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

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.