, which restricts the 10s range of motion. Although doctors don’t know why it happens, they know what happens during fetal development. If a newborn has tongue tie, it can make it difficult to stick out their tongue and it may or if you’re breastfeeding, sometimes tongue tie might not be a problem. And sometimes it requires a simple surgical procedure, like the one we described, where the doctor clips the tissue to free the top. That tissue doesn’t have many nerve endings or blood vessels. So often this procedure is carried out in the doctor’s office without anesthesia and babies younger than three months old. And so and you said now she’s seven and a half. Oh, wow. What she is who? She does her singing

 

A  23:11  

damn fan talking and arthropathy Yeah, so she’s nonstop talker.

 

P  23:19  

That’s cute. Is that is that a run in your family? I guess. Like sometimes

 

A  23:27  

I was on. I don’t I don’t know if I mentioned this, but on my have the BBI with integrating High Courts of immune suppressive drugs. I don’t know if you are. But I can move on. Very high dose of prednisone steroid that is controversial, but you know and it makes you crazy. So I always joke I was like I was the steroids but she’s so like, everything is amazing. Everything with our daughter like a 10 She’s on either amazing or horrible traffic.

 

P  23:58  

That is super cute. So I’m actually a weird outlier. I love Britain. So I’ve been on a bunch of times. And it is the kind of thing where like, you never get tired,

 

A  24:07  

never feel tired. It’s like, sometimes you wish I was like, oh I can be but right now.

 

P  24:15  

Totally. But that’s amazing. She sounds horrible.

 

A  24:17  

Yeah, she’s great. And she just we just got it together.

 

P  24:24  

Wow, that’s fun. So I bet you have a lot of advice for younger you. But if you could give your younger self advice what what do you think you would focus on?

 

A  24:36  

Well, if I would give any young women not only young women, young self, but just any young woman is I you know, we all know so much about our politics and our finances and I just wish that we knew more about our body. And you know, people would say Oh, do you think every woman should freeze their eggs? I’m like, I don’t care if people and I don’t care if they even have children. Norma, I just like in their late 20s. I want them to know about their body and they want them to know if they have people that might be if they have no period they want them to know that might be PCOS. They want you know, I speak to so many women in their late 30s When a lot of these things interfere. I just want everyone to be educated. And I think what happens is there’s so much going on in the world and there’s so much to be worried about. I think, you know, young women who don’t have a partner or don’t know if they want to don’t even think about it they don’t even look and they’re like I’ll deal with that only up I just want every author and every woman even men know your family history. Like I didn’t find out until who knows when that my brother had blood circulation issues. Hello blood circulation issues are gonna affect me as well. You know, I just want people to know whether I just want everyone to make an informed decision and have all the information just the way you would about like buying the house or just not that information like demands that were female empowerment.

 

P  26:03  

Yeah, it is. It is amazing. And I think a lot of us, myself included, learn a lot on a pregnancy journey. Well, when things don’t go well and when things do Right, exactly. We have not prepared to do it earlier. If I would give advice

 

A  26:16  

for anyone who’s having fertility issues and also just this is a finite moments in your life. It feels like it’s gonna last forever, but it’s not going to last forever. So like, you know, you know, even though I had that picture in my mind of having the baby on the table, and I didn’t have it the way I wanted, and you might not have the kid the way you know, but you might not have it the way you think you’re gonna have. You’re gonna get that in school, but you know, some one way or another.

 

P  26:43  

Yeah, I think that’s good advice. It is a useful perspective because for sure when you’re in it, there’s nothing else. Right, it’s very hard to look up. Well, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story and your book called The trying game is available all over obviously. All over Amazon but

 

A  27:00  

any bookstore. Yeah. Actually, if you like the sound of my voice, I’m actually narrating the audible version.

 

P  27:09  

Oh, that’s that’s awesome. And you have a website people can go to to find your other writing. Yeah, you can go to

 

A  27:21  

trial, but that calm and I have lots of articles on fertility, health, parenting,

 

P  27:30  

things like that. Okay, that sounds great. Thanks so much. Thank you. I look forward to it. Thanks again to Amy for sharing more about and really appreciate conversations with women in which they share their actual experience. Our goods in general Warren, Washington.

 

You IBM, we’re also hashtag grateful for everything we fought for. You do not discuss our mixed feelings. I’m not talking about the feeling of being scared shitless the excitement and terror that comes from knowing I’m talking about the leftover infertility of the past, mixed in with the cost of child labor. She writes. I think it took me a few weeks to feel that unfair joy. Sure. I was recovering from major surgery and trying to exclusively breastfeed the second world after 70 to subsist on negative sleep to entertain every form family member by myself. I couldn’t relax. I understand she was here to stay that she was mine. Mama, exactly. Receptionist would say a few times before I understood that she was talking to me. I am the mama. Yes, I ran into check on the every five video monitor. Meanwhile, I was outside. The only ones because I was also still running for my feelings like I had during fertility. I was still unable to relax the Brotherhood. Did I fear of the baby not waking up one morning I was overwhelmed but my fears this year to see what another day with her would bring. An early read was crowded out. And finally going through infertility as they be more sensitive to others. Because I remember what it was. I don’t remember every HCG data. Every embryo counts every medical protocol. But I do remember the the desolation of not having a child having a child this child this wonderful, beautiful, adorable person. There were so many dark days. I never thought I would get here. I didn’t know whether I would recover from a pregnancy loss. I didn’t know that I could start fertility takes away from uproot my life move across the world with just the world getting pregnant and moving on without being who was denied the one thing I wanted. I did not know what the settlement was together. Yet. Here we are with our curly girl in a mermaid bathing suit flopping around with a fish. Most days the gratitude has to go against me to college and I have to just pretend to be a regular thanks so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Feel free to like and subscribe. I will be back next week with another inspiring story.