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Today, we’re really lucky to interview Dr. Crevecoeur, who has an amazing story and many titles that I’m leaving off here by just referencing her background as a doctor as an OB, in fact. So Dr. Crevecoeur, thanks so much for coming to the show. And will you please give us a more extended sense of the things that you’ve been doing. 

Dr. Crevecoeur: Oh, well, thank you for having me. First of all, I really appreciate this opportunity to speak to your listeners. I’m a retired OB GYN and I stopped working maybe about 20 years ago, because I have five kids, and I stopped to homeschool them. The community that we lived in was not very conducive to learning. They really needed to be challenged. I stayed home and also because of the fact that my middle child was injured by the babysitter. We had no family in the area. So baby sitters was such so difficult for my husband and myself. We’re both physician and so we always had to compare our call schedule, application schedule. And then when the educational thing came in with my six year old, my five year old, then I figured, okay, you know what, this can’t go on like that. So then I took off my medical training hat that I worked so hard for, to put on my teacher homeschooling hat, which also was an amazing experience and I loved it. I I you know, looking back at it, my kids are adults now. Also beautiful, but of course, there was some difficult moments. Then I became an author I wrote about my experience, and my memoir, pressure makes diamond. And I talk about some of my war stories which I love your title of the podcast because people don’t understand that. Having a baby being pregnant, there is a lot of difficulty that occurs if there’s even tough that occurs with either my my two patients that I’m dealing with the unborn child and the mother and sometimes they’re in conflict of each other because the unborn child will try to do whatever they can to survive. 

P: It’s an amazing journey, and I think many of us can think relate more completely to the idea of homeschooling after the pandemic. And what an unbelievable undertaking that is. So I’m excited to hear this whole story. Let’s start from the early phase here. Do you have siblings? 

Dr. C: Yes I do. I have five siblings. I am kind of like the before the youngest on my little brothers. That is the youngest. I’m also an immigrant. I came to this country from Haiti. I left Haiti at the age of two, but I came to this country at the age of five because I traveled with my my parents. I was at that age where I wasn’t in school, like my oldest siblings, and I wasn’t a baby like my little brother, so I could travel with them and I kept my mom companion while my father pursued all these different avenues of where he would live with his kids. And so my father was an intellect a mathematician and a lawyer. And so he had a lot of offers at that time, especially in the late 60s With all of these social upheavals, civil rights movement and everything else. And they wanted a lot of black educators to come to this country and to other countries. So we lived in France for a year we lived in Africa for a year. Before we settle down in Brooklyn, New York. And then the rest of my family came and joined us. Yeah. And I love my siblings to death. They’re my best friend. And that was one of my main reason for wanting a large family. And when my husband and I got together when we were dating, I told him how important it was for me to have a large family. And he came also from a large family. So at the time, we thought it was perfect. We agreed. But once we had my girl and my boy, my oldest, my husband said we’re stopping at two and I said, No, you can’t renege on our promise. So then eventually, we settled for four, but I cheated because my last pregnancy with twins a girl and a boy. 

P: Well done. 

Dr. C: Thank you. Well, it was a touch and go pregnancy. That was my hardest pregnancy, actually. 

P: So let’s talk about the pregnancies. Were you already a doctor before you got pregnant? The first time?

Dr. C:  Yes. Yes, I was. 

P: So you unlike most of the people I talked to you probably stepped into pregnancy with a different set of expectations. And a different view about what it might be like so many people come on the show and say oh, you know I’d been on Instagram and I you know watched all the movies and I assumed pregnancy I’d be beautiful it would be fun and I could eat whatever I wanted. And it’s just a glowing aura around the idea of pregnancy that doesn’t necessarily match the experience. So I’m wondering what you were thinking about pregnancy before you got pregnant. 

Dr. C: Actually, I could say I was probably like he the other people you spoke to. I saw a lot of the mishaps in pregnancy, but I never expected it to be to me, you know,

P: yeah, that’s fair

Dr. C: I always felt that I ate right I exercise right.  So I knew what to do. I knew all the pre counseling that I gave my patients so I knew how to protect myself, my prenatal vitamins and everything else. I never expected to have twins that did not want to in my family. So that was a different aspect. I never tended to have preterm labor. I mean, how could you prepare for that? But I wasn’t treating labor and of course, the pain because of the fact that my husband’s anesthesiologists I wanted to feel that pain of pregnancy that my patient spoke about and I know some of it was was really hard but my husband told me Colleen and you’re sort of having these contraction now you become a moving target and if you decide to get epidural later on, it’s so much harder. Why don’t we just put in the catheter now and if you need to be topped off if you need medication, at least it’s already there. So I said fine. We’ll compromise oh my goodness, I have one I had one contraction that I could relate now with my other patients. after that. I told my my husband get me the anesthesia. 

P: You know pain is a hard thing to describe and to prepare for. It is it really feels like

Dr. C:  I felt like my back was going to break open. My oldest sister did not get an epidural and she went through the whole lamaze method. I didn’t go through that but because of everything she told me I figured that if she could do it, I could do it. And no after that first pain I said there is no reason for me to go through pain like this when I don’t have to. 

P: Yeah, 

Dr. C: so at least I know what that first pain felt like. And then I go maybe joyful. All of my kids. 

P:  feel like your husband will feel useful. 

Dr. C: Oh yeah, he used what he felt very. It’s not sensual. But I think it helps when a doctor could relate to what their patients are going through. And I’m saying that very cautiously because we know that we have a lot of male physicians that can’t go through that. So I’m not saying that women physician are necessarily better, but I just feel that when you been in that kind of situation. You could probably relate on that aspect better. 

P: Yeah, experience is a real educator, especially in pregnancy where There’s so much going on. It’s really hard to describe in a way to make someone else which is why we walk in and think yeah, I won’t need the epidural. I remember when I had contractions and I didn’t even get that far. I felt like I must be doing it wrong because it hurts so much. there’s no reason it should it should be feeling like this but so I’m with you. Was it easy to get pregnant?

Dr. C:  It was very easy. 

P: Good. 

Dr. C: It was even too easy. And I could always find my pregnancy so we had let’s get pregnant here so we could have you know plan on vacation and it usually work. But you know what though? I felt guilty because I had Kate patients that were infertility treatment. I was there. We’re going through infertility treatment. And I was pregnant almost five years ago. So a period of time I have five on the five so and I wanted them that close because this is an eye with that close, 

P: Although I think it’s like it’s a beacon for the rest of us. Right I did not get pregnant easily but it’s a good story to have in the world and a good experience that’s hopefully someone’s getting pregnant easily. Right that that 

Dr. C: It is unless you’re dealing with your infertility patients or you’re dealing with patients that have previous miscarriages and I had a patient that you know, twice in a row she had her miscarriages when I was pregnant. 

P: That’s hard 

Dr. C:  so I saw her again and when they call to tell me Oh, that the critical we have a case you know, miss a bush, you know, I’m thinking who’s the patient and give me some history you know, I’m on my way. And when they would say the name I’m thinking oh my god not heard God you know, and I felt so awful. And here I am coming in with my pregnant belly. You know, she’s looking at me and I and as much condolences that I try to offer to her. She’s like, you don’t know what it feels like, you know, you’re pregnant every year. You know? Of course she doesn’t say that. But that’s how I could envision it. And I just felt guilty. I really did. 

P: Yeah, I can see what you’re saying is as someone who had trouble getting pregnant, whenever I went to my OB office and was surrounded by pregnant women, I was like okay, your’e make him look easy.

Dr. C: How was the first pregnancy? Well, my pregnancies I had hyperemesis I grew up throughout my whole pregnancy. When I would see patients I would say excuse me, I’ll be right back. I would go to the bathroom and I got to be really good at that. It wasn’t a big deal. But I was dehydrated. My husband being done anesthesiologists, he had to be in the office line by seven o’clock. He had to be in my nine. So he would hook me up to an IV and that’s how I would be hydrated. And in the evening he would hook me up again if I needed it. If I didn’t have him I know I would have been in the hospital a couple of times just getting IV fluid in and because that’s how bad things were. For me. So that helped a lot. But that happened throughout my whole entire pregnancy for all of my pregnancies that was something that I just had to get used to. 

P: Let’s talk about her emesis for a second. My understanding is that we think it’s driven by a hormonal issue. 

Dr. C: Yes, 

P: is there any more that we know about? hormones? 

Dr. C: not at the moment. Your body’s getting used to a lot of changes when you’re pregnant. And sometimes we see it happen with the first pregnancy and it doesn’t happen as much with the remaining pregnancies. And we see it mostly happening in the first trimester. And so as your body is getting used to it, you’re getting better handling it and then we see some pregnancies like myself but my own. It happened throughout the whole pregnancy was worse. I would say the first trimester then the remaining months, but it still was present different food elicited different reactions from us. That’s still the basis of it. Do we do give patients besides fluid we give them antiemetics or medication? I never really liked those so much. They didn’t seem to help me that much. 

P: So did you manage it with gingerale and saltines and the IVs or what was your approach?

Dr. C:  It was basically, um, ginger and fluids. Okay, that was my approach. And it was 

P: and is it does it run a family to any of your siblings have it? 

Dr. C: that’s a really good question. It really doesn’t matter and family and none of my two sisters ever complain? About so I was the only one. 

P: So that’s interesting. And hard. Good lord. Yeah. Especially since you had your pregnancies close to each other. It’s a long period of time to not enjoy food. I know right? 

Dr. C: You know, I enjoyed food is just I didn’t stay down. It didn’t enjoy me. As much. 

P: You only got to enjoy briefly. Okay. So with the first one, so we have hyperemesis and then someone is following you, I assume and and talk about the preterm labor. How did all that develop? 

Dr. C: Yeah, pre term labor and I don’t know, there’s a lot of theories about preterm. Labor. And now there’s also talking about vitamin D deficiency, and that’s something new that we never really associated with preterm labor, and of course, different infections could cause preterm labor. But for me, I was usually always healthy and exercising. I always tell my patients that if you’re healthy and exercising you shouldn’t stop doing that. And if you’re used to running marathons, or whatever your body’s used to, you should stop doing that. Well, I was very active, but I remember coming back from seeing my parents, my parents lived in Florida at the time and in Pennsylvania. Like I said, we didn’t really have any family members. And I was getting to this really depression like I miss my sister. I miss my mom, you know, my husband says you’re off next weekend. Why don’t you go take a trip and I was pregnant with my first child. I you know, if my mom was gonna fly in on time, I didn’t know my sisters. Were going to be there. So I went and I saw that my state as long as possible and when I was I laughed I was gonna miss the plane. So I was doing one of these running down that airlines getting down you know, the run, you know, like trying to catch my plane. And, and I was maybe around 20-24 weeks with my adult daughter. After that, I had the most severe pain. If I made the plane, I was in so much pain. Then I felt I was having these contractions these mild contractions I was so contacted my doctor right away. She hooked me up to the monitor, and she told me that I was contracting. She put me on medication and everything and I and it kind of stopped. Ever since then, all of my other kids. My contractions started earlier, and I was able to deliver my daughter at 37 weeks, but each child after that son was 36. My other son was 35. Then my twins were my earliest authority to 

P: talk about the first delivery because that that’s a must be a bit of a surprise. 

Dr. C: So my first delivery besides the preterm labor and the hyperemesis and once I got my epidural, it was uneventful. So my doctor and I, we both decided that, you know, I could get off the video, gentlemen, the lung, my baby’s lungs should be mature because that’s the main thing that we worry about with preterm deliveries is the lung majority because babies are not breathing in utero for good reason. The mom is doing it for them. The lungs are not functioning and when they take their first breath, that’s when the lung starts functioning. So we know we don’t have any basis of knowing when the lung maturity is going to occur. And we think that by term, it should be fine. So preemies we do worry about the lung maturity they can’t read. And you know, and this is why we have so fast and now which helps the alveoli in the lungs to keep it open so it doesn’t collapse. 

P: Okay, so quick note about surfactant factor is a liquid made by the lungs that keep the air sacs or alveoli open. This liquid prevents the air sex from sticking together with a baby exhales making breathing possible after birth. A fetus starts making surfactant at about 26 weeks and the baby’s born before 37 weeks. There’s a concern that not enough of this liquid has been made and the baby may have breathing problems. When it’s born. The whole issue of surfactant was first identified in 1929 by a scientist in Switzerland. And it wasn’t until the 1980s that researchers were testing various animal surfactants and manufactured surfactants on preemies. 

Dr. C: That was what my research has a residency. That was what I did. My husband had helped me and that’s when we work together. And I was looking to see how so fat that really work. And could Is there any basis of putting it in the amniotic fluid because we do, although babies don’t really breathe. We do know that there are some instances and so I wanted to try to see if we could help these preterm babies earlier than wait until they are born to give them that dose of a surfactant in their lungs to help keep the alveoli open. So I understood all that and I was always 

P: wait that sounds like very cool research. Did you find out that if you inject surfactant in same fluid, it has an effect or 

Dr. C: it wasn’t statistically significant. And so that’s why we don’t do it. How was it when you took the first one home? Was it what you expected because you came from a big family or your siblings had kids or 

Dr. C: It was in November and we had a lot of snow we were in central Pennsylvania and that first three months or so I think my family did come but they didn’t stay too long they came to and we had snowstorm so it was really hard to get to us. And I stayed home with my oldest for six months before I went back to work. My husband was busy working and felt I was going crazy. As a mom just being with my daughter and not really having anyone to talk to. I felt totally isolated. I had all these plans to do things with her. But she was just a baby. And so it was difficult. You know now that you’re making me reflect on this. If you know you really hit a really great question. It was difficult those first three months I really wanted to do things for her. We were stuck in there was a big snowstorm. Remember, I couldn’t even go out. I couldn’t even drive around places would have my husband was always on call and we had no family in the area. So it was a very lonely period with her. I talked to her constantly and this is why she’s so smart, you know, until I have the other kids until my family came but that was a good question. It was different from what I expected. 

P: The kind of all demanding quality of a newborn is the another thing that’s sort of hard to translate or prepare for. 

Dr. C: Right as much as I tell my patients about breastfeeding and everything else. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna breastfeed to be honest. But I did my daughter just latched on before I even had a choice in the matter, which was so interesting. But that’s another thing with the breastfeeding. I liked it and I was thinking I would breastfeed, you know, for three months or something. And I was only able to breastfeed for six weeks because of what I did it for all my other kids six weeks after that my breast milk just dried up. So that was also something that I didn’t know if I was doing wrong and it’s so funny when the lactation nurse came in and say Oh, Dr. Crevecoeur, you know, I’m gonna teach you this but you’re a pro at this. I’m thinking No, I’m not a pro at this. I’ve never done this before. Don’t assume anything. Just make sure you’re talking to another patient you know, because you’re adopted they just assume you know all this my don’t so 

P: that’s amazing. Also, your body has its own limits, right. It’s you’re gonna have hyperemesis whether you want it or not and it sounds like your milk production is there for six weeks. So enjoy. Yeah, yeah, it’s over. I’m guessing that with your other pregnancies between your daughter and the twins, and it was pretty easy to get pregnant. Right? And then you have the hyperemesis. But was it a little bit better each time or was it equally bad? 

Dr. C: It was equally bad. I think I got better at it. I got it better. What’s your anticipate? And so but I think it was equally bad. 

P: Do you need the IV support at home for each one? Oh, wow. I did. 

Dr. C: I don’t know if you want to go to the incompetent cervix because I also had that. 

P: Sure. I mean, whatever you want to tell us about did that happen for the second one or happen for the second one and all of the remaining ones? I had traction throughout all my pregnancies and I was on medication for that. And I was on bed rest take it easy, Carlene and all these other things that I try to do and

P: Can I ask  a question. What is the medicine do how does that worked? 

Dr. C: The whole thing of how the ritigin works? 

P: Yeah, 

Dr. C: it’s supposed to uterine relaxation basically, supposed to counter the contractions 

P: it sounds like it more or less worked for you. 

Dr. C: It did. It did till until it didn’t until the baby’s like I’m coming out regardless of what you do. We move we stayed in Pennsylvania, but we moved maybe 30 minutes away from where we were living to a bigger house because now we were going to have two kids. Basically, we had our house a month before we actually moved in so that it wouldn’t be too crazy things would be put away. I remember that day. I called my husband I said, you know, I’ve been contracting throughout the day and I don’t think this medication is working. And my contractions weren’t anything severe but it was just, you know, I felt them. And he told me Well, Carlene, I’m on call today. I said, you know, I think we should go to the doctor. I think we should go to the hospital because I’m a little concerned. It’s not stopping. And he says Well, I’m on call today. Could you hold it? I said okay, I’m gonna go with or without you because I’m concerned. 

P: Yeah, 

Dr.C: he  goes, Okay, I’ll find someone to cover me. I’ll go with you. We go to the hospital and I’m sitting in waiting for my doctor. And I’m just common anything and then he examines me and he says, Carlene your seven centimeters.

P:  Oh my god. 

Dr C.: Seven that day two was an ice storm. And so while we were driving to the hospital, I wait for my husband got home. He was sliding. I could have had that. baby at home easily. Because if we waited until I was pushing, you know, 

P: what are you 36 weeks at this point? 

Dr. C: I was 36 weeks. 

P: So let’s agree that we need a different term other than incompetent cervix. I don’t love as a trainer. I have to figure out something else for that. I agree. But essentially, your cervix is opening because the uterus is contracting. Is that as it should? 

Dr. C: Yes. And I not really feeling that pain, because it’s kind of floppy. So So yeah, that’s basically what it is. It’s not holding tight. And what’s so remarkable about the organs in our body. Now cervix when we have pap smears and you have an abnormal pap smear and the doctor says, Oh, we could freeze it. We could do cryotherapy or we could take a piece of it. uncomfortable but it’s not painful. You know, if you’re doing a freezing technique and you’re telling your patient how are you doing? Are you okay? And they say yeah, I’m fine. We don’t have nerve endings for that in our cervix, 

P: okay, 

Dr. C: because I’ll start with never felt like they will be in a situation they will be frozen or they would be taking bites off. So there was no reason to put nerve endings there like we do enough skin. But we do have nerve endings for dilitation. And so when you’re dilating, you feel that pain, because your body’s telling you your cervix is opening up, you’re getting ready to deliver a child and you should know this other than that we don’t have nerve endings for anything else. It’s just like your bowel too we have no nerve endings for distension but if I take a piece of your bowel, my bone it you probably won’t feel that or at least you won’t feel it that way you’ll feel it on your skin. So when you have a quote incompetent cervix, your dilating, without me knowing you’re doing this on your own, which is dangerous, because then I could go to the hospital, or I, you know, I don’t know if I’m fully dilated. 

P: So so that’s really interesting because as you’re talking your cervix should be dilating when your uterus is contracting. That’s how the whole thing works. But for this condition, you don’t feel it the way you would at a normal time of labor. 

Dr. C: Exactly. 

P: Okay. If you’re seven centimeters, there’s no going back. 

Dr. C: There’s no going back. I guess I was contracting so continuously that the doctor felt that the long maturity of my my son would be fine. So as soon as he just broke the water, yeah,the amniotic  fluid I delivered. I delivered in like less than an hour. 

P: Wow. 

Dr. C: Yeah, I deliver very fast at that time. It would have been at home and if I didn’t go to the hospital when I did. 

P: I don’t know if it was your doctor training. Or your own intuition. But how smart to leave. Oh, no, thank god. Wow.

Dr. C: Yeah. And you know, and it was just continuous in the medication that seemed like it was helping, and it wasn’t painful, but it was not stopping. So with my history, I just want and then I think I heard that there was going to be an ice storm. And I knew that it was bad. So at least I wanted to be in a hospital in case anything had to be done. You know, even if they sent me home, no Carlene you okay, you will give me some fluid and send y’all you lose nothing. 

P: So the contractions feel like cramping. Is that what they feel like? 

Dr. C: Yes, they felt like cramping. Okay. Because when I have patient my time to seven centimeter you’re screaming your screen, I give me an OB doorwall Why did you do this to me? And so the fact that I was seven centimeter and it was just some mouth and traction that, you know, was dangerous. 

P: That’s a little scary. So it sounds like you and your husband took a little pause for a second to work out. How many kids are we going to have between the second and the third? 

Dr. C: Right a year

P: and and then you came around good work. And then do they put a stitch in your cervix immediately or how is our that usually work? 

Dr. C: that usually goes after the first trimester? That makes sense? 

P: Yeah. 

Dr. C: Because if you’re gonna have a miscarriage for whatever reason, then you don’t want to put a stitch there. But you want to definitely put it before the pregnancy gets much heavy and before you start dilating. 

P: So that’s enough to that first of all, the stitch Can you feel it or no because again, you said like that, that part of the cervix has not innovated. They had an epidural for that. 

Dr. C: Okay, you had an epidural and they took me to the O R, and they put the

stitch in 

P: and is it literally one stitch? That’s enough to keep your cervix closed?  

Dr. C: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It helps. 

P: So what happened with the third one because that one was even earlier? 

Dr. C: that one was at 35 weeks? I think I did have an amniocentesis for that where they take out the fluid to see the level to see the ratio of the lungs maturity. 

P: ok What you’re hearing is an edited version of my conversation with Dr. Quebecor, because we’re going to talk about prematurity. We talked briefly about the lab test to measure the lung maturity of a preemie. As she suggests it’s an amnio that examines the ratio of two I think their fats in the amniotic fluid. It’s called the LS ratio, and it provides a way to estimate lung maturity, given that lungs are the last organ to develop in utero. breathing problems are a big issue for preemies. In a 2014 article in a journal called Future medicine, the author suggests that this kind of testing doesn’t improve neonatal outcomes. So it’s becoming a less common way to manage premature babies, but I did it with my firstborn and it sounds like Dr. Crevecoeur did it with her third baby. 

Dr. C: So because my my child’s lung was mature, my doctor said, okay 35 weeks we’re gonna go and we’re gonna cut you a stage off and so by then I knew that I would probably go into labor. I did rounds that day. I told my patients that it I’m checking out it won’t see until six weeks later and everything because I’m probably going to go into labor. And my husband came with me afterwards they cut the stitch, So I started going into labor, and they just kept me broke my order and I delivered, but I remember going in the morning seeing my patients setting somehow. And so I think that one was more plan because my oldest son that was like rushing and everything else so this one was better. Plan as far as my schedule, my husband’s schedule. 

P: so that one sounds a little less stressful because you’re taking all the information you learned from what exactly to this. 

Dr. C: Yeah, exactly. And just when you think you learned everything, you get a curveball with twins. 

P: So let’s talk about that. Obviously, you know, by eight weeks or how long does it take, can you use HCG to say this is off the charts? It might be more than one? 

Dr. C: No, no, I did not expect it to be more than one. I knew that I was pregnant, and I expected it to be one I was hoping forI was hoping for a little girl because I had already two boys and one girl and my sisters are my best friend. So I really was hoping for the girl and I already agreed with my husband had a big fight. And he said one more we’re going to have four and if it’s a girl or not with stopping and I had said, Okay, fine. So because he gave in I figured, you know, I’ll choose my battle. 

P; Yes. 

Dr. C: So he was in the hospital, and I was with my three it was in the evening I come home from work, and I was in the kitchen, washing some things or getting water or whatever. And I felt a pain searing across my pelvis. And it was extremely painful. It was spontaneous one minute I was fine. The next minute I was bent over in pain 

P: how far along are you at this point? 

Dr. C:  eight weeks 

P: Okay, 

Dr. C: I just limped over to that family room. And I told my oldest who was one five years old so at the time to take the kids upstairs and put them to bed and she was like so mature and she was my strength. I counted on a whole lot of things. So she put them to bed. You read them a story she was reading by then. She was so proud of her older sister, you know, role that she played. And I called my husband and I told him, I’m having a lot of pain. And I think I’m having a miscarriage. And he says, Okay, I’ll find someone to cover me I’ll come home. And I said, Sweetheart, this is eight weeks. There’s nothing you could do for me to just hold my hand. I said, I’m not bleeding yet. But I’ve never felt such bad pain in my life. And, and so for you to come home and hold my hands. It’s not gonna help. I just need to let this play out. He said are you sure and I said, Of course. I’m sure then he stayed. And I went over to the couch. And I started crying because eight weeks is nothing you’re going to do you know, the next day, I felt great. And I looked and I was in bleeding and I’m thinking what just happened here? And so I took the kids to preschool and daycare and everything else. I went to the ultrasound. I told my friend who was really my good friend could you scan to see what’s going on. I’m pregnant, but I thought I was having a miscarriage. It was so painful last night. When she did the ultrasound. sHe found out that I was having twins, but that’s not what caused my pain. My corpus luteum the dominant follicle that releases the egg becomes the corpus luteum that supports your pregnancy before the placenta could take over with progesterone 

P: In case you are like me and didn’t entirely follow along on the brief bio of the corpus luteum here’s a refresher. As a woman you are born with all the eggs you will ever have something on the order of 2 million by the time puberty hits about 400,000 eggs. Between 405 100 of these eggs will mature during your reproductive years. All the immature eggs are enclosed in a single layer of cells known as a follicle that supports the egg. Each cycle hormones encourage follicles to grow and release a mature egg. Sometimes too, but usually only one mature egg is released during ovulation from this dominant follicle. The empty follicle seals itself off and becomes the corpus luteum which produces progesterone and estrogen to prepare the lining of the uterus for potential pregnancy the role of hormone production is taken over by the placenta between 10 and 12 weeks if you become pregnant, 

Dr. C: that ruptured, there was fluid, right? You could see fluid behind my uterus. You could see that accumulating. And what’s so interesting about it is that could kind of see it and as it’s a carving in a way, a lot of times you assume that’s what happens to patients because of what how they describe it. But by the time you do an ultrasound allow that fluid has been resolved. And so you don’t see that so this was like it was happening to me but it was also so interesting, because I was able to see and I was new was happening. I did not expect that.

P: for the civilians in the room. Is this supposed to happen or it’s not supposed to happen? 

Dr. C: Oh, no, it’s not supposed to happen. We don’t want the copy studio to rupture before it’s ready. And in some patients that does what we do is we give them suggestions, depositories. And the reasons because of the corpus luteum is gone. It’s not doing the job. And the placenta is not yet developed enough to take over because at one point the placenta will take over. So and we think that this is why some patients have miscarriages. And so sometimes when the patients describe what I was describing, I would just give them suggestions repository to see if we could maintain that pregnancy

P: and that sends a signal to uterus to do what

Dr. C:  to basically protect the developing fertilized egg. It helps the villa the finger like projection of the placenta to embed itself. In the end, it helps develop that also kind of wrote out the description to myself, and I did it you know, and I did it right away and that saved my pregnancy. So after my first trimester, 

P: Good Lord, okay, so you’re the doctor, you’re the patient. You’re the saving the kids hear this a lot going on here. So how long do you have to take the suppositories for 

Dr. C: about the first trimester because by then you believe that the placenta will take over? 

P: Are you ultrasounding all the time now or how do you manage this? 

Dr. C: Well, I wasn’t ultrasounding all the time. That we saw to gestational sac to little tiny fetuses starting to develop. So one of them look the normal size, it’s going it’s symmetrical, and we’d like to see that the other sack was kind of irregular. That scares us. Because then we think that either that first sack absorb the irregular sack, which happens in two entitlements to choose and syndrome and all these other stuff that we know about twins. And we could still have a Miscavige because the bigger twin for whatever projection was left remaining. Maybe that twin was able to develop better and faster than that other point that we don’t have enough for. And so that irregular sack look like I could have lost if not both of the pregnancies, at least one of the pregnancy that was very concerning. So at 12 weeks, though, so once we knew that the pregnancy was viable that’s when you would put this a collage and I think get us a collage. 

P: What’s your emotional state between eight weeks and 12 weeks? I think I would be ultrasounding every day just to be like, Okay, we’ve still got it

Dr. C: I don’t know if itwould have helped me to know that. I was just saying that. Just gonna do a projection this is going to work out because again, you’re not going to do a C section at eight weeks to protect the baby. So it’s either it does or it doesn’t work. And so because of the fact I was still working and because of the fact I still had my little ones at home, I needed to get my mind off that and just carry myself to To 12 weeks. We’ll know what we have to do that I saved the pregnancy. How am I going to get us a car do I move on? 

P: That seems like a lot. It was it was like to some degree thank God for all the stuff he had going on so that you can focus on other things. 

Dr. C: That’s true that does help after when the doctor puts into succotash and says Coleen, you have a history of preterm labor. With twins, it’s even more just because of the whole pressure and everything else that we really need to be careful with you. I want you to go on bed rest very early in your pregnancy. So I said okay, so you told me Don’t go crazy. Don’t do anything abnormal or anything too strenuous because of my history. And because now I was having twins at 24 weeks. My ceclage ripped open. 

P: Oh wow

Dr. C: Yeah, yeah. We were in, in North Carolina at a family reunion of my husbands. And during that time, again, I felt contractions in the religion, the medications that are we’re on, we’re really not helping, and it wasn’t bad contractions but with my history, I said to my husband you know, let’s go to a local hospital. Let’s just somebody checked my cervix because I don’t know if I’m dilating on her in that’s what he says Colleen, you have this a card. I said here but times you can break through this o’clock and open up the cordless. And so he really didn’t want to leave. He says, Okay, we’ll call tomorrow, you know, and then it was a death of his family. And so this family reunion. We all were having a wonderful time in North Carolina had to be cut short. So everybody had to leave as soon as we got home. I caught one of my nurses who was really in I’m one of my OB nurse and I told her, you know, I’ve been having contractions throughout the whole trip, and I really think I’m dilating. Would you mind coming to my house and checking me out and she was so wonderful. She says that the critical I’ll be right there. She comes over and she says you’re four centimeters.

At 24 weeks I was four centimeters. 

P: yeah, that’s too soon

Dr. C:  that’s way too soon. And I always tell my mother in law she recently passed away that it was her father passed away. The kids grandfather, he saved my kids because my husband did not want to leave. So we would have waited probably too long and I don’t know what would have happened. I had bulging membranes and I was four centimeters. So I get rushed to a tertiary care center in Johnstown. Which is like an hour away from us because my local hospital is not a tertiary care center. And if I delivered those kids, those preemies we wouldn’t have the facilities, the proper facilities to either 

P: you need like a NICU or something 

Dr. C: exactly. But NICU where we will so we drove over to the hospital that did have a NICU, they put me in Trendelenburg which is basically they turned my bed like almost upside down where my head would be down just so that the gravity and the pressure would be alleviated off my pelvis and, and they put me on IV medication and fluid, and even antibiotics because sometimes when you have contractions like that there as soon as could be an infection. And he told me Coleen, you have both your membranes we’re going to do our best but in putting that stitch in we could also ruptured your cervix because you’re already four centimeters. So we’re going to put another stitch in we’re going to try to stop your contractions but you have all people know this that involve, you may lose babies. 

P: Okay, three questions. Question number one at subsequent ultrasounds, Baby B looks fine. Doesn’t 

Dr C: Yes. 

P: Okay, good. 

Dr. C: Yes, baby. He looks fine. And Baby B was my daughter. And by that I knew that idea was a boy and a girl. So yes, so I was eight. I was telling my husband that after this pregnancy, hopefully everything’s fine. You could cut my tubes. You could burn my tubes you could do whatever you want with my tubes. I signed the consent form that said I was done. So I was going to get my little boy, my little girl afterwards. 

P: So second question is why do we think bedrest works? Do we still think progress works? 

Dr. C: I don’t think again, we have a lot of sense that we can, you know, so we hope that helps because you’re being less active. And like I said, when I was with my first pregnancy when I was running down the airport and everything else I had some bad pains and I think that started everything. So we don’t know how much it else but we know that it doesn’t hurt. And so when I told patients, I’m going to put you on bed rest because I just want you to take it easy. And they said how do I do that with three toddlers? How do I do that? And the reality is, it’s so hard. 

P: Why do we think if your resting will affect a delivery date? 

Dr. C: That’s a good question, but it’s also not actively because of gravity pounding on your cervix pounding on your uterus. 

P: Okay, so basically we’re just trying to alleviate the pressure of gravity. 

Dr. C: Yes. 

P: Okay. Tell me I was gonna ask Golgi membranes is that the amniotic fluid and 

Dr. C: that’s what we we say all the cervix is closed, you know, or the service is one centimeter. You know, you can move your membrane very well. But by the time the service is for 10 centimeters, you could kind of feel membrane, but when it’s bulging, you have fluid there and so it’s easy to rupture the membranes and the fluid comes out and then the head comes out. So when you have bolted membranes like that, you really want it to be pushed back. Up, especially if you’re going to be putting in a stitch. The last thing you want is to put a needle through that membrane. 

P: Yeah, 

Dr. C: you know, the uterus is pretty a sterile area. You don’t want to introduce infection there. And so once your water breaks, don’t really the patient on any kind of tocolytic medication to stop their contraction because now you’re increasing the risk of infection. 

P: So now we’re back with you and you’re kind of tilted in a way that does not seem comfortable to keep your cervix closed and they’re about to do another sir collage. Yes. Okay. So okay, sorry, play, okay. So,

Dr. C:  it doesn’t surprise that he tells me the risk 50 You know, that I could lose a baby and of course, I cry, but I understood it helped that I knew what could happen. You know, he didn’t have to go through all the information, although he did and I appreciate it that I go through it. It’s successful. My contractions kind of diminishes. And he tells me on strict bed rest for the remaining of the pregnancy. And this is where family comes in. My in laws came in for a weekend so my parents flew in from Florida, they stayed till 32 weeks when I went into labor again. 

P: Oh, okay. So for those eight weeks, right, are you are you just lying flat? Are you inclined or

Dr. C: I am just up flat. Okay, the incline was more so they could put the stitch and move the membranes away. So by the time I get home, I’m just lying flat. 

P: And how do you feel?

Dr. C:  I feel okay, you know, the surgery was a success. I feel happy my family was able to come to help my babies were still doing okay and now I had to be on steroids injections. Because of the lung maturity. We knew that most likely they were going to be delivered early because of my history and because of pain points in general. But one thing about twins because of the fact that they are in a smaller space and a single tenant already fighting with each other for space. They’re very stressed. The cortisol level the stress level actually increases with the lung maturity. 

P: that’s interesting

Dr. C: So yeah, so that was good to know. Plus, because of that, I was also getting injections of steroids to help with their lung maturity and at 32 weeks, I was contracting again and I went to the tertiary hospital because that’s where I was going to go. Now when he examined me my first one which was turned out to be my boy was a footling breech 

P: uh oh

Dr. C: footling breech, the foot is coming out first and you don’t want to stress a premium out and you don’t want to deliver anybody. footling first, and I’ve had three successful vaginal deliveries. I left the hospital before 24 hours. I’ve never stayed after delivery. I’ve never stayed in the hospital for more than 24 hours. The reason was because not only did my husband Hurry up wanted me to come home, but my husband we are an interracial couple. He’s White, I’m black. And so a lot of the reasons why they want you to stay in the hospital rather than 24 hours because they’re learning all of these genetic tests on your baby to make sure that everything is fine before they send your baby home with your baby. And a lot of these test takes at least 24 hours for the results definitely for my case being black. They will get sickle cell they will look at anything that’s prevalent in the black community and for him and the white community would do that. And so we’re both physician and so I said, Sweetheart, we can’t leave now they’re running tests and you know, and he says Colleen, what is the likelihood we are both carrying a recessive gene. Our kids are going to be dominant on he says the things that’s gonna run in my family is not gonna win. In your family. And when he said that, I was like, Oh, and this is an aside but I feel that people go outside of their race or their ethnicity of the chances of us have having kids that are affected with genetic abnormalities is better. And at some point, I’m thinking, was that the reason for doing all these race, and we haven’t decided that when we all stay without own blue? We’re making things worse. 

P: Yep. 

Dr. C: And so because of how you see your god i This is not meant to be a religious discussion. But I think it’s ingenious. I think the more we realize that we need each other and that we’re better together and that we have less of a chance of these genetic abnormalities being predominant. I think the better it is 

P: totally agree with your larger point here, and then with respect to your smaller point, I think you’re going to stay longer than 24 hours because you have preemies, right?

Dr. C: because of the fact that they were pre knees because of the fact that one of them the first one was afoot language had to put a foot out there, and I was contracting. My doctor told me that he’s gonna do a C section. And before he did that, they did test the lung maturity of my babies. And they found that at 32 weeks, the lungs were mature. They said, Okay, we’re going to schedule you for a C section first thing in the morning, and they did

P: and how did you find that experience. 

Dr. C: Oh, boy. That was hard. Because again, like I said, I never had a C section with my other baby. And after having a vaginal deliveries, I was up and walking around. I felt great. It felt wonderful. And this is one of the reasons that I really tried hard not to give one of my patients C sections if they didn’t need it 

I was in pain after that C section. I’m thinking oh my god, is this what I do to my patients, you know, it’s painful. It really is. Also as doctors we have a habit of taking out the uterus, putting it kind of on the abdomen and sewing it right there and pushing it back in when we finished because you have a clear view of it. And I saw what people you know, when you keep the uterus inside and you sew it from there, it’s less trauma to the uterus. It’s less potential adhesions later on that you’re, you know you’re doing and so of course the patients only see the finished product and they’re always worried about the scar out of there Scott looks but there’s a lot of other things that you have to consider for your patients in their healing process. 

P: So are we trying to direct the show from the operating table? 

Dr. C: Oh, no that at all. I really liked my doctor and I was very confident that he was going to do everything he could to give me as minimal amount of pain as possible. And my husband he was the one that kept peeking over the to see what was doing and he goes oh my god call me the first boy he’s he’s five penalty so big. So my kids were five pounds and four pounds my daughter.

P: wow

Dr. C:  Yeah, they were in the NICU just observation, but they did well and in three days they were able to go home with me. 

P: So they would have been giants, if you kept them in are much longer. 

Dr. C: I know I know. My second pregnancy my son, Michael, he was my biggest pregnancy at like seven pounds, you know, just barely seven pounds all my others were like six and I told them if you’re bigger than seven pounds, you’re staying in there. I’m not pushing out a bowling ball. 

P: No kidding. Wow. And only NICU for a day is kind of awesome for 32 weeks, right? 

Dr. C: Yeah. But like they did the preliminaries. They did the lung maturity I was getting you know test the amniocentesis, I was getting steroids, you know, so all of that. 

P: That’s amazing. So how many days do you have to stay in the hospital with the C section 

Dr. C: C section is normally three days and I was so distended afterwards because they heard bowel sounds. You’re not supposed to eat anything. You know, we tell patients until we have bowel sounds. But my husband listen, then he goes, Oh, I could hear bounce. I’m so hungry. I’m starving. Well, I think he got food for me or the nurse. Somebody did I wasn’t supposed to eat and I did eat and my bowl once you maneuver the bow it stops working for a while and 

P: yeah, 

Dr. C: just stay there. Well, I didn’t take that advice. I was so distended afterwards, I was in pain. And my parents were with me for how long like six, eight weeks. They were excited and they came to see the babies but after that, I think my dad booked a ticket at one way back. They gave up a lot and you know, as soon as I heard they were leaving. I had five little ones now. Yeah, I had a C section. I was so shocked that okay, Colleen, you’re fine. You’re doing well. We’re leaving. I was like, How could you do that? But I could say that I couldn’t be you know, just to give myself but I was a little sad that they would choose to leave me like this. My husband did have a week off. I think he had like the following or, but he didn’t have that time off. And it’s not like we had this paternity leave at the time at all. No one was doing that. 

I remember getting up out of bed taking care of my twins taking care of my three little ones in so much pain. One or two of my neighbors stopped by to pick up my daughter to take her to daycare or preschool. I remember them helping me. But other than that I was on my own was harder than when I had Danielle at first that we talked about walking around when you have just had your abdomen open up that was extremely painful. 

P: The whole thing is kind of nuts right that you’re sent home after major abdominal surgery to take twins no less and other kids. Yes. And even six weeks seems like a crime so that people go back to work after that. Yeah, it’s a lot is a lot.

Dr. C:  There’s a lot that was very painful. Not even having my husband to be able to take paternity leave. So I could have been home I had leave but being by myself and not having a supporting spouse to help you. It’s really hard. 

P: Yeah, seems unbelievably hard. Yeah. They’re all grown. 

Dr. C: Yeah, they all go. Remember I had when I stopped working for some reason. I guess I was telling my kids I used to be a doctor. You know, things like that. And I remember my daughter, my oldest thing that she wants to be an OBGYN. I don’t think she ever had a clue of what that is because she wanted to be like Mommy, and I was so touched by that and I’ve always wished that I was worthless. I could take her to my practice with me because I’ve done that with medical students. I’ve done that and high school students to let them assess. And so now that my daughter is in her second year, they did like a minor introduction to all the specialties and she was Oh Mom OB is so interesting. And I just like oh my god. Oh, that’s always nice when your kids want to follow in your footsteps.

P: That’s amazing. That’s awesome. Yeah. So wondering, other than these experiences helping you to connect with patients? Is there anything you learned yourself that you’d say Oh, if only I could speak to younger, Carlene, I would tell her.

Dr. C:  I think I try planning everything in my life from my medical school experience from working to put myself through medical school to college, and everything when I was going to have my babies and when I was going to take time off and planning everything, and plans don’t always work. It’s good to have plans though because it helps you have a goal. It helps you to be able to pivot but you always have to remember that ready to pivot. Because, plans do change everything is not set in stone. And I think when I saw my plans changing, I became so upset because how dare they change on me, you know, this is how it’s supposed to happen and life doesn’t happen like that. I didn’t think I was going to quit my job to homeschool my kids 

P: right

Dr. C: but the situation happened and I had to learn how to pivot. And so doing so causes anxiety, so I need to know or tell my younger self to relax. Because getting upset over things you can’t change doesn’t help you take a deep breath and you say, Okay, how do I pivot? 

How do I turn this into a positive and even with my own cancer diagnosis, which was a very depressing and low part of my life. I had to find a silver lining and that one of my silver lining that helped me move forward. Not only was I still homeschooling my kids, and I did that on my weeks that I wasn’t on chemo, but also when it came back and I was diagnosed with stage four. I said, You know what? I may die, but I’m not going to look at this like, by me God or like, why not me? I had a terrific life because of the fact that I was able to with my kids, and during that time was somewhat the part of my life. I enjoy that immensely.

 Life is gonna throw you a curveball all along. How you approach the curveball. How you try to enjoy your life helps you move forward and helps you to live. 

P: Yeah, that’s an amazing lesson to have pulled from that really only what we see really hard experiences. Yeah, it’s awesome. 

P: Tell us about the book where we can find it, what is called and a description of your book. Let’s talk about that. 

Dr. C: Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, it is cool. Pressure makes diamonds. From homeschooling to the Ivy League. It’s a parenting story. And call the pressure makes diamond because of the fact that we put ourselves through a lot of pressure as wives as mothers as teachers has member of society. We place a lot of pressure on ourselves and sometimes I think we just need to stop. Take a deep breath, especially mothers, I think we try to be perfect. And everything our kids do or don’t do somehow it’s our fault. 

And we don’t have an algorithm to motherhood. We don’t have a previous book that we could describe the perfect mother or the perfect child. And I think it’s left up to us to make that definition for ourselves. And our family and not be pressured by why society thinks you should do. 

P: Well. It’s amazing advice and the book is called pressure makes diamonds. From homeschooling to the Ivy League a parenting story. I know we can find it on Amazon because I looked it up and you have a author website. 

Dr. C: Yes. And it’s my last name WWW dot Kolleen primer core.com. And when you go on that website, you kind of get an introduction to the family. You get in you get different places where you could purchase the book and yes, you could get it at Amazon but you can also get it at bookshop that org and then if you live locally, I have some local bookstores that are carrying my books and so it’s really nice. I like that. 

P: Dr. Crevecoeur thank you so much for sharing your story gratulations on your amazing kids and and on your recent election. Thank you. It’s been great talking to you and I so I’m looking forward to sharing this story. 

Dr. C: Thank you so much. I really appreciate talking to you

Thanks again to Dr. Crevecoeur.  I have links to her book up in the show notes which You can find that on the war stories from the womb website.  and thanks for listening. If you liked this show, feel free to like and subscribe, and share it with friends.

As the year closes We are going to take a little break on the podcast, to plan for next year’s shows. If your expectations of getting pregnant, being pregnant or giving birth didn’t match your experience and you’d like to share your story, contact me through the website. and we’ll be back with new episodes later in January.

Have a great holiday and a happy new year.

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

Katie: Yeah, my name is Katie Tikkun, and I am from Salt Lake City, Utah.

P: Oh nice. So let’s talk a little about pregnancy, before you ever got pregnant, I’m assuming you had some idea of what it would be like what were you imagining,

K: I had a very unique experience I think growing up, because I’m the sixth of 10 children. 

P: Wow. 

K: Yes, and I was homeschooled so for my four younger brothers. I really saw a lot of, You know what my mom went through what postpartum was, was like, what having a new baby was like, and so me and my sister have talked about how a lot of our friends in terms of like having a new baby, are really blindsided like oh my goodness and overwhelmed like, I didn’t know it would be like this right it’s just constant demanding I can’t do anything but care for this baby, but we knew that, you know, we were like, Okay, I’m gonna do nothing but care for a baby for at least six months, you know, 

P: yeah, 

K: and we had that expectation going in. But even with that, I would say, My mom was definitely not a sharer in personal things around like what pregnancy and delivery was really like. And so I think I, I knew that I wanted to go into it, like, and be triumphant, you know, if that makes sense. I’m like, I got this I can conquer this. And so in terms of postpartum I think I had a better idea of what that experience would be like but the personal struggles and such. I knew there would be some, but I didn’t know what to expect exactly, you know,

P: God that is a real window into what it looks like and I think most people, most people don’t have the nitty gritty on what pregnancy will feel like and deliveries feels like a shrouded secret, and, on the one hand I feel like people often say like well we don’t want to scare anyone, but it is you know like 90% of people get pregnant again at some point of their life so I feel like it’s not really serving us to hide that part of the story. 

K: Yeah. 

P: So did you get pregnant easily the first time.

K: Yeah, it wasn’t much of a struggle. It took longer than I wanted it to, but there wasn’t, it was only about four or five months until it wasn’t as hard it’s time as I know some people have,

P: I imagined the first time you have unprotected sex, you’d be pregnant. Did you have that feeling as well, 

K: especially because I’d had, like, my, my sister and my mom talked about how easily they got pregnant, I was kind of expecting that and so yes there was definitely like some disappointment and I was like Okay, is it, you know, I’m checking those pregnancy I’m like I’m one day late. I’m gonna take a pregnancy test you know and like, so it was definitely like a lot of anticipation and disappointment every month that way, I think personally I didn’t just trust my body very much with that process like, it’s just not time yet.

P: Good, good. And how was, how was that first pregnancy.

K: Pretty good. I mean, it’s funny, I, I felt guilty, a lot for my pregnancy, and, and it’s honestly something I have had to work through in lots of areas of my life is just like, I felt like I had it really easy, because I didn’t really get morning sick, I didn’t get really huge really fast. It seemed really really easy. And so from that perspective I was like, Well, I’m just kind of going about life, you know mostly normal and, you know, I was really tired and I had to pee a lot and you know all those sorts of things, I didn’t follow a lot of cliches I had heard and so I was like, Well, I guess it’s not that big a deal for me you know it’s funny how, even if you don’t meet the bad cliches, sometimes that’s still a struggle for you right, you know,

P: yeah I think so normal. There’s no honor in the struggle, it just is and I think like, you know, if you had that part’s easy. That is awesome because being a parent is really challenging and so take your wins. Right, yes. So I’m glad that went well and then did you do want to take us to delivery you happened during the nine months or

K: when we did our ultrasound, we found out that my cord was attached a little differently, so usually the umbilical cord will connect directly into the placenta and instead it kind of went into the wall of the uterus and kind of climbed up towards the placenta, which happens sometimes. And depending on you know different factors can make you a little bit higher risk.

P: So the umbilical cord attaches the fetus to the placenta and this attachment is really important because the placenta is the source of nutrition and oxygen, a cord attached to the middle of the placenta is considered, quote unquote, normal, it looks like scientists don’t know exactly why cord attachment, might not be in the center, but risk factors include age of the mother, if she’s over 35 smoking status, and if this is a first pregnancy, among other reasons. The site in which the umbilical cord attaches to the placenta can be really important for fetal growth and development. In particular, it can affect birth weight, it might generate a low birth weight, it can affect the timing of delivery, it might lead to preterm birth, and it can affect the mode of delivery, so it’s associated with emergency C sections, because there are a bunch of different factors that might affect the site of cord insertion, It might cause problems for the developing fetus or it might not, and whether it’s a problem or not, maybe related to the underlying cause of the off center placement.

K: Thankfully I wasn’t super high risk, but it was something we needed to watch and just kind of look at and and that sort of thing so that was a little, you know, one of those moments where it’s like okay, everyone’s seen this isn’t that big of a deal, but they’re still bringing it up and all those questions and wondering and everything, and then my water broke when I was 37 and a half weeks. And

P: was it it wasn’t like a Hollywood moment or you were just,

K: no, I was like, I almost thought that I was like, Okay, we want the gruesome details here. Yeah, I almost thought that it was like, maybe like peeing myself a little bit I was like, because it was just this tiny tiny little bit but it like wasn’t stopping, and I went almost all day and I was like I don’t even know what’s going on with me right now. And I was like how to pad and I was like, This is really weird. Again, like when you think water breaking you think, oh it was this big guy like gush thing and it was not it was more like a little leak. And so

P: I feel like I’ve heard that before and that oftentimes people aren’t sure, and when they call the hospital, the hospital people say, are you sure you’re not just seeing her, and you know no one really knows so yes there, yeah.

K:So for my birth plan with this. I’ve gone through midwife and birth center. probably not surprising knowing I grew up homeschooled and all the stuff I was like, wanting to go, all natural and like, keep it super, you know, meditative and I had really got this image in my mind of just this really like, zen, relaxing, like spiritual experience type birth and delivery, and, and I had this image that I have what I wanted. And when I talked to my midwife and like I think something’s going on and she’s like yeah your water definitely broke, and she’s like, I can’t deliver outside of a hospital when you’re five weeks early. So I was like okay and that’s, you know, that’s when that image just started to crumble. 

P: Two quick questions. One is, did you attend your sister’s birth. No. So had you been to anybody’s birth before

K: I had never seen an actual delivery before I had watched, I think it was called the business of being born that was like my only experience to like action because they actually showed films of what deliveries were like, that was really my only exposure.

P: Okay, so this idea has just come from, you know your environment or your upbringing or you’re just, that’s what that’s where that came from. Okay, so that’s disappointing that the midwife says it can’t be done here in the birthing center. 

K; Yeah, 

P: can she go with you to the hospital.

K: She did, she couldn’t deliver in the hospital, but she did, you know, go with me to answer questions and kind of get that support took on a bit more of a doula role, but we ended up in the hospital, I hadn’t had the…

P: the strep B test

K: Yes, the strep B And so, because I have results on that yet. I had to be on antibiotics, the whole time so here I was, I want no drugs I want no needles I want no no and here I am like attached to an IV drip of antibiotics and like that this big monitor thing strapped to my belly for the contractions and I didn’t even go into labor right away like my water had broken and they, they really tried to get me to take some Pitocin. And, and to, to really induce that labor and that like high risk, infection, I was grateful that I have really decided that I wanted. I knew that my grandma and my mom had had terrible reactions to Pitocin. And so I was like, we’re not doing that we’re going to try pressure points and we’re going to try getting me moving around we’re going to give it at least an hour or two in the hospital of trying, before we go that route, and I’m really glad I did because my labor started up in you know, five minutes or so, and and we’re able to get things going, and ended up being, I think it was all told, maybe 15 hours of labor, honestly that was probably the thing that surprised me the most was like the sleep deprivation, on my brain, especially because it was like evening when we started. 

P: Yeah 

K: and so I was, you know pretty much awake for two and a half days almost, the mental fog, You know I, especially again back to that vision that I had, like, I you know I want to be present and like meditating and like all this stuff and I was like, I’m exhausted and I’m brain dead and I’m struggling to like really function here, it just wasn’t that that was one aspect I just wasn’t anticipating

P: that kind of makes sense if you imagine, I bet your sleep was not ideal in the third trimester because you’re big and uncomfortable and yeah. So then to go into this marathon thing that’s both emotional and physical for that many hours… laboring that long is is hard work. 

K: Yeah, It’s a lot. 

P: Yeah, that makes sense so was the delivery was just attended by doctors and it was, although it was not what you anticipated it was relatively smooth for that context.

K: Yeah, it was relatively smooth, even though my son was five weeks early, he seemed okay in the end…I was laying on the table, pushing, and I had a nurse midwife in the hospital, who was delivering. And my other two words I was able to not do lying on my back on a table and oh my goodness, if you can possibly avoid it, do not deliver on your back, it is the worst thing ever you want gravity on your side on this one, it was hard and uncomfortable and if I were to name the overall emotion of that experience to, you know the pushing of the delivery would be frustration, honestly, it was mostly just like, let’s just do this already and why is this so hard and unroot, I’m ready. We’re all ready, let’s just get this done and like almost that impatience, right. 

P:Yeah. 

K:On top of all the exhaustion and everything else. 

P:And then we’re guessing since you’re not excited about medication that there’s no epidural.

K: No, I was, I mean, that’s like a whole other story. But yeah, I didn’t I knew I didn’t want to do an epidural, 

P: wait, what’s what’s the story of the epidural.

K: Honestly, I think it’s, it’s a lot just kind of my upbringing of being pressing natural paths more than conventional doctors, and my mom’s experiences of she’d had some epidurals and some not. And she’s like, it’s not worth the big needle was always her story it was like it’s not worth that big freakin needle it’s freaky and. And so, Me going so I was like, Yeah, that sounds like kind of awful, and personally I believe that that I wanted to be there for my baby, because they were going through this experience, and I wanted to go through this experience with them I didn’t want to opt out of it because the. I know this can be a little controversial but personally I was just like, I want to just to own this and have this experience and not feel given to fear around this experience.

P: That’s amazing. I remember being terrified halfway through my pregnancy. How on earth is this baby coming out, I don’t understand the physics. I understand that it has happened and that’s the only reason I’m here but now that I’m in, it seems like it’s not gonna work. So I have to confess. My only knowledge about homeschooling is that those are the kids that will win the National Spelling Bee. So when you say oh, you know the homeschooling thing like so. It’s why it sounds like it’s not only do they win the National Spelling Bee but it comes with all these other things. So the other things are like, you don’t pursue conventional medicine or 

K: Well, I would say that if, if a person chooses to homeschool, then they kind of like sidestep convention and culture to a degree. And once you’ve taken that one first step outside the box, it’s really easy to explore all sorts of other outside the box ideas. So, I think, you know, homeschoolers can be all across the board in terms of what they do or don’t do, but it’s common for them to do other fringe things like fringe medicine or fringe, you know beliefs or fringe, you know, whatever it is, just, just because once you make that leap, it’s really easy to continue. Okay,

P: that’s a good description. Okay, yeah. So, once this baby is born, because he’s early do they put them on your chest or you don’t have that.

K: I got him on my chest for maybe three seconds. I got to, you know, rub his head and go oh my goodness I have a baby, and then he was gone for. I don’t even know how long felt like at least an hour. They made me sit up like they cleaned everything up and they made me sit up and I ate, and like I showered and then they put me in a wheelchair and I finally got it felt like forever before I got to go see him and when I did go see him. He had cords and needles and things and like I was definitely not the experience I wanted to have as grateful as I am for you know that health care and making sure we were both safe. It was just really hard to let go of that 

P: That sounds hard was he kind of big enough.

K: He was big enough, he was five pounds 

P: Oh…

K: four ounces.

P: Yeah that’s a great size.

K: He was big enough, and today, and really he was fine, they kept him in NICU for like seven hours for observation to be safe, and we spent the night at the hospital and then we got to go home the next day. 

P: That’s like a drive by, that’s fantastic for that early that’s great. Wow. 

K: Yeah, 

P: I mean, how did you feel after the birth, do you feel okay

K: I recovered pretty quickly. I was so angry, they kind of pushed on my stomach to get blood clots and I clean things out, didn’t know that was going to happen was extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t do that with my other two births, and it was fine and great.

P: currently postpartum hemorrhage is the number one cause of maternal mortality and delivery. To prevent this doctors want to be more proactive in the third stage of lever after the placenta is delivered. They can either administer oxytocin to induce contractions of the uterus and prevent blood loss, or they can perform uterine massage. It looks like the jury’s still out on whether the massage method is effective, but it also looks like one of the risk factors for postpartum hemorrhage is marginal insertion of a umbilical cord, so maybe that played a role.

K: but For the most part my bleeding was was pretty minimal. I healed up pretty quick, they did stitch me a little. but even as the, the nurse midwife was doing, she’s like, this isn’t a huge deal but I’m just going to stick to just in case. Pretty simple, pretty easy. I think for the most part, my recovery on that. My recovery with all of my births have been pretty quick and easy.

P: good

K:  Again, charitably, but I feel like my, my body seems to just kind of get pregnancy, pretty well, my pregnancies aren’t too bad. My, my deliveries are pretty comfortable. Well, as much as deliveries, my postpartum is pretty quick, but

P: so do you go home triumphant, or how are you feeling when you get home.

K: Honestly when I get home. It’s definitely mixed, cuz again lost that experience, but I’ve got my baby and we’re good. And honestly, like, I think, I wanted to move into like this, this magical, I’m a mother, which means I’m kind of saintly and like everything’s great and you know a little bit of those kind of like everything’s gonna be rainbows and butterflies and I don’t know, there’s definitely some of that going on of idealizing. And then when it’s like I’m changing diapers and feeding a baby and trying to go about the rest of my life and it was, it was interesting for me because, again, as I said before, I’ve heard lots of moms say how overwhelmed and surprised they were about how much effort, a baby took. I almost had the opposite experience I think because growing up in such a large family, with so many kids there’s so much going on, it was like almost boring like yes I’ve got this baby to take care of. But then, it almost felt like I wanted to hurry up and have like a whole family, if that makes sense. 

P: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I mean 10 Kids sounds like a lot of great chaos in the best way and so it’s I’m sure with one you’re like this is it.

K: Yes, yes, I’ve told other people before it’s like it really took me three kids to feel like I even like really had a family like the family dynamic that I was at least kind of used to, you know, chaos to count as a family.

P: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I hope your husband’s from a big family too. 

K: Yeah, yeah, there’s, there’s six in his family.

P: Okay good, so he’s on a similar plane of this Yes. Good. Yes, so how long till we get pregnant again.

K: So it was about two and a half years. I mean, my kids are just over two and a half years apart so would have been about two years. That time, I got a positive pregnancy test. The next day my period started so

P: that’s a bummer

K:. Yeah. Medically speaking, they don’t consider that a miscarriage because you aren’t really like far enough along, but that was definitely when I started to miss trust my body and be like, Okay, what just happened. Yeah and so I, I started to go see some naturopaths and nutritionists and be like, let’s double check everything make sure everything’s going well because my mom again she had 10 children, but she had more miscarriages than she had children. 

P: Oh wow. 

K: Yes. And so, I didn’t want that to happen

P:  in your mom’s case do they ever figure out what the issue was, 

K: yeah, she had her hormonal imbalances that I believe she had not enough estrogen or too much estrogen, I’m not sure I think it’s not enough estrogen, and so she was able to kind of supplement and do better. But, again, I think it was a lot just like healthcare at that time versus healthcare at this time, I won’t go forever.

P: But at least the story in your head may have been one where, if this is an issue I can I can fix it, like my mother.

K: Yeah, yeah, and that’s, that’s definitely my default mindset is like, Okay, how do I fix like jumping in and like, let’s fix this problem there’s problem, okay let’s just throw everything at it, we can get it fixed, but so when I did finally get pregnant, I was like, Okay, Now I’ve got to finally have this dream, and the pregnancy on that one was really good. Honestly, I it’s probably the pregnancy I remember the least, was just pretty good, pretty direct for me,

P: are you by like it’s a little more challenging because now you have a baby or we’re so far below the threshold of chaos that that doesn’t register

K: it’s still pretty low, below the threshold for me in terms of chaos. But the exhaustion factor was tricky. Thankfully, my oldest be very self entertaining at times. And so a lot of times I see what’s you know too, and so I’d like kind of lock us in his bedroom and I would lay down on the floor and I would sleep while he played, and it would just kind of like it worked okay.  but yeah it was it was pretty good. And so, I, the other birth center because we moved and was working with another midwife and was super excited, and I was like okay I’ve done this before. I got this now…40 weeks, he was like right on schedule and wake up three or four in the morning, and like contractions and like okay I should sleep everyone tells you you should like sleep while you can right because it’s like so really mild contractions. I should go back to sleep. And I totally can’t go back to sleep. I’m like you know all excited like my brains are running and so I’m like okay, I’m kind of restless, so I get up out of bed and I go onto our couch and like tried to kind of sleep and rest on our couch, and my husband comes out, he’s like, what’s going on, and, like, it’s just a little contraction, it’s okay, you just go back to sleep, it’s like, well how I can’t sleep so he, he’s like I’ll just get a head start on my workday because he, he works from home and so he gets out his computer and you know it’s like 4am and we’re just both sitting there going, nothing’s really happening, we’re here waiting. And I ended up being in labor. All that day, and pretty much all night. I think he was delivered at like 2am the next day. So again, the exhaustion factor. And I was really getting really frustrated like why is this taking so long

P: wait so when did you go into the birthing center and did your water break.

K: Yeah, so, so I went in and got checked around like 10 or 11am I think some sometime later in the morning, and I’m like, well nothing, you know, nothing’s really happening and with the birth center that says they’re not a hospital, they don’t let you just like check in and just stay for forever, they’re like, so we went in they checked how I was dilated and I was only like only like three centimeters in like I was barely anything and I was like, oh why, and like you know, go home, just keep going and it’ll be great. Let us know when things pick up. 

And so I think I went in and got checked like twice that day, and things were just taking forever, and then we finally went and stayed around like 1130 or midnight, one thing, you know, the labor really started picking up contractions were getting more regular I delivered in the tub at this big huge Jacuzzi tub. The Birth Center is great. I deliver the baby comes up they lay the baby on my chest. And I’m like, You know, we did it. And I’m holding my baby and it took me like five or 10 seconds and I’m like, shouldn’t he be breathing, and the midwife just scoops that baby off my chest again and takes him to a breathing table she starts pumping his air and starts working with him and starts, and everything, and I’m sitting there.It almost feels petty to say like, frustrated that it happened again but really it was just like a heartbroken that this happened again. And that I didn’t have my baby. I just went through all this, just to hold my baby. 

P: Yeah, yeah

K: and My poor husband had been holding me, and the afterbirth starts and I’m in this tub and the whole tub goes red, and my husband freaks out because I’m like I like collapse down in the tub goes red and he’s like she’s bleeding out he totally had like this moment of oh no what just happened. But I was fine. It was just normal after birth and I had that baby on that table for Several minutes, called an ambulance, were only a few minutes from the hospital, to call the ambulance she

P: did she get him breathing or the baby he

K: she eventually got him breathing. Okay, I forget what it’s called but there’s like that, number of points that they do on the avatar yeah yeah the app car. Um, and he was like a three year low. Yeah, when he was. And it took about, almost 10 minutes to get him up to, like, seven. 

P: so just to get some context here the app offers a test given to newborns to see how they whether they transition from fetus to newborn. It was developed in 1952 by Dr. Virginia car, and the test includes five measurements, heart rate, respiratory effort, muscle tone, reflex irritability and color, and each measurement is given a value from zero to two, so the total score ranges from zero to 10 with higher scores, indicating a better physical condition. A low Apgar score is commonly defined as less than four and that’s associated with an increased risk of neonatal death among infants born after 37 weeks.

K; And so she eventually got him there. She got him breathing. One of the other midwives mentioned that, after the fact when we were talking about she’s like, I think it was a huge blessing that you had. Becky that midwife. She has a gift for helping babies breath.

P: oh wow

K:  And yeah and so I just felt like it was just really special. And so he was having trouble breathing. He had fluid in his lungs, the ambulance showed up, it wasn’t super dramatic because he was breathing at that point he was okay, but the ambulance showed up. They checked him out, they put him in. They drove off with my baby. And 

P: that seems a little traumatic. 

K: It was so hard, so hard. And so my midwife continued to care for me. We cleaned up. My husband again this was like three in the morning, thankfully, my, my two year old is was with my sister and, and I was good there. Thankfully, but we slept for maybe three or four hours at the birth center, and then drove over to the hospital. And again, I mean this is after like, you know, being awake for more than 24 hours and like a couple hours of rest and hobbling into NICU and doctors like he’ll be fine. He’s doing pretty good. I just need to make sure we keep him on oxygen and he ended up being under bilirubin lights for a little while, he ended up being in NICU for a week, mostly because they wanted to keep him on antibiotics to prevent infection in the lungs because he had the fluid in his lungs and they didn’t want it to get infected.

P: Do they say why that happened or how common it is or.

K: They said it’s fairly common for the most part, the NICU nurses were really great. First, Nurse though. She was very much the stereotype for me of like the old warhorse type, nurse, and she insisted I couldn’t touch him, especially, again, being tired, upset and angry and sad and all of this, I’m like, why can’t I touch him and she’s like well it startles them and it disrupts them makes it hard for them like I couldn’t just hold my baby and I was so upset. And the worst part about that week of NICU was that I was not checked into the hospital, and I had to leave every night. Yeah. Every night I had to go home without my baby. 

P: Yeah, 

K: that first night. I mean home sitting around the table. Me and my husband and my two year old, just sitting there going, where’s my baby. 

P: Yeah, 

K: you know, it was just so, so hollow and especially something that I had to really, really process and work through for years. After this delivery this says my hardest one, was that I believe very strongly importance of that can be starting that connection with your baby right off you know that that bond that is created through that birth process, and it feels like that was interrupted really made me feel like the whole relationship with my baby was shattered. And as much as I could, like, cognitively say, Oh that’s fine you know we’ve got all these other opportunities and we can fix this and it’s all, you know, this isn’t, you know unfixable, but emotionally, to me it just felt so unfixable like it was just damaged that would that would never be undone. And it wasn’t helps when going to breastfeed because I had breast fed my first and everything and so I told the hospital, please don’t bottle feed until we’ve established breastfeeding that’s like, pretty standard thing to say, and they’ll ask you about come in the next day again after leaving that night and I, I’d have to pump to make sure my milk was coming in, while he was, wasn’t there. So I was waking up to pump so I still basically didn’t sleep well that first week still, but I came in the next day, and the nurse who was on duty all night. Like, I think he was hungry all night he cried all night, because I think he was hungry or they had put in a feeding tube, and she’s like We fed him but I don’t think he was full enough. And so He just cried all night hungry, and that broke my heart so bad that my poor baby was sitting there hungry. And I was like, I just made me so much more angry with the whole situation and just all like, it was one of the hardest weeks of my entire life. It was so hard.

P: It sounds super hard and it is again in part it is like you have this image in your head of what its gonna look like and you got, you know 95% of it, or whatever 90% of it. So to have it kind of wrenched away at the last minute, as a surprise in a way that you didn’t expect in a rate I mean, I’m sure in your wildest dreams you weren’t. He made it 40 weeks right you’re probably gonna go home with this baby, so many things were overturned and last minute. And because my guess is they thought your baby was healthy, the whole way through, you’re not thinking of this care that he’s getting in the NICU as critical or whatever it was,

K: especially because I kept getting feedback from all the nurses, oh he’s, he, you know, it took him a day to be above his birth weight, you know like he’s just eating and he’s growing and he’s doing all these things, they kept talking about how perfect and wonderful he was and he was just fine, but they’re like, oh, but we need to make sure he keeps on the antibiotics for a whole week, it was just like, it just felt so arbitrary and so frustrating and so like, Yes, I’m grateful that you’re keeping us all healthy seriously like. It was so hard. It was so hard and frustrating.

P: Oh that sounds really hard, I’m sorry.

K: Thank you, it was, it was a lot for me. And the last day they, they’re like, You know what, let’s just skip his last dose of antibiotics, and he can, he can go home now. So we finally like, he didn’t even fit in newborn clothes anymore. So, now, especially after my premature firstborn who was in like preemie clothes for like a month. This he was just tiny. And it was just funny, like, Oh, he’s just so big and chunky and he was, he was great, and finally got home and I’m almost convinced now that you should just pump. If you don’t have to pump because that was the best milk supply I’ve ever had when I was pumping regularly and consistently that first week, gave me great milk supply.

P: and How was the two year old like his new brother.

K: Oh they, they’re fine, they’re happy, but it was like, the longer it went the rougher things got, you know, and like 

P: I think it takes, I think it takes the first one a minute to figure out the new baby staying,

K: yes. But it wasn’t too bad. No, it never got too awful as I remember. So, eight months later, my period started up again I was like, that’s, that’s, that was a really weird period, they always say you know when your period starts again it can be a little different and shorter or longer or whatever. I was like, Well, that was weird. And another month goes by, I’m like, I’m like a week or two late oh well and when it starts again it can be really irregular I’m like wrong. And so I took a pregnancy test well okay I’m pregnant. Again, with the nine month old. Yeah, it was, it was great I mean we’re planning on having more kids and stuff so it was fine. It was just like, oh well this was not exactly the timeline we had in mind, and especially after my previous birth, it was very like, okay, I can do this again, it actually turned out that that like little period. Definitely not a period it was implantation bleeding. And so, that hadn’t happened, I don’t know how long I would have gone pregnant without realizing I was pregnant because I was not looking for it. Thankfully we got an early ultrasound that clued us into that and, and let me know that I was further along than  I was. 

P: That’s a gentle slide into pregnancy.

K: Yes, yes. So that was interesting being pregnant with a nine month and honestly I think. I think the hardest thing about that was that my eight month old ceased being the baby.

P: yeah

K:  Oh, you know, like and I kind of feel bad for that poor middle child. I was surprised how just being pregnant prevented me from really like engaging with him is like my youngest and my infant and like it was just different after that, like knowing that I had another one on the way,

P: you can be pregnant and breastfeed, that’s fine.

K: I hear it’s different for everybody. I lasted to maybe like four months along. Five months along. 

P: that seems like alot.

K:  It is a lot for your body to try and do both at the same time, although I hear there are women who tandem feed their newborns and their toddlers and I’m like, Yeah, that was an interesting journey bring especially like bringing my two and a half, almost three year old, and my eight month old, to all my appointments and everything and like juggling all that and my big belly and I had braces at that point, As an adult, I’m small and petite and look pretty young and I was like I totally look like a teen mom, pregnant and tiny baby and braces and anyways a little funny, but felt like a spectacle anywhere I went my pregnancies are pretty straightforward, you know, tiredness, And that was probably the biggest thing for me actually is. I didn’t get huge necessarily you know by comparatively, but my ligaments. One thing people didn’t really me into was like, how the ligaments that hold up your uterus and your pregnant belly, get strained and stressed and below to enter like, oh my goodness they hurt so bad trying to move around again hauling children and stuff was like it was a lot of strain on those, and, and then I know that that one I had, you know, some magnesium deficiencies so I got this bad Charley horses and just like tension and stuff and sleeping was awful, especially when it’s like you’re waking up with a nursing baby when you’re pregnant, 

P: that seems physically confusing. 

K: yes, that’s good way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, the pregnancy was again pretty straightforward. We get to it. And I’m 40 weeks and baby really happens and I’m 41 weeks and nothing really happened.

I have a few contractions, I’m getting contractions like almost every day, I was like okay. He ended up being 10 days late, so I was like, 

P: Wow

K:yeah, I’m like nine days late and I’m like, really I get serious about, like, what’s going on here. And personally, in hindsight I really think I was like, emotionally crossing my legs, and just being like, I’m not ready for this, I don’t want to do this again, I can’t do this again. And I think there was, there was sort of a sort of subconscious procrastination there that anxiety of this is going to happen again and I’ve got this big idea you know this this big vision, again that this is the thing that I want that’s going to make everything perfect and wonderful and my relationships with my kids will be perfect because this birth was perfect because you know like all of these things just tied to this outcome of, I just want this and I need this and I have to have this and I’m never going to get it. Again, I finally go into labor, it’s another full day, just trying to get things in place, the baby lined up and get things moving. And I’ll tell you I was, I was having like an anxiety issue. The whole time I was just so on the verge of tears of just going. I’m just scared that this isn’t gonna work out again, I’m just scared of not that something terrible life threatening would happen but something like, I’m going to be hurt and disappointed and sad again.

P: Okay, before you get to this birth, let me ask the question, your kids are kind of close together so it’s our and, Obviously, child wrangling at that age is an all encompassing endeavor and so it’s hard to have much time for reflection, because you’re literally feeding someone or changing someone or whatever it while you’re pregnant with your third if you have any moment where you say okay the first two didn’t go as I planned but we’re happy. The kids are great, we’re connected, it sounds like not that much of that is going on yet.

K: No, no, that’s, that’s a really good point is that no I didn’t. I was so much, as you said, like, in the thick of all of it. 

P: Yeah, 

K: I didn’t have that, that moment to just step back and be like, You know what, It’s all good. I think part because part of me. Me wanted to just look at that of the events of those, you know that hard week in NICU and you know those hard deliveries and those moments and look at those and go, Yeah, those were terrible and I didn’t like that. Rather than looking at that, you know, The where we are now and it’s okay it’s all okay and we’re fine and we’re good and we’re fixing it and we’re moving on, and I think honestly, I think, part of me wasn’t moving on. I think part, I think there was that opportunity for me to have moved on and I could have moved on and and have done more and I think part of me was still stuck on those in that resentment and frustration and anger of. I didn’t get what I wanted. It’s especially hard. And like, when I say it that way is like, I didn’t get what I wanted sounds a little like spoiled and entitled and whatever, but it’s like, it’s hard to recognize that when it’s like it was a good thing to want good

P: I’m going to put could have moved on in quotes because, yes, yes, you could have moved on, if you weren’t doing 150,000 things, right. You were sitting around eating bonbons you were, yes. The thing is I can see that you’re, I can see that it’s so upsetting and I’m thinking, put the kids rightly or wrongly, but now take us there it’s 10 days late, but now you’re laboring like so it’s understandable that you’re anxious about this.

K: Yeah, and and I’m taking, I’m taking a long time the same way I have before and like things aren’t lined up great and, and I’m going okay, go to the birth center. And I’m laboring, it’s like, midnight or early you know later or something, and I’m in the shower, delivering, they have this huge shower in the birth center, and my husband, bless him, he’s been helping me this whole time, super dedicated and trying to do pressure points and relieve tension and stuff, most of my Labor’s, he’s had to do counter pressure on my back and my hips, basically holding me together so the baby can come out without breaking, what it feels like. And so he’s holding me and he’s got me in this funky position because it’s what I where I need them to be and he’s trying to hold me up while I’m kind of squatting and delivering this baby and the baby’s heart rate started to drop and we’d been at this for a while and I’ve been pushing for, I don’t even I don’t know how long but it was longer than the midwife wanted me to be pushing, and the baby’s heart rate was dropping and the baby’s heart rate was dropping with each contraction, and my midwife was like okay, Katie. Next, push you are delivering this baby. This baby is coming out. You go and, and the baby comes out, and I have my baby, and she puts him up on my chest, I get to hold my baby. He stays. And I get to hold my baby and he’s there, and my husband is there, and we have just this moment of here we are, we did it. And it was, it was great. 

But was it worth the anger and frustration and disappointment and grief of missing out on the previous times. I wasn’t too sure. And it was really interesting for me to sit there and go, Okay, this just happened, like like we did it, we succeeded. And it’s not. I’m still the same person, and we’re still in real life, and I still have to go home and feed this baby and change this baby and, and it was a little, it was almost a letdown, like it was great, but it was almost letdown, because I had for so many years and so many experiences and so many times sat there going. Oh, I couldn’t get this perfect experience. Oh, but I didn’t get this perfect experience, and as hard as those other experiences were. I really think that, like there was this realization for me of I put myself through a little more than I needed to, you know, I’ve just Yes I did, like, like you said, it’s like, but what about everything else being fine the babies are beautiful. The babies are there and, and you’re, you’re moving on with life and it was kind of that, that made me realize just like I wasn’t letting myself move on.  

I’m so grateful that I got to finally have the birth experience that I had envisioned and wanted, but it was a little bit of a wake up call for me to go, that’s not the most important thing, it’s great and it’s wonderful. It’s not the most important thing, and that there’s so much else that matters, you know, you get another, hopefully, 18 years you know with these kids, and you get so many more opportunities, and so much more potential to create amazing experiences with them. And as significant as birth is and can be. Don’t let it ruin everything else. Don’t let it set you up in a pattern of being frustrated and disappointed.

P: Yeah, it’s hard to compete with an ideal Right, 

K: exactly. 

P: So they’re all make sense but also what a great lesson in for parenting right it’s, you’re gonna need that forever, so I feel like it was hard earned, but but useful.

K: Yeah, definitely. Because that’s what I really learned like with my middle son who’s in NICU and I felt like I’d abandoned him and it was like so hard and I lost on so much on the connection with them, because of that experience. It was a hard wake up call for me when I realized I needed to still believe I could have any relationship I wanted with him, I don’t have to let that keep me from having any kind of special amazing, wonderful relationship I want to have with him.

P: Yeah, I’m gonna take this opportunity to edit your self talk and say, abandoned him in the NICU, what are you they’re kicking you out every day, you don’t really have a choice. There’s no, I know how terrible it is to leave a kid in the NICU but that is the bargain you make right you will feel alive and I will get out of your way. Yeah, it’s the whole thing is hard right it’s, it’s harder than it looks.

K: Yeah. Amen.

P: So how old are the kids now.

K: My oldest is now seven, and my middle son is four, and my youngest is three.

P: Oh lovely God that’s fun.

K: Yeah, it’s a lot to have three little boys.

P; I bet, I bet, are they all doing the same thing because the three year old wants to do it the seven year old does and,

K: yeah, pretty much, I mean, it’s usually like the the three year old decides to sneak into the raisins and when everybody’s eating the raisins are all over the whole kitchen before I can even blink. But yeah,

P: good ,that sounds, that sounds very fun and I’m guessing that you have already kind of shared this but if there’s something you could go tell your younger self, what would you tell her

K: something like, except that she didn’t love it. And just, just learn to love what you have and don’t be so set on what you want, that it breaks you.

P: Yeah, that’s great advice. That’s great advice because this whole process is so filled with surprises. 

K: Yeah, no matter what right, 

P: I’m wondering if your mom or your sister. Your sister has kids, right. And were they at all helpful, they have a similar idea in their head of like this sort of riches look like or.

K: I would say that they definitely inspired me in terms of one team, You know natural births and things, but that there’s also, you know, the nuance of relationship that that makes it, is this something we talk about is this something we don’t talk about like, I think there are definitely holes there that we could have talked better about it and more thoroughly and more openly than we did.

P: Yeah, yeah, I don’t think I had any of those conversations with my mom..I’m one of four, and so it was fairly surprising and I have friends who had kids before me, but it still was not, you know, it wasn’t very detailed so you kind of go in there with whatever’s in your own head. 

K: Yep. 

P: Well your yours is an amazing story because, you know, there’s so much learning, and now it sounds like you’re at least approaching the level of chaos you’re hoping for.

K: Yeah, we’re getting there. I’m actually expecting my fourth so 

P: Oh nice…Congratulations. When you do me good that’s a good time to give birth right, even in Utah, is it. is it spring there in May.

K: Sometimes a little bit. 

P: Okay, fingers crossed. 

K: Yeah, thanks.

P: Well good luck and thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story.

K: Thank you so much. I hope that helps a lot of moms out there.

P: Thanks so much to Katie for sharing her story. Her three very different births provide a really  clear example of the power of expectation to shape experience. I am hopeful that as more people share their experiences of pregnancy and birth, we all walk toward this transformative event as if it were a trip, a trip to a place we’ve never been–something that’s exciting and will change our lives, something that will likely have ups and downs (because no trip that long is entirely smooth and without surprises), and importantly, it will be an experience full of episodes that we can’t predict and that may well teach us about ourselves

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