Many women approach pregnancy, and especially the birth of their children, as a sacred moment, as something they’ve long contemplated before it arrives. And with these thoughts come expectations. Such was the case for my guest today. For all three of her children’s births, she’d imagined a natural birth, with both the pain and the sense of triumph that experience involves. But circumstance got in the way, once, twice, all three times. Despite the challenges she faced, including peripartum depression, she found some significant ways to square the difference between expectation and reality, and when she couldn’t find them, she created them. Using her experience as inspiration, she co-founded the Omaha Better Birth Project, to help give women the birth experience they imagined. For more about her non profit, see: https://omahabetterbirth.org/
Resources mentioned in this episode
Emily’s website with parenting advice
Accuracy of ultrasound
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5810856/
Foley bulb
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322956#procedure
https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/foley-bulb-induction
Perinatal depression
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/perinatal-depression/index.shtml
Prodromal labor
https://americanpregnacy.org/healthy-pregnancy/labor-and-birth/prodromal-labor-25779/
https://webmd.com/baby/prodromal-labor/overview#1
https://www.ccjm.org/content/84/5/388
Cleveland clinic article on post partum depression
https://www.ccjm.org/content/ccjom/87/5/273.full.pdf
ICAN
My conversation with the therapists from family tree wellness:
In the body of the podcast, I included an excerpt of the conversation I had with the therapists from Family Tree Wellness that was directly relevant to Emily’s story. But I had a longer conversation with them about a variety of issues that come up in a women’s reproductive years, and everything they say is worth your attention. For our extended conversation, see:
For more about these therapists see:
https://www.familytreewellness.org/
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In the next episode: we hear the story of a woman who went from struggling with “secondary unexplained infertility” to managing a triplet pregnancy…