Category: Show Notes

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Episode 144SN: What Happens when you have a Pregnancy on a Boat with 4 other kids? Tanya’s Birth Story, Part I

This week’s episode features details of a pregnancy on a boat.

My guest Tanya shared her experiences of her other 4 births on an earlier episodes:

Her first episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-you-learn-from-your-first-two-of-5-births/id1546909059?i=1000617239231

The second half of that story: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-happens-when-with-each-birth-you-get-closer-to/id1546909059?i=1000618066765
 
She had a variety of experiences in the hospital:
*induced labor
*shoulder dystocia
*large babies
with midwives and OBs, but this pregnancy and birth are entirely different. 

She shares what she learned both about her body and the process of birthing, including the fears she had and how she overcame them. 

Acupuncture & Labor Induction

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6953318/

https://www.ajogmfm.org/article/S2589-9333(23)00414-7/fulltext

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Episode 145SN: What Happens when the Midwife sends you to do Acupuncture during the Labor? Tanya’s Birth Story, Part II

In todays episode we hear the end of Tanya’s story.

To remind everyone, last week we left Tanya:

*She’s spent the whole pregnancy on a boat with her 4 other children & husband
*the boat is docked in Sarasota Florida for the birth
*Although it’s her 5th birth, it doesn’t go quickly
*The midwife sends her to see an acupuncturist during her stalled labor
*Tanya is terrified of needles

Listen to how this birth unfolds….

Castor oil and labor
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7138266/

https://evidencebasedbirth.com/ebb-128-inducing-labor-with-castor-oil-and-dates/

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Episode 99SN: What you “know” about Motherhood is probably wrong: Chelsea’s story, Part I

This is episode 99 of the podcast, and next week is the 100th episode. it seems a totally fitting tribute, for a podcast dedicated to changing the conversation about this transformation, to have a guest whose profound book is all about debunking our most socially potent beliefs about what defines a mother and where they came from (spoiler alert: they don’t come from rigorous scientific examination, at best I’d call them science adjacent).

My guest shares the experiences she had in pregnancy and postpartum that inspired her to write this book which so powerfully dispels so many myths around mothers and motherhood. While she was talking, all I could think was: why weren’t you whispering this in my ear when I was pregnant? This could have changed how I thought about lots of aspects of my postpartum, although I’m grateful to overturn some of my most oppressive beliefs; hopefully she can change how you think of this period.

Here’s Chelsea’s book: Mother Brain: How Neuroscience is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood

Audio Transcript

Chelsea: 

This idea that maternal instinct is innate and is automatic and really distinctly female. We generally talk about the scientific idea but it really was rooted in moral and religious ideas of womanhood and motherhood that were then written to scientific theories, particularly through evolutionary theory. And Charles Darwin talked about maternal instinct as the very thing that made men superior to women that were designed to care for one another and men were designed to compete with one another and that’s how they obtained higher eminence he said in all things because that competition,

paulette  0:52  

Welcome to war stories from the womb. This is a show that shares true experiences giving birth to help shift the cultural narrative away from the glossy transition to a more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person or release that new person from their body, into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka, I’m a writer and an economist  and a mother of two girls. And boy, did I struggle with this transition. 

This is episode 99 of the podcast, and next week is the 100th episode. It seems a totally fitting tribute for a podcast dedicated to changing the conversation around this transformation, to have a guest whose profound book is all about our most socially potent beliefs about what defines a mother and where those beliefs in my guest here’s the experiences she had a pregnancy and postpartum that inspired her to write this book, which so powerfully dispels so many myths around mothers and motherhood. While she was talking, all I could think was, why weren’t you whispering this in my ear when I was pregnant? This could have changed how I thought about lots of aspects of my postpartum although I’m grateful to overturn some of my most oppressive beliefs even now. Hopefully, she can change how you think is what follows is part one of our conversation. 

Today we’re lucky to have Chelsea Conaboy on the show, the author of Mother Brain, how neuroscience is rewriting the story of parenthood and this is an amazing book and if I had to give a synopsis I would say Santa is not real and either as the Easter Bunny and everything you thought you knew about parenting is wrong. Thank you. Good night. We’ll get to the details. We’ll talk about me it’s a fascinating read. But first of all start with your story because it feels like from the book that kind of motivated your interest in this subject. 

 

Chelsea: Absolutely. 

 

Paulette: Okay, good. So we’ll start with you first. So I know from reading the book that you are one of three. It’s right. 

 

Chelsea: Yeah, I’m the youngest. 

 

Paulette: And I’m wondering if you think that experience of growing up with siblings made you think you want to have a family or why did you know you want to have family?

 

chelsea  2:59  

I don’t ever remember it being a question really. Honestly, I grew up in a pretty close family, also very conservative suburban family and we were Catholic and it was just kind of always an assumption that I that I would be a mom but externally probably but internally to I was I kind of always assumed I would.

 

paulette  3:23  

Excellent. Okay, well, that’s a smoother path to actually being one. I think, you know, in some sense, right?

 

chelsea  3:29  

Probably, I guess so. I mean, I think there are different bumps for everyone, but I think

 

Paulette:  totally 

 

Chelsea: that sort of assumption also, I think partly set me up with false expectations about what it would be like to become one for sure.

 

paulette  3:43  

Oh, yes. And obviously you’re not alone. Yeah. So let’s fast forward to the time of your life when you think you’re gonna have kids. So do you get pregnant easily?

 

chelsea  3:54  

Yes, we did get pregnant easily, which was a relief. We were trying I was at a very what I would consider stable point in my life. I had my husband and I had been married for about a year we had a good job. I was more financially stable than I had bad at any point in my adult life. We wanted to have kids and we were trying and then luckily we got pregnant.

 

paulette  4:18  

And you I’m assuming you found out what’s like a home

 

chelsea  4:21  

kit or how did you did? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So

 

paulette  4:25  

how did that go? Yeah, it

 

chelsea  4:27  

was it was good. i My husband and I were getting ready to go to a drive in movie and packing a picnic. And and we’re going to bring some mixed drinks, I think and I was feeling just a little funny. And went and took a test and came out and said I’ll make my non alcoholic. It was a really happy moment.

 

paulette  4:50  

That’s awesome. Yeah, that seems like you’re pretty attuned to your body to recognize that something feels off and I’ll take a pregnancy test.

 

chelsea  4:58  

Yeah, I mean, I think it was top of mind. Something felt off. And I mean, I think my boobs were more painful than usual. And they they felt bloated and and it but it was already top of mind because because we had been trying that was something we were talking a lot about. So yeah, I had the test in hands and I was sort of thinking much they take

 

paulette  5:20  

Yeah, awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. So what’s the pregnancy like?

 

chelsea  5:26  

So overall, for most of the pregnancy, most of the pregnancy went very well to think back here a little bit. So I was working full time at a newspaper through my pregnancy and my husband and I both worked at the same newspaper and we were living in an apartment in Portland, Maine, and we were house hunting at the same time. So the house hunt piece was a stressful part of the pregnancy because we’re under contract at one point and then it fell through on the seller side and it just was some ups and downs. Pregnancy itself physically. It was like what I now kind of understand to be a kind of mild experience. From what I’ve heard from others, I had some morning sickness, but nothing awful. I felt good in my second trimester. We let’s go

 

paulette  6:14  

slowly there for one second. So the morning sickness, does that mean you’re throwing up at work or you just no

 

chelsea  6:19  

nauseous? Let me see no. And I wasn’t showing up at work but I was very uncomfortable. And there were some work days where I had to go in late because I felt the nausea was so overwhelming, but but the number of days that that happened was just a handful. Okay. Yeah. I guess that’s what I mean. I felt like it was within reason if I wasn’t debilitated for an extended period of time. I just had some kind of mild morning sickness or morning nausea.

 

paulette  6:49  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously everybody talks about that, and I understand it as a as a common part of pregnancy. Yeah, for me, the felt sense of it was much more kind of dramatic than what I imagined. I guess. It’s hard to imagine what nausea feels like all the time. You know, without going through it, but it’s just a it’s such a powerful reminder that you’re busy. Your body is busy.

 

chelsea  7:13  

Your body is busy. That’s so true. Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting. I remember I mainly I tend to downplay it in my mind a little bit because I wasn’t throwing up actively for any length of time, but there were a lot of mornings where so my husband and I would we live very close to our office and we’ve walked to work together and there were mornings the smells of the city and the city sidewalk. Really. were overwhelming and I’d have to go very slow because between the nausea and the tiredness, but I remember him kind of leaving me. We didn’t I just couldn’t get to the office of you. Okay.

 

paulette  7:51  

And then the second trimester is smooth. It sounds like

 

chelsea  7:53  

yeah, I remember it being pretty happy and smooth. And you know, the house Hunt was stressful, but particularly as it went along, and I could start to feel the baby. I felt that I felt very, there was a lot of joy in it for both he and I we would read together at night he would read to the baby and it’s just the sweetest moments I would say of of our marriage and our that part of our lives.

 

paulette  8:22  

In the book we talked about how I think your husband attended. Maybe we’re going to be looking at as a boy, yeah. What’s it called? To man, which is Yeah,

 

chelsea  8:32  

it is main placement. So yeah. And so that’s the look, I think that’s like the local group that licenses this program, which is or or buys the license from the National Program, which is called Daddy bootcamp. And it’s offered in hospitals around the state and Yeah, he did that program. It was really amazing. I mean, so So I’m, you know, reading all of the baby books and pregnancy books that I could get my hands on. We took some classes together at the local hospital. And then he goes off to this daddy bootcamp, which is such a great program where they bring in recent dads, so dads with babies, I think under six months old, and and then there’s a facilitator who’s been through the program himself. And there has been curriculum, things that they want to talk about, but there’s also kind of open, open question, question and answer period where they can just interact with these new dads ask them what it’s really like, ask them what’s hard, and also just the dads bring the babies to the class and so there they are feeding them and comforting them with changing their diapers and they can see all of that happen in front of them, where the dads are doing it independently. I think that’s important. Nice,

 

paulette  9:46  

is super cool. I can imagine somewhat transformative to allow you to imagine what you will one day be in the not so distant future.

 

chelsea  9:54  

Yes. And what you can choose to be I think that’s a big part of them. Yeah. That’s a big part of the messaging of the program that you get to choose you get to choose there all these messages about gender roles and and who does what but actually, you can make it up for yourself. You can be as engaged as you want to be. And here’s how and here’s how you can think about it.

 

paulette  10:18  

Yeah, that is awesome. I will definitely put a link to that in the show notes just so people can find it because I read it was like it would have been so great have had we had something like that when we were going through it. And not

 

chelsea  10:29  

only that I sometimes think that there needs to be a version of this for mothers to we have mommy groups that you know, find if you’re lucky to write one fit for you. That’s after the fact. But I’ve heard this as I talked to, as I talk to parents for this book. I mean, one thing I heard from a bunch of mothers was the sense that they did all of the prenatal education and they read the books and they went to the classes but they never had this time to sit and talk about and think about what motherhood was going to mean for them who they were as a person. And I kind of think that’s a little bit of what happens at that boot camp is they actually talk about self actualization, what that will feel like in fatherhood and and I think we need some equivalent in motherhood that I haven’t seen defined yet

 

paulette  11:18  

agree that every birth two things are born a baby and a mother and we focus so much on the baby that you just the mother, you know, you changed roles. And it’s a little bit like being pushed from a cliff because things that matter before and things that you were good at before media don’t necessarily apply to the new job. Right? 

 

chelsea  11:37  

And I’m sure we’ll get into this,

but I think we don’t have that because there’s been this underlying narrative for so long that we aren’t we’re ready we’ve already got what we need to do this job.

 

paulette  11:46  

Yes, I’m tired quotes lined up here. So we’re gonna get to that. 

 

The more I thought about this, the more interested I became in this idea and I went on Facebook and posted about this and found that mommy boot camp does exist now. Boot Camp for dads started in 1990, it was assumed that women had a bunch of resources so no equivalent was ever created. It says this on the website. There are lots of classes that tell her what to expect during labor and delivery. But none of that helped her navigate the changes in her relationship and life. Once she brings this new little human home. Although friends and family can be a valuable resource, nothing replaces the value of sitting down and getting straight answers for women who are just in mom to these shoes and are willing to share what worked best for them and what they learned that will be valuable for expectant moms to know if you’re interested you can check it out in the show notes. 

 

So going into the third trimester, do you have a vision of what you think the birth is going to be like or what you’re hoping for?

 

chelsea  12:44  

Yes, I definitely was in the camp I had. I always get her name wrong because I ina may Gaskin right so I had read Ina May Gaskins famous book about natural childbirth and kind of getting in the right frame of mind for for that experience. And I really wanted to have an unmedicated natural childbirth. I definitely did have a sense that it was okay if that didn’t happen that I was just going to do my best and see and kind of take it as it came but that is definitely what I wanted.

 

paulette  13:22  

Take us to the day. How do you today’s the day…

 

chelsea  13:25  

yeah, well,so that was my goal for sure. And I was in in for one of my regularly scheduled checkups. And I remember very clearly going into my boss’s office saying I have to go to this checkup. I’ll be back in about an hour and a half. And he said Well, you never know because I was so I was so far along. I was 30 approaching 38 weeks, and he was like you never know a good day could be the day and I was like I think I’ll be back because I felt good. I actually remember I had like a very cute maternity dress on I had a long list of things that I needed to do that day and and and I went and my blood pressure was high and and they kept me and monitored it for a little while. There was something else that they monitored you for previously but so anyways, I go in and my blood pressure’s high and and they monitor it for an hour or so. It said no, it’s definitely high. And I can remember the doctor looking at me and saying sort of matter of factly it’s time to move towards an induction and bursting into tears and saying no and of course, it was definitely a high enough where I see now that it was it was the right choice to make and it stayed high, you know through my induction so. So

 

paulette  14:52  

the presence of mind to say that, Oh, this could be preeclampsia or you’re just more focused on the fact that you’re giving birth earlier than you wanted.

 

chelsea  15:00  

I both I think at first I was like how can this be I feel fine. Yeah, and I’m not ready and I don’t want this to be rushed. And then as they monitor it for that extended period and then after as I went into the hospital to prepare for the induction, it became clear to me that it was high and it was staying high and that we needed to do this.

 

paulette  15:23  

Yeah,

 

chelsea  15:24  

so one thing I had been pretty stressed. At the end of my pregnancy we had found a house and we had started kitchen renovation and had moved in the house before the renovation was complete because we had to and also around that same period, we had realized that we had things in the house that hadn’t been properly medicated for and so suddenly I was like oh my God living in this house. And there’s this risk here and is it safe and you know, we had the state inspector come in and and tell us it was safe for us to be there and and there was a lot happening. And so now looking back, it’s no surprise I guess that that’s where I ended up but I definitely felt like on top of all of those stressors to now have a shortened timeline to get ready for the baby and deal with all of that. Yeah, it was it. I was overwhelmed by it for sure. Once we’re in the hospital, I think we did a good job of shifting our frame of mind to just be like, we need to just focus on what’s right here in front of us. The induction took a full three and a half days  so we had some time

 

Paulette: Oh Good lord…

 

Chelsea: so we had some time…I was really lucky to be in a hospital where they don’t rush you through the induction and so they started the induction and with Pitocin, very low dose Pitocin and very quickly. The baby’s heart rate was going up and so stopped the Pitocin and they gave me I forget what it’s called but insertion they give you overnight 

 

Paulette: cervadil? 

 

Chelsea: Yeah, give me cervadil and that started the Pitocin they even lower dose the next morning and I was monitored that whole time which was probably the worst part of it honestly, wearing the monitor for those days and and then fortunately I did progress and slowly at first and then work quickly and the night when I was in labor really the active labor. I don’t think anyone realized that I was as active labor as I was and I don’t think even I realized it because I had this crazy thing happened with both of my pregnancies where I would feel a contraction and it would be intense. And then it would be over and I would immediately fall asleep or pass out not sure which and and then I’d be woken up with another contraction and I just I don’t know I managed that sort of quietly and so I went through a lot of my active labor kind of just sitting in the middle of the night through my bed. 

 

There was a nurse there with me but I suddenly it was very clear that suddenly I needed to push and she thought that I was nowhere, nowhere near ready. And when she checked me. I was right there and I pushed for a very short period of time. And so there was a very interesting moment during the delivery where I got very scared and things felt tense suddenly and I sort of can see the faces on the doctor and the nurse still kind of watching the monitors and I let a contraction go without pushing at all and and they kind of that were like because and I said I feel afraid and and then they were like we’re encouraging me on the next one to go ahead and I pushed and he came out he had the umbilical cord around his neck three times. 

 

Paulette: Wow. 

 

Chelsea: And they cut it. He was fine. But I always I do think back to that moment. What was that? What was this moment of intuition potentially and I knew he needed a break for a second and I needed a break and then we did it we did it or something else do the opposite of that where I don’t know it was just very interesting moment. And so he came out and they put him on my chest and I said He’s so tiny. He was he was five pounds. 12 ounces. And so yeah, that feeling of wonder and joy at having him and real fear of how small and vulnerable he was definitely kind of defined my early weeks as a mother. I think

 

paulette  20:07  

my you know, while you’re telling this story, all I’m thinking is oh my god, you must be so tired by the time you actually comes to pushing because it’s three days of not great sleep. And then and then you know the big marathon is still ahead of you. 

 

Chelsea; Yeah 

 

Paulette: and and you know, people I think can obviously see that breastfeeding is a relationship and is very much dance between mother and child, but that’s probably true of birth too. So it doesn’t, it seems to me, you know, potentially legit that it was intuition and the YouTuber had your way to communicate physically like you have been for the last 40 weeks or Yeah, eight weeks.

 

chelsea  20:47  

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right. I mean I am. The nurse came up to me afterward and said something like, you know, if you have any more children, I think it’s gonna go well for you you have you she said something along the lines of You have you have a very strong like intuition for your body and I and I, I was in the middle of it all didn’t really get to ask her what she meant about that. But I have wondered and I wondered specifically about that moment of what were they seeing on the monitors and it wouldn’t have confirmed my fear in that moment. And, and or I don’t know I don’t it. Yeah.

 

paulette  21:29  

I mean, it’s interesting because you feel fear, but you don’t have the words to describe exactly what it is. That feels like intuition

 

chelsea  21:34  

Yes. That feels from Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and then and then he was there and he you know, he was so tiny. I mean, that’s a wide I had lots of hair and and and he was he was just so tiny. I can

 

paulette  21:56  

only see from the neck up but you don’t seem like a giant person. So when they say he was underweight or no, don’t even be bigger.

 

chelsea  22:03  

No, he they didn’t. I thought it would be bigger. They had told me that he was going to be bigger. Also he was measuring, you know fetal measurements were or I can’t remember where they put it, but it was more of an average weight. And you know, he wasn’t what’s the phrase when when a baby’s underweight, low birth weight. He wasn’t technically low birth weight, but he was kind of close to that. And then we struggled in those first days to just start initiating breastfeeding. He had some trouble suckling, we had to help him learn how to do that. And my milk didn’t come in right away. And so that amplified that feeling, okay, that’s all he is and how he really didn’t have much weight to lose. Yeah, it’s early days

 

paulette  22:44  

in your research. Did you come across the fact that potentially an induction at 38 weeks is highly correlated with a bigger window before milk production comes in because the symphony of hormones that’s supposed to create that is not really being created?

 

chelsea  23:03  

I know that birth experiences can shape your milk how it comes in for sure. I don’t I don’t have this specific research to cite for you. But I know that that is generally true that and and more true, I think if you have a C section, but but it can be true, definitely with induction as well, I think

 

paulette  23:20  

so the short answer to this question is yes, C section can delay milk production, and so too can induction because of the potential for added interventions, which is not to say that it happens all the time, but that it does happen often enough that if it happens to you know that you’re not alone. There are more details on this topic in the show notes 

 

Paulette: and how was postpartum for the first one.

 

chelsea  23:44  

I mean, so that was what prompted me to write this. This book really so my, my gosh, how was postpartum with the first one? So it was okay. I think I had unreasonably high expectations for myself in that time.

 

paulette  24:06  

So what what time What did you expect?

 

chelsea  24:10  

I expected you know, loss of sleep and for things to be hard and, and that I would need some help. And certainly that I was bad. I was going to have 12 weeks off and I was glad for that. I did not expect a change in my mental states that went beyond sleep loss. I had I think I had a sense of postpartum depression as you know, as I write in the book that it was sort of like the flu you either had it or if you didn’t have it, then you were kind of stable and steady. I didn’t have a clear sense of the real transformation that happens in that period for all new parents whether they experienced any symptoms of anxiety or depression or not. And, and then the reality of my time was that I felt really obsessive about my son’s safety and well being and about my ability to take care of him and, and so I didn’t feel you know, certainly this was eight years ago, the symptom checklist for postpartum depression was more of like feeling withdrawn or cold or unemotional, and I felt the opposite of that I felt extremely engaged with him and and worried and like I couldn’t look away and also really concerned about the safety of the world around us our food and the air in our neighborhood and house and how was I going to keep them safe when it was hard to control all of these factors that that affected our our safety. And so I felt really worried and then I also felt quite worried about the worry itself. I felt like it was this this sense of overwhelm kind of drowning out the love or the warmth that I wanted to be expressing towards him and and was it you know, a sign of something that may be broken or missing in me if I didn’t if I couldn’t just focus on that love and that forms then what did it mean about me as as a mother?

 

paulette  26:18  

Oh, so I’m very sorry that you had this extremely stressful first step into parenthood because that sounds really stressful and it is vigilance is, you know, is energy costly, right? Just it’s exhausting. It’s right. It’s a really hard way to live. And this brings us very much into your book. So I have identified three main takeaways I could have identified 30 main takeaways. But so my three takeaways and you should amend these if this is not what you’re thinking is 

  • everything you think that makes a good mother and what makes a bad mother, a good mother shapes your child and what you should be feeling is essentially wrong. That’s number one. 
  • Number two is both chemistry and experience, rewire the brains of all caretakers. Mothers and fathers. And those effects are long lasting. 
  • And the third one is, there are many stories of gendered expectation that women are natural caregivers based on quote unquote science, but the science is done by people with gender expectation. So the scientific findings tend to reflect what the scientists bring to it. And so we can, you can add more to that if you’d like. 
  •  

But going back to the first one, so I wanted to mention three, one you just mentioned was postpartum and was blown away by the fact that the first drug for postpartum depression was what was just approved

 

chelsea  27:39  

yesterday, and it’s still pretty much inaccessible to most sorry, how long

 

paulette  27:43  

have you been been giving birth for? Right get the clock out, right. So that’s not but that’s one of them. And then I wrote down the three more that I was really that I thought were really profound. So one of them was golden hour. And he talked about this podcast conversation between Hillary Frank and innovate Gaskin, the author of the natural birthing Bible, and you tell the story about how Hillary Frank says the birth didn’t go the way that she envisioned it. She was empowered like you were by you may ask and and that’s not however has been shipped epidural ship Pitocin she had been Peasy on all these things that contradicts kind of the vision she had built herself. And she walked away feeling like a failure. And kudos to ina may Gaskin for, for revising how she talked about those things because she was saying, in particular, that people have come to think of the golden hour as something that if it’s missed, then you’re not going to bond properly with your baby. And she says that’s absolutely not true. Another thing you talk about is oxytocin as the love drug, which everybody thinks of it in that way, but basically what you say is hormones are fantastically complicated, and work in a symphony and not a solo. That’s right. And they do many things and men also have changes in their oxytocin and testosterone and progesterone and all this stuff. So it’s much more complicated than that story we’ve been sold. Yeah. And because a woman’s body was made through production we all should be able to do it, if not naturally at least bad. That’s like an idea. We walk in with what was the maternal mortality rate before we had medical interventions was super high, right?

 

chelsea  29:17  

I don’t know for sure. But my my assumption is a couple of things. One, I think like the real the real depends on which point in history you’re talking about, I guess, but back Oh, kind of pre Industrial Revolution. Anyways, I think that death was just honestly a much more common part of society. And so I mean, many more kids died, people died younger and people saw you know, other women die or be injured in childbirth. Often that was part of life. So maybe it was just so woven into the experience that it was and and it was the God given role to write. So sort of take what comes

 

paulette  29:57  

I’m going to end my conversation. With Chelsea here. I’m grateful to her both for candidly sharing her personal story of stepping into motherhood, and for her book that helps us all step into this giant transformation, with more awareness of both what’s to come. Some of the amazing undoubted benefits of this journey, both for burning people and our partners. Really interesting really speaks to the rest of my conversation

 

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Episode 97SN: Her Birth & Postpartum inspired her to find a better way to Postpartum: Kaitlin’s Story, Part I

We–ALL of US (in the US)–are doing Postpartum wrong. Once we experience it with our first born, we learn this, and all make plans to do something different the second time, if there is a second time. Today’s guest wants to change Postpartum for all of us.

In today’s episode, my guest shares the birth and postpartum experience that propelled her out of her work as a special ed teacher in New York City and into the field of birth workers. Unfortunately, the overwhelming two that she experienced and talks about is likely to sound very familiar. I had my kids 10 years before she did and she could have been describing my postpartum in lots of ways. But what’s new is what she did with that experience, and what she’s doing for birthing people now.

Check out Kaitlin’s company, BeHerVillage

Audio Transcript

Kaitlin McGreyes  0:02  

I poured all my time and energy into the nursery, all the things for the baby. And I neglected to mine with any kind of support for myself. And I blamed myself for it. It didn’t, I thought, wow, I really failed here. You know, I didn’t I didn’t know how hard this was gonna be I obviously did something wrong. And then I became a doula soon after my second birth, and I started seeing that almost all of them had that experience that universal moment of being postpartum, whether it’s three hours postpartum, or it’s a day postpartum or it’s a week postpartum, they all find themselves alone.

Paulette  0:38  

Welcome towards stories from the womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition. You find on all kinds of media to more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and release that new person from your body into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and a mother of two girls. And boy that I struggle with this transition.

In today’s episode, my guest shares the birth and postpartum experience that propelled her out of her work as a special ed teacher in New York City and into the field of birth workers. Unfortunately, the overwhelming two that she experienced and talks about is likely to sound very familiar. I had my kids 10 years before she did and she could have been describing my postpartum in lots of ways. But what’s new is what she did with that experience, and what she’s doing for birthing people. Now. This is a really inspiring story. So let’s get to it. 

Today. We have something unusual, I almost never promote a business because I don’t want to sell anything but but today is different because I heard about this miraculous woman on podcast who wants us all to reimagine one of the fundamental, almost rites of passage for a pregnant woman in America. The baby shower. Basically, I heard about her company for women in postpartum. I thought this is genius. And we should all be doing this. And so I’m so excited to introduce Kaitlin McGreyes. I say your name right. Humans got

 

Kaitlin  2:21  

it so close. It’s McGreyes. Okay. My husband and I combined her last name. So it’s actually graph and Reyes but together.

 

Paulette  2:29  

I love it. Okay. So Caitlin, McGreyes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m so excited to hear your personal story and the story of the company. I’m excited to hear it all. So will you tell us where you’re from?

 

Kaitlin  2:42  

And a little bit about yourself? Absolutely. Thank you so much, Paulette. That’s awesome. I am Kaitlin McGreyes. I have three children, seven, eight and 10. I’m from Long Island, New York. And I am a doula turned founder of beer village because essentially I was a special ed teacher. I went through the motherhood experience, the very typical American motherhood experience. And I felt like many of us, underwhelmed to traumatize spectrum depends on the day. And I realized that that was sort of like a universal experience. To enter motherhood, alone, unsupported. And I had this one moment where I sat in my nursery three days postpartum. And I was trying to figure out how to breastfeed trying to figure out which way was up trying to figure out how to take care of this post C section body. My husband was already back at work. Oh my god. I know he didn’t get any time off for that one. So I gave birth Saturday morning at 520. And he was back at work while I’m still in the hospital. And he worked for New York City. It just they didn’t have pay leave then we couldn’t afford unpaid leave. It was a whole thing. So I had a very bumpy entry into motherhood. And I just remember sort of looking around at my apartment and seeing all the beautiful gifts, my perfect nursery, it’s where I it’s where I poured all my time and energy into nursery all the things for the baby. And I neglected to line up any kind of support for myself, and I blamed myself for it. It didn’t I thought wow, I really failed here. You know, I didn’t I didn’t know how hard this was gonna be. I obviously did something wrong. And then I became a doula soon after my second birth, and I started supporting hundreds of women over the course of my Doula career, and I started seeing that almost all of them had that experience that universal moment of being postpartum whether it’s three hours postpartum, or it’s a day postpartum or it’s a week postpartum, they all find themselves alone, and without the care that they need, while they’re trying to care for their babies. And all of us are surrounded by stuff. We have the best strollers and the best baby bottles and bouncers and gadgets and devices and our communities. Our loved one spent 1000s of dollars on us at our baby shower to the tune of $12 billion a year on being crazy. And I thought, man, there’s got to be a better way. To do this. This just feel like we’re not doing this right we’ve got this we’ve have moms totally overloaded with stuff for their kids for their babies, and no support totally left alone. And then you have you know, all all this money getting spent on stuff when when there could be a way to spend that on supporting them and what what is the way that we solve this problem? How do we get these funds that are so generously being spent to be spent on hearing for the actual mother? I started thinking about how do we actually go buy a baby shower gift? You know, like how does that happen? We got a baby shower invite usually have some registry information you go you click a few things and and it’s done. It’s sort of just like a task that you do. And what if we shifted the baby shower registry? What if we created a place where instead of all the stuff for babies we could shower the mother with support? What if we could buy her a doula What if we could get her postpartum here but if we get our pelvic floor therapy or lactation visits or mom you need groups or you know meals and laundry and just the whole the things to sort of like envelop this new family in the care they need, which is so impactful. So I pray to be her village.

 

Paulette  6:20  

I was so excited to get into that. I want to hear your story first. And then we’re gonna save time at the end to walk people through what it looks like. What you’re doing now what you’ve learned from doing it, however long you’ve been doing it because it’s such a good idea and when I read that billions of dollars are spent on baby stuff. I thought a that’s crazy and B I totally understand it. Right. It’s that is what we’re geared toward in a way that completely overlooks the mother who’s entirely critical of the baby, right, or health or Well, being her mental state is so fundamentally important. And we’re like, Ah, here’s a rocker, you know, the mean, and the rocker is beautiful, but when you’re sitting alone, crying while you’re breastfeeding, you know, I’m not sure anything about the rocker.

 

Kaitlin  7:10  

That’s exactly I mean that that is my story. My story is that.

 

Paulette  7:14  

So let’s start off slow here. So do you have siblings in your family? Did you come from a big family?

 

Unknown Speaker  7:19  

I have one older brother.

 

Paulette  7:22  

So when you were younger, did you think I’m going to have a family or did that affect your idea about family?

 

Kaitlin  7:28  

I think I always knew I wanted children. It’s kind of funny. This is like a funny thing to say, Well, I I knew I wanted children and never necessarily wanted to be married. And maybe when I was a 90s kid with divorced parents, so the idea of being stuck in an unhappy marriage was my idea of hell, but I knew I wanted to help kids. I was always very maternal. I was always playing house. I always was loved to take care of my little cousins when they were babies. But I didn’t necessarily imagine that happening with a partner. I just knew I kind of assumed I would live on my own and then do IVF or something. And then I was a special ed teacher in New York City. And the Para, which is like a teacher’s assistant, in the classroom next door. He was really really cute. He was really, really cute. And I thought to myself, he’s so cute, and honestly, he was more than cute. He was hot. But I thought man, he can’t be nice. He’s probably kind of you know, his personality probably is terrible because he’s so good looking. And then I went up and I talked to him. And he told me that when he’s not working with the special needs kids in our school that he’s he works at a puppy daycare. Oh man. He’s everything you know. So I feel very, very, very hard for him. And I ended up marrying him and I just remember this overwhelming feeling of wow, I just want to make humans with you. It was the most was maybe the first step in the primal nature. of motherhood, you know, because on paper, having kids didn’t really make sense. It’s still quite, it doesn’t make that much sense to have kids on paper. It’s expensive, takes a lot of your energy the extra time it shifts your whole life. But there’s this space in my body. You know, this like gut space that just has this urge to have children and to have children with him. So So yeah, so that’s what we do. I’m very quickly went from a single living on my own in the city, going out all the time to living with my partner married and then got pregnant two months after we got married. Wow. So yeah, and then had three kids in less than four years. So when I do things, Paulette, I do them big.

 

Paulette  9:41  

For the sake of be her village, I’m excited to hear that. I’m glad. So it sounds like it was easy to get pregnant.

 

Kaitlin  9:48  

It was scarily easy for you know, it’s like it can go either way. Right. It can be like wow, this is really hard and heart wrenching. But it can also be like, Wow, we just think about getting pregnant. And we all three times it was incredibly, incredibly easy.

 

Paulette  10:01  

Yeah. Okay, so for the first one, did you walk into pregnancy with an idea of what it would be like?

 

Kaitlin  10:08  

No, I was the first person in my social circle. I was only 27 which in New York City is very young to start having kids. I feel like the people I know don’t start think about until they’re like 33 And they’re like, start considering it. So at 27 I was the first person I knew and was already in my circle to have a baby so I had almost no expectation and I don’t know I have this expectation that everything would be really easy. I also I also have this invincibility this like 27 year old invincibility like nothing can hurt me because I you know, tell I know how to tell people to go at themselves. You to like and that will save me which in many situations. Like it wasn’t enough. I remember watching the business of being born. And before I had my first baby and thinking, Oh, I can handle that. You know, I was horrified at what I saw. And I thought I can handle that.

 

Paulette  11:06  

Was it was it? Was it a vaginal deliveries they showed?

 

Kaitlin  11:10  

Well, what they showed on us as being born is a plant homebirth different C section because the baby was breech so she was like eight centimeters and they had to transfer pretty quickly but they they walk you through the cascade of interventions, you know, mostly in the epidural, the stall, the C section, that sort of thing. And, and I just sort of felt immune, I felt like I could handle all of that. So

 

Paulette  11:34  

how do we know today’s the day or you know, the baby’s gonna be born?

 

Kaitlin  11:38  

Because the midwife told me it’s time to go to the hospital and get the baby out.

 

Paulette  11:43  

So you do wake up with contractions and you know their contractions

 

Kaitlin  11:47  

know the midwives. Were working at a birth center in New York. There was only one so I won’t name it but you guys can figure it out. They were working at a birth center and sort of saying, Hey, this is midwifery care. But the rules at the time in New York State did not allow midwives to own birth center. So they were actually puppets for an OB run and owned facility. So I went for 41 weeks screaming Wow. And the midwife just said, Okay, it’s time there wasn’t a discussion. It wasn’t true midwifery care. And I’m always sort of careful to say that it was not true midwifery care. They were just a puppet for OB care. And it was a little bit of a bait and switch. And it’s it’s unfortunate because I tried, you know, like I tried to line up and out of hospital birth they tried lining up a midwifery led team, but it’s it made to him. I didn’t like, deep enough, but I think part of that experience was that I was a little idealistic. I was a little bit like my just gonna be my you know like I’m part of I think my deep skepticism the unfolding this as I’m saying it but like, what am I deep skepticism about the existing systems and and how they serve us is due to this like I did all the right things. I checked all the boxes, you know, I planted out of hospital birth I got a midwifery team. I took the childbirth class, I prepared as best as I could. And still, the system just took me in and systematically shut me down, took away choices took away my voice.

 

Paulette  13:25  

So before we get to the hospital, how did you come to the conclusion that you wanted an out of hospital birth? What What made you make that choice?

 

Kaitlin  13:33  

That’s a great question. I don’t really know my mom had a vaginal delivery with me and my brother, and my brother and I and my 10 year old would be correcting me and my grandma was my brother and I, I think I was just it was the beginning. Of when I start considering another human being like my son. I think it was just the beginning of this, like, what could be the best for him and what I was reading was the best is less intervention, the you know, the business would be important. It’s like how do we avoid this cycle? How do we avoid I was just sort of curious that I guess I got led down that path of looking for an alternative and I’m not somebody that has ever wanted to walk the mainstream path. Like part of my personality, so I think it makes perfect sense that I was that I was exploring my options. I’m also somebody that is very intellectual. I like to know as much information as I can it helps reduce my anxiety. So I think just in doing the, the research and looking and going and meeting people and finding out what is the best way to have this baby. That was what led me down this path and I got so close, like some key things that were sort of outside of my control. For you know, that’s that’s where everything sort of went sideways.

 

Paulette  14:52  

So you went to the midwives just for a regular checkup. Was that your intention?

 

Kaitlin  14:56  

I went to the sonogram place for a 41 week sonogram to check on, I guess, you know, just the like normal, non stress test and water levels and whatnot. And it was the hottest day of July, you know, and I was my water was a little low. And I didn’t know I didn’t have a doula. It’s a big part of it. I didn’t have a doula. I thought that a doula would make the experience less intimate. I thought a doula was unnecessary because I thought my midwives had my back. I didn’t understand like the power dynamic that the midwives were working for OBS and I didn’t understand that even if they aren’t working for OBS that they’re trying to exist and give care in a system where they are liable in a system where they need to be covered by insurance in a system where they have to maintain hospital privileges. I had no idea about the complexities of that. So I felt that my midwife would protect me rather than be one of the people that sort of a mouthpiece for the larger system. And so, so I was told my water was low. And I remember standing on the street in Brooklyn, and she called me and said, It’s time to get the baby out. Go to the hospital. Not a question, not an informative conversation just it has been deemed it has been decided. And I remember bursting into tears to figure out why the tears you know, in the moment it’s almost like my body knew how wrong this all felt, but I couldn’t you know, when you’re in that sort of panic stress, you can’t pinpoint it. Years later, and many, many hours of contemplation, but I think I just went into immediate trust mode and I don’t know that I could have figured out well, yeah, because maybe, maybe I wanted to have a voice in my care. Maybe I wanted to be a decision maker instead of a passive participant maybe being told what was going to happen. Didn’t feel good for me and maybe I needed trauma informed care you know, it’s such a subtle thing, but it’s a huge thing. If she had said, Hey, this is what’s going on. And these are our options. Yeah, take an hour, go to lunch, go connect, go get in a room with your husband. I was by myself. Go get in a room with your husband haven’t take you out to lunch and discuss the options you know, just something as simple as that there was nothing urgent about me. You know, my water was a little low. Okay, baby was fine. So something like that would have just completely shifted the experience and and I think that’s where when I eventually become a doula and do all of this work those moments stick with me. It’s not it’s not about how the baby comes out. It really isn’t. It’s not about what medical things happen. It’s about having the space and room to adjust. It’s about having people speak to you respectfully. It’s about having a team that maintains your power your autonomy, your centering in the entire experience. It’s just that birth from that phone call on I was I was just an annoyance to everybody. I was just the thing they had to deal with. And that’s how I felt I felt disempowered and voiceless and powerless. And it I mean, it continues to grow. At first that was the best part of the birth leader was that

 

Paulette  18:05  

this is this is something I hear often from women and the fundamental question is Were things done for you or to you? Oh, they were done to me. Right because you had no choice but that’s that seems to be what it turns on. You know how much control you have. So you’re crying in the street. What happens next you call your husband.

 

Kaitlin  18:25  

I call my husband and I call my mom and they meet me at the hospital or my mom like picks up my husband and I don’t remember exactly we all meet at the hospital. And, and the midwife needs to be in triage. And so the thing to know about this situation, too, is that this birthing center was always in flux. I don’t know the workings behind the scene, but I know as a patient and then as a doula when I would have patients there. They they’re just sort of constantly in flux. So at the time, they had privileges at mammography. So I went to my mother’s hospital in Brooklyn, which was incredibly far away from my home and my parents home. We were trying to have birth center birth and that this was plan B. But the other thing that had happened is that there was this like shifting of all the midwives on the staff, and only one or two of them had like five or six had privileges at the hospital. The sense I got from the midwife who’s now a home birth midwife in Brooklyn, was that she was exhausted. And didn’t want to be there. And I got the overwhelming sense she wasn’t happy in the position she was in which is fine but it definitely bled into my care you know, she dropped me off in triage. I got an IV in my hand. I remember hating the IV so much. And then now get this pull that you’re gonna die. I was set up for a Cytotec induction in the C section. recovery room. Yep. So I was lying there, eating a sandwich. Not allowed to get up. I didn’t know you know, this is like this is like another me not allowed to get up not allowed to move. Getting double doses of side attack because the first couple didn’t work. Surrounded by semi conscious moaning women. Oh my God, who had just come back from a C section or waking up from anesthesia. Whatever it was like it’s surgical recovery room on the OB floor. And the midwife who I’m sure is overworked. His that she’s the only one you know, that has hospital privileges. It just, she was in her own place. She’s like, okay, by all means Call me if you feel like you need an epidural. That’s not midwifery care. By the way. For anyone who’s listening. That’s not midwifery care I was getting. I was getting OB care through the mouth of a midwife. Call me feeling an epidural. Call me if you feel like you need an epidural. It’s actually what she said. Cool.

 

Paulette  20:56  

Thanks. So I got it from here. Thanks. Anyway.

 

Kaitlin  21:00  

Thank you so much, you You’re the worst. So I Yeah, so I the the Cytotec kicked in around 11pm

 

Paulette  21:08  

Is that Pitocin so it was it was like Is it attack is a cervical ripening

 

Kaitlin  21:13  

or it’s an off label use. So it there’s a lot of controversy oversight attack. It has its uses. I’m not this is not an anti Cytotec podcast. It’s just that was what I had, but incredibly effective. It’s also it’s the abortion drug, it causes intense uterine contraction. Oh, so it’s an off label use there’s something like it’s for ulcers. It’s an ulcer medication that the OB is used to induce and also to control bleeding and also to I believe it’s the abortion. I don’t know though.

 

Paulette  21:45  

Just a quick note, here, Caitlyn is right. According to medical websites, Cytotec aka visa protocol, not sure if I’m pronouncing that correctly, is also a drug that’s used off label by OBS for various things including inducing abortion. It’s one of the two medications used in the abortion pill. There are links in the show notes if you’re interested in details.

 

Kaitlin  22:07  

So I get that it’s incredibly effective. I started having essentially transition level contractions every three minutes deep, deep, deep contractions, and it is almost unbearable because the nurse Wendy is now in this surgical recovery room. She’s taking care of 20 women and me who’s laboring and she won’t let me quote unquote, let me because I didn’t know I didn’t. She wasn’t allowed to not let me write. Wouldn’t let me get up she kept saying well, I have superior commanders. She would make me live not even just lay but lay flat on my back. I had those the things that go on your legs. Like clap preventative thing. I had blood pressure cuff. I had the flippy thing on your hand, but I was essentially strapped down. Even though technically not shackles really felt like it. And I remember just she was forcing me to lay the waves were so intense and so fast. And I remember saying I need an epidural I started vomiting. I started shaking uncontrollably, which is all now like now I know it’s all part of like I was dilating I was now I know I’ve actually been incredibly fast labor my body. So the baby when it’s ready, so good to know, but my body took to the induction, I think a lot faster than anybody expected it to. And I remember asking her if I can get out to the bathroom and she said to me, Well, no, you really look like you’re in charge. I can’t let you get up and she made me use a bedpan How humiliating how dehumanizing. I was conscious. I was not an epidural. There was no reason I should not have been allowed to get up out of that bed. I shouldn’t walk to school. There’s a lot of shoulds in the story, but it’s part of why I’m so passionate about everybody getting to let says this is the foundation of my work right now. It is this. I was like a trapped animal and not in a good way. I was like an animal, my spiritual unmedicated me back to you, but like a wonderful, primal, beautiful goddess animal. This was like being in a cage and I remember I was I was throwing up I was shaking. She was trapping me and honestly, I don’t know how much time I gave birth to 5:20am Voc section. This started at 11 I don’t think that much time has really time doesn’t exist in labor. You know, it felt like 10 years to me. And I remember my husband and I had prepared with childbirth classes and it’s his role right to kind of support me and not wanting to throw. My mother and him weren’t allowed to touch me unless they had cold rags because I was so hot and I couldn’t take the touch. They were like deer in headlights. If there’s ever a reason to have a doula it was just the look of their faces. The eyes not knowing what to do with me. And I remember saying out loud, I want an epidural. And he looked at me and he was like, really, you know, and I feel for him because he does his job. Right. And we think it’s our job to talk people out of epidurals. It is not our job to help people. It really isn’t is our job to offer other alternatives. But epidural always has to be on the table. We need to listen to women and I’m so adamant about that because because he listened to me in that moment. And I needed him to listen to me because he was like, Are you sure? And I looked at him and I said, not like this. This is not it’s so far gone. You know, I talked about going down an epidural. I was talking about like, you know, with a flower crown and a birth center or anything. Like obviously, I just imagined it being so much more wholesome and holistic and centered and I was able, you can’t say no epidural and then take away every other tool they have to cope. Suffering. And so he understood that and the funniest thing happened. Well, it’s not really funny. I said to her swinging, I said to like an epidural. And she said the strangest thing. She goes, Are you sure you want an epidural? That means you’d have to go into a labor and delivery room. And I was like, What do you mean I could get my own? Okay, yeah, no, I want that. Like no, I want it more. What do you think is the weirdest weirdest thing so the residents run and check me because I spent so much time as a doula talking people through the conversation about getting examined and what what pads do go on and this and that, and we really slow down the labor around these points, the cervical exams being a big, big one. And I remember it was just like, checkmate, whatever. I’m just I mean, after all, I don’t care if you check me or not, but I was checked and in retrospect, I was four to five centimeters and that was like two hours or so after. Wow. Look, I was rocking and there was a reason why I was in so much discomfort. So they gave me the epidural or they hold on to the head. So they get me over to l&d. And the l&d nurse is worse than Monday. She was so just didn’t want me to be there. She didn’t like me. She hated her job. You can just tell when people hate them. And I think too, as a birthing person or a birthing moment you press especially sensitive to energy because you have to see who’s a danger to you. So I think I’m already pretty sensitive to people’s energy. But I was really quite sensitive that night. So I remember going into the bathroom and wiping and there was blood, mucus and blood like I was opening really beautifully. And I remember sitting on the toilet. This is right before I’m gonna get my epidural. I remember sitting on the toilet and thinking I could do this What am I doing? But it’s because I was sitting on the toilet I was right. I was able to sort of release it was a completely different experience to sit on the toilet and labor versus being strapped to the bed and labor go figure go figure that was different. So I didn’t know that at this point. You know, I mean, really, I just needed a way out of the school scenario. Everyone was so awful there and I’m getting a C section that I had that this ended it was not the worst part. The C section was the way out of being surrounded by I’m so vulnerable to people who were disrespectful and who couldn’t care less about me. So I get back in my my one fear actually, you know, you asked me that question before about why I went and will say and I just remember the answer, because my biggest fear about birth was not giving birth. It was about getting a needle in my spine. So I was trying to avoid an epidural. And and my fears were founded because this anesthesiologist was female anesthesiologist came in and she gave me the epidural and I remember feeling the needle go into my spine, and it was uncomfortable. It hurt. It was like getting a needle in your spine.

  

I remember being moved and I think I remember being like, oh and I moved and I screamed and she was so

 

Kaitlin    

I don’t know the word for it but but this day and she was like, is it pain or is it just couldn’t believe I was reacting like that and I was like it’s even in getting the relief. I couldn’t get relief from the from the game so awful and looking back at it wasn’t even one of those patients. You know, the one we all fear being the one that like to be honest, I wasn’t even that I was so docile, but I think the morale at that place was really rough. So I got there. And I finally got released and it did its trick, which is great because it doesn’t always work that way for people. So it did have that full relief. But then I was resting as close my eyes and every time I opened my eyes, everybody was still in the room and everybody had really big eyes and my mum looked terrified. And I realized that they were worried about the heartbeat of the baby, that they were watching midwife the midwife had returned. She helped me through the epidural. And you know, it was the worst part about that is that she was actually incredibly comforting. She was very good during the epidural and it would have been a different labor if she stayed if she had to work. I deserved a midwife and I said, So I realized that they were concerned about it and I, I opened my eyes and I looked at midwife and I said, what’s going on? And she said, well, so my baby was going to tack a cardiac instead of radical artic. So the biggest party wasn’t going along. It was actually going to really high up. Which after taking care of strangers, newborn resuscitation protocol, that’s just as dangerous. That’s just as bad of an indication. So there was a heart rate issue. And in retrospect, what happened is essentially his head was a little asymptotic. It was just like a little off. I think it would be opening so quickly, and then the epidural, I’m sure opening me. I think he just got jammed in and stuff. And he just struggled a little bit. So I remember looking at the midwife, and she said I still hate him. We would she said they were all clearly worried about it. They were describing something that was scary. And she said I’m gonna call them the OB and the OB will come in at about 45 minutes. Oh my god. And I want to just like preface this by I said this about me and I would never say this to a pregnant person. I said, Okay, I just want to help the baby. Just get me healthy baby. And I say that because it’s incredibly toxic to say at least the unhealthy baby enters a healthy now that’s not true. I matter. But at that moment, everything I had desired about this birth was so far out of the window, right? What I meant if I had the capacity to speak in a full thought, What I meant is you’ve ruined all of this right? This has already been destroyed. I need to help the baby at the end of this.

 

Paulette  7:30  

I’m going to end my conversation with Caitlin here for today. I so appreciate her sharing her experience of the postpartum period, which I think is regrettably common. Many of us leave the hospital or birthing center to return home are met by our new job that requires work around the clock or that we often do alone and work that we do when we’re exhausted at a time work.

 

Next Friday I will share the rest of this inspiring story.

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Episode 95SN: Identity Shift without Identity Crisis in Motherhood: Anne’s Story, Part I

When your interests are shifted to the back seat to make room for the baby’s, you WILL have feelings about it, but most of us never talk about it because it doesn’t fit our idea of motherhood.

Today we discuss some of these challenges, and ways of making sense of them.  I talk to a writer who is also a mother of three about the ideas she brought with her into this giant transition and how she works to balance her family life and work life; the difficulty of this balancing act and the feelings it brought up for her.  I also talk with a fantastic therapist who specializes in helping mothers feel comfortable in motherhood by giving us valuable ways to think about and reframe what may be uncomfortable and conflicting feelings–like love and connection with the baby, but also moments of anger or regret– as we all navigate the job of parenting. what follows is the first part of my conversation with both women.

To find Anne Zimmerman’s work (An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher, Love In A Dishand Other Culinary Delights and M.F.K. Fisher: Musings on Wine & Other Libations, check out her website. Here is her writing on related topics.

You can find Jessica Sourci, from Family Tree Wellness here

Audio Transcript

P:

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

Today we discuss conflicting feelings about motherhood. i talk to a mother of three about the ideas she brought with her into this giant transition and how she works to balance her family life and work life and I also talk with a fantastic therapist who specializes in helping mothers feel comfortable in motherhood by giving us valuable ways to think about and reframe what me may see as conflicting feelings–like love and connection with irritation and anger– as we all navigate the important job of parenting. what follows is the first part of my conversation with both women.

Paulette  0:03  

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

Anne  0:07  

My name is Anne Zimmerman, and I am a writer and mother living in Portland, Oregon.

Paulette  0:15  

Anne it’s so lovely to have you on. I should confess that you were my writing teacher at Stanford for a classified suck and you’re a beautiful, beautiful writer. And that was a great class. So I’m excited to have him on. So one thing that’s interesting about your story is you have three kids. You are not Mormon but you grew up in Salt Lake City, which I think of as a pretty happy place and a place filled with big families. So maybe correct me if I’m wrong. Is that your experience?

Anne  0:44  

Yeah, you’re right. And it’s interesting because I’ve gone through various periods in my life where I think about the Mormon Church and the influence of the Mormon Church and the influence of the psychology of the Mormon church a lot because it is really interesting. Parents are not from Utah. And my family has not never been Mormon, but I was born in Salt Lake City. I lived there until I was 18. And my parents are still there. So I continue to go back there fairly frequently. And so it is baked into who I am in it. For those that have been to Salt Lake. You will know that it’s laid out on a grid with the Mormon temple at the center all the street names are keyed off of the Mormon, Mormon temple in the center of the city. So I grew up in a in a beautiful old grid neighborhood and of the like 18 houses on either side of the street. At the time, there were maybe only three other families that were not Mormon. I mean, maybe an older couple or two who did not have children. But in terms of the kids I grew up with, and there were a lot of them. There were at one point there was a family across the street had eight. There were you know, big families and the Mormon church was just pervasive, and I knew it, because I always knew that we weren’t Mormon. It was very clear. We were not going to go to the Mormon church. We were not going to go to the Mormon church just to see what was happening or try it out or anything like that. But it wasn’t until I got a lot older that I was like, oh, so what what was that like, you know, most if not all of the women at home, I should pause and say I only have one brother who’s five years younger than I am. So I did sort of experience something different within my own family unit, but just in terms of being out in the neighborhood or playing with other people from school. Or just being at school, this culture of child after child after child and also everything just seeming really I mean, you’re right. It’s like it doesn’t describe it but perfect and happy is is really true. I think you see it now in social media. I used to have a more than obsession with following in sort of humans, the lives of Mormon and mommy bloggers back when blogging was more of a thing or Instagram because it is in a way it is something that’s so familiar and comfortable to me. Yeah, just that whole we’re gonna have a baby and then we’re gonna have another baby and everything’s gonna be happy and everything is gonna be perfect and everybody’s gonna match. And we’re gonna make cookies and dad comes home and we play basketball and you know, just this very wholesome, very happy, very clean, white, obviously, culture and just I don’t know, just even talking about it. There is still something that is like, appealing about that, even though now being a mother. I sort of see that there that there’s, you know, dark dirty corners. There have to be there.

Paulette  3:48  

Yeah, having kids is too complicated to have just one

Anne  3:52  

more than I mean. We do have three children. And when I went into my motherhood experience, I think I thought we would only have two and we wanted a third child, we plan to have a third child, but that adds to the chaos factor. And sometimes when I’m in just very normal, but chaotic moments at home, I’m like, wow, so then what’s it like if you get each kid to their lesson, that’s their passion that they are willing to live or die for, you know, three tantrums or whatever it just it’s work. It’s it’s an incredible amount of patience and management. And chaos

Paulette  4:28  

yeah, it’s certainly it’s harder than a lot, right? parenting has very good marketing has we all go into it thinking it’s not going to be quite as hard as it is? 

Anne: Right? 

P: We focus on that on the easy, lovely parts that everyone wants to share and glorify and there’s you know, reasons to do that. But it is an incomplete picture. So it sounds like you grew up thinking you were gonna have a family. 

A: Yes. Yes. 

P: And was it easy to get pregnant the first time? 

A: Yes. 

P: And how was that pregnancy?

Anne  5:01  

I would say that of the three. That was my most difficult pregnancy and not because there was anything’s physically difficult about it. I mean, you know, just the normal, the normal stuff, early morning sickness, the changes in the body, all that kind of stuff. Everything was very, very routine. I was still pretty young, especially by San Francisco standards. I had a difficult birth, but the whole pregnancy was very healthy and very normal. But I think I also I had I had published a book I was teaching I had wanted to have children my entire life and then after getting married, that it amplified, it definitely wanted to become pregnant and have this child but then I remember at the time feeling like it was just super practical stuff. We have the San Francisco and but where are we going with this baby? You know, just all of a sudden it was like I remember feeling like, Oh, I knew I wanted this and I thought about this and chose this. And yet now that it’s happening, no one told me it was going to be to negotiate some of these things and to decide I was privileged in that I am able to take care of our children but just sort of like where I was going to draw the boundaries.

Paulette  6:21  

Today we’re lucky to talk with Jessica Sorci and LMFT perinatal mental health certified and certified internal family systems therapist and Founding Director of Family Tree wellness. And we’re here to talk broadly about maternal ambivalence. Jessica, thanks so much for coming on.

Jessica Sorci  6:39  

Thanks for having me. Call it. It’s fun to be here.

Jessica:  6:53  

That’s right. Yeah, there’s so much pressure on moms to be quote unquote, good moms or perfect moms. And there’s a lot of societal ideas about what motherhood supposed to look like. And feel like and that pressure is alive in every every mom. I think we just we all get that memo and feel compelled to embody something that is really not real and doesn’t exist some sort of perfection and yeah, and then having having those those real feelings that are not in the realm of bliss, and ease and connection really feels threatening, I think to to the ideas we hold about motherhood and maybe to our own sense of being decent for. For many of us, we want to be more than decent, we want to be exceptional moms. And when we start noticing that we’re actually feeling those things you mentioned, you know, some might be irritation, it might actually be rage, resentment, regret, is definitely a very big, common feeling that moms have and it makes a ton of sense that those those sorts of feelings really threaten that clean image that we think we’re supposed to aspire to. So not only is it uncomfortable to have the idea of being perceived as something other than a perfect mom, or a really good mom, or supermom in terms of how people are seeing us as we’re so comfortable inside in our inner world to hold the complexity of those polarized parts that seem like they need to do away with each other, you know, the perfect mom feelings, or maybe we could say in a more specific way those feelings of I wanted this baby or this child, I value motherhood. I enjoy the feeling of connection. There are there aspects of me that really like taking care of someone. Sometimes, I’ve got these feelings of real pride in my child, a feeling that I understand them and I am in tune. And that’s got kind of a lot of dopamine around it and a lot of feeling maybe actualizing what I was meant to do on Earth in some way, my purpose. So there’s all of that. And then to have other feelings that are completely almost seemed like they delete or erase or destroy the good feelings, right? Those ones that come up that are like so so black and white, so absolute around this was a horrible mistake. I really should never have done this. There is no room for me in this picture anymore. And it seems like it’s all or nothing. It’s the baby or it’s me. Somebody’s got to take one for the team and I’m sick of taking one for the team right like I’ve I’ve held back and maybe exiled so much of my own need in my own truth, to be of service to this child and there is a feeling inside of being really done with that of hating it of wanting my own. Well being back on use of space and time for myself. It feels like those two are just wildly in opposition.

Anne  10:41  

I had watched women not work outside of a home to choose motherhood as their profession and then and I had been like, maybe that’ll be me. Maybe that’s what I want to for sure do during a certain period of my life. And my husband was supportive of it for his own reasons. His mom had been away a lot when he was little and he was like, Yeah, we’re on the same page. This is what we’re going to do and then it just very quickly kind of became oh but what if that was wrong, what if that’s not actually what I want, but then how am I going to negotiate all that nice still? I still feel like I’m trying I mean, every Sunday night I’m looking at the calendar and going okay, what do I have to do other for other people? What do I have to do for myself? What am I getting paid for? What do I get? You know, what do I What is the writing that I want to do that I might not be getting paid for yet but in some ways is more important than any of the other stuff. I have to put that in all right. I don’t feel like myself. It’s very tricky.

Paulette  11:37  

But yeah, the the the happy marriage of parenthood and a job is a really difficult thing. And I remember early on thinking oh, now I’ve reached what I’ve heard many women describe which is I feel like I’m failing at both jobs. So that seems Yes. Now I’ve reached the level right i i can’t fully put myself into my work and I can’t fully put myself in a way that I want to be present with my child and this is the world that we live in.

Anne  12:06  

And I am incredibly lucky. My schedule has always been very flexible. My students have been very understand that you know, they’re they’re adults with hearts typically in mind, they’re incredibly understanding if there is ever a time when something has to shift a little bit, but just today, you know, it is 2023 But between yesterday and today, I think for alerts that there’s COVID at the preschool you know sort of starting to infiltrate and cutting hours a little bit because two teachers are sick and it’s like, the preschool that my littlest child goes to, is close to a hospital. So there’s a lot of working professional parents. What can people do? I mean, we’re so lucky and sometimes they think about doing something different. In air quotes, they don’t really know what that is, but it’s hard it I don’t eat I don’t know, it’s an incredibly hard balance

Paulette  12:58  

and finds the spiritual within her about I am a creative person. I’m a writer. I want to do this work, but I’m also a mother and how those things fit together.

Speaker 3  13:08  

Yes, yeah. So as I think about, you know, what, what the parts of a mother or mom parts might look like in a in a kind of generalizable or predictable way. I think there are those those parts that emerge when you have a child for basically all of us. We call one in particular the baby’s representative. There’s like a part that shows up in mom’s consciousness. That’s the baby’s rep and it’s here to advocate for that baby, and it’s here to pull all of mom’s attention and energy and resources toward the baby and does that through you know, brain changes and other physiology. It does that through kind of CO opting the cognition and preoccupying the thoughts of mom, and it does that through attachment through building a bond, and that sense of real deep caring. So you’ve got that whole babies rep going on that’s so inarguably occupying it takes up a lot of space. But you were a person before you had your child and you had those things you’re naming that and felt around your own creativity, your own reason for being your own inspiration and ways that you got your dopamine before you had this baby. That didn’t go away. It got kind of elbowed out when the babies are out showed up. But I think of those as sort of self interested parts and they do have to take a backseat. You know, in the beginning I think it just happens it’s like you don’t have any choice. Your physiology demands it when you’re giving birth and in the days that follow when you’re really not yourself on a physiological level. Sometimes that’s months that follow for some folks years, but the self interested parts are there and there’s nothing wrong with them. You know, I think the system can start to feel like it’s a threat to the baby rep. And all that is aspiring for and you are holding in your one nervous system, essentially two nervous systems. So how, how gracefully can this one individual mom hold multiple nervous systems? And multiple agendas, the babies and hers there is no getting around that it’s complicated and taxing and requires a lot of adjustment and a lot of work. But you know the the only answer really is becoming more conscious and being deliberate in your self compassion. That self compassion starts to open up more space so that maybe both things can exist. Maybe you can be a good mom who is tending to the baby really beautifully, and has her own needs her own reality her own, you know creativity or desire for productivity or let’s Let’s even say desire for control because there’s not a lot of control in mothering. You don’t get to kind of exact your own visions and volition like your baby runs. Oh, they are and you’re sort of attuning and following their lead. So, you know, to respect in a compassionate way they don’t impulse and your own desire to follow your own dreams to make them the color you want. The tone you are feeling. You know that that’s real and true and does not go away with motherhood. Very long time and I mean it goes so deep right? You don’t get to take a nap when you want to take a nap. You don’t get to think so you want to think that was a really hard one for me. I wanted some space to think like that and they would be interrupted every 30 seconds or less. I was so so frustrating and also created a lot of grief. I missed having that space with myself. So I think we have to be really respectful. How much babies wrap is asking us to give. And in that respect, there’s compassion right like they’ve given it up for a long time. was not easy. Let’s find some space for you to have your own self interest.

Paulette  17:52  

Now that my kids are grown, my sense is your grandparents. That’s the way to make it work and and but then you have to be okay with grandparents parenting your children.

Anne  18:04  

Right. And that’s actually a really important waves to lift the veil on on Utah on Salt Lake City on the Mormon church to some degree. Of course. You can’t make a blanket statement, but it is in a way it’s in the village. You know, I remember at one point, the people who lived across the street for us grandparents lived tutors. You know there there was just this really flowing back and forth and we wanting to have children younger, which grandparents are younger, which means we are all with whatever childcare or something during the summer going on vacations, you know whatever just generally being participatory factor and you have a lot of siblings sometimes, you know, and so it’s also like you can be it. It’s, you know, answer those houses together and that is that I’m not sure if that really clicked for me until after I get there. Maybe we don’t have family. We don’t have family living around. That’s where this whole weird fantasy of being like, you know, Norman Norman, I’m not sure it was ever that explicit but this desire to have kids and have this feeling of fullness and busyness and excitement and fun and like that’s where this is going to hit a real roadblock is because we don’t have any support men pandemic it and then then we all know, yeah, got parents of young children and families and that type of thing. You know?

Paulette  19:42  

Yeah, that made it much more stark for sure to say oh, actually you’re I guess what? Super hard. So let’s talk for a second about the birth. And actually the pregnancy. You walk by it because you say oh, it was normal. I remember in the first trimester falling asleep on my keyboard at school and and just being knocked out by fatigue in a way that I never understood or

Unknown Speaker  20:08  

read about that. That

Paulette  20:11  

was just it was such a shocking thing for me. People say oh, you’re gonna be nauseous and Oh, you’ll be tired. But the feeling of that is so much different than the description that it’s just shows it’s so hard to create another person and we just take it for granted because that’s what I do. Yeah,

Anne  20:29  

yeah. So yeah, so I mean, I think one thing that popped into my mind but when I left once I had one child, subsequent pregnancies, I just looked like a rock because I was tired. But with my first pregnancy, I remember being awake in the night a lot, which was really notable because my husband has struggled with insomnia for most of his life. And I remember being so angry that he wasn’t awake was like okay, I’m finally awake. Where are you think that you are sleeping soundly. So insomnia and then also I plan as the illness often is. And I remember when there was the bombing at the two men are sort of on the loose on and this was back when I was on Twitter and Twitter was kind of a easy place to be. And I just didn’t sleep practically all when they needed to know if they were going to find these people and it was so weird because I hadn’t ever felt like that water in the business and that restlessness before and I remember finally getting to the point at 330 or four o’clock in the morning orient that I just have to get up. You know, I did a lot of food writing and in written a biography about it. I just have to get up and start cooking because there’s nothing else to do. I’m not going to sleep. And that was definitely a nervous kind of again with I was very anxious about what was going to happen. You know, my husband’s mother was notably dying while I was pregnant, which is interesting element to the whole thing. And I remember he had gotten to be with her over Fourth of July weekend. I was due to have a baby in September, so I was seven months pregnant. And I didn’t go to a barbecue and I remember telling the women at the barbecue that it was because they needed to figure out how I was going to organize my closet and in my mind that was just because this is the most important thing to do right now. This is it. This is this is it, which is in some ways I will that just stem so much the stereotypical new nervous moms spinning her wheels about you know, whatever. But at the time, I think so much of it was feeling really destabilize my own identity really destabilized. It did have something to do, obviously with the fact that I was growing human in my body and all of the effort it takes to do that. But so much more of it was about me and feeling really destabilized. And, and also, again, kind of going back to both my childhood in Utah but also just the culture around pregnancy, feeling like there was I could not say anything to anybody. You know, it’s not like I didn’t want to have my child. It was just it was just so much bigger and realer and so much more of an identity ship before I even had the child than I ever anticipated. And I remember here’s something I remember that is interesting as I remember being probably I would say, I don’t know, still early in my pay, let’s say four months pregnant. And I was teaching a night class in person. And I was leaving to go to the class. And I took a picture because my mom sent me her shirt or something, took a picture and texted it to her and I said no, you gonna be able to tell that I’m pregnant question question mark, exclamation mark. And she wrote back and she said something like, Do you not want them to know that you’re pregnant? And in that moment, I was like, I do know that I’m pregnant. I do not want them to think that anything about our dealings or our interaction is in any way influenced by the fact that I am right now that I’m going to watch out.

Paulette  24:32  

For and she talks about being anxious or during the pregnancy about this identity shift. She anticipated that she’s going to have an identity shift. And it is this, I think making space for these two identities like you talked about. So do you have any suggestion about how we one goes about?

Unknown Speaker  25:33  

She’s

Speaker 3  25:41  

that natural and inevitable, but good girl. You do so it’s not a bad thing to encounter that grief. The fact that there’s grief and loss doesn’t mean it’s bad or that you should avoid it or that there’s nothing better on the other side. Having that clarity should add about identity shift.

Speaker 3  26:20  

Energy or access to your own resources. You are working which are very different in terms of your your body and your being. It’s temporary you know that the massive loss a massive hit is temporary. That’s the good news right you’re gonna get much more of yourself. So having having some softness around the surrender, I think surrender is usually the most graceful way to go in like and it is and there is a loss. You know, people don’t say that I heard a podcast recently where a therapist was talking about moms having ambivalence, and that sometimes there are moments of hate and she said nobody likes the word hate so I’ve actually stopped using it. And I thought to myself, of course, can can we just allow our parts to feel what they feel the more we can make space for that is truth and honesty, the better the playing field for the baby and for being understood, making sense being seen not feeling shameful or like there’s anything wrong with her. Not starting to think of herself as a failure or more or less of a mom. No, that doesn’t mean that your feelings can be here. No matter what they are all all parts and all feelings are welcome. And you can be great

Paulette  27:53  

Are you imagining that they’ll think something negative?

Anne  27:55  

Yes, definitely, like negative rather than positive which is so funny because I actually also remember that when they found out I was just being over me and one of the students in this particular class no one of course, no one thought your brain has been diminished by this. But I think yes, I think I’m worried that they would think that somehow. I guess specifically the comments that I might make on their work would somehow be not valid for us.

Paulette  28:37  

Totally interesting. Why is it so powerful driver of your behavior in a way that you’re not necessarily totally conscious? Of in the moment and that anxiety? Jamil and appropriate, and I guess I regret that there’s a negative overlay on that to say oh, the anxious first time you should be anxious, guess what? Right. Every single thing has changed. I have no idea where this is. Going. I just heard some statistic that 70% of pregnancies are relatively normal and go off without a hitch. But you don’t know if you’re in that camp. And it’s just for many people because we don’t know we’re relatively young. It’s the first time you were introduced to this idea that you are not in control of your body. And that’s such a weird thing to feel and to experience. And I remember saying to my husband while I was pregnant, my belly was growing. I must be doing this wrong, because this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced. Except there’s no cause and effect here that I can. You’re no longer in charge of your life. Yeah, true. True and I feel like that’s a line that’s slowly being revealed to you. Right? The nausea and the fatigue is a good entry into that idea because it’s nothing that you you’re doing in the moment. Something else is going on in your body that you can’t control. It does become more and more true right as you get further along. So something about your first birth, what were you hoping to do

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Episode 94SN: Life Lessons Learned in Pregnancy & Birth: Molly’s Story, Part II

Conceiving, being pregnant, giving birth and then learning to be someone’s parent by immediately being responsible for the survival of a new being are all challenging experiences that contain within them, possibilities to grow.

Today I finish my conversation with Molly. In this episode, she compares her expectations at the birth with her experience and learns that the expectations she had about the first encounter with her baby after birth is built on a false narrative. She also shares her process for increasing milk production when she was breastfeeding and some useful tips for that process, and she shares the important lessons she learned from the 10 year runway that preceded the birth of her son.

To read more about Avoiding the Cry it Out Method in Sleep Training, see Valerie Groysman

MTHFR gene

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/folicacid/mthfr-gene-and-folic-acid.html

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/mthfr/#synonyms

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/folicacid/features/folic-acid-helps-prevent-some-birth-defects.html

Does stillbirth have a genetic component

https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/miscarriage-loss-grief/stillbirth

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7604888/

https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1471-0528.17301

https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/miscarriage-loss-grief/stillbirth

Audio Transcript:

Molly  0:02  

So they did the balloon to open my cervix, which was fine. It was like uncomfortable but it was it was fine. And that’s when what I wanted for my birth plan and what the hospital wanted for my birth plan decided to go two different directions.

Paulette  0:18  

Welcome to war stories from the womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition that you can find on all kinds of media to more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create another person and release that new person from your body into the world. Oftentimes, this transition requires some heroics, which is where this podcast gets its name. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and a mother of two girls, and boy did I struggle with this transition. Today I finish my conversation with Molly. In this episode, she compares her expectations at the birth with her experience and learns that the expectation she had about the first encounter with her baby after birth is built on a false narrative. She shares her process for increasing milk production when she was breastfeeding, and some useful tips for that process. And she shares the important lessons she learned from the 10 year runway that preceded the birth of her son. We’ll pick up where we left off last week. Molly is contemplating how to approach the birth of her son.

Molly  1:27  

because I researched when I panic. It was what is my birth plan going to be I had seen my my younger sister had already had two kids. And so I had been there for one of them and things did not go according to any of the plans. And so I was like what if that’s gonna happen to me? And you know, I’ve talked to my other sister in law and I don’t want to be medicated and i don’t want to have this thing and I don’t want to do that. And I had really wanted a midwife and they didn’t have any in the city that we were in. There’s not a midwife in an hour’s distance to us. There was no birthing center, they just had a you know, a thing and then all of a sudden, I realized about halfway through. Oh, yeah, I’m moving before I have this baby. I need to figure that shit out. Yeah. And so I finished working at about seven and a half months. I quit and we moved and we moved to Pennsylvania. And that’s after I had an ER visit because I could not breathe. The pain was so bad and my stomach I didn’t know which part evidently I had gas.

Paulette  2:36  

Maybe was fine. Good. Well, good. That’s the best answer.

Molly  2:39  

We had come up to visit in May, which was shortly after we had moved but we came up because it was a bigger holiday to see all the family and I thought I was in preterm labor because I was having contractions so bad. I wasn’t the minute we got there. They went away, of course, but having to reestablish care. Nobody really wants it mostly. Yeah. Ready to pop. Mom. And again, we had no midwives. Next to where we were going to be there was there was midwives at a hospital in Pittsburgh, but that was an hour away and I did not want to risk that while in labor if that were to be the case. And luckily I found a clinic and they were fine and not fine. They did a good job and they reassured me they’ve answered all my questions. And I did forget to mention in the beginning when I first got pregnant, they gave me progesterone suppositories. So for six weeks, they were like, Nope, we’re keeping this woman she was so they tried to help keep all of that getting all the healthy nutrients that it needs. Oh, and on top of all of this, I have MTHFR so I can’t that I can’t process folic acid. Like

Paulette  3:49  

Oh no. Yeah, shit. Yeah.

Molly  3:52  

So they were like, we’ll just take extra which isn’t necessarily how that works, but nobody really knows about it.

Paulette  4:00  

So it turns out that MTHFR gene includes instructions to make a protein it helps your body process fully or vitamin E nine. Most people recognize the term folic acid that’s what I heard of before. It’s in dark leafy vegetables. And if you’re going to get pregnant, everyone will tell you that you need folic acid to reduce the chances of a fetus will develop neural tube defects like spina bifida, which happened very early in pregnancy. Some of the variants of the MTHFR gene inhibit the body’s ability to process bully

Molly  4:30  

or people do know about it, but they think about a different part of it. And it’s a whole thing. And there was some concerns about preeclampsia at one point because I was just so puffy. When we

Paulette  4:39  

saw the folic acid problem. That’s an issue. We didn’t Oh my gosh.

Molly  4:45  

I mean, I took prenatals that nobody gave me anything to kind of help with that. Even though it was something I was very much like, Hi. I’m pretty sure I need something here and there was never any help with that. And then I mean, there was concerns about preeclampsia for a while just because I was so puffy there was worries about gestational diabetes because I was just getting grumpy as heck because I gained 70 pounds and that came back negative although I got horribly horribly ill from the test but I still was sick I still if I had meet the nose me in it it still be getting sick and throwing up and and by the time I got at six and a half, seven months pregnant people who had never met me before kept coming up to me and they’re like any day now and I’m like three months left.

Paulette  5:35  

Yes. Oh my God, that’s such a bad game. That’s such a terrible there’s just there’s not just say you look great. Right? Right. It’s terrible to say you look too small because then you’re like, Is the baby too small is terrible to say you’re too big. We’ll just just say look great. That’s that’s the only right answer. Yeah,

Molly  5:51  

I It’s. I would always get so frustrated because it’s like, not only do you think I’m fat, I still have to get fatter. Yeah.

Paulette  6:00  

This is our sounding like a walk in the park is pregnancy.

Molly  6:04  

No, it wasn’t because I was alone for a lot of it. My mom was around but I was still at home alone. Packing the house. Yeah, dealing with the dog going to work dealing with the stress of stupid people at work. Not that all the people I worked with the stupid we just had to deal with some stupid things while we were there. And it was just a lot and I’m still trying to figure out the game plan and figure out the food and I don’t want to look at food but I have the food because I have a baby in my belly. And so we finally figured out what was going to happen we went to our birthing classes once we got settled in Pennsylvania, and that helped so much. It was a breastfeeding friendly. That was what they encouraged for people who couldn’t handle and for all the different reasons, not that breastfeeding is the right solution for everybody, but you can’t you know, and so we took that we took the breastfeeding class, so I finally felt prepared. I’m gonna go in air. Yes, yes. And it wasn’t till three weeks before the baby came or was supposed to come that we even bought a stroller about a crib bought a mattress because I was in panic of I don’t want to nest this can because I didn’t mention this before. But this can I was panicking because it could still go sour because my mom had had a stillbirth eight and a half months. And so I

Paulette  7:22  

was oh my god, of course. Sure. So this is a useful question. Is there an element of stillbirth that’s genetic. I found some journal articles about this topic. They define stillbirth as death in utero at 20 weeks of gestation. And these kinds of deaths account for 60% of all perinatal deaths. Most of them go unexplained between 25 and 60% of cases. It looks like the most common causes are infection, problems with the placenta or umbilical cord, and medical problems with the mother like diabetes and preeclampsia and birth defects in the baby. I found one study that suggested that inherited genetic risk might exist, but data is pretty limited at this point. You can check out the show notes for the links that I’ve included on this topic.

Molly  8:09  

And we did do genetic counseling like at the anatomy scan, they did genetic counseling, they didn’t do genetic testing. They just did the counseling. And we were told at that point, there’s good odds that our kiddo would be autistic and just based off of our family genetics and how things would be going.

Paulette  8:26  

I thought we think autism is the gene times environment thing. Is that not true?

Molly  8:32  

So not not when nine out of 10 people in the family are autistic. There’s we have a very, very neurodivergent heavy scenario and my family.

Paulette  8:45  

Do we care about that? We don’t care about the news or we do care about it or

Molly  8:49  

you just need to be prepared. Okay, care, my husband’s autistic and I am probably my therapist tells me she’s like 90% sure that I am too. But so I wasn’t nervous. And I have so many people in my life that are autistic. I work with the neurodivergent community. Yeah, you know, it was not. So we finally started nesting and putting things together. My mother in law came out early because we were like just can you just arrive early because we knew we would need support. I knew I couldn’t do it alone. Yeah. My husband is on sleep medication at night so that no hope and help there because knocked out so she came out which was wonderful. And blame my kiddo did not want to leave the womb.

Paulette  9:40  

So that sounds like you made it to 40 weeks pretty, pretty solid. Already one. Yeah. And then and then do we get induced or how does that the day that that they’re born? What does that look like?

Molly  9:52  

So we were induced to scheduled induction I walked my ass off trying to not have a scheduled induction I did. The last thing I wanted was Pitocin. And so we showed up at five o’clock in the morning. And I had already said I didn’t want any I wanted it to be as drug intervent like, I don’t want them touching things. And so they did the balloon to initiate the first little bit which was fine. A little bit to open my cervix. Yeah. Which was fine. It was like uncomfortable but it was it was fine. And that’s when what I wanted for my birth plan and what the hospital wanted for my birth plan decided to go two different directions because I knew that you can have the balloon dilation and not have Pitocin because sometimes it can just kickstart the labor process and I was already having contractions I was already having things and I felt in control at that point. And that is when they were like so we’re gonna start Pitocin

Paulette  10:54  

are they offering that to you as an option or they’re telling you that’s what’s happening

Molly  10:57  

and telling me that that’s what’s happening? Because I had already said I don’t want it and they’re like, Okay, next thing you know, it’s in my IV and I went from having manageable, tolerable contractions to within 20 minutes, not being able to control my body in any way, shape or form because the contractions are so intense. And I just had a nurse that kept telling me you’re not having this baby today. You’re having this baby tomorrow. You still got a good 20 hours ahead of you. Oh, good lord. And I’m sorry, that’s what they were used to seeing. And I wish I had used my brain to be like she doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know how my body is going to react and based off how I feel right now this is going to be over in a couple hours. Because at that point, even though I did not want any pain medication, I didn’t want an epidural. I didn’t want anything. I wanted to just do it because I knew it would. I knew it would come it’s just temporary and it would go away and that it didn’t need to happen this way. And recovery can go really quick for a lot of people. But she kept telling me it was going to drag on forever. And I was running out of energy and we were an hour in. Yeah. And so I said I need the pain meds. Well I barely could talk actually. Yeah, barely. And I finally got them to give me some pain meds. It was the worst decision I could have made for me, because what they don’t tell you is that the pain meds don’t take the pain away. They just make you incapable of advocating for yourself because you can no longer communicate.

Paulette  12:28  

That’s totally interesting. So that’s the thing is like how that epidural works in your body is different for everyone. Right? It’s yeah,

Molly  12:34  

well this was just the pain meds like normal pain meds not even federal yet. Not an epidural yet. This is just IV pain meds. I got to sleep slightly but not really because every time a contraction came it would wake me up and I couldn’t communicate. I was talking so slow. Even I was like why can’t I get my body or my mouse to do the things that I need? And I kept telling them, please check me, please check me but nobody was listening because nobody could understand me and I was just delirious and at one point somebody came in and said You’re scaring people because you’re yelling so much. But I was trying so hard to advocate for myself. But nobody could understand me and people would pat my arm. Oh my God. They were trying to be helpful but I had planned on being in control. I had told them that I wanted to walk around and I wanted to work through these and I was stuck in this bed because I couldn’t control my body because they had given me a medication that I didn’t want, which resulted in me having another medication that I didn’t want that was supposed to help which made things worse. And so a couple more hours went by and I eventually said because she kept coming in and telling me we still got a good 10 hours because they wouldn’t check me. You still got a good 1015 hours before you’re gonna go. And I’m at this point exhausted knowing that I’m going to have to push a baby out of my fucking vagina. Yeah, and you’re telling me I’m going to take forever there’s no way I don’t there’s no rest. There’s no Yeah, so Okay, give me the freaking epidural. Well, they had to check me before they gave me the epidural. I was at nine centimeters within five hours.

Paulette  14:10  

Wow, that is really fast for the first time.

Molly  14:14  

Which is why I was in so much pain. Yes. Yeah. I honestly think that if I hadn’t had the Pitocin and if I hadn’t had the pain medication, it would have been longer. But it would have been something that I could have kept up with and maintained and

Paulette  14:29  

yeah, I was gonna say also if your body doesn’t naturally there’s a symphony of hormones that play out together to help you get through it right. So right, which are cut off if you inject Pitocin just to clarify what I was saying about hormones and Pitocin. Pitocin is the synthetic form of oxytocin that your body naturally produces when you go into labor spontaneously. When you go into labor spontaneously, there is an internal conversation going on between your brain and your body about which hormones to release and when but when your body is getting signals from an IV, the brain and body are no longer in direct communication. So that can affect the hormone next, the endorphins you get a response to the pain of a spontaneous labor, for example, don’t work in the same way when Pitocin is used. Even though you’re still in pain.

Molly  15:16  

Right? So it was just very frustrating. In that point, it took two hours to push the kiddo out. We arrived at five o’clock and Blaine was born at three.

Paulette  15:27  

Wow. Oh my god. That is the fast lane for sure.

Molly  15:31  

Right. And the nurse never was like Oh, I’m sorry to make you think that this is gonna be forever and it only took you five hours. You know,

Paulette  15:38  

this is such a tricky thing about managing expectations, right? I’m on both sides of it. I think don’t don’t say it unless you’re sure there’s no way to be sure. Don’t leave me in the dark and say nothing. Right. I don’t know. I don’t know what the best way to do it is

Molly  15:53  

I think if I had been in a hospital, this hospital still had delivery room and then a room that you go to post delivery. Yeah. And it so it was in that sense a little bit older. They didn’t have a bathtub or really a shower big enough that you could get in to be in there. There was no what we would consider now more common place or thing, accommodations or whatever won’t call them. They didn’t have any of that. And so I come in wanting those things because I know the benefits to them and how they can help the mom do better in these situations. Because again, I’ve had 10 years. Yeah, think about this. You know, I’ve seen lots of people have babies, lots of friends have babies and talk to them about their birth story. So I kind of collected the best knowledge I had from all of them to create what I wanted and I didn’t get any of it. And Blaine came out and and was fine 711 So not even a diet baby. No. So hello. Right but the I will say I did not tear because I did not listen to the doctors at all. At that point. I was kind of coming off them that the pain meds because I was due for another round. But they were like Oh no, you’re about to push we’re not doing that because they you’re not supposed to give them so close to the BBB for and I think and so I was finally in my head and they kept telling me push harder, push harder, push harder. And I was like no because I feel like I’m going to tear and I was just trusting my body. So when my body was like no, don’t wait. I knew well enough that my body would do what it needs to do. And so it did take longer than they wanted it to I will admit that but Blaine was fine didn’t have any adverse reactions to being in the birth canal that long. But I am proud of that because I did listen when I could. And I asked my body where I could where somebody else wasn’t influencing what I was doing. And I luckily didn’t have a doctor that tried to do an easy on me or anything like that, because I’m not about that life. Yeah,

Paulette  17:54  

no, no. I think one thing that’s tricky. It’s hard to embody the person you’ll be in labor before you’re actually there and we all think we’ll be able to advocate for ourselves and that’s just it is such an all encompassing over sensory experience that you there’s no way you’ll be able to be your own lawyer in this right now. Yeah. And I’m imagining that you have an emotional attachment is the idea of being able to have a kid but you didn’t necessarily have an idea that the birth has to go this way or it doesn’t count.

Molly  18:28  

No, I didn’t. Now it’s like, I have things that I know now if for whatever reason I were to ever get pregnant again. Like I have things that I would do differently and I would advocate, I am a much stronger individual now than I was then. Not that I was a weak individual than either, but I know more. I know more and so I think I would do things differently but I don’t have this want to let’s try it again and get it right. Like some people do get that. I was talking to somebody who had a kid as a teenager, and they’re now an adult. And they were like, I just want to know what it’s like to have a kid as an adult and raise the kid as an adult. And I was like, oh, okay, that I can I’ll give that one to you. But yeah, and I will say I really thought that everybody feels this immense Disney like love for their child when their child comes out. And what I have learned after talking to a lot of people, that’s actually not the case. It’s actually the minority of people that are married with lovey dovey eyeballs with their for their baby. Not that I didn’t love my kid when they came out, but it was different. It was still like, that’s a new weird human that I need to get to know. Yeah, who is that thing? So I am now bound to

Paulette  19:44  

I don’t know this with any scientific certainty but I wonder if you go the Pitocin route and your body is not allowed to go through all the cycles of hormones and stuff. Whether you get that feeling and how much of that is a chemical reaction like oxytocin is released once the baby is born and right is that kind of thing. And if you don’t have a birth that looks just like that, whether you’re gonna get that outcome.

Molly  20:08  

Yeah, that makes sense. Because, yeah, I just felt like okay, you’re touching my boob. Alright, you know, what have, you know, my little kiddo looked like a little turtle. So that was, you know, you’re like, what’s with the head and you’re just analyzing your baby so much, because you’re like, Okay, you were in there and I imagined you one way. And now you slightly look like you came from an alien movie. Yeah. And I’m trying to make sense to you look like dad and me, you know? So, yes, but once Blaine was out, things were good. The hospital actually had like many photoshoots that you got to do with the babies and stuff. And so that was nice because I did not have a photographer lined up and so we did end up getting baby pictures because of that. And I was only there for 24 hours. They offered me a second night and I was like, I can’t sleep. Every time the baby’s finally asleep from breastfeeding. You come in and you wake me up to check my temperature like yeah, no, this is not helpful. They did have a nursery and there’s a couple times I actually did send blame to the nursery because I needed some sleep. And if they were going to pay more attention to the baby who didn’t need food right now. I could sleep without being a dolphin. Yeah, I you know because dolphin sleep with one eye open. Yeah, yeah. And then then that’s gonna be helpful. But then once we came home, and I guess it didn’t, it didn’t actually go smoothly. Once we got home. We got home. And breastfeeding was going terribly because we found out six weeks later Blaine was tongue tied. And so it was like having a cat tongue instead of like, it’s supposed to be like a squishy, soft loveliness. Yeah. And it was not. It was like a cat was like in your nipple and that was awful. And so things are chapped and terrible, and I didn’t give up I went the doctor was like, well, you need to not breastfeed for three days. I was like, well then I’m pumping because breastfeeding was what? I don’t like touch so it wasn’t like I need this because it’s going to be connected thing it was, I don’t want to pay for formulas. I’m going to make breastfeeding work, which was an option for my brain. It might not be an option for everybody’s brain. And so I pumped for three days ate all the oatmeal that you could imagine. And I pumped enough for the next three months in this house. Oh my god, I I got milk overnight and it came because I was pumping a whole bunch of all the things that help you. You know, I was eating everything that they said eat to have more milk production

Paulette  22:58  

was fabulous.

Molly  23:00  

Oatmeal. I would eat drink like the tea. There was some other cookies that you can get in the breastfeeding aisles that you could buy there. I don’t even remember anyway was a long time ago. I just remember was a lot of oatmeal.

Paulette  23:14  

Okay, but you were you were doing some kind of special breastfeeding diet and it seems like it worked.

Molly  23:19  

Yeah, I mean, I was just Yeah, I just incorporated anything that could help with the production into into my intake for those three days. And then I pumped every two hours on the clock. So if the baby was feeding, I was pumping and I had a double breast pump. I had an Adela and I loved it and it was wonderful. Definitely had the broad and make it easier. But and I just kept pumping and we kept freezing and for a good couple days I thought I had to pour out all the stuff that was pink note to self as long as you don’t have any communicable diseases that come through blood. You can you can let your baby drink that red blood milk all you want.

Paulette  23:56  

Oh, that’s just find out. Yeah,

Molly  23:57  

I did not know that at the time and I would cry and pour it out because it was taking me like I was everything I was doing. But on day three through day five Blaine didn’t stop crying once. And that’s when I knew something was not right. And so I took them to the doctor and they tested planes poop and it was milk soy protein intolerance. So not only was I not allowed to eat meat while I was pregnant, I now could not have anything with milk. So I at all, just so everybody’s tracking with me. That’s everything at the grocery store.

Paulette  24:35  

I pizza. I love you. I say you

Unknown Speaker  24:39  

buy white bread.

Paulette  24:40  

Yeah, soy.

Molly  24:42  

Soy isn’t everything. Yeah. And even for blamed was so sensitive. I couldn’t have soybean oil, which they say it’s hyperalgesia not for that sense. I should say yeah, I could nothing was soy lecithin, anything like that. And so we went on a very strict diet and laying stuff.

Paulette  25:01  

What could you eat? What did that leave?

Molly  25:03  

So I would just use vegetable. I would specify that things are not have no soy like if it said vegetable oil. I would make sure it said like things that weren’t soy as gradients. So like sunflower oil was usually the thing. A lot of things I just started shopping at like Whole Foods, because it’s much easier to find those indicators at stores like that or Trader Joe’s we just ate meat and vegetable. Yeah. And we kind of kept it at that. I did try signing up for like CompTIA for things like that and get the noise No soy no dairy options for things, which helped for a little bit but then we would get bored eating like literally a steak and a potato. But yeah, so we figured it out. Chipotle was another place I can eat and that was good. But then they also found out that Lane had three little holes in their heart. And so luckily they weren’t large enough that they need to operate but they were that we needed to go in pretty frequently to have it monitored.

Paulette  26:04  

Do they close themselves?

Molly  26:06  

They just did this year. Oh wow. It’s been five years. One closed up within about six months and then three little ones had clustered together. And so this year is the first year that clean does not show any signs of heart defects. So that’s all exciting. And then at six weeks, we had Blaine’s tongue clip because we finally figured out that’s why breastfeeding was so painful and I cried because I didn’t realize that that was how much different it was supposed to feel like it was a night and day difference. And I had mastitis four times in the first three months, sometimes I

Paulette  26:50  

get more likely because they’re not like sucking the right way.

Molly  26:53  

Ironically, I got it after that. And I don’t know why but I really it usually happened because we have missed a feeding and I just was really prone to it I guess because I would get in gorged like crazy. And it took me a while to realize I needed to release the milk no matter what. Yeah. And that was the part that I think was really hard because I’d never been around anybody who

Paulette  27:27  

guys

Molly  27:34  

was sleepless nights a lot because the soy protein intolerance if I ever had it, that would cause things and just there’s a lot of crazy crazy things that people say about baby sleep, but just that sleep deprived state that you’re in is so mind overfitting because like

Paulette  27:57  

I was gonna describe it as a different state of consciousness. Way to walk around in the world.

Molly  28:03  

Yes, and I I really wished I had not done the cried out thing or blame like it really. Now that I understand Blaine’s brain and I understand how blame thinks it’s a huge regret that I have, because it wasn’t necessary. And it’s we actually have backlash from it. So Blaine has huge nighttime separation anxiety and thinks that we won’t respond. If there’s an emergency and it’s all kind of linked together because of how their brain processes rejection. They think that from that it used to be an issue from it’s terrible.

Paulette  28:40  

All I would say the wily as a parent of older kids. Parenting is way fucking harder than it looks. At and then a marketing suggests, yes, you you’re going to make 1000 mistakes because that’s every at every stage, you’re learning something new. And the only thing that matters, I think or what you may have control over is the repair is to recognize that a mistake was made and say this is how we’re going to do it from here on I’m sorry, I did that. I’m learning but there’s no way to avoid the mistakes. I don’t think.

Molly  29:11  

No. And that’s the one thing that we’ve incorporated is apologizing. Yeah, as soon as we figure out that we’ve done something that has caused harm in some way is being like oh we didn’t know that. That happened. Yeah, we’re so sorry. That happened. And I find that Blaine really appreciates knowing that we make mistakes, and then we’re able to talk to him. I do my five year old is like going on 50 But

Paulette  29:39  

that’s probably even more important, right? If they’re an old soul, they appreciate that but I think it does make kids feel seen to have that conversation and they are forgiving and it’s you know, people will make mistakes and you’re showing them that it’s okay to make mistakes and this is what you This is how you recover.

Molly  29:54  

Yes, and blame is just some magical little kid.

Paulette  29:58  

That’s awesome. For the record I to regret daily.

Posted on

Episode 93SN: A Path out of Infertility: Molly’s Story, Part I

When she was 18, a doctor told her that getting pregnant would be challenging, without offering any suggestions about how to improve her odds. She worked for ten years to prove this doctor wrong–and when she was on the brink of giving up, it happened–she got pregnant.

 In today’s episode my guest offers advice about what she would’ve done differently when pursuing the health issue that likely contributed to her trouble with fertility, she shares the dramatic story of finding out she was ,in fact pregnant after 10 years of trying, and suggests ways of thinking about medical advice that may alter how you take hard information in. What follows is the first part of our conversation.

General Information about Endometriosis & PCOS

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pcos/conditioninfo/causes

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/endometriosis#:~:text=Endometriosis%20is%20an%20idiopathic%20condition,discuss%20it%20with%20a%20doctor.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6283441/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pcos/symptoms-causes/syc-20353439

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/endometriosis/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20354661

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicebroster/2020/08/27/why-it-takes-so-long-to-be-diagnosed-with-endometriosis-according-to-a-expert/?sh=41ec7fb56967

Clomid

https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/how-does-clomid-work

https://www.forbes.com/health/family/what-is-clomid/

Ketogenic Diet/Keto Flu

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/24003-ketosis#:~:text=from%20Cleveland%20Clinic-,Ketosis%20is%20a%20metabolic%20state%20that%20occurs%20when%20your%20body,energy%20and%20treating%20chronic%20illness.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/keto-flu-symptoms#how-to-get-rid-of-it

False Positive Pregnancy Test

https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/false-positive-pregnancy-test#user-error

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/getting-pregnant/in-depth/home-pregnancy-tests/art-20047940#:~:text=A%20false%2Dpositive%20might%20happen,fertility%20medicine%20that%20contains%20HCG%20.

Audio Transcript

Molly  0:02  

To this day, there are still days of like, Wait, we have a baby. We had one, we’re good, we’re good because that that 10 years of being infertile . It’s a very specific concept that you have about yourself  it’s really hard to shake

Paulette  0:20  

Welcome to war stories from the womb. This is a show that shares experiences of getting pregnant. being pregnant, giving birth. To help shift the common cultural narrative, away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition. You can find all kinds of media. It also celebrates the resilience and strength that it takes to create another person and release that  person of your body I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls and boys I struggle with this transition. In today’s episode, my guest offers advice about what she would have done differently when pursuing the health issue that likely contributed to her trouble with fertility. She also shares the dramatic story of finding out she was pregnant after 10 years of trying and suggests ways of thinking about medical advice that may alter how you take in heart information. That follows is the first part of our conversation. 

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

Molly 1:32  

I’m Molly Hicks. And I am from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Paulette  1:35  

Oh, wow. What is it just completely winter there right now? 

Molly  1:42  

No, it’s like this weird mix between spring and winter where like it can’t really decide which season it wants to be. So we keep going to freezing and then it’s like being freezing.

Paulette  1:54  

Well, I’m both happy and sorry to hear that. Yes, exactly. So before we jumped on this interview, you mentioned that you are a podcaster.

Molly  2:05  

Yes. I co host a podcast with my friend Angela. It’s called Drudgery, Dreams and In Between and it’s for neurodivergent weirdos and

Paulette  2:15  

struggling to human. I like it and here’s an interview or what’s the

Molly  2:20  

sometimes we have a format where Angela and I come on and talk about subjects that need to be talked about, especially for later diagnosed or divergent events or late late realization fears. You know, either way that like just talking about that the struggle it is to come to terms with some of these things, and we occasionally have guests on I usually talk a lot from the parent component. And so we had an expert in teaching and we just interviewed a guest who is the founder of a neuro divergent focused company. So

Paulette  2:53  

wow, that’s very cool. Okay, so we’re going to talk about kids and families and sometimes the family you create is in some ways, either a reflectiojn, or a projection of the family you come from. So I’m wondering, did you grow up with siblings? And did you think I want kids how does that unfold for you?

Molly  3:13  

So I was obsessed with pregnancy as a kid. And I was raised Catholic. My dad’s convert, but my mom’s from the Catholic family. And my mom had five siblings. My dad had seven siblings. And growing up, there was three of us and now there we have an additional sibling. That was born when I was 20. And growing up, no offense to my siblings, but I did not want them.

Paulette  3:45  

Where are you? Where are you in the lineup?

Molly  3:47  

I’m the oldest. And so it was just like, my memories. of sibling interactions aren’t always positive. And I mean, it is what it is, right? You’re kids, you have opinions and they get stuck in your head. But like I remember when the next sibling was two, and I was eight, seven or eight and my mom’s like, well go play. Since you’re bored. Go play the two year old or you know, and it’s like, what? I’m What am I supposed to do with the two year old like, I don’t know what to do with a two year old. They just want to sit in a corner and scream. I don’t want to do that. You know, and it was just those types of things. And so growing up I always had this concept of like if I if I have a kiddo, I want that kiddo to not feel pressures from other siblings or feel held back because now there’s too many kids. No offense to people who have lots of kids like this fine. Just having been the oldest and as more kids came, I got to do less your I got less attention or I got less things. And I didn’t want that for mine. So if they were ever happened, and I remember a time where I was like, I’ll have four and then I went to I do not want any because I worked at a daycare and then that that taught me I don’t want to make this I don’t have patience. Like so. So for things like that. And I did grow up into a bigger family where we had lots of cousins and they were all around all the time. I don’t like people that much, so

Paulette  5:22  

It usually cuts one way or the other either. You think I want exactly this or I want you right. So, so you do have a child. So how do we bridge that gap? And and you were talking before we got onto record about other struggles. So maybe take us there.

Molly  5:40  

Yes. So my uterus and I never agreed, even as a young teenager, it wanted to do its thing. make myself feel like I was being you know, ruined from the inside out. I didn’t want it to do that. Differences of opinion. And so I remember I joined the military. I went to my annual pap exam and in the waiting room was a Reader’s Digest. And I had just we’ve been married for gotten married for maybe like six or seven months. And it said that if you haven’t gotten pregnant in the first six months of marriage, that you probably have something else going on. Even with all the odds, at that point. Usually something happened that you are aware of. So I went into my appointment and I said, Excuse me, the Reader’s Digest has told me this mind blowing thing, and she’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, you probably just Yeah, it’ll be a problem. And I was 18 and I took that as a challenge. Like, to my heart, I was like, Well, if you’re gonna tell me I can’t, I’m going to show you I can. This just underlines the neurodivergent brain thinking pattern. But

Paulette  6:46  

did she do anything specific did she say you have endometriosis or something? 

Molly  6:51  

no, they there was like no details. Oh, and I was in tech school, so I couldn’t really investigate too much. all of my symptoms were extremely heavy periods, severe cramping to the point of not being able to function, super long cycles that were asynchronous. they did not line up. So classic symptoms of endometriosis or PCOS that,

Paulette  7:13  

yeah. So, unfortunately volley. too many women fell into the abyss that is women’s reproductive health as it relates to endometriosis, and PCOS or PCOS. Endometriosis occurs when the tissue that normally lines the uterus, the endometrium grows outside. And PCOS involves a hormone imbalance that interferes with the ways the ovaries function. Both conditions are difficult to diagnose, and can contribute to infertility. Endometriosis can come with heavy or irregular periods or meaningful periods, and or spotting or bleeding between periods. It’s diagnosed with a pelvic exam ultrasound and maybe a laparoscopy. It can take on average between six and 10 years to diagnose PCOS or PCOS can come with irregular periods, eccess facial and body hair and infertility. According to the Mayo Clinic, there’s no single test or diagnosis of ethos that may fall from a discussion of your cycles with your doctor and ultrasound and or a blood test looking for hormone imbalance, what conditions they have a partially genetic basis. If women in your family have these conditions, that is sometimes a clue. But it looks like there’s no definitive explanation for why these conditions develop.

Molly  8:30  

My mom was just like, that’s normal. Now looking back on my normal I should have gone to the doctor. But so we ended up at our first duty station and I scheduled a consult with gynecology. And they said, Yeah, we think you have endometriosis. We’re gonna test this and they put me on Lupron

Paulette  8:52  

That’s like an estrogen blocker, estrogen blocker.

Molly  8:55  

And so for six months, I had chemical menopause, which is wonderful.

Paulette  8:59  

And does that mean you had like hot flashes and no sleep,

Molly  9:03  

couldn’t sleep,  hot Flashes the whole thing it was other than, you know, I would read my estrogen levels would recover and I would be a better term functioning uterus with ovaries. It was the legit menopause situation. And after that, they said yes, the symptoms went away. You do have endometriosis, but honestly nothing got better. I never got pregnant, we ended up doing several cycles of Clomid I think we did a year and a half of Clomid.

Paulette  9:35  

Okay, so what does Clomid do and how does it work? Clomid binds to receptors in your brain to block estrogen. This makes your body think that your estrogen is low and that makes it release normal FSH to increase estrogen and in this process, FSH helps oocytes grow into mature eggs.

Molly  9:53  

Lots of ultrasound, lots of everything. We did IUI which is inner uterine area insemination that had no lot.

Paulette  10:02  

I did that too. And before my first one, I assumed that the doctor would be in her clinic with a turkey baster.

Molly  10:08  

I know I had no sense of what it would look like. I know it was so odd. I was like wait, are we sticking a needle somewhere because then they get the tubes out that are like when they’re going to draw blood with the butterfly. And I was like, Wait, what are we doing? And it was all fine. But yeah, and after that, I ended up having a exploratory laparoscopy which showed that I didn’t have endometriosis I did have some type of weird webbing going on everywhere. And then I had parents who will assess so they took an app that out and they were like, everything should be fine now. It was not it didn’t change. But they did say at that point. They started looking at my tests for my hormones and realize actually has PCOS. And so then I started getting into Metformin, my weight started becoming a bigger issue because I was getting older. So then I was not a teenager anymore. You know, I’m actually an adult, actual adult now. And so all of my hormones were starting to level out and I was just getting a whole bunch of funk. And so by the time we get to this point, it’s been 10 years and never ever that we know obviously we could have gotten pregnant and miscarried and  never know. And I think that’s the point that people really don’t understand is that you don’t always know if it’s early. Like you couldn’t present it and I I hate when people ask me that question for all I know, I’ve been pregnant 100 times. I only know what’s you know, and so we moved. We finally both were out of the military both are medically retired for various things. And it had been 10 years and I was super heavy at that point. I’m five foot one. And I was up to 200 pounds. I was really unhealthy. I was not in a great mental state. Because again, bipolar disorder has issues. I didn’t know I was bipolar at the time. They told me I had something else and so I was on medicine that I should have been on

Paulette  11:56  

So I don’t really know how bipolar works, but it can’t have helped your mental state to have your hormones slingshotting all over the place. Right?

Molly  12:05  

No, I’ve always struggled with extreme depression and then go into these, these other cycles where I’m super productive, always on never sleeping kind of going and I have bipolar two specifically not bipolar one. And so I tried to explain it as you’re happy was my sort of sad because my range of well I’m assuming that you’re happy but my emotions were so far apart from each other. I just had this extended range. Yeah. And so when I went from one to the other, it was significant. And so now I medication they’ve they’ve lowered the peaks on both end. And so now I have a somewhat normal range but for a good two months when it first started I had to relearn my emotions because I had no actual gauge of what I was feeling anymore. And so yes, having hormonal changes does not help with that at all. So I ended up losing about 50 pounds because they stopped the medication abruptly and didn’t wean the off of it and I got extremely sick and I went through withdrawal. And so I lost 50 pounds in less than three months.

Paulette  13:16  

Wow.

Molly  13:18  

It was hard. People kept looking at me like are you okay? I’m like why is everybody looking at me like this? And then I eventually tried on my clothes I had I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention or something. But I was doing this with my clothes. Are you holding? I was holding out it was like one of those limbs fast commercials from the 90s Were they like in a pair of pants? It was like that.

Paulette  13:41  

So for people who haven’t seen it. Pants and the pair of pants was meant for someone else because the waist is so big.

Molly  13:46  

Yeah, right, correct. Yes. And as I was getting healthy I had signed up to go to a consult with a leading IVF doctor in the Syracuse, New York area. People traveled from around the world see this guy and I was like, this is the guy. This is the guy. But I’d also kind of come to terms with this may just not happen for us. If this guy talks to us and it’s the same thing that we’ve been hearing. I just keep I’m done. Crying while peeing on sticks is only something you can do for like so long, you know? So we went and they did an ultrasound and they found a polyp. And but they couldn’t get any blood out of me to do bloodwork because I always dehydrated and so it just couldn’t get it. And so they said okay, well we have a lot of success when our patients go on a keto diet. So we want you to go on this keto diet because for some reason, butter in your coffee gets people pregnant. Sure, okay. Fine, whatever. At this point. I haven’t tried this. This is the thing I haven’t tried so short. Yeah. And so that day I started keto. And we have a family picnic a couple of days later and I was eating a keto friendly meal and I was just like, I’m just not feeling it. And my aunt was like, Oh, you might have keto flu. I was like, Oh, okay.

Paulette  15:16  

Okay, so lots of people have heard about the ketogenic diet. The point of the ketogenic diet is to put your body into ketosis, which is a metabolic state in which your body burns fat instead of glucose. In general, ketogenic diets follow some form of a high fat, some protein and low carb performance. And it looks like scientists don’t really understand what causes the so called keto flu, but they think it may be a human reaction or a change in the gut microbiome or some kind of carb withdrawal.

Molly  15:46  

And so I went two weeks, and I was just sick all the time. And I was like, if I have to eat ricotta cheese one more time, like no, and everybody kept going, are you pregnant? And I’m like, No, I’m not fucking pregnant. Because I have never been and I’m just sick because the goddamn keto flu, and I just have to eat so much fat and dairy and it’s just not what I like, because I just want my goddamn vegetables. You know, so I kept saying this and I was throwing up I couldn’t keep anything down. I looked green. It was awful. And eventually, it was fine. Wait, wait,

Paulette  16:21  

I’m gonna stop you right here. Yeah. So I’ve dabbled in the whole keto world. My sense of the Keto flu is it’s like three days or something. Yes, but you’re still thinking is the Keto flu because you’re assuming there’s no way to be pregnant and residual makes sense?

Molly  16:37  

This the only thing that makes sense is that I have because obviously, after 10 years, I would need something more than a random fluke.

Paulette  16:45  

Yeah, you’re correct. And you haven’t done other than the IUI we haven’t done anything else, yet.

Molly  16:48  

Yeah, well, I’ll be like Clomid and like ultrasounds time we had did We did HCG snapshots and injections and things like that. But but we didn’t do IVF. That was and so I was like, fine. I went home and I was like, I need to go get a pregnancy test because we didn’t have any home because I had stopped carrying them in the house because why would you carry something in the house that always tells you you’re a bad person? At least that’s how I felt doesn’t really tell me. And my partner was like, I’m not buying another test. I said, but everybody thinks we’re pregnant. We got to prove to them that we’re not pregnant. So everybody will stop suggesting the test was positive.

Paulette  17:29  

But at that point, I oh my god, wait, let’s not run past this part.

Molly  17:34  

So you get the test is your program reading outside the bathroom? I sit outside the bathroom. My husband was in the bathroom. And he is the one that looked at the text and was like it’s positive and he’s an asshole sometimes. So I thought he was playing with me. And I was like, this is not fun. I agree. And like then the shock like then I realized, oh, no, he’s in shock. And I was like, Oh my God, and I just kept saying, Oh my God 400 times. And Steven goes, Do you want to call your mom and I was like, We got to look up how you could possibly have a false positive because this cannot be true. We were convinced this was still wrong.

Paulette  18:14  

I agree. Why are we at CVS right now getting more tests.

Molly  18:18  

So I had another test and I was like, I’ll take it in the morning. Maybe it’s a thing because it’s 12 o’clock at night because we stayed up to do this thing. And I should note that our dog had randomly started sleeping on top of my belly a week or two prior and I was like, you weird dog. So evidently, my husband stayed up that night, researching false positives and found out that common false positive for pregnancy tests is, is cervical cancer. 

Paulette  18:44  

Okay, so just a note here about false positive pregnancy tests. There are a host of reasons you can get a false positive, most of which are relatively benign. These tests are looking for hCG. If you’re taking medication that increases HCG that could throw the test off, in general, according to the Mayo Clinic are false positives are uncommon.

Molly  19:08  

And so we were convinced that I had cancer. Now, this is not to make anybody who has had cervical cancer feel like something. This is just how convinced we were that we could not possibly be pregnant or cancer was a more realistic alternative to us. So I took the second test in the morning it was positive again. So I immediately call the clinic that we weren’t going to the IVF doctor, and I was like, I’ve had two pregnancy tests. And I I think I’m dying, because of course, overreacting. And she goes come in now, because they did not expect me to say that I had a positive pregnancy. So we came in and it’s been two weeks. I had lost like four pounds in these two weeks. And so they are doing the ultrasound and my husband goes so what are you looking for? How do you know your baby and the lady goes? We got to see the baby on the screen. And that’s when they told us that the polyp that they found when we came in was the yolk sac. 

Paulette  20:24  

Wow, oh my God, plot twist but

Molly  20:30  

I mean, because I was supposed to to get a DNC to take the polyp out.

Paulette  20:35  

Oh my god. So so so I’m worried for you when you call the clinic worried for you on your way and you’re like they’re gonna confirm my cervical cancer this the worst day in the world. At what point do we break free from that and just there’s joy or something else.

Molly  20:51  

There wasn’t joy till the baby was born honestly. Well, that’s even mix. There are to this day, there are still days of like, Wait, we have a baby. We had one. We’re good. We’re good because that that 10 years of being infertile like it. It’s a very specific concept that you have about yourself. It’s really hard to shake. And you’re not like other people who get pregnant by breathing. And so they can’t relate with you and you really can’t relate with them because not everybody has. I mean, there are some people who have been exposed to miscarriage their friends or family or have experienced themselves and so they have a rational fear of that first trimester. But not everybody does and some people get pregnant in their life. And they just Yeah. And they’re happy and excited. And I was constantly just pregnant. 

Paulette

I imagine its a huge mindshift to go from not being able to get pregnant to being pregnant.

the first time I had sex with intention, I’d be pregnant and I was like oh, is this seems to work. Just keep going. Seemed

like we weren’t trying to get pregnant. No, it just told me that and actually I have a interview. A while ago, my daughter’s friends told her no one no one ever be told this. Alicia like missing the machine. Right? Because she said, you know, pregnancy often happens, right? Whether you want it to or not. And it’s great. I control it and I wish that no one had ever said that. Right there’s a lot of times

Molly  23:28  

and it made it so that was the only focus for a long time. Like it. It took all the fun away of being a newlywed. It took a lot of that those early years we were already under stressful conditions because I was in the military. We were on a team away from home. You were living in Monterey, and you know, family was several if not 10 states away. We were all of these things that like looking back and like oh, we needed to be alone and you know, let us learn how to be ourselves and figure out who we are as a couple and you know, our boundaries. Didn’t even know about boundaries that back then. But all of those things kind of add us to a lot of us. Yeah. All of those things that taken away. The doctor didn’t mean to do that. And it wasn’t like I was purposely doing that to myself. My brain just latched on to it. And it was like, this is the only thing we’ve

Paulette  24:27  

got to fix this. This is not okay. Yeah, yeah, of course I am assuming doctors have the best of intentions and they’re trying to prepare you for something. But I guess I think that’s a little bit of an unknowable thing. You know, more humility or more uncertainty about the prediction would be great.

Molly  24:47  

Absolutely. It would have it would have been better for her to reframe it for me as maybe you just have a uterus that needs more attention. You know, Oh, well. Do you have any of these other things, but you do. Let’s try and figure out that because that’s something we need to address before you get pregnant any way or anytime of reframe there. But, I mean, it turned out I’m not I’m not simply a person that things worked out the way they worked out. But in hindsight, I’m glad it took 10 years because I would not have been in the right state of mind or been as capable to handle all the things that I have to handle. Now. Especially with my, my specific, kiddo I mean, it would have been different specific it’ll probably then

Paulette  25:36  

I think I couldn’t boil an egg at 18. So like, there’s something to be said. So you’re pregnant now. And do you lose the sickness after you’ve crossed the threshold of the first trimester?

Molly  25:51  

No, it stayed the whole time. I could not eat any protein during the pregnancy. Wow. So I literally Well, I mean, I cheese but I can eat pizza and Brownie. Occasionally gonna have some pasta but even that was started when my partner and I got I got mushroom ravioli because they were supposed to be not one of the things that was an issue and I still got sick. And so I got but on site clean just which is a combination of two things you can get over the counter, but when it’s combined into this bill, it’s extra helpful or something. And so that at least made it so that I could keep things down and most of the time, I still had to keep to the rules of don’t eat certain things otherwise, nothing can save me. But I at least was keeping things down which is good. And I gained a lot of weight though because you know, and by the time I was five or six months pregnant, I was swollen. Just all over and I don’t know. At the time I didn’t feel that swollen and I felt fine and fabulous. But looking back at pictures I’m like, how did we not get concerned about the amount of water that is protruding from my feet?

Paulette  27:17  

Well, let me ask you a question because this was and this was the case for me that may not be for you but I my first pregnancy was a giant disaster. And that’s not entirely because of that. The second one I was panicked the entire time. I threw up every single day. I’m a vegetarian, the Olympia pull downs, hot dogs. Disgusting, but that’s what I could eat. So I totally relate. To your by state of my lane, which I’ve used to be things that have been all worked out. But I tend to think when, I look back on that pregnancy that part of that was emotional, or that was that I was freaking out internally. I don’t know that you could see it necessarily but I was really nervous. too. So do you think some of yours was also concerned that this pregnancy would go to the end? Or?

Molly  28:05  

Well, there was that and then there’s extra chaos? So I had been the breadwinner until I got pregnant. And then my partner and I had a conversation and we acknowledge that I was the only adult in the house that actually could handle children. And so I needed to stay home because that was I had the skills. And so he went and looked for a job and he got a job and it was in West Virginia, and we were living in New York. And so I found out I was pregnant. The first week of November by January 1, he was in West Virginia. I was three or four months pregnant. We didn’t even know anything. We didn’t do the anatomy scan or anything yet. And so that was an extra stress load on everything but there was also just the added fear of what if I slip What if I fall? What if this is going on? What is that going on? What about this? We have a genetic cocktail in my family that’s kind of not helpful for a lot of things. And so you know what, if any of those come to light and then because I research when I panic, it was what is my birth plan going to be I had seen my my younger sister had already had two kids. And so I had been there for one of them and things did not go according to any of the plans.

Paulette  29:27  

I’m gonna stop my conversation with Molly here. I totally appreciate her sharing her health conditions and neurodivergent viewpoint affected her life and her pursuit of pregnancy. Once you are pregnant, you know how much physical and emotional effort it takes to keep up with doctor’s appointments. Now add 10 years of doctor’s appointments to the front end of that failed pregnancy tests hope and disappointment. Molly’s is really an inspiring story about perseverance and grit among other things. Next Friday, I’ll share the rest of our conversation. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it with friends and or write a review telling everyone your life was changed forever by the show.

We’ll be back next week with the rest of this inspiring story.

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Episode 92SN: When Postpartum happens in a Pandemic: Julia’s Story, Part II

Scientists often study extreme cases to learn about the mechanics of a phenomenon. Many women found themselves running this kind of experiment in their own homes. How would the postpartum period–a time marked by isolation–feel when the whole world was isolating?

In today’s episode, author of the Upstairs House Julia Fine, reflects on her experience having her second child in the heart of the pandemic, and how the difference between a pre pandemic postpartum and a pandemic postpartum taught her something important about the period.  She shares some advice she wishes she’d received before she had kids and talks about how having language around some of the dramatic challenges we face as caregivers in those early months can change our experience of them. I also include insights from Dr. Patel, a former OB who now focuses on helping women in the postpartum period, on how to combat cultural expectations around motherhood in this period.

Click here to find Julia’s work, including The Upstairs House

To connect with Dr. Patel for postpartum coaching, click here

Audio Transcript

Paulette kamenecka  0:03  

Hi, welcome to War Stories from the womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth. To help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions of this enormous transition, you can find on all kinds of media to a more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strength it takes to create a better person and release that new person from your body into the world. I’m your host, Paulette kamenecka. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls and boy did I struggle with this transition. 

In today’s episode, Julia reflects on her experience having a second child and the heart of the pandemic and how, the difference between postpartum pandemic postpartum or something important about the period. She shares some advice she wishes she’d received. Before she gave kids. And how, having language around some of the dramatic challenges we face as caregivers in those early months can change our experience. I also include insights from Dr. Patel on how to combat cultural expectations around motherhood, the postpartum period. We left off last week with Julia talking about being home with her firstborn just after birth.

Julia  1:15  

Then when my husband went back to work, it was really really hard. You know, I had gone from having my own life and my own creative work and teaching to like, you know, the baby was my full time job and it wasn’t sleeping. And my son still doesn’t have a six and it’s still awful. And that has been like from day one, which is a terrible sleeper. We didn’t even get those good. The first few newborn nights that people get with that fool you into thinking that oh, it’s not that bad. We didn’t even get those. It was just it was just exhausting.

Paulette  1:50  

Yeah, but that’s super hard. And did you have did you have breastfeeding ambition?

Julia  1:54  

I yeah, I breastfed. He latched very easily, but I was not prepared for how much it would hurt to start, just like how painful it would be to have that adjustment. So I remember saying, I’m only going to do this for another week or so. And I said that a year I said, I’m only going to do it for another week. And ultimately, because it was so much less expensive to nurse him if he could nurse we want a full year.

Paulette 2:18  

Yeah, yeah, well, good. Well, God worked out, but it sounds like you were not emotionally attached to them.

Julia  2:23  

Not really. I don’t know if I would have felt differently had it been hard to nurse but we had a fairly easy time. I did really resent it for a while. Especially I remember it was my first so he was born April 29. And so my first Mother’s Day would have been a week and a half later, maybe everyone should come over. We were gonna go to the farmers market because walking distance, but he just wanted to nurse and so I was just sitting on the couch breastfeeding. And finally it was like I guess all of you our place was pretty small. And it was my husband’s whole family was there so it’s like I guess you guys just go and I remember just sitting there feeling so resentful of the fact that they were there and I was doing this and I don’t know why. You know, it’s I I wouldn’t have wanted them to stay. But you know, there wasn’t there wasn’t a better solution, but I it was very frustrating and I think I felt very frustrated. For a lot of my early motherhood experience.

Paulette   3:23  

I took this issue to Dr. Patel. Julia talks about feeling frustrated and resentful in those early days because of you know, the demands put on her exclusively and the pain of breastfeeding and no sleeping and I think there are these strong cultural expectations around motherhood that it’s about selflessness. And so you know, we talk about taking care of mom, but we don’t really want mom to take care of mom is many people’s perception of it. That’s like a false suggestion. So what advice would you give to new moms? How do you navigate that?

Dr. Patel  3:55  

It’s a wonderful question and a very tough one because this is actually a lot of what I try to work with because it’s about mindset. And here’s the thing: 

4:07  

women are made guilty or ashamed of themselves especially in the learning period. to do is to think about where feeling coming from, is it because you are trying to do something that is expected of you but doesn’t feel right to you? Is it expectations you have for yourself? What are those expectations based on? And what exactly are your priorities and what do you really want? So by thinking about what are your internal priorities like whether it say okay, it’s really important to me that I breastfeed my baby. It’s not as important to me when I think about it deep down that my house be perfect for guests or that I look perfect. If that were the case, I would ask mom to really think about the other things that she is being made to feel guilty or selfish for and to just let it go and accept that your priorities are your priorities. And you are doing what you feel is right and that is perfectly fine.

Paulette 5:17  

Yeah, I feel like there is no analog to how dependent a baby is so you don’t have any experience of being that necessary and required for someone else.

Julia  5:27  

Yeah, and nobody else can do it, especially if you’re breastfeeding because it’s not like like eventually we started I pumped a little bit and my husband would take one shifts. And that felt a little bit better but then you still have to pump. I don’t know it’s a lot.

Paulette 5:44  

It is. It is unbelievable. I mean, this is why you live with extended family. Right? This is yeah, it turns out that was a genius idea, which we did not

Julia  5:52  

know now. My youngest is now two and a half and we’re only just it’s like they’re only just coming up for air in terms of not  being stressed about raising kids. Constantly. Now, we’re only stressed about raising kids like 80% of the time.

Paulette  6:09  

Yeah, I want you to the time is required, of course. So it sounds like your husband also didn’t didn’t flag maybe you have depression.

Julia  6:19  

He? Yeah, I think we just didn’t know. I mean, he definitely he also was working long hours immediately come back to work and when he was around, he’s a great he’s a very good co parent and especially at this point sort of post pandemic in work from home. Life. He is absolutely it just was night and day with my daughter of how involved he could be in those early days. And that’s something that I think about COVID in the pandemic we wouldn’t have gotten but with my son it was. I was just by myself a lot because he had to work and he was the sole breadwinner at that point because I had left my job because it didn’t make sense to adjunct and pay for childcare and try to work on this novel that I was working on. So it was it was really rough actually. So this is funny too. So when we had the baby, we were living in a two bedroom but it was a lofted two bedroom so the second bedroom only had half of a wall and that wall was shared with the kitchen and I just remember it was fine when the baby was in with us. But we set up that second room we set it all up as a nursery and we were like finally we can put him in his own room and have our time and our space and like get back to our relationship. And then we realized nobody nobody warned us again. This is where I’d maybe if I had had friends with kids that could have been like you can’t put a baby there with that shared wall with the lights gonna get it in the sounds gonna get in and that’s not how it works. So the first time we put them in there and we were like Did we just like hide on our tiny balcony do a pull up in our bedroom. We’re in such a small space. So we ended up breaking our lease and moving because it was just untenable. But yeah, so that’s something we’ve everyone’s like, what advice do you have for your kids? Well, if you’re in an apartment, make sure you have four full walls for the kids room.

Paulette 8:06  

Totally, totally. That is totally true. And I asked about your husband in part because in your book, Megan’s husband is pretty quick to accept her suggestion that it’s nothing because yeah, I mean we all want it to be nothing right? That’s that’s like a completely human reaction. But when I was reading it, I found myself yelling at him. I was like Ben, no, dont’ believe him!

Julia  8:31  

he’s not great. He’s the he’s not that is not modeled at all. After my experience. I had so much more support the family I had to live my mom read the book too. And she’s like, this is it and as a Tory, these are not my parents. These are not my in laws. This is all fiction. But yeah, I sort of I in order to tell the story I want to tell I needed him to be a little more out of the picture. And I needed him to believe her and it also a lot of the book too is sort of about inauthenticity and relationships almost are about sort of how you know an ideal idealized view of what a relationship should be can sort of ruin what your relationship actually is. So I think in that particular relationship between Megan like she has never especially been herself and open with him and so it’s like, why would she start now, Bear?

Paulette   9:21  

On this topic of the difference between what you feel in this process and what you think you should feel? I’m going to read an excerpt from the upstairs house. In this scene. Meghan the main character has just given birth and is in the hospital. Julia writing in the voice of her main character says there’s nothing like the bond you will feel upon first meeting said Mrs. What to expect the Rush of  love will be overwhelming. I looked at Clara puffy little larva mouthful sang and I waited for the bond. I waited for the rush of love. There were needles still stuck in my arm. Maybe they were interfering and one more excerpt a few pages later, Megan is still in the hospital and feeling off. And she says to the nurse. Wait, I said I think there’s something the matter. The nurse pressed down on my abdomen. It all feels fine. Totally normal. No, I mean, Ben was coming into the room rolling the bassinet in front of them. It looks so happy so perfectly content. Nevermind I said. I must just be tired. The nurse smiled again parted the curtains and walked out the door. Do you want to hold her for a minute before the family gets here? finessed passing Claire over before I could respond. I wanted to want to hold her. So I nodded even while realizing that I didn’t want to hold her. There she was in my arms. 

Paulette: There were a lot of things that you wrote that I thought this is a perfect description of what it is of what it is as opposed to what what we’re imagining it should be or you’ve been told what we’ve been told to expect. So so it sounds like your older son is two when you get pregnant again, because they’re three years. 

Julia: Yeah, he was two and change.

Paulette  10:53  

And is it easy to get pregnant again? Super easy. Okay, good.

Julia  10:57  

We were so lucky. Yeah, we I think it was two months and then I was pregnant and it was difficult. Again, I had I think I had a normal level of national probably about the same as it was but because I also was caring for a toddler. It was harder, but then I was five months pregnant in March of 2020. And that was very, very, very hard, just emotionally and access to my OB. And I mean, it was hard. Sort of the question of like, are you higher risk, what would happen and I was so hormonal, and I think everybody was breaking down and crying. So in that in that respect, it wasn’t that different. But it was, you know, my idea of, oh my gosh, I’ve done this before I’ve got it. It’s going to be so easy this time around and it just, you know, went out the window.

Paulette  11:52  

My kids are older so I didn’t face the fears you described as a pregnant woman in COVID. But when COVID hit I thought immediately of pregnant woman I thought oh my god, it’s such a vulnerable place to be as a pregnant woman. It’s so it just makes COVID 1000 times harder, especially with a toddler because 

Julia  12:09  

It was very hard. You know, the one nice thing like I said, is that my husband was sent home and so at least he was there, you know, physically present even if he was working. I wasn’t alone alone, but it was. Yeah, I feel like I I have a few very strong memories of that time and then the rest I feel like I’m just like, blacked it out.

Paulette kamenecka  12:34  

So how imagining you’re going to the doctor by yourself?

Julia  12:36  

Yeah. It was I had I think it was about 20 weeks. So I had my 20 week. No, because he wasn’t there it had I think that people were there were like whispers at my 20 week scan. And he personally I think there was some kids meeting or something. So I’d been there by myself. But then after that meeting, I had to go by myself. It was like you went through. You waited in your car. For them to say that it was time to go into the building and take the elevator up and it was like you went through sort of the hazmat and everybody and it was yeah, it was very weird. And then there were a few appointments to that. I think they were like we’ll just do this virtually because if you say you’re feeling fine, then we believe you because nobody knew. 

I remember the first time that I went to the OB sort of once we knew what was happening post lockdown and it was just terrifying to be like, am I going to get COVID and kill my child by going to try to get help for my child in utero. It just was a mind trip and I hadn’t left the house in four weeks to it was very weird but yeah, what really was amazing was the fact that the nurses the OB is and the staff at the hospital were going in and coming in there and made it feel like it was weird, but it was i don’t know i They were really just such superheroes. It was really amazing.

Paulette   14:03  

It is what healthcare workers did for the pandemic is completely amazing. And, you know, whatever anxiety you might have come with has now been turned up to 11 because

Julia  14:15  

the worst part so my daughter was actually four weeks premature. She was right on the cusp of being an official preemie baby. If he had waited a few days, she would not even have technically been a preemie. But she was like four weeks, three days or something. And my inlaws at that point, it was June and my inlaws had started venturing out of the house and we still were just like, we went nowhere. We started nobody. We were just very, very careful. And so my in laws were like going to start quarantining so that if the baby came early, come and be our child care for my older child. And the day they were going to start quarantining. I just started bleeding and they said, come in and they’re like, up, you’re having the baby now and so there was a period there where we weren’t sure the baby, her heart rate was accelerated. And there were some weird complications of like, we don’t know if it’s going to be a C section or what’s going to happen when they weren’t sure because my husband was with my son. We weren’t sure if we were gonna get childcare and he would even be there for the labor and I was waiting on the COVID test. So I didn’t know if I was going to be in the COVID Waiting, in which case my husband couldn’t come regardless, there was all of those things all at the same time, and like this 25 minute period, which is probably the most stressed I’ve ever been in my entire life, and they all ended up falling in our favor. I didn’t need the C section. My dad at 1am picked up his phone and volunteered to stay for a night with my son, and I didn’t have COVID but it was just it was a vastly different experience because I wasn’t having contractions because it was just an early like random  bleed, but emotionally it was really wild.

Paulette kamenecka  15:57  

Yeah, that sounds super stressful. So was the bleeding and indication that the labor was on?

Julia  16:02  

Yeah, so retrospectively my doctors maybe your water started to break or maybe something they don’t really know what it was. But yeah, I had called thinking they’d be like, come in, and then they’d send me right home and so they’re like going over and bidding you if you’re gonna have the baby. That was my that was a shock because especially if we had woken up, my dad just turned green and we can walk him up and put him in the car. It was 830 or something and he had been asleep for like 45 minutes and we woke him up, put them in the car, took them downtown, and he’s like, what is happening? And then we thought I would, I thought I was going to come home. So they just drove around down in downtown Chicago, like they drove around in circles until I called them was like I am staying here. I guess you better take him back and figure out what to do with him because I couldn’t have any visitors. I could just have my one sort of support person, which is my husband. So in previous times, maybe we would have had him come into the hospital with us until someone could pick him up. But it was. Yeah, it was it was weird though, too because the hospital seems so empty compared to the first time around and all the times I have been there before. And then after. I was there for a few days because she was a preemie so I had I think an extra day because I had tests to run and no visitors really quiet very it was actually sort of a soothing and it felt almost like after being at home for such a long time. It was kind of nice to be somewhere else where was waiting on me. But it was very, very surreal.

Paulette  17:31  

And did she spend time in the NICU? 

Julia  17:34  

No, she didn’t. I claim she was fine. They’ll give her some steroids and she was tiny. She was only five pounds but healthy. So she’s just very little. She’s finally caught up. She’s a normal size now but it took a year and a half. 

Paulette: So they don’t know what kicked off the birth?

Julia:. No, they don’t know what kicked it off. So it it was a lot harder. And I this is I think you know I had already at this point written upstairs house and it was already off the publication but it sort of confirmed everything that I had read about birthing people needing someone to advocate for them like I find myself during sort of the period where I was by myself in triage and then they admitted me and I was by myself for a while and I remember looking over at one point interesting blood on the floor and I couldn’t it’s so hard when you’re in that state to know what’s going on and to make decisions for yourself or ask the right questions. So yeah, they ended up inducing me because they didn’t know what was going on. But my doctor came in and was like, Well, we know the baby’s gonna be born soon right? Let’s just let the baby like, you know, let her come out. And so it was such a relief when my regular doctor finally got there. But yeah, it’s um, I think I just went into early labor for whatever reason.

Paulette  18:47  

And that birth I’m assuming was shorter than your son.

Julia  18:50  

Oh, it was so, so quick. She Yeah, they so I was not having contractions or anything until they put me on Pitocin and again, I got the epidural right away, which I’m glad I did. And then I fell asleep and then I woke up to that being like time to push and I pushed four times and then she was here. So she’s so because she was so little, so it’s just like she came and then afterwards that was a little bit scarier because with my son, there was no reason to think that everything wouldn’t be totally normal, but with her it was like okay, well why was she early is her heart rate. Okay, did she pass all of these various, you know, premie tests, and again, she was just so so small. It was really wild. I don’t know if that had been my first kid. I think it would have been just very, very hard to not think I was gonna break her every day. 

Paulette   19:40  

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, five pounds is a second sugar. Yeah, she was tiny. She was tiny. And so what’s it like when you get home the second time?

Julia  19:48  

Oh, man. So in a way it was. It was definitely hard because so my mom who lives on the East Coast didn’t even get to meet my daughter until she was six months old. So that whereas she had flown out when my son was born, and she didn’t say long, she just came to meet him and then left but we had family there and there were people and people bringing by it was just the four of us, but it was nice. There was something really really special about my son meeting his sister for the first time and I think because of he had not been around other kids for a long time. So I think it in a way, made that transition almost easier because he was like, thank God. It’s not just mom and dad in the house. Again, it’s something new, but I also felt like I have learned from my son, we used a pack and play bassinet because I was like, oh, we’ll save money. And I’ll just use the bassinet part of the pack and play and that really didn’t work really well for us. And with my daughter, I had the my sister in law’s nice swivel bassinet. And I knew sort of, I knew what to expect in terms of how much sleep I would be getting and I knew to have a protein bar for the middle of the night and I knew to you know, budget time for this. So in that regard, it was a lot easier even though we didn’t have help. I think that for my husband who was on Oh, and the other part too is my husband who same company you had 10 days of maternity leave the first time and then they changed policy and he now had two months.

Paulette: Oh wow. 

Julia: So he was with that three year old and I was with the baby I mean basically did it like that. And then by the time he had to go back to work, back to work just you know work for him still. I sort of had the heart, the heart we were through sort of some of the more difficult parts and I was getting a little bit more sleep than

Paulette   21:44  

I was gonna say I hope your daughter is a better sleeper

Julia  21:46  

that she is. Yeah, she is. Yeah, and she was right away too. Yeah, it was so it was a very it was very weird because on paper, everything should have been so much harder. But the second kid just the circumstances were so much more difficult. But I think because I was already a parent, it was easier for me than that transition from sort of belonging only to myself to being somebody’s mother.

Paulette  22:15  

Yeah, I mean, I’m sure that you’re hoping this too, but I’m hoping that books like yours, the upstairs house will broaden the way we talk about postpartum so people know to expect you know challenge.

Julia  22:27  

Yeah, and I think because I think what’s even harder and it so much of what we see is this, you know my perfect nesting cocoon experience. And so you think, Oh, I’m having these particular feelings. And so then not only is it hard to have the feelings but you also feel sort of like guilt or shame about having the feelings and the more we can normalize it. You still might be having the feelings but at least you know, like this is normal. It doesn’t make you a bad parent. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have a great relationship with your kid. It doesn’t mean that things are not going to be as good as they are for anybody else. But because we talk about it in such an infantilizing way with term baby blues. just kills me. Would you say that to anybody else about any other illness or disease or diagnosis? It just is so for me personally, I felt very well. Why can’t I just shake it up? It’s just baby blues and then it’s no that’s not how it works.

Paulette  23:21  

Julia talks about how what we perceive as quote a perfect cocoon normal and postpartum is based on what we see around us. And if you look on Instagram, you may see pictures of quote, a perfect food. And it really does bring people a disservice because it makes them question their own experience and makes it seem as if this transition is easy, but it’s not for a lot of people.

Dr. Patel 23:40  

Exactly. And as soon as babies out of mom mom’s kind of left to herself and all the focus is on baby with at least the rest of the family right and yourself. And she’s dealing with all the physical whatever she went through for childbirth, the mental the hormonal changes and plus the loss of control the loss of her own identity. She’s now just known as mom, you know, she’s not necessarily who she was before and it’s it’s very difficult. And so the one thing that I always say to to new moms is if you feel weepy or upset or irritable, allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling. Right? Just because it’s baby blues doesn’t make it not real or silly or because it’s going to go away in a couple of weeks doesn’t mean you’re not feeling it right now. Talk about it, let it out. Let your feelings show share your feelings with others and get the help and support that you need. And then take care of yourself get the fresh air get the exercise, change the scenery. Try to get as much sleep as you can try to get healthy food and let go of the need for control because nobody’s perfect and nothing is gonna go exactly according to plan and it’s all okay. It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling. I feel like so many women fight that just makes it worse

Paulette  25:03  

That’s totally true and a critical thing to highlight accepting that as a lifelong project, right. Your kids will teach you that in 1000 ways in the next 18 years, but the initial indoctrination is so extreme. 

Dr. Patel  25:18  

It is it’s extreme and it’s sudden, in a way and no one tells you right? So if you’re blindsided

Julia  25:24  

and I think if I had had different language for it, I might have just been gentler on myself and less, you know, get over it. You’re fine.

Paulette  25:34  

For sure I there’s a lot of language around pregnancy and maternity that really needs to be revoked and renewed, really to the geriatric pregnancies 

Julia: oh my gosh, 

Paulette: 

So there are a lot of terms that need to be both more accurate and more useful, because those terms don’t help. They’re things like the incompetent cervix. How is that helpful, or accurate or useful or you know, there are no very to other things where you use that kind of adjective with a body part in a way that makes you feel like a failure. 

Julia  26:13  

I know there’s there’s enough to feel bad about that. You shouldn’t have to feel bad about these things that are just biological phenomenon.

Paulette   26:21  

Yes, yeah, totally. Agree. Am I leaving something out from your book or your experience that you’d like to highlight?

Julia  26:30  

I don’t think so… I think we have touched on all of it. I mean, it really, I think most most importantly is it left me and it feels like you were left with this to after your experiences. I just my own personal experience left me very frustrated with the way that in the US especially we provide or don’t provide for new parents and just ready to do whatever I could to try to change that until I’m writing the book. You know, I hopefully it was like, Look at look at how little support we aren’t giving people how can we change that? And I don’t know that I’ve have had the answer to how can we change it but I hope it shines the light on the experience that something people have.

Paulette  27:11  

Yeah, I think calling it the fourth trimester suggesting that you should be done. With that difficulty in three months is insane. And there’s so many other like you mentioned biological processes that take so much longer to recover than three months is just for your uterus to shrink. So that can’t be the whole story. So it is important to enlarge this conversation to include lots of other things. 

Julia: Absolutely. 

Paulette: Before you go into our talk a little bit about your Yeah, sure.

Julia  27:39  

So my my third novel is coming out June 13. From flat iron books and it is it’s funny because it is vastly different superficially, but at heart it’s about a lot of the same things, which are sort of gender roles and the patriarchy and you know, women and girls specifically sort of not being believed or having an opportunity, but what it’s about is it’s a book about so the composer Antonio Vivaldi who wrote The Four Seasons taught and wrote music for this sort of all girls orphan orchestra in Venice in the 1700s. And so the book takes place in 1717 and it is about two girls, one a violinist and violist who are sort of competing to be in this top tier women’s orchestra and they make a deal with this unknown creature in the canals of Venice and sort of has dangerous repercussions. So it’s very much if the if upstairs house was like me writing from a lot of my personal experience, this was what do I wish I was doing instead of being stuck in home with two kids in the pandemic But yeah, comes that it’s called Madalena and the dark.

Paulette 28:53  

Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.

Julia  28:56  

I’m so glad you’re doing this is really wonderful. Thank you for the opportunity.

Paulette kamenecka  28:59  

Absolutely. And the book again, upstairs house. I thought it was really good.

Julia 29:04  

Thank you.

Paulette   29:06  

Thanks again to Julia for sharing her experiences and how they influenced her to take up the often intense challenges of postpartum period as a subject worthy of exploration and a novel. If you think of the weight of the dramatic changes that happen instantaneously after you come home from the hospital or birthing center, it’s astounding. You’re immediately required to mother a newborn and figure out what the job entails how to do it and heal in real time. And oh, by the way, a life depends on it. It makes sense that we all feel like it’s a lot but doesn’t make sense is that we don’t talk about it more. If you’re interested in other stories of how people manage postpartum depression, you can check out episode 60 and 61, where I talk with a psychiatric nurse who experienced postpartum depression. And in Episode 58, I include the insights of a researcher who worked on the trials of the first FDA approved drug needs specifically to address postpartum depression, which was both shockingly because it’s so recent, and not shockingly because Women’s Health rarely gets top billing 2019 in the show notes, you can find links to Julie’s work and to Dr. Patel. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with friends. We’ll be back next week with another inspiring story.

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Episode 91SN: A Postpartum that inspired a Novel: Julia’s story, Part I

“Need is an albatross. To be needed is to wear the weight of stones across your chest . To be wanted. That is different. To be wanted by a child is the cleanest of desires. To still be wanted once the child is fed and rested; once the diapers are fresh and the snot has been siphoned from the nostril and the gas has passed through. To be recognized not just as a body, but a person, a comfort to be loved.”

That’s a brief snippet from the novel The Upstairs House by Julia Fine, my guest today on war stories from the womb.

In today’s episode the author Julia Fine talks about how her experience with the significant challenges of the postpartum period inspired her novel, what she’s learned about the experience now that’s its in the past, and how she hopes it will foster a more realistic public discussion of the challenging months that most mothers encounter in the weeks just after birth. I also include the insights of a former OB who has become a postpartum coach about signs of PPD and her advice to help women manage this often stressful, exhausting, lonely period.

Here is a link to The Upstairs House, Julia’s book about the Postpartum period, and to Julia’s other work

You can can find Dr. Geetika Patel‘s workshops, newsletter, Birthing Mamas group, and postpartum coaching here. Feel free to contact her through my website.

Audio Transcript

Paulette  0:07  

My guest today on war stories from the womb. This is a show that shares true experiences of getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth to help shift the common cultural narrative away from the glossy depictions this enormous transition you can find out all kinds of media to a more realistic one. It also celebrates the incredible resilience and strain it takes to create another person inside your body and release that new person into the world. I’m your host, Paulette Kamenecka, I’m a writer and an economist and a mother of two girls. And I struggled with just about every aspect of this process.

In today’s episode, the author Julia fine talks about how her experience with the significant challenges of the postpartum period, inspire her novel, The upstairs house, what she’s learned about the experience now that it’s in the past and how she hopes it will foster a more realistic and honest public discussion of what it’s like for most mothers in the weeks just after birth. I also include the insights from a former OB who’s become a postpartum coach about signs of postpartum depression as opposed to baby blues. And her advice to help women manage this often stressful, exhausting, lonely period. What follows is the first part of my conversation with both of these women.

Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show today. We are lucky and excited to have author Julia fine on the show. And we’re going to talk about many things, one of which is her recent book, I think 2021 2021 Yeah, called the upstairs house and I want to describe it and you can correct me. Okay. So generally speaking, I’d say it’s a book about the challenges of the postpartum period. One of the themes is how cultural expectations about love and relationships can profoundly shape our actual experience of them. And what I’d say about the book is it follows two threads. One is the story of the main character in the present day, whose name is Megan, who’s working on her I’m guessing English dissertation,

 

Julia  2:40  

right? Yeah, it’s a history, but it’s sort of some overlap. Yeah.

 

Paulette  2:43  

And she has her first baby and is stepping into the postpartum period. And another thread starts off as a story of two women who are featured in Megan’s dissertation and progress and talks about their intimate relationship in the 30s and 40s. And one of the women featured in the dissertation is what I would call shadow famous, which is that we all know Margaret Wise Brown because every parent has read Goodnight Moon 4000 times, but we don’t know her know her which is coming through in the dissertation. And these two threads get tangled when Megan returns from the hospital with her firstborn and starts hallucinating that the women from her dissertation have moved in above her flat, there is no apartment above her flat. So that’s one of the signals that there’s this isn’t necessarily really what’s happening. And Megan is negotiating the intense challenges of this period of isolation, the exhaustion, the emotional flux, while her dissertation characters have invaded her home and in her mind are sort of stirring up trouble.

 

Julia  3:41  

Yeah, that sounds about right to me. Okay, excellent.

 

Paulette  3:43  

So I in some ways, on your perfect reader, because I did my dissertation at University of Chicago. I lived in Chicago was pregnant for that. I felt every single thing I lived in a walk up. All that stuff felt so real and familiar to me. I love this book. I thought it was really powerful. And for me, one of the marks of a good book is does it make you feel something and I felt panicked. I 100% I 100% felt it and I and I it is one of those books that you can’t put down so congratulations on this amazing work. And I know that you talk about in the book how you want to bring attention to the postpartum period. So we’re going to talk about that because I want to hear about your experience. How old is your

 

Julia  4:26  

i So My oldest is he’ll be six at the end of April. which just sounds nuts to say but it’s true. And then I also have a two and a half year old.

 

Paulette  4:34  

Okay, so you’ve been through this today. So let’s talk first about your experience. And then we’ll talk about this book and the one that you have coming out in June. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So with most people we talk about is how the family that you create is in some ways linked to the family that you came from, in terms of your ideas about what you want a future and what you think it’s going to look like. So did you grow up with siblings?

 

Julia  4:56  

Yeah, I have. So this actually is very, very apt because I’m the oldest of three I have two younger brothers, one of whom is three years younger than me, and it felt like everyone we knew the sibling, my age, and then there was younger. So when it came time to have a second kid, I was very much like, I want it to be three years younger, which I think ultimately means nothing, but to me felt very, very important. And it was funny too, because in order to have my kids three years apart, and one of them had to be born in June of 2020, which is like a terrible time to be giving birth. So if I had, if I had not felt so strongly, perhaps it would be different, but it definitely impacted you know, wanting my kid to have a sibling. I’m not sure that it would have been as important to me who I not grown up with siblings and sort of felt the value of that

 

Paulette  5:41  

Okay, so now let’s fast forward to your children. When you go to get pregnant, is it easy?

 

Julia  5:48  

Yeah, so my first is a surprise baby. I mean, we knew that we wanted kids, you know, within sort of like a three year window, but when I got pregnant, I it was not planned. And we were sort of like what now what do we do? And it sort of goes back to the book too, because I had just written but not yet sold. My first novel, you just signed with a literary agent. And I felt like I want to have a career before. I have kids because I had seen my own mother. How difficult that was. My mom had been a lawyer to work for the Justice Department and she had a career and took some time off to raise her kids and then tried to go back to it and it was so difficult. So I could only imagine how hard it would be if I had not yet really established myself because I was hoping to establish a career as a writer, which sounds nuts in any regard, especially nuts with a small baby. But we were sort of back and forth about like, is it the right time for us? And then ultimately, I think I felt like okay, well what if, you know, we decided it’s not the right time now. And then it’s hard to pregnant later or what if I regret it and so that was enough. For me to be like, This isn’t my timeline necessarily. We’re like two years off, but it’s gonna make sense for us. But what it meant was that in my circles, at least, I was the only one really having a kid I was 29 when he was born, I have just turned 29 which I know you know, in certain places is like, Oh, my goodness, why don’t you have five kids already? Among my friends and family. I was the first one and that made it, I think, more difficult because there wasn’t really I didn’t really know anyone who I could meet up with. afterwards. I didn’t know anyone who could sort of like explain pregnancy to me or sort of reassured me about things like I found myself in the role sense and but at this point in my life, like a lot of my friends have kids, but I found myself like as my college and high school friends were having kids. I was the one who’s like, Oh, this is normal. Oh, don’t worry about that. Oh, that’s weird. Maybe you should call somebody you know. It’s just nice to have that person. So I think that despite the fact that I had a very supportive family and very good friends who you know were there and what ever aspects they could be I found pregnancy and postpartum periods specifically to be very lonely. And I think that is what led me then to write a book about a very lonely woman who does not have the support that I had. And it also sort of led me to look into like, wait a minute, why is this the case? Like why as a country are we so obsessed with making women give birth and then giving them no resources? No preparation, I felt just like totally sort of thrown in the deep end. Because you read all the books, you know, like, you know, in six months of pregnancy, this is what your baby’s doing, and here’s how you should feel but then the baby comes out and it felt to me at least, like there were no real resources. There was a lot of like your baby should be eating and peeing this many times. But there wasn’t anything like for me necessarily. It felt it felt very isolated, very lonely. I felt like I was doing something wrong. And it took me probably like eight months to make friends who also had kids, and we were all like, oh, I felt that way too. And hence sort of feeling like Alright, there’s room to write more about what it feels like to become a new parent. Like, what it actually feels like.

 

Paulette  9:08  

Yeah, so I’m picking up two things from what you said. The first is this attempts to mesh a family life with a career as I said, I missed my grad school graduation because I gave birth and then I was racing to recover because I had to start a job within three months. And this that, you know, the the career system is not set up for birthing people in any way. And I am sort of hoping that since COVID, kind of grasp the work environment and shook it hard, that we’ll get different ways to progress in a work context because it doesn’t make any sense and like you, I want it to be established before I had kids and and that’s just those are too many things to juggle and balance and the current system we have does not actually strike the word balance because that’s a silly word that doesn’t really apply to this experience. If you’re lucky enough to get to control your fertility. It’s hard to know what to do with that. There’s no There’s no good time. There’s no right time to do it. And the second thing that you mentioned was that there is no emotional investigation of what it is to be a mother when you give birth to a baby now, two things are being born the baby and a mother. Absolutely. And those things are both brand spanking new. And I feel like the books that are out there that describe it are a little bit more medical or clinical then is useful.

 

Julia  10:34  

Yeah, I think so. And it’s cut off at the Automate because I’m not the type of person who sits and reads parenting books as much as I would love to. I sort of feel even today. All right, well, I spend all day doing it. I’m not going to read about it, which is probably to my disadvantage, because I’m sure I would learn things from read articles. I don’t you know, there there definitely are things out there too. Because when I started to dig in to do research for the upstairs has to I found into Memoirs of women and birthing people who’ve written about their postpartum depression. or psychosis or just sort of ambivalent or whatever else it was. And it’s funny too, because as I was working on the novel, I felt like there weren’t very many novels about what it was like or a bit sort of included. That part of random and even since 2021. If you think about sort of the lifecycle of a book I think I sold the book in 2019, early 2019, and it came out in 2021. And in that time, there have been a lot more books that I think interrogate society’s idea of the new mother and if what to me feels like a more accurate depiction of what it feels like and people who are not afraid to be talking about breastfeeding, you know, for like 50 pages in a row because that is what absorbs you. And for such a long time. I think we thought oh, one it only is relevant to new moms, which I think is absolutely ridiculous. I think in the same way that we would need to learn about other people’s experiences, the experience of a new mom is equally valid, as you know, a world war two pilot that you’re reading about. They’re just different people, different minds. And also this idea that the things that women do in the domestic sphere is aren’t all literary, I think has also been sort of a pervading myth. In the past, however, many more probably from the very beginning of sort of like modern fiction, and I think that’s something that a lot of people are pushing to change that, you know, we could read about a man’s midlife crisis and be like Pulitzer Prize winning literature, but for a woman it just nobody, no one would want to quote unquote, buy it. And I think that is something that I was really, really pushing back against, because it sort of invalidates the experience. There’s nothing more nuanced, I think, than those first few early days of parenthood in terms of just your the way that your emotions are so mixed, and the highs are so high and the lows can be so low, and it’s so new, and it’s a reinvention and the idea that that would not be literary enough or that there wouldn’t be interest in that just struck me as so ridiculous that I felt like how can I write this as a book that sucks people in and forces them to acknowledge when it’s valid to feel however you feel about new parenthood and to, you know, this experience is just as deserving of literary treatment as anything else.

 

Paulette  13:25  

This issue of our cultural view of postpartum to an expert today we have Dr. Kate Tikka Patel on the show. She’s an OB by training, who saw and experienced some of the significant gaps in medical care for mothers who’ve given birth and is now focused full time on helping women manage the postpartum period. Dr. Patel, thanks so much for coming on.

 

Julia  13:45  

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

 

Paulette  13:48  

So I think part of Julie’s mission with this book is to normalize the experience of how difficult it is this early postpartum period. What are your thoughts about that, in your opinion? How does our current medical system handle this and what could it do better?

 

Julia  14:01  

There really is not a lot of reliable consistent guidance for women in the postpartum period. So I think it is really important to get the word out about the lack of care I mean, the current medical system is basically absent from this time period. And it leaves women adrift and looking for answers on their own. And unfortunately, I think in previous generations, that support may have come from expertise within the family or community but the way our culture is now we’ve kind of lost that. And early postpartum is full of changes and struggles and whether it was generational support community, they would provide the extra hands, they would provide the expertise, and they would provide the companionship, which which many women are lacking in the postpartum period.

 

Paulette  15:02  

So I totally agree with you and I think it should be a day Lodz. And just if we’re talking about statistics, let’s imagine it’s only women who care about it. 86% of women at some point in their life give birth. So that’s nearly half the population surely that’s enough. At the risk of suggesting this blaspheme. I think this is a movie. I think it’s a beautiful book. And one thing I like about it is I’m a little bit of a little bit of a snob for pretty prose, and it’s but but I think it is, this is a large story. This is a real story. You know, this woman in the book has postpartum psychosis. I think my legs say that. Yeah, yeah, it’s

 

Julia  15:41  

I mean, it’s sort of unclear throughout the book, if it’s like she’s, it’s an actual ghost or postpartum psychosis and that it sort of comes down like the medical establishment comes down on the side of postpartum psychosis, but I sort of hoped that the reader could interpret it, you know, however you wanted to, but definitely the sort of realistic way to interpret it is like she’s having a psychotic break.

 

Paulette  16:01  

This kind of psychosis is pretty rare. But, but, you know, I was looking at statistics for it. Let’s say there’s about 4 million births a year 350 to 9400 9400 is a lot of people. If you would think these sorts of things. It’s a small fraction, but there’s enough there are enough births, that it’s that is significant, but postpartum depression is like a half a million with women a year. Like that’s just a huge number of people who I’m sure can see their own experiences in this because this postpartum period is such a fun house. It’s just it’s such a weird transition and your view of reality gets so exactly warped by exhaustion and I totally agree with the isolation which I had no, I did not give birth during COVID at all, and and it was totally isolating in a way that I had was not prepared for

 

Julia  16:50  

how I Yeah, so it was funny because the isolation of becoming a new parent. So my son was born in 2017. And my daughter was born in June 2020. And it should have been so much harder to give birth and COVID We had no outside help. We were all crammed into this small condo couldn’t go anywhere. No one could come to the hospital with me, you know, and she was early there were all these complications. And it was still harder for me the first time around with all of the social support and trends like not in a pandemic just because that transition is so hard.

 

Paulette  17:23  

Yeah, it is. Can you speak specifically to the issue of isolations? Like what suggestions do you give to others to help us adjust to the dramatic shift in priorities when the social structure doesn’t shift with it?

 

Julia  17:37  

Yes, so this is so important. I can’t even emphasize it enough. And I think that the first step is awareness that we have to talk about this it has to be more normalized and understood, not just among women who are getting pregnant or had been pregnant, but also their partners and the entire community in general. We have to talk about it. And because it happens so often in our culture, and if you think about why it’s happening, it makes perfect sense, right? We’re going from these social beings completely in control of our schedules and activities. In our lives. We are going to work or you know, hanging out with friends. And then suddenly we’re new moms, and we are constantly have a little helpless infant who can’t survive without us. We can’t sleep when we want. We can eat when we want. We can even use the bathroom without being interrupted. Much less go out, go to work, hang out with friends or have a normal phone conversation. Right? So so there’s none of that interaction that we get before having the baby and so it’s it’s only natural that it would lead to isolation. The partner may also feel the same isolation. If you know, the mom and the dad or mom and partner are both just taking care of baby on their own and they’re again neither one is getting out for a while or whatever. So they may feel it as well. And they also may not be aware that mom is feeling it if they’re going to work all the time and they don’t feel it at all right. So the partner is an important person ought to also be aware, along with extended family and friends. But once there is awareness, I think the other thing to emphasize to Mom is that this is a change that is not going to go go back to what you believe is normal anytime soon. So a good idea is to accept it to accept that these are changes that have to happen right now because this little one can’t survive without you. But you can also figure out ways to reduce the isolation. You can try to get support. You can join support groups, you can share your experiences with other new moms that are going through the same thing. You can ask for someone to come and help and maybe take baby for a little while so you can spend some time doing things that you want to do. I think it’s natural for us to try to fight it right to be like, Well, no, I’m supposed to be happy. I’m supposed to be joyful. I’m supposed to be fine with this and and everything will just be fine. And but I think that fighting and that sort of negative outlook on it doesn’t help either. We have to just say okay, this is what it is. And it’s really hard but let me see what I can do to alleviate it.

 

Paulette  20:30  

So let’s get your son’s story so you get pregnant easily on and I you know thank goodness for that story because that’s the story we all have in our head. The first time I connected sex I was like I’m pregnant. Thank you very much pregnant, which was not how it works for a lot of people so I’m glad for that. And and it is hard to be the first in your friend group to be pregnant. So what is your pregnancy look like?

 

Julia  20:53  

Oh, it was fairly easy. I had a decent amount of nausea, especially when I compare it to doing it a second time around with a three year old versus doing it just Oh, I could just lie in bed and watch movies and I was working as an adjunct professor so I had a lot of downtime. Where I didn’t need to be in an office. I only had to be on campus three days a week. So I literally was just eating grilled cheese and watching romantic comedies in bed thinking this is so hard and retrospectively I wish I could go back there. But yeah, no, it was a fairly uncomplicated, pretty easy, you know, up until like even even labor and delivery was pretty easy like I pushed for a very long time but that’s normal for you.

 

Paulette  21:36  

But let’s go a little bit slower. So even the nausea would you want me to walk past that and be like oh so easy. I was throwing up every day. Like it is. It is I’m it’s Yeah, it is normal, but it is your first kind of wake up call that you are renting out your body and you are no longer the owner, the owner, the only owner. And it’s a little bit shocking. I mean, I was in grad school. So I also had a lot of flexibility. But I remember falling asleep on my keyboard. Like I think of it as like natural chloroform. Like you just all of a sudden you just can’t you just can’t write which is not what I expected. The overwhelming fatigue and the and the nausea of I again I was lucky in the in the scheme of things because I only threw up in the morning. It wasn’t like all day nausea. Yeah, but but that’s still a pretty big thing to undertake.

 

Julia  22:28  

Oh, it was a lot and I think I just mentally when I think back to pregnancy, the first time around. I just knew it was so new. And again, I didn’t have any close friends who had been through it. And so every little thing. It’s like oh my boobs hurt is that normal? Oh I’m you know bleeding. Is that normal? Is this normal? Should I be throwing up this offense? You know, I was on the What to Expect When You’re Expecting message boards where you just ask every single question it’s everybody’s asking all these questions like Is this a normal thing does this look at this like does that and I feel like it says something culturally, we’re gonna get 10 xiety inducing just carrying a child is but also like how unprepared we are because we don’t really talk about it in any circles other than that particular circle. Imagine if growing up, I had talked to people all the time who were pregnant about the specifics of pregnancy, I feel like it would have been a very different experience.

 

Paulette  23:27  

Totally, totally. And so it sounds like the pregnancy went along pretty normally. And then before we get to the birth, did you have an idea of what you hoped it would be like or how

 

Julia  23:37  

so I am such a baby when it comes to pain. I was like I want the epidural. As soon as possible. I knew I wanted to be in a hospital where I could be as zonked out as possible from it. I’m trying to remember if I had a playlist I might have had. I might have made a playlist, but it was not very precious at all about what I thought would happen. I just wanted to help the baby and I wanted to feel the least amount of pain that I could possibly feel.

 

Paulette  24:05  

Okay, totally fair. So take us through the day. How do you know Today’s a day?

 

Julia  24:10  

Oh man, so I my son was born on his due date. So it was I had gone in for all of the checks where they’ll what do they call it where they write down your cervix or whatever they do? Or they stick their finger up there, you know? And I kept thinking, oh my god, I was so I was so uncomfortable. Everybody is in those final days and weeks of pregnancy that I was just like, come on, come on, come on out. And I can remember I eat spicy food and had sex took a walk and did all the things and then it was 9pm the night before my due date and all of a sudden I started having contractions, and I was there. I’m in general, a fairly prompt person. I like to be like Okay, now it’s time to do this. Now it’s time to do that. So it’s like now it’s time to the hospital. And they’re like, No, it’s not you know, you stayed stayed home for a while to remember I finished the book I was reading. And it was a 200 pages of a book that I read between 830 and I sent my husband as you go to sleep because you’re going to need you know, I can’t sleep right now and one of us should be well rested. And I remember I woke him up probably at like 2am to be like this really really hard. And when made called they say the thing of you know wait for the contractions are five minutes apart and lasting however long and when a time that it wasn’t quite so we tried to put something on TV and it’s like I can’t even sit here and watch us we have to just go. So we got super lucky because we live in we’re in Chicago and really in the middle of the city and our hospital was downtown. And I had been like oh my gosh this traffic What will we do but it was 3am so it hurt it was terrible like every pothole felt like I was gonna die. But there was no traffic so we got there really quickly. But when you get to the hospital at 3am There’s just not as much good they cannot move quite as quickly. So we were in triage for three or four hours or Wow by which point because i They admitted me at first and they were like you’re not dilated enough. And I said how is that possible? And they sent me to walk around in the halls for a while. So I did and then I came back I was like, please check me there’s no way and then they checked in like oh wow, you’re now which sounds like is that fair? Like? But then yeah, I just remember being in triage. We got to the hospital around three and I was admitted around 7am or 730. At which point I was like it felt like heaven to be moved from the tiny little triage room with the blurry TV and you know, there’s no space at all into the big birthing room. And then I got asked for the epidural on the way up for you guys like I’m ready for it now and then it was great both times I had I’ve had the epidural and has worked. So it’s not even true with my daughter. They couldn’t find the nerve for it. So that part was awful. But for my son, they found it right away. The epidural kicked in. It was great. I was great. I was calling my mom texting my friends. You know, so ready, maybe napped a little bit. Although I do remember my husband was like, I’m gonna go get something to eat and I’m like, don’t leave you might miss the baby and the nurses were like, go get by. Yeah, so I it was a nurse that I liked. I remember I was chatting with the nurse. I started All right yeah They’re like two hours into pushing. Maybe we’re all of a sudden it’s like a switch flipped and all of a sudden is like, this is actually terrible. I’m in so much pain. It’s really bad. And it went from being like if he had just come come right on out, it would have been such a pleasant experience. But then I think he was crowding for 45 minutes. And wow. It was awful. They had to bring in the mirror, which I think I have in the book, too. They brought in a mirror because they were like, look, look at him. He is progressing, but I just use the big headed kid. And it wasn’t my OB either because it was so early in the morning, I guess or I’m not sure exactly what it was, but that would be there. I’d been seeing it was somebody else too, which felt very weird. But yeah, it just took it took a while but then he was out and it was fairly uncomplicated after that no carrying no bleeding. So in retrospect, I got very, very lucky but it was at last hour and a half of pushing. It’s all Oh, I’m actually

 

Paulette  28:23  

there’s no fear.

 

Julia  28:24  

Oh, I was really scared. I think that

 

Paulette  28:29  

I accelerated Prentice

 

Julia  28:30  

Women’s Hospital which is just I felt very I have a few friends who work there, which I think helped. But I also felt very I just felt very secure very safe very much if something goes wrong. That’s why I’m in a hospital which in a way, I was so nonchalant about the birthing process that then when I had a baby to take care of I was like, Whoa, this is the end result of this, you know, but yeah, when I hear other people’s stories, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I maybe should have been more afraid. And my mother actually when I asked her what her labor with me was like she’s like I’m not even going to tell you so bad. I’m not going to get it in your head. I still don’t even really know that story. But for my son it was. Yeah, especially then when I think my second time around was much more complicated. And so it was just sort of your textbook, labor and delivery.

 

Paulette  29:31  

That’s great. That’s great. So they hold you for 24 hours after vaginal delivery.

 

Julia  29:36  

I stayed for two days. I think I hadn’t started nights and I wasn’t checked in until I showed up at 3am. So do count as a night so I got an extra one.

 

Paulette  29:50  

Okay. Okay. And then what’s it like when you go home?

 

Julia  29:53  

Oh, gosh, that was hard. That was I mean, I that was almost directly what I what I wrote about where I remember I sat in the backseat with him. So terrified to have this child float. Drive slower. Oh my gosh, drive faster.



Julia  0:07  

That was I mean I that was almost directly what I what I wrote about where I remember I sat in the backseat with him so terrified to have this child flow that drive slower oh my gosh drive faster you’re driving too slow cars gonna hit us it was just very very intense

 

Paulette  0:23  

if it makes you feel any better when we came home from the hospital my husband dropped me off in front of our walk up and then crashed the car in the air. I’m tired. Like it’s so stressful. So drive your egg around, right it’s just it’s

 

Julia  0:40  

yeah, no, I yeah, I remember we got in and this was good too, because this was not a COVID delivery. So my sister in law had come and I saw many of these details ended up in the upstairs house. She had come and she had cleaned up for us and she had put food in our fridge and made a little fine. And it was me she was so so sweet. And then I felt terrible because then when she had kids, I was like, I can come do this, but I’m dragging my one year old along so it’s not quite the same. But yeah, she had prepped everything. It was great. I had totally set and then I think it was that first night we’ve had actually I just remembering this now so he was circumcised at the hospital but you were supposed to wait after the circumcision. They want you to wait until he has a wet diaper. I think before you go home but because of insurance and timing and everything and the doctor’s schedule, they were like you can just go home but check for it. And I remember being so anxious. I mean, like I can’t tell heads up what’s happening. I’m calling I remember I called the doctor at 1am That first night and they were like well hold on hold on. I remember I was on the phone with a doctor. He looking straight up at me. You know, it’s like Oh, thank God, but it was Yeah. It was very surreal. And it I think I feel like it was like fun sort of at first because you’re still kind of loopy and then it very quickly. So my husband had at that point he had like 10 days of paternity I think good luck and enjoy your five minutes. So yeah, he had 10 days and so for those 10 days i do i very clearly remember my in laws coming over and I didn’t I just wanted to lie on the bed and cry. I was just like I retrospectively clearly this was not you know, I should have been talking to someone for this but at the time I think now I can look at it and be like yeah, I probably did have postpartum depression, but at the time I felt like well, it’s not that bad. And like baby blues suck it up. You know,

 

Paulette  2:29  

first of all this term of baby blues, what can we change that? It’s silly. That feels patronizing.

 

Julia  2:35  

Well, how much of how much of medical care is not paid for? But baby blues is I don’t even know who coined the term but it’s become a term that’s accepted and so changing it might be difficult, but I agree with you. I don’t I don’t love that term. I also feel like it doesn’t really describe what’s going on. So can

 

Paulette  2:53  

you can you describe like what actually is happening that we’re labeling the baby blues? Yeah, so baby blues

 

Julia  2:59  

can happen at 70 to 80% of births, which is a really large number, right? And the fact that people don’t talk about it, like as a routine thing is kind of crazy. But so the symptoms of baby blues are basically very similar to depression. You may experience sadness, sleepiness, irritability, insomnia, impatience, anxiety, fatigue, poor concentration, all the things that you associate with depression. It usually starts within the first few days after giving birth and lasts usually about up to two weeks, but it goes away on its own, and symptoms come and go. They’re intermittent. So you might be super weepy. And then 510 minutes later, an hour later, you’re feeling perfectly fine. So the symptoms usually lasts for a few minutes up to an hour or two. But usually not longer than that in one go. And we don’t know the exact cause of baby blues, but we believe it. It’s related to the large hormone fluctuations that come with delivery and also combined with the lack of sleep that mom is having at that point, the changes in her routines, a lack of control all the emotions from her childbirth, experience, all of those together can lead to baby blues.

 

Julia  4:23  

But then when my husband went back to work, it was really really hard. Even with visitors adjusted you know, I had gone from having my own life and my own creative work and teaching to like, you know, the baby was my full time job and I wasn’t sleeping and my son still doesn’t sleep through the night. He’s almost six and is still awful and that has been like from day one to use a terrible sleeper. We didn’t even get those good. The first few newborn nights that people get with that fool you into thinking that oh, it’s not that bad. We didn’t even get those. It was just, it’s just exhausting.

 

Paulette  5:03  

I’m going to end my conversation with Julia here. I’m grateful to her for both the beautiful novel she’s produced and for her willingness to share her own experience of this enormous transition. The suggestion that these early days weeks months of becoming a parent, especially from the mother’s point of view is not worthy of literary investigation. That’s something anyone wants to read. About. Sounds like a quote from a TV villain version of a publisher. Although I don’t doubt for one second that Julie is reading the landscape is accurate. It just feels very distant from reality. Hope her book sales bear that out. I also appreciate Dr. Patel’s work and her suggestions. Next Friday. I’ll share the second half of my conversation with both Trulia and Dr. Patel. You can find links to Julie’s work and Dr. Patel in the show notes available on the war stories website. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, please share it with friends and subscribe. We’ll be back next week with the rest of Julia’s inspiring story.



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Episode 89SN: What her Unexpected C Section Taught her about Life: Anja’s Story, Part I

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

In today’s episode you will hear, useful advice about what you can do if the birth you planned is not the birth you experience, a very persuasive case for why trusting your intuition is so important and insights on how much control you have in this transformation from person to parent.

To Check out Anja’s book: Parent from this Place How Yoga Changed the Way I Parent

Nausea & Lethargy in the First Trimester

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/expert-answers/nausea-during-pregnancy/faq-20057917#:~:text=Research%20suggests%20that%20nausea%20and,attaches%20to%20the%20uterine%20lining.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22489-human-chorionic-gonadotropin#:~:text=Your%20placenta%20begins%20producing%20and,to%2010%20weeks%20of%20pregnancy.

https://www.pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk/documents/HCPconferenceslides/what-causes-nvp.pdf

https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=morning-sickness-1-2080

https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/pregnancy-fatigue#causes

What happens in a C section surgery

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/c-section/about/pac-20393655

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/7246-cesarean-birth-c-section

https://americanpregnancy.org/healthy-pregnancy/labor-and-birth/cesarean-procedure/

Audio Transcript

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

In today’s episode you will hear, useful advice about what you can do if the birth you planned is not the birth you experience, a  very persuasive case for why trusting your intuition is so important and insights on how much control you have in this transformation from person to parent.

Let’s get to this inspiring story.

Anja Simmons

[00:00:00] Hi. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Could you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from?

Sure. My name’s Aya Simmons. I am a yogi parenting coach, a speaker, an author and the biggest one, you know, mom of two, and I’m originally from England, but I live now in Toronto, Canada.

Oh, lovely.

Lovely. You said Yogi parenting Coach. Was that the first thing? What’s that? Yeah.

Yeah. , that’s

unusual, right? . What does that mean? What’s that title mean?

Okay, so what it means is From my own journey of , becoming a yoga teacher and my own yoga journey, I realized when I was supporting and, and guiding parents, mostly moms actually that it was the yoga portion that really changed the way I parented.

And that’s then what I bring to the table not necessarily touching your toes, we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the whole feeling and scope of yoga. In terms of breath work, in terms of how you feel in your [00:01:00] body in terms of being present, that kind of thing.

So that sounds super cool.

I’m a devoted yogi, so , let’s make sure we talk about that at the end, cuz I wanna hear how you’re using it. Perfect.

Yeah, I’d love to. Very

cool. But before we get to the end let’s start back before kids. Did you have siblings? Did you always know you’d want a family?

Yeah. Yeah. So I had I have a brother, a one year older, a sister, one year younger. I come from a divorced family where they both remarried and there were stepbrothers and sisters as well. I always knew I wanted a family because at that point I really loved looking. After I was babysitting and taking care of kids, I went on and became a trained British nanny.

It’s a thing. , so I knew, yes, and I, I really wanted a big family In my head that’s just the head, not body in my head. Oh my gosh, how amazing. Loads of kids, dogs, maybe even a farm. I mean, I was like completely in the dream world of my coping abilities. . [00:02:00] But yes, so I had wanted a huge family.

 I’ve never heard anyone put it this way and it’s so smart to say in my head and not my body because I’m a hundred percent with you.

Yeah. I, kept saying to my husband a team, not a, not a football team, but a basketball team. Five. Yeah.

Perfect. Yeah. Mine was six, I felt six had my son and I went Great. I think we’re done . I do have two, but we did go again. But yeah, it was certainly at the time. Yeah.

But I think for me, and maybe tell me if this is true for you as well, it looks a lot easier than it is.

Oh my gosh. And I, and don’t forget, I had actually nanny, so I had looked after other people’s babies. I had helped moms when they’d had a baby. I had looked after toddlers, twins all of that. But I could clock out at the end of the day and sleep. Yeah. Big difference. . Yeah. I mean, huge difference. ,

the difference between me and you is I had no experience, right.

I had no idea what I [00:03:00] was talking about. And, and had never successfully, you know, nad anyone else. So right. So yeah, I was definitely flying blind, but, so you’ve decided you’re gonna have a family and then do you step into it easily? Is it easy to get pregnant or how does that go?

I was really lucky.

 When we decided Yeah, we’re gonna have kids kind of to start the whole process. I got pregnant right away. It was very easy. I had actually also a pretty easy pregnancy. I had the typical morning sickness stuff for the three months, and then I actually I loved it. I had never felt so connected to my body.

That’s interesting. At that time, yeah. And I didn’t realize how disconnected I was to my body. Yeah. Talking about the head, not the body before. And so I don’t know. I felt like I had magical powers. I mean, I really was in this like, my God, I’m carrying a child, people, I have made this thing in my belly, you know?

And so that part of it was very, Yeah, pretty blissful. I, I also was in a good part of my relationship , so my husband was just as [00:04:00] much in awe and amazed at the whole thing too. So I mean, all of those that don’t have that to be able to even get through the pregnancy, nevermind the birth and everything.

So in that, that point, I was definitely ahead of the game and, and lucky in that, you know, oh, you need a foot. Oh, you do. Oh, you sit down. I, you know, all I had all of that. Yeah. And just as excited about any little flutter in the belly, any appointment we went to, that kind of thing. So it did feel a bit like hours as opposed to just

mine.

So all of that is really interesting. Let’s walk a little more slowly through that. Mm-hmm. , the first thing I wanna focus on is everyone says, oh, it was super easy. It was normal. I was, I was really sick the first three months. I get that it’s common, but it’s not easy. Right? It’s not, it’s, it’s such a shock and it’s such a dramatic way for you to understand that your body is being rented out to some other purpose because, , right?

It doesn’t matter what you ate, you could have had a, you know, a toast for breakfast and you, you’re [00:05:00] still gonna throw up and feel terrible and have this kind of lethargy that is just an enormous weight. Yeah,

yeah. Right. It’s beautifully said. Really, really true. And obviously I’m talking 25 years ago, so at the time now, reflecting back on the pregnancy part, we’re get obviously into the birth later, but I.

I actually didn’t mind the sickness bit because , that part I knew about, I was ready when it ended and I was really lucky that it kind of did do the normal three month. Yeah. With him, with my daughter was very different. But yeah, no, it is a horrible feeling. We won our own business size, going into work, going into the washroom, throwing up, coming back out, trying to be professional, going back in, and then the tired.

Was. You know, I was, I feel I was quite young at the time. I was 30 when I had my son, and I felt pretty fit, pretty, all of those things. So but I, and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I haven’t even, it’s not much of a baby in there now, and I’m still tired. , you know, his weight is not something I’m carrying at this [00:06:00] time, you know?

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it is. I, I kind of marvel at our younger selves thinking , You know, we’re expected to just fit into normal life and I had a job and I, you know, yeah. I just ran off to the bathroom and threw up and came back to my job. That’s, yeah. . What, why is that normal?

I know. Why, and why is that not really even, you know, something that anyone else has to deal with unless you’re pregnant.

Right? Yeah. . Otherwise you’d be running to the doctor thinking, okay, something’s wrong with me, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And I, and I take your point that it was consistent with your expectations, so Yeah. You know, that part of it. Wasn’t necessarily hard to manage because you knew that this was, this was part of the deal, I guess.

Yeah. But, but the

 Actually, I do remember, sorry. Something that I, I just remembered now was being my lovely vain self at that point. I had a horrible chin rash across my chin, like really bad. Acne and acne’s. Not really something I’ve. Now more menopause. I’m dealing with them back there.

So I think the morning sickness or all day [00:07:00] sickness, that definitely wasn’t a morning thing only. And the rash, the rash actually bothered me more because that was more visible. Yeah,

I guess, yeah. Yeah, I’m just saying pregnancy is hard no matter what. Right? That’s, oh God. Yeah. . That is a tricky thing and , the felt experience is so different than the description, right?

Mm-hmm. , it’s one thing to say you’ll be sick. It’s another thing to walk around feeling green all day. Right? That’s, yeah. And eating

crackers and thinking, this is just something I would never do. I’m not a bird. . Yes, totally.

Totally. And I Somewhat ashamedly. Admit that I, a vegetarian could only eat hotdogs cuz that was like the only thing that’s vile

And I haven’t, I haven’t touched a hotdog since the pregnancy, but I was craving salt, I guess, probably. And I, yeah, that was what I could eat, but. Well, that’s so

funny. And I had I remember with my son, it was with my daughter was carrots. Go figure. So at least that was healthy. But with my son was salt and vinegar crisps, we call them in England.

Yeah. And I was making my family in England semi because I only wanted those ones. I did not want no, any Canadian [00:08:00] ships. I wanted these particular ones.

Yeah. Yeah. No, you, you have been overtaken by some, by some other force. Yeah. Very powerful force. And I also kind of relate to your awe in the second trimester when you can come up from the toilet seat and lift your head away from the garbage can.

You know, I, I interviewed someone who said, she was talking about sitting on her couch watching tv, and she was saying to her husband , can you go get me some water? I’m making a foot right now. I’m busy. I’m, I’m busy working on feet over here, so I can’t, which I was like, such a funny and great way to describe it, because That’s true.

It’s totally true. Yeah. So before we get to the birth, what were you imagining the birth would be like?

Totally blissful, totally. I can totally manage pain. People don’t die. This was very, very arrogant. I also w in the hospital here at that time, maybe they still do, you had those birthing classes.

So you would go and you did, I don’t know, six weeks or something or other. So I felt very prepared and I wrote a beautiful birthing plan and [00:09:00] I believed, And I was led to believe that my beautiful birthing plan is how my birth would be. That is it. That is what was going to happen. We could bring music in.

Yeah. We could bring in, I think a bouncy ball thing, the things you sit on. And yeah, I felt very ready, very plan prepared. I am the kind of person who I, I didn’t at that point connect to my body. So to me, I hadn’t visualized anything. I just knew beginning, and he’s my beautiful.

Okay. And I’m imagining you’re, you’re thinking of a vaginal birth in a hospital.

Yeah. Is that what

you

were thinking? That’s totally, yeah. Yeah. At that point I had tried for a midwife, a doula. They would, that was pretty rare. Now I think it’s obviously much better, but yes, for me it was definitely that my mom actually had home births with us and so there was a big thought about it, but it didn’t, yeah, I didn’t feel I I, I would be comfortable with

that.

And , did your mother’s view play into your [00:10:00] expectation? Did she say It’s beautiful? It’s a little bit,

yeah. Yeah, it was like start to finish pretty easy. You know, almost the squatting, here’s your baby, and off you go, , it did, it didn’t happen that way. Such a shame, Paulette, because I did love that whole scenario.

But the wake up, right, that actually happened because of it all, and due to it all was, was the learning I really needed. I.

Yeah. So, so we’re gonna go right there. Mm-hmm. , although I will say it’s a beautiful story and who doesn’t fall in love with that? Beautiful. Yeah. Right. The end to this dramatic transformation will be gentle and, easy.

Yeah. And quick. Yeah, very quick, very easy. People said it’ll be a bit painful, and I thought, wow. I can handle pain. What are people talking about? . Right? They, like I said, denial. Big denial, big dream. World. Denial.

Well, also the language does not suffice. Right? We need a different word for, [00:11:00] for contractions and, and labor and Childbirth than, than the word pain, which is applied to a paper cut or, yeah. Absolute. Stubbed your toe. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we, well, we’ll get cracking on that. That’ll be our next assignment, . So the day your son is born, how do we know today’s the day, what happens?

So my memory is that he was overdue, is my memory.

And I had, was having those. Contraction. You have to remind me of all the words. Cause I, I think it’s Braxton Hicks. Braxton Hicks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I had these contractions and they would build and then stop and build and then stop. And funny enough, my mom, I was so blessed, was waiting in England for the time to come over.

She was ready, wanting to come. She figured she’d miss the birth, but as soon as labor started, she was on her way. So it got quite thought it was ready. Bless my mom. She arrives and I’m sitting on the couch like, oh no, no baby. And so it, I know it went on a few days and fast forward to when it was actually happening.

When the contractions got stronger and bigger I was. To [00:12:00] be honest, really kind of enjoying the process at that point, cuz the pain was obviously very tolerable and my mom and me were sitting, my husband was sick, he’s in bed. My, my mom and me are playing cards at the table and every time there’s a contraction, I would stand up, but I would kind of breathe through it.

My mom would run my back and then we carried on and then it, that kind of increased and my mom then woke my husband up and said, right, we gotta go. Get in the car. The hospital wasn’t sort of that far away. So that sort of was the start that it became. Okay. It’s actually really, I think, happening now.

Okay.

So it’s the timing of contraction’s, not like water breaking or anything that’s sending in the hospital? No. So no water?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We were definitely very premature because then we get to the heart of the door and I think, and I know this is my personality now more than I did then I’m all good until.

The moment. So as we are walking through the hospital, . I was thinking, oh fuck. Like it’s actually really gotta come out now. Now I’m in the, now I’m like, Oh, I don’t know [00:13:00] how, how does a baby come out your body? I mean, not physics, but like, oh my God.

And, and I was so surprised. I assumed the contractions were gonna be really right up on my ribs on the top of my belly for some reason, being very unaware of the body. And I thought it was going to be like like a, like a push there and then the baby’s just gonna come on down and slide out. So when the pain was obviously in the right place, lower, much lower I was kind of surprised by that, you know?

And so then as we were walking through the hospital, I was so self-conscious that people would see me in pain or crying or not handling, I’m not too sure a hundred percent what, the fear was and. And it was definitely coming out for me as embarrassed, like, oh my God, people are looking at me as I, I had to keep leaning against the wall to go through a contraction till we got to the labor delivery place.

We get to the labor delivery place. And I’m really starting to panic at this point cuz it’s really hit me , I’m having a baby, you know, [00:14:00] and how is that baby coming out? And this is really painful, you know? And at this point, I guess it’s just the beginning contractions. Unfortunately, what happened then was the nurse or somebody came out and said, okay, can you go into the waiting room?

Wait a sec, we’re just getting a room ready. And I was in there and there was a couple I think they were the parents of somebody having a baby, like the waiting room for that. And, it really was an embarrassment that people would, I, I guess it was vulnerable. I think from that, that I burst into tears and I’m really like getting panicked now about this poor baby.

Like it is the first thing I heard of it. And they you know, just realized I’m actually gonna get this baby out. And so, My memory, the nurse then comes out, sees me crying and , and that freaked her out a bit thinking I’m about to have a baby. They took me in. In retrospect, I should have been left to calm down because my contractions actually disappeared.

Then I freaked out , I freaked [00:15:00] out the baby. He wasn’t coming out, and so they take me through all the things. They lie me flat, they hook me up to something, and then it was this pressure. Of hurry up and have your baby. Yes. And I didn’t know how to make that happen. Yeah. He, he, he’d stopped , he’d gone back to sleep, you know, so that was the beginning of quite a traumatic experience.

And I, and I do wanna say for the record, I’m well aware that I’m a white woman having this experience, and I, I’m, I’m way more aware now. Didn’t know that the time of that privilege in itself. Yeah. In that, I, I assumed I was getting the best care. I trusted everybody, and I didn’t for one minute think that I wouldn’t have been treated properly.

Anna, it sounds like they took your pain seriously. Right? That’s their

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. They were like, oh, she’s crying, she’s red in the face, which I heard my cry, and that’s what happens. And push me through, okay, we, you know, she must be serious. She [00:16:00] must mean it. Yes. She must be serious. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

 In your defense I would say the feelings that you’re having about being freaked out about the baby coming out, I had probably when I was five months pregnant, And , it’s better to save them until the end. . It’s be, it’s like the, if you’re gonna have ’em, it’s best to just push ’em to the end, , because in five months I was like, how the fuck is this baby gonna get out of me?

It’s already too big to escape its intended route. So I don’t, yes, and I haven’t thought about C-section that wasn’t on my radar. No, wasn’t my mind. And I was just like, I have gotten myself into something that I cannot get out of. , I, I don’t know how this is gonna work. Yeah,

yeah. , I kind of was saying to my husband, okay, you need to make this go away.

You need to figure this out and get this stopped, . So I, I do not want children. . Yeah. I think

it’s a, a legitimate feeling and if I had a choice, I would’ve done it. Your. Right. Okay. Makes sense. It doesn’t, it doesn’t do you any good to have it, you know, while you’re in the Oh yeah. . [00:17:00]

No, no. It’s, it’s

not, it’s not helpful.

So you’re strapped down and in this room and what happens?

Yeah. And so it was hours and hours of being there and all of our birth plan. And what we had learned was, you know, shouldn’t lay flat, get up and move around. They. Everything sort of that I hadn’t wanted to happen happened in, in simple ones of just being completely out of control.

So I, I lost complete ability. So then everything stopped. So they break my water, , I get an epidural. I think we maybe got there mid-afternoon. He was born the next day kind of idea. So

  1. Wait. When they’re, when they’re doing all these things to you, you’re saying yes, but in your heart you’re feeling like shit, this isn’t what I wanted.

Or How’s that going?

Yes. Yeah, I did. I didn’t want this, but I also felt like, oh my God, I, I, I was just constantly in a panic feeling. And I couldn’t get myself back. I couldn’t bring myself back. Even having the support of my mom and my husband, you know, we [00:18:00] hadn’t done that before. Nobody, you know, it’s the same sort of situation.

And my mom you know, wasn’t my voice there. She was my support and Yeah, I just remember everything stopping and I remember that the doctor kept coming in looking quite pissed off. She was very tired and kind of like, oh, for God’s sake, like we still haven’t had this baby. This isn’t progressing. We need to do this.

And then they’re like, oh, we need to, whatever it is that they put in the baby’s head to monitor him. Yeah. Yeah. And then this isn’t progressing. And funny enough, I actually spoke with my husband this morning cuz I was trying to say, okay, what do you remember about the book? and he remembers something that I totally can’t remember at all.

And I didn’t believe I started pushing at all. They had just said, we need to get you to have a C-section. And I was completely stunned by that point. I was scared the epidural bit that they gave me, we’d heard such awful things about this. So I was like, oh my God, I’m gonna become paralyzed.

 I was just in not a great place. And so my husband remembers that I had actually started to push and my son [00:19:00] started to come out, but his foot actually caught. Something inside. And so he wasn’t coming out and that’s what led us to the C-section, which is really freaky to me because I can’t believe I have only, I feel like I’ve only just found that out today.

It’s totally true. But yeah.

I mean, interestingly, that probably would’ve colored your view for a long time if you’d remembered that bit because Yeah. Then it is some natural thing that. Right. Yeah. Had to of forcing this next decision. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. And I felt like it was all really based on this poor, really tired doctor.

Yeah. Who was just like, oh my God, you know, this lady’s taking up a room. My shift ends. Let’s get this done. You know? So I end up having a  c-section and I was crying, I think the whole time, just devastated by that fact. And also tired. So probably tired too. Cuz I felt like it had been gone on forever.

A lovely port. Part of it was that when my husband’s a musician, not that that necessarily matters to this pit, but [00:20:00] he, he would sing to the baby when the baby was in my stomach, when my son was in my stomach, and when I felt him being pulled out. He started crying and my husband went straight to him and started humming and singing that song and he totally went quiet.

Oh, I was conscious. Yeah, I was conscious of that part and I thought, oh, okay. You know how lovely that that happened, I I never knew C-section was quite such an invasive surgery. , that was not on my birth plan, . That wasn’t gonna happen to me. You know, that must be for people who have other issues.

Anyway, so he was then birthed into the world by being pulled out. And I remember going to a room being left there a little bit. My mom came in and sat with me eventually, maybe my husband two, and then Very lucky. He just went to the breast and breastfed. And then we, I had to for c-section, stay a couple of nights in the hospital.

And that was yeah, I, I was [00:21:00] remembering that I had like I said before, as a nanny. Been around lots of little babies, helped moms, helped sort of sort that out. And there I am, totally exhausted, tired, left alone. Your spouses can’t stay in the hospital. And my baby’s crying and crying and I didn’t know what to do and I, and I called the nurse.

And the nurse comes in and literally bundles him back up and goes, you know, babies do cry. And kind of roughly handed him back to me and I was devastated. I thought when have a failure, I haven’t been able to birth him. I don’t know what’s happened to my body and I can’t move. Like I’m in a lot of pain.

And that was kind of my hospital experience. Well, it’s

interesting that you say I wasn’t able to birth them since, you know Yeah. You did birth them. I believe that. Yeah, I know. But what, so c-section doesn’t count, or what does that mean? No,

that to me at that point it didn’t. No, no. At that point, it felt like my body and I had a whole grieving process after the fact that my body had let me [00:22:00] down.

Yeah. That I could have, and I should have. and obviously everybody around you wants to tell you, but you’ve got a healthy baby. And , I get that and I get the gratitude for that, but I need to grieve whatever I need to grieve. It’s, yeah, it was there, so I did, I don’t believe it now that it’s not a birth, but I had totally believed that that was something for other.

Yeah. I dunno what other people

that that’s, yeah, that’s super interesting. And I think that’s not uncommon. I, I, for sure when I was panicked about the birth, did not have c-section on my radar. Mm-hmm. and, and I had a C-section tube. Mine was planned and it was a different thing, but Okay. But when I was thinking about the birth, all I thought about was a vaginal delivery.

That was the only kind of thing on the menu for me. The only course. . So I, so I get that idea. So what’s postpartum like with you? Feeling like the birth didn’t go the way you wanted and the

pain now? Yeah, yeah. I’ve been trying to [00:23:00] find this book and I really, I can’t find it, but somehow I had this book given to me .

 And it was about women birthing birth experiences around the world. I remember it as an amazing book, and I happened to have it right after somehow , and it really helped me to give myself permission to grieve and how many people in birth, so-called regular birth view back, but all of those things.

There is a p kind of a grieving PO process after birth that we hadn’t ever, we, I had never knew. I didn’t know. And so I with my daughter, I had stronger postpartum depression and things that I actually tried to seek help for with him, with my son. My first birth, I not so much. I did my c-section did get infected and I remember finding that really traumatic when I went to see my doctor who hadn’t been the one at the hospital when I gave birth.

And she just in. In the reception. Oh, in the room, in her surgery. Her space just kind of sound feels like poked needling or [00:24:00] something to, I know that’s too gross for people listening, but it was really hard that, that really injured me again a little bit, you know,

because, because you felt that was another failure on your body’s part or

no more that it was at No, that was actual pain that she just was like, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

But meanwhile, I still was, had my stitches and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was that kind of thing. So So this particular book and women’s birth experiences I wish I had perhaps read it beforehand. And I, again, don’t know how it appeared in my house, but that really did help with the forgiving myself too.

And I know when we went back to the baby group from the baby planning group, I was the only one who had a C-section. And , there was shame around that. Like God must. Not a good person or I must have. Yeah, it took a lot, it was a lot of stuff to do with that and then not being accepted that, that was allowed to feel that, to grieve that.

Because look you how selfish, you’ve got this lovely, yeah, yous good, healthy [00:25:00] baby boy,

right? Yeah. Yeah. You get it either way coming and going, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s super unfortunate. I’m hoping. Our children, there is more leeway in what a birth looks like. Yes. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

I’ve, yeah, I hope so too. And I think even the movement being way more obviously with my coaching of mothers, but way more this whole change around, , not society expectation. Finding your voice, trusting your intuition. Yeah. Like my intuition was, stay home. It’s not ready. But Okay. I, I’ll listen to everybody.

My intuition when I got there was, okay, why don’t you just go take a walk . Right. I didn’t listen. Yeah. I didn’t have the knowledge to listen and to check in. Yeah. Or to tell the hospital No. Okay. Nope. I don’t want certain things. Yeah. I didn’t, I know I had that voice.

Yeah. It is a unfortunate juxtaposition of a birth, which can involve so many medical things happening early enough in your [00:26:00] life that maybe you have never had those experiences before.

So you have no idea that you can talk back to to the authority of the doctors or, or, or set your own agenda in any way. And a birth is this kind of intermediate space where it doesn’t necessarily have to be medical. You’re there in case something goes wrong. But since you’re in a hospital, it feels like you’ve seated authority because that’s usually what happens in hospitals

for sure.

And there’s someone else involved. Right. It’s not really just a decision for me and my body. There’s a baby there. You know that What if I make a wrong decision? What if I totally, I

mess it up. Yeah. Making the choice for someone else is such a heavy burden, right? That you’re Yes. That, that you will end up doing a thousand times after that, but, but this one feels pretty dramatic.

I agree.

It does. It does. And the loss of control, I had no idea. That I really did like to control what my life was like and what my expectations and up until birth, I think I was able to control enough of my environment. Yep. You know that this was then a shock to more than just the birthing process.

Well,

it [00:27:00] leaves you with the impression that you have control, which, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Total

fallacy, but yes. Yeah, .

So how much space is there between your son and your daughter?

Two and a half years.

Okay, so, so does that mean that you had processed all the trauma before you got pregnant again,

or, I thought I had, yeah.

Yeah. I had really had the space and the support to sort of grief that I did. But I really wanted this vaginal birth, which is so funny to me now. What do you get a pat on your back? Whoa. You did it buzz that way, Ray. But at the time it was super important to me and I had to seek a different doctor and find actually I into, I then took the leader a bit more on interviewed doctors to say, this is what I want.

And I found an amazing doctor who I was surprised even was there at the birth that was seemed so uncommon here that he was like, I will be there. And he He fought for me cuz really he was feeling very strongly that we should, we were very quick to move. He thought it’s gonna have to be another C-section cuz she just did not wanna come out [00:28:00] after hours and hours it feels like.

 So you get pregnant easily again?

Yes.

The decided. Yeah. Is the pregnancy similar? Does it feel the same?

It I think because you then have a toddler, everything felt sort of that I, I the sickness lasted longer in this one and ti tiredness, and I had the swelling, like the ankle, the feet and, and I can’t remember what that’s called, but that kind of thing happening with her, which I didn’t have with my son.

And so that part was different. Slightly, but other than, yeah, it was pretty, it was really, I just remembered that one and I many mums, when you’ve got another before I could rest when I want to rest, and now I had somebody who’s like, let’s go to the park. Yeah, yeah.

Totally different. Yeah. and I so my oldest is 21, so we’re basically had kids around the same time.

Yeah. And I feel like in my experience, so my first one was a C-section v a c I think was less common. I’ll go back and look up the numbers for our, our time period. But I know with my doctors, they had said, you can [00:29:00] do whatever you want. And I decided to do another C-section cuz I was worried about my body had failed in a million ways, way before the C-section, which made the C-section necessary, you know?

Okay. Mm-hmm. months before mm-hmm. . So, so the c-section was like, added to the list, right? Like I wasn’t, I didn’t single that one out in entirely, but, and also maybe because I had these medical issues, I was worried about the very, very small chance of uterine rupture. . But when I told my doctors I was gonna do a C-section again and they, they said, thank God, oh my God, thank God.

Right. They were really kind of relieved. So that’s kind of consistent with your experience where it’s hard to find a doctor who will support this idea Yeah. 20 years ago. Yeah,

absolutely. Absolutely. It yeah, I remember sort of really having to seek out and ask people and try to find out, you know, that I wanted this.

And then I did start to advocate for myself. I, you know, having been through it, at least you have a bit more of a idea. Still there’s no control. We get that, but it was, yeah, [00:30:00] a different sort of setup. But for her , I remember going in, To the hospital. It was a different hospital.

 I had said, oh, I do want epidural. Right from the beginning, no, no fighting. This is time. It’s like, go for it. And my husband was there saying, oh, but she’s just like a small dosage or something, and I nearly smacked him. I went, no, just whatever you give , I want the full fact.

Well, why is he, why is he standing in the way of, he thought,

he thought that I, I would’ve wanted it to still be in the birth.

Okay. Like more of the feeling of it that he, he, he felt that maybe last time having the epidural, it stopped my body working Okay. The same way. Okay. Is what my eye, I, I think I, and so I ended up pushing a long, long time for her and they ended up having to use the vacuum thing on her head, , it’s not called a vacuum to hold her down.

And then yeah, that was funnily enough, recovering from that birth took a lot longer than the C-section one. [00:31:00] And I don’t know why, because I had two people there, but I, I had really bad, I tore really bad and then had to have those stitches and yeah, that was. From my memory,

at, at the time. Did the birth feel like a triumph?

Like now I’ve done it. Vine? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good . Well, it’s nice that I what you focus on, right? I, I know. But it’s nice that you focus on this thing and it worked out and then you felt satisfied, right? Yes. That’s nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That, that was yeah, very much so. And felt very blessed to have a little girl.

And then was very much. We are done. Let’s get a puppy. . .

Totally. So you suggested earlier that that birth was followed by postpartum depression or so Yeah. What, how did that look different and and what did you notice?

A lot of crying. A lot of crying.

Everything felt very overwhelming. I don’t know how in my head I was able to, but I was still working at our business and I was still going backwards [00:32:00] and forwards. And I would go to work, come back in nursing, then go back to work, and my husband would be home with the kids. And I just was, in my head, I cope.

I am one of those women. We just cope. We can manage it all, you know, and as a detriment to myself. Yeah. And so I did eventually go to see. A doctor and I c cannot recall the drug, but she really didn’t particularly listen to me, that I had just had a baby and that I had a toddler at home. And she was quick to prescribe me something.

And I, I didn’t take it. It was some very strong, addictive something or other. And So I, I kind of sorted it out a little bit by myself, if you call it sorting out. Like I just was able to let it as much as possible happen for tears and things. And the change my body was pretty big for that one.

I had gained quite a bit of weight. I felt very like moving, a bit tricky. I also felt, you know, I breastfed both of them and I [00:33:00] definitely felt for my second child that it was, it felt more of a chore because I’ve got things to do now. . Yeah. I couldn’t just sit in a door her lovely face. I was like, oh.

Breastfeeding as you, as any mom. Right. Walking around doing stuff. That kind of thing.

That sounds tricky. . So how, how long would you say the postpartum lasted?

I think a good five, six months. Okay. Yeah. After. And then

Yeah, I be, in my recollection, I was, she was about 3, 2, 3 months old when I went to the doctor, and then it was just yeah. Yes, that’s what

I would say. I, would also say probably, 20 some odd years ago, postpartum depression was so not a a thing we talked about or recognized that I can imagine your doctor not focusing on it because.

Yeah. It just wasn’t a thing for us. Right. It wasn’t That’s very

true. That was very true. And I remember her being a young doctor cuz my, my original doctor wasn’t there or something. And I just, I remember feeling kind of shamed by it a little [00:34:00] too and a little more like, Oh, well, you know, here take this.

And then, and I remember saying to them, but this is pretty addictive , and really, I probably, if she’d had just listened and made me a cup of tea and said, you know, oh God. Yeah. That is a lot. No wonder. Yeah. Yeah. Would’ve, would’ve made a difference.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you get over the postpartum period. Mm-hmm. , you get over mm-hmm. , you get over the depression and everything and you decide no more kids we’re not having sex.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I. Was completely overwhelmed with parenting re incredibly so.

And I, I came pretty cocky into the situation having been a nanny. Yeah. I know what to do and I so was not prepared for the full on. Fear worry. Am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? Needs of a child constantly, you know, 24 7 needing you, needing something from you. I found it super, super [00:35:00] overwhelming and I was so thoroughly enmeshed in there with my children which is not a healthy place to be , you know, now, you know, for either of us.

And so yeah, that sort of changed a lot of, of my awareness of myself, I did feel incredibly goddess like , having been able to make. And bring children into the world. There was something felt in myself, my femininity, my confidence in myself, my mother bear. I didn’t know that was gonna come out so strong.

But I really believed only I could. Be the best person for them, , no one else could watch them or be with them. And I, you know, with work and running our own business and all these things, I just, I didn’t think to ask for help. I didn’t know if that was an option. I didn’t wanna be vulnerable enough.

I believed I can do it all.

That’s so interesting given that you were a nanny for someone else. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. [00:36:00] Yeah. And a very judgmental nanny. I’m a great nanny. I’m was really good with the kids and fun and playful, that kind of thing. But I really was like, Ooh, Louise, your children are been, this is because I was so hard on the moms.

Dad’s not because in my generation that’s what, you know the focus was all the moms and the martyrdom of mom, motherhood and giving it all up. And for your children, it should all be about the children. And I sit sarcastically now because to me that is one of the biggest misconceptions from birth right through to raising them.

That that’s it. It shouldn’t all be about the children. We, we parenthood motherhood. From, I can’t talk about fatherhood is all about me actually .

So I, this, this feels like a bit of the magic. Why don’t you lay some yogi parenting coach on US and let us know what you would’ve done for younger Anya.

What, what could you have told younger Anya to make this road easier?

Yeah, great question.,[00:37:00] first of all, really. Bring kindness into the picture. Kindness for myself, I would have told myself that it’s okay to ask for help. You do not have to do it all.

And the yogi side would be, you know, how about you just dance still a minute before you respond, before all those emotions that you know, you are like a emotional coach to your child, right? As they’re growing up. And I would take it all on and I’d feel it so much in my body and my body would carry theirs and mine and my husbands and societies and lives and , sometimes just pausing and taking a big breath.

Can really change how you respond to something. You know, how really seeking help and support and asking for it is actually a superpower rather than not. And then the real underlying part is our kids are super, super wise. They do not need us to figure it all out for them.[00:38:00] , we have our wisdom, but they, if we are trusting our intuition, if we’re being present in our body, if we are using that beautiful life force of breath in different ways to bring us to this present moment, you see things differently.

I’m running ahead, busy, busy, busy the whole time, right between work and this. And I can cope and I can do, and my own personal self was completely neglected. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was so meshed in, or I’m his mom and his, her mom and these kind of things and kind of realizing their wisdom of their own life experiences actually has nothing to do with me.

So lean back. That’s a whole .

Oh, no, that’s, that’s awesome advice. So how did you, how did you get from the enmeshed to the person you are right now who can give that advice.

Right. Well, so when I was pregnant with my daughter, I, started some yoga classes.

I think I had maybe taken some of it before. I wasn’t, I really actually didn’t believe in it. I [00:39:00] didn’t really like it. I didn’t like the idea of touching my toes. I certainly did not like the idea of sitting with myself and being quiet, all things which I now know are vital. And so I had started taking some yoga classes.

I think at that point, maybe they were both in school or preschool. I think my daughter maybe. So three, five, and the transformation for me was super slow, but it started to be all the stuff that I did off the mat using the skills that I learned on the mat, right? So the present where moment awareness, right?

Which obviously as a yogi for yourself, you, you, there are moments on your mat, doesn’t happen the whole time, but there’s moments that you are fully present in the breath. Mind is clear, right? Yeah. So you give yourself a chance. Be still. And so I just started, I was going, I think every Thursday morning for about six years or so, I, I, I would go to this yoga class and it was the feeling afterwards and the feeling of being so much more aware of my own body, [00:40:00] how my natural stance was holding my breath.

Yeah. Yep. Doesn’t serve you. My natural stance was full on anxiety and tension. I never knew that. It’s like that had to peel back the layers of suddenly, you know, you, I’d be like, feel like I’m relaxing. I’m making cup of tea or cutting vegetables and my shoulders are up here. My jaw is tense. And I had no idea.

So like I said, from before, I was really ahead walking around . Yeah. With this body underneath that I had no, no connection to. And I grew through my yoga. On my yoga mat to really like myself again and really kind of love or more in love with myself as imperfectly as I am, as, yeah, you know, all bits of me, where my mind goes, how I am, what I, what matters.

 I didn’t realize I was an empath at all. I, meanwhile, I’ve been soaking up people’s energy since babyhood, of my own, right? Yeah. And so that was all the, the [00:41:00] tie in and then I realized, How simple but difficult it is to be fully present first for me and then for my children. Yeah. And that was a big change around in how I parented.

Yeah. It is a,

it is an amazing transformation. And I came to yoga much later than you did, and I was an athletic person before then. Mm-hmm. . And for me, the most shocking thing was to coordinate breath with movement. Yeah. In that really controlled way, which I had never done before. And I had a really hard time doing, I was really surprised that it was so hard to do that.

Yeah. But it is, you know, the breath work is so powerful and it is this dual connection between mind and body where body can dramatically affect mind. And you, you don’t really think of it. That too. You don’t really think of it as a two-way Yeah, right. What

it’s, yeah, absolutely. And I think going back to sort of the yogi part of things [00:42:00] the more I liked myself, the more I showed up as a kind of mom.

Right. Yeah. The more I could be when I say parenting’s more about me, I bring the energy into the room. I come in as a bitch. Nobody’s really being very nice. Right? Yeah. And, and I’m not talking about ever perfection. I’m so far imperfect, beyond imperfect beyond imperfect.

That realizing that I actually threw my own energy. Can change the whole situation. How I respond to something changes the whole situation. You know? Being caught up in like, kids are really annoying and they’re full on and they trigger you in all kind of ways, all the way from little babies who don’t wanna sleep all the way up to teens, slamming doors, and, you know Their life choices.

It’s a continual learning, but it all starts with me. That was a one of the biggest changes I think of the, that yoga really was the catalyst for me, for that. Yoga was my therapy, I guess, to know myself more, to realize, you [00:43:00] know a certain twist or a certain thing. I, I could just be bursting into tears and crying and I wouldn’t know why, but my body was just like, oh, thank God.

She’s just finally letting this bit go, letting this bit go.

Yeah. That, that’s amazing. And becoming embodied is a, is a huge deal, right? That has a dramatic effect on who you are in the world and how you show up. And I agree with you that it is it’s easy to be overwhelmed as a parent, right? .

There’s lot lots going on. And I don’t know , how universal this characteristic is, but to take on the emotional emotional content of your kids’ moods Hmm. Feels very natural to me. Feels like a, the thing that you would do. Yeah. But that’s a, that’s a tricky thing to do, and then you’re not in your own body and then you.

You know, you’re

reactive. Yeah. You’re absolutely, absolutely. And, and, you know, having the compassion too. I mean the, the yoga I studied was called yoga, and that’s what I eventually went and had my teacher training in. And that’s [00:44:00] really my embodiment is really about self-compassion, compassionate self-acceptance, and.

I would imagine practically everybody, I’ll speak just for myself though. There’s a feeling of unworthiness that comes with us from childhood. Yep. Through divorce. I’m, I’m very aware of that. Just having parents, two people, like nobody, we are all figuring it out. . Yeah. So they’re having compassion from them and compassion for myself and, you know, being able to say, sorry I messed up and being.

Say, okay guys, I’m outta here, I need to time out. You, I just can’t handle the emotions and I f I even to this day, I find that the hardest part to keep myself separate from them. Not detached Yeah. But separate that. Yeah. You know, feel filling my own energy field, working on rooting down. I’m all in my head and I’m stressed and, and I realize I, in honoring of myself, I, I can’t cope with a lot in one time.

Now I’m a pretty strong person now and there’s lots going on in my life and that obviously loads of ups and downs and [00:45:00] huge, big things. But I really, for me, I need to keep coming back to me in order to be able to sort out a problem, deal with the death, deal with, you know, money issues, deal with marriage, you know, and, and for that, it’s the honoring of myself again.

That has to be the change. I can’t change who, who this child is. Yeah, I can do my damnest, but really if I see them in the light of love, just on their own journey and their own experience, I felt for me, a huge weight lifted. Like I don’t actually have to figure it all out.

Very subtle. I don’t have to figure it all out for everybody. You know? Yeah. I, I actually, they, they, they can figure that out for themselves, and the best I can do is lead by example. Yeah. You know, and again, not imperfect ways, like if I don’t, if everybody feels like they’re being really unkind, okay, hey, have a look at yourself, or I just realized I snapped at them and shouted at them and I’m not being [00:46:00] very kind.

Right. It’s that kind of constant self-awareness and reflection.

Yeah, that, that sounds. Like an amazing journey and an amazing thing that you’re giving to other people through your coaching business. Thank you. So how can people find you? You’re on the

web. Yeah. My biggest place that I hang out and offer.

, different solutions and things would be on Instagram as Yogi Parenting coach. Yeah, that’s kind of the main one. I do have a website and things, but I’m just not very active. I need all those things, sourced it out sometime. But I, I like Instagram, so that’s really where you’ll see most of me.

And you can book with me and you can, I wrote a book about parenting from this place, how yoga changed the way I parent and get that on Amazon. So yeah.

Wow. That’s super cool. Congratulations and thank you so much for sharing your story. That’s amazing. Well, thank you

very much. I’m glad we collected This is You too.

I think what you’re doing is an awesome thing because we really need real authentic stories out there so that the [00:47:00] next generation and the next generation just able to speak about it without sugarcoating it.

Right? Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.