Episode 92: When Postpartum happens in a Pandemic: Julia’s Story, Part II
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.
Episode 91: A Postpartum that Inspired a Novel: Julia’s Story, Part I
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,
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Julia 2:40 Â
right? Yeah, it’s a history, but it’s sort of some overlap. Yeah.
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Paulette 2:43 Â
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.
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Julia 3:41 Â
Yeah, that sounds about right to me. Okay, excellent.
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Paulette 3:43 Â
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
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Julia 4:26 Â
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.
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Paulette 4:34 Â
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?
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Julia 4:56 Â
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
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Paulette 5:41 Â
Okay, so now let’s fast forward to your children. When you go to get pregnant, is it easy?
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Julia 5:48 Â
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.
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Paulette 9:08 Â
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.
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Julia 10:34 Â
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.
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Paulette 13:25 Â
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.
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Julia 13:45 Â
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
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Paulette 13:48 Â
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?
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Julia 14:01 Â
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.
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Paulette 15:02 Â
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
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Julia 15:41 Â
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.
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Paulette 16:01 Â
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
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Julia 16:50 Â
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.
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Paulette 17:23 Â
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?
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Julia 17:37 Â
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.
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Paulette 20:30 Â
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?
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Julia 20:53 Â
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.
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Paulette 21:36 Â
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.
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Julia 22:28 Â
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.
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Paulette 23:27 Â
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
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Julia 23:37 Â
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.
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Paulette 24:05 Â
Okay, totally fair. So take us through the day. How do you know Today’s a day?
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Julia 24:10 Â
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
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Paulette 28:23 Â
there’s no fear.
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Julia 28:24 Â
Oh, I was really scared. I think that
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Paulette 28:29 Â
I accelerated Prentice
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Julia 28:30 Â
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.
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Paulette 29:31 Â
That’s great. That’s great. So they hold you for 24 hours after vaginal delivery.
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Julia 29:36 Â
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.
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Paulette 29:50 Â
Okay. Okay. And then what’s it like when you go home?
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Julia 29:53 Â
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 Â
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
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Paulette 0:23 Â
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
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Julia 0:40 Â
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,
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Paulette 2:29 Â
first of all this term of baby blues, what can we change that? It’s silly. That feels patronizing.
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Julia 2:35 Â
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
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Paulette 2:53 Â
you can you describe like what actually is happening that we’re labeling the baby blues? Yeah, so baby blues
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Julia 2:59 Â
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.
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Julia 4:23 Â
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.
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Paulette 5:03 Â
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.
Episode 90: From Motherhood Myths to Parenting like a Yogi: Anja’s Story, Part II
Episode 90SN: From Motherhood Myths to Parenting like a Yogi: Anja’s Story, Part II
In today’s episode Anja and I talk about one of the biggest, most oppressive misconceptions about motherhood and what you can do to free yourself from it. We also discuss:
* how not being in control can actually be a good thing;Â
* how being present makes you better able to respond to needs, including your own, and
* how the energy you bring into the room and the world has a big impact on both you and your kids.
Historical VBAC Rates
United States
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066476/
Canada
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/190/18/E556
Brooke Shields & PPD
https://slate.com/technology/2005/06/down-came-brooke-shields.html
https://www.today.com/popculture/brooke-shields-battles-postpartum-depression-wbna7748616
https://www.today.com/popculture/brooke-shields-blasts-cruises-ridiculous-rant-wbna8427947
Audio Transcript
Anja: To me a huge weight lifted like I don’t actually have to figure it all out. Let me settle. I don’t have to figure it all out for everybody.
Paulette 0:13
As this clip suggests Anya and I talk about one of the biggest, most oppressive misconceptions about motherhood and what you can do to free yourself from it. 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 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, PK. I’m a writer and an economist and the mother of two girls avoided I have trouble with almost every aspect of this transformation. In today’s episode, Anya and I talk about how you are not in control and how they can actually be a good thing. How being present makes you better able to respond to needs including your own and how the energy you bring into the room and a world that has a big impact on both you and your kids. We pick up this week with Anya talking about her feelings and stepping into her second birth after the first birth didn’t meet any of her expectations or hopes.
Anja 1:25Â
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 decision wouldn’t really mess it up? Yeah, making the
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PKÂ 1:35Â
choice for someone else is such a heavy burden, right that you’re that you will end up doing 1000 times after that, but that’s pretty dramatic. I agree. It does.
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Anja 1:45Â
It does add the loss of control. I had no idea that I really did like to control what my life was like my expectations and up until birth. I think I was able to control enough of my environment. You know that this was in a shock to more than just
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PKÂ 2:02Â
the birthing process. It leaves you with the impression that you have control which Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah. 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 have processed all the trauma before you got pregnant again? Or I thought I had Yeah,
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Anja 2:21Â
yeah, I had really had the space and the support just sort of grief that I did. But I really wanted this vaginal birth, which is so funny to me now because what do you get a pat on your back? Whoa, you did it that way right. But at the time, it was super important to me and I had to seek a different doctor and find actually into I then took a little bit more on interview doctors to say this is what I want. And I found an amazing doctor who was surprised even it was a book that was set seem so uncommon here that he was like I will be there and he he fought for me because really, he was feeling very strongly that we should we were very quick to move he thought he was gonna have to be another C section because she just did not want to come out after hours and hours.
Â
PKÂ 3:06Â
So you get pregnant easily. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Is the pregnancy similar? Does it feel the same?
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Anja 3:13Â
It I think because you then have a toddler and felt sort of that I the sickness lasted longer in this one and tiredness and I had been swelling like the ankle, the feet and that kind of thing happening with her which I didn’t have with my son. And so that part was different slightly. It was really I just remembered that one and I had many moms that we’ve got another before I could rest when I want to rest on that I had somebody who’s like, let’s go to the park. Yeah.
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PKÂ 3:45Â
So I had a C section for my first for a variety of reasons. I chose to have a C section again the second time around. My doctors were relieved when I told them I would not be trying for a VBAC.
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Anja 3:56Â
Absolutely, yeah, I remember sort of really having to seek out and ask people and try to find out, you know, that I wanted this
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PKÂ 4:05Â
was much harder. It was a much harder thing to gain access to 20 years ago. I found a couple of articles in medical journals that suggested in the late 90s into the early 2000s, the VBAC rate was on a steep decline. To give you an idea of that decline. One study that looked at VBAC rates across eight academic centers in the US found a rate of 28.3% in 1996, and 9.2% in 2004. These declines are attributed to a complicated mix of things like perceptions that the backs weren’t safe changes in hospital policies and shifts in the health of Burling people. I have faced the challenge of finding help with this procedure. In Canada, not the US, but it looks like these trends extended across the border. I’ll link to the articles about the US and Canadian rates of vivax in the shownotes if you’re interested.
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Anja 4:59Â
And then I did start to advocate for myself, you know, having been through it at least you have a bit more but idea don’t there’s no control. We get that but it was yeah, a different sort of setup. But I remember going in to the hospital was a different hospital. I had said I do want epidural right from the beginning, no fighting at gunpoint, and my husband was there saying oh, she just like a small dosage or something and I really smacked him. I went no, just whatever you give.
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PKÂ 5:31Â
Why is he Why is he standing?
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Anja 5:34Â
That I would have wanted it to still be in the birth. Okay, like more of the feeling of it, then he felt that maybe last time having the epidural stock my body working, okay, same way, okay. Is what my I think. And so I ended up pushing a long, long time for her and they ended up having to use the backing thing on her head quarterbacking to hold it down. And then yeah, that was funnily enough recovering from that took a lot longer than the C section one and I don’t know why that is because I had two people there that I had really bad. I told really bad and then had to have those stitches. And yeah, that was my memory.
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PKÂ 6:21Â
At the time did a birth feel like a triumph? Like now I actually okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s nice thing what you focus
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Anja 6:30Â
on right?
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PKÂ 6:31Â
I know but it’s nice that you focus on this thing and it worked out and then you felt satisfied, right?
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Anja 6:35Â
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That was yeah, pretty much so and felt very blessed to have a little girl and it was very much we are done. Let’s get a puppy.
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PKÂ 6:48Â
Totally. So you suggested earlier that that birth was followed by a postpartum depression or so. What how did that look different and and what did you notice?
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Anja 7:00Â
A lot of crying, a lot of crying everything about 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 and forwards and I would go to work. Come back and nurse and then go back to work and my husband would be home with the kids and I just was in my head. I cope. I’m not one of those women. We just cope. We can manage it all you know, and as a detriment to myself. And so I did eventually go to see a doctor and I 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 didn’t take it. It was some very strong addictive something. And so I kind of sorted out a little bit by myself with the call it sorting out like I just was able to let it as much as possible happen. The tears and things and the change my body was pretty bad for that one I’d been quite a bit of weight I felt very like moving victory. I also felt you know, I breastfed both of them and I definitely felt for my second child but it was it felt more of a chore because I’ve got things to do now. Just sit in a door with a lovely face. I was like breastfeeding as you as a mom wife walking around doing stuff, that kind of thing.
Â
PKÂ 8:23Â
That sounds tricky. So how long would you say that postpartum lasted?
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Anja 8:27Â
I think a good five, six months. Okay. Yeah. After and then Yeah, I bet for in my recollection I was she was about three to three months old when I went to the doctor. And then it was just yeah. Yes, that’s what I would say.
Â
PK Â 8:43Â
I would also say probably 20 some odd years ago, postpartum depression was so not a thing we talked about or recognize that I can imagine your doctor not focusing on it because it just wasn’t a thing for us. Right? It wasn’t.
Â
Anja 8:58Â
That’s very true. That’s very true. And I remember her being a young doctor because my original doctor wasn’t there or something. And I just I remember feeling kind of shamed by it a little too, and a little more like a well, you know, here take this and then and I remember saying to them, but this is pretty addictive. And really, probably if she just listened to maybe a cup of tea and said, you know, oh, god, yeah, that is a lot. No wonder. Yeah, yeah, would have would have made a difference out.
Â
PKÂ 9:28Â
Okay, so postpartum depression was not really a thing about 20 years ago when Anya and I were giving birth. I know that this is gonna sound like one of those stories where we walked uphill in the snow to school, uphill both ways. I think one of the first times I was introduced to the idea of postpartum depression was through the actress Brooke Shields, who described her experience of postpartum depression. In her book Down came the rain in 2005. And her public announcement was met with a range of reactions. And weirdly Tom Cruise is involved in this story. At the time, Tom Cruise, yes, Top Gun Tom Cruise, criticized the actress for taking drugs and became particularly passionate about it on an interview on today. So here’s a quote from an article talking about it. Tom Cruise’s yelling at Matt Lauer and he says you don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do. And then he went on to say that there’s no such thing as chemical imbalances that need to be corrected with drugs and that depression can be treated with exercise and vitamins. And then Brooke Shields responded that he those remarks were a disservice to mothers everywhere. So that weird cultural moment actually happened. And it’s all to illustrate that Anya experienced postpartum depression at a time when it wasn’t openly discussed like it is today. Yeah. So you get over the postpartum period, you know, the depression and everything. And you decide no more kids. We’re not having sex.
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Anja 10:56Â
Yeah, yeah. I was completely overwhelmed with parenting. We incredibly so and I came pretty cocky into the situation having been a nanny. Yeah, I know what to do. And I still was not prepared for the full on. Fear. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this wrong needs of a child constantly, you know, 24/7 meeting you needing something from you. I found it super super 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, but you know of us. And so yeah, that sort of changed a lot of my awareness of myself. I did feel incredibly good as like having been able to make and bring children into the world. There was something about it myself, my femininity, my confidence in myself, my mother bear. I didn’t know that was going to 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, you know, with work and running our business and all these things I just I didn’t think to ask for help. I didn’t know that was an option. I didn’t want to be vulnerable enough. I believed I can do it all that’s so
Â
PKÂ 12:24Â
interesting, given that you were a nanny for someone else, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Â
Anja 12:29Â
Yeah. And a very judgmental nanny. I’m a great man. He was really good with the kids and fun and playful that kind of thing. But I really would say, Oh, this is your children. Because also hard on the mind. Yeah, it’s not the ghetto in my generation. That’s what you know, the focus was on the moms and the martyrdom of mom motherhood and giving it all up and for your children. It should all be about children and I said sarcastically now because to me that one of the biggest misconceptions from growth right through to raising them, that it shouldn’t all be about my children. parenthood, motherhood. I can’t talk about father is all about me actually. So
Â
PKÂ 13:12Â
this this feels like a bit of the magic. Why don’t you lay some Yogi parenting on us. And let us know what you would have done for younger Ania what what could you have told younger Ania to make this room easier?
Â
Anja 13:26Â
Yeah. Great question. First of all, we 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 stand still a minute before you respond? Before all those emotion that you know you’re like a emotional coach to your child right as they’re growing up and I’ll take it around and I feel it so much in my body and my body would carry theirs and mine and my husband’s and societies and lives and sometimes just pausing and taking a big graph 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 wide. They do not need us to figure it all out for them. We have our wisdom, but they were trusting our intuition. We’re being present in our body. If we are using that beautiful lifeforce 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 like to 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 mission on 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.
Â
PKÂ 15:08Â
So on your writes about this in her book, relating what you can learn from yoga and apply to your quote, real life. She writes, Many of us unconsciously lean forward thinking we are alone. So many of us walk and sit leaning into life. Many are racing forward leaning into other people’s business. We leave with our chin rather than our heart. And then she goes on to write all of this relates to parenting we are in our children’s lives. We are leading so far into them that there’s no space for them or us to breathe fully. We’re in charge of everything about them and all that they do each day. We make it our business to be involved in every aspect of their lives. We’re coming from a place of possession. I see this so often and mothers are consumed by this. They’re leading so far and that it’s surprising that they have not fallen over want to walk around the outside of school buildings with a megaphone shouting step away from your child.
Â
Anja 16:01Â
That’s a whole too much.
Â
PKÂ 16:04Â
No, that’s That’s awesome. So how did you how’d you get from the enmeshed to the person you are right now who can I give advice?
Â
Anja 16:13Â
Right? So when I was pregnant with my daughter, I started some yoga classes. I think I had maybe taken some a bit before I wasn’t I really actually didn’t believe in it. I 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 the things which I now know vital. And I had started taking some yoga classes. I think we’re at that point maybe they were both in school or preschool I think my daughter maybe be 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 map. Right. So the present wet moment awareness, right, which, obviously as a yogi, for yourself, you you there are moments on your map doesn’t happen the whole time. But there are moments that you’re fully present in the breath. Mind is clear, right so you give yourself a chance to be still. And so I just started I was going I think every Thursday morning for about six years or so I would go into this yoga class. And it was the feeling afterwards and the feeling of being so much more aware of my own body how my natural stance was holding my breath. Yeah, so my natural stance was full on anxiety intention, never knew that was like that had to peel back the layers or suddenly, you know, you’re I’d be like, feel like I’m relaxing. I’m making a cup of tea or cutting vegetables and my shoulders are up here. My jaw was tense and I had no idea. So like I said from before, it was really a head walking round. body underneath that I had no no connection to. And I grew through my yoga on my yoga mat to really like myself. Again. I’m really kind of lovable, more in love with my style, as imperfectly as I am, as you know, bits of me where my mind goes how I am what I what matters. I didn’t realize I was an empath at all. Meanwhile, I’ve been soaking up people’s energy since babyhood of my own. And so that was all the 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 and how I planted.
Â
PKÂ 18:37Â
It is it is an amazing transformation and I came to yoga much later than you did, and I was like an athletic person before then. And for me, the most shocking thing was to coordinate breath with movement 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. 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. I mean you don’t really think of it that teachers don’t really think of it as a two way.
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Anja 19:17Â
Yeah, absolutely. And I think going back to sort of the yogi part of things, the more I liked myself, the more I showed up as a kinder mom. Right, the more I could be when I say parenting is more about me. I bring energy into the room I come in as a bitch nobody’s really being very nice right and and I’m not talking about ever perfection I am so far from perfect, beyond imperfect beyond imperfect that realizing that I actually feel my own energy can change whole situation, how I respond to something changes the whole situation. You know, being caught up in like kids are really annoying and they fall on and they trigger you in all kinds of ways all the way from little babies who don’t want to sleep all the way up to Team slamming doors and their life choices. It’s a continual learning, but it all starts with me that was one of the biggest changes. I think yoga really was the catalyst for me for that. Yoga was my therapy I guess to know myself more to realize you know, a certain twist or certain thing 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 go letting go.
Â
PKÂ 20:33Â
Yeah, that’s amazing of 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 lots going on. I don’t know how universal This characteristic is, but to take on the emotional, emotional content of your kids. moods. feels very natural to me feels like the thing that you would do. Yeah, that’s a that’s a tricky thing to do within your own body. And I mean, you’re
Â
Anja 21:10Â
absolutely, absolutely and, you know, having the compassion to I mean, Yoga I started was called propelling yoga. And that’s why they eventually went and had my teacher training and then that’s really my environment is really about self compassion, compassionate self acceptance. And I would imagine practically everybody I’ll speak just for myself, though, is a feeling of unworthiness that comes with us. From childhood through divorce and they were back just having parents to people like nobody, you will figure it out. From them and compassion for my son and, you know, being able to say sorry, I messed up and being able to say, Okay, guys, I’m out of here. I need a timeout. I just can’t handle the emotions. And I’ve even to this day, I find that the hardest part to keep myself separate from them not detach, you know, filling my own energy field working on rooting them all in my head and I’m stressed and I realize I don’t know enough my stuff. I couldn’t cope with a lot in one time. Now I’m pretty strong person. Now and there’s lots going on in my life and obviously, loads of ups and downs and a huge big thing. 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 a death deal with, you know, money issues deal with marriage, you know, and for that it’s the honoring of myself again, that there has to be the change. I can’t change who this child is. Yeah, and do my damnedest, 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, I actually they can figure that out for themselves. And the best I can do is lead by example, you know, and again, not in perfect ways. Like if I don’t if everybody feels like they’ve been really unkind. Okay, hey, I’ll have a look at yourself. I just realized I snapped at them and shouted at them and I’m not being very kind right. It’s that kind of constant self awareness and reflection. Yeah,
Â
PKÂ 23:27Â
that sounds like an amazing journey and an amazing thing that you’re giving to other people through your coaching business. So how can people find you you’re on the web?
Â
Anja 23:36Â
Yeah, my biggest place that I hang out and offer different solutions and things that would be on Instagram as Yogi parenting coach. Yeah, that’s kind of the main one. I do have a website things that I’m just not very active. I need all those things sorted out sometime but I like Instagram. So that’s really where you’re seeing 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. Get that on Amazon. So yeah.
Â
PKÂ 24:06Â
Well, that’s super cool. Congratulations, and thank you so much for sharing your story. That’s amazing. Well, thank you very
Â
Anja 24:13Â
much. I’m glad we connected. I think what you’re doing is an awesome thing, because we really need real authentic stories out there for that next generation generation to speak about sugarcoating, right? Yeah,
Â
PKÂ 24:27Â
totally, totally. Thanks for sharing both her birth stories and her journey through parenting and how yoga shaped her view and approach to parenting. I will end this episode with two more excerpts from her book. She writes, becoming a parent is a big old bumpy ride. The moment I think I’ve got something figured out. It all switches up again. And then I am again trying to figure it out from scratch. It’s important to be told this before we become parents, it needs to be transparently said and not how bad it must be included in the preparation with having a baby along with shopping for maternity clothes and buying the highchairs it is only the honest truth of what’s to come that will. It is only the honest truth. of what’s to come that will give us real expectations of what real life parenting is all about. Our kids have the longest relationships we will ever have. So I found that really moving. And one other thing I wanted to share is she in a little section she titled yoga doesn’t fix. She wrote yoga in and of itself doesn’t fix things. it didn’t for me. It didn’t change my circumstances, the depths, sorrows, fears or hardships, but it helped guide me to change how I responded to them. It gave me choices and allowed me to process some of it through my body and brand rather than my mind. Thanks again, Tanya, and thank you for listening. If you liked the show, share with friends, and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, we’ll be back next week with another inspiring story.
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Episode 89: What her Unexpected C Section Taught her about Life: Anja’s Story, Part I
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.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
- 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.
Episode 88SN: Developing skills of Self Advocacy to create a better Pregnancy, Birth & Postpartum : Megan’s story, Part II
In today’s episode, you’ll hear the second half of my conversation with Megan. She shares:
* how she was able to identify what turned out to be PostPartum Depression in herself given that her symptoms didn’t match her sense of the condition
*a useful perspective on managing the difficult transition from one to two children and
*insights about what she wished she’d known about her relationship with her OB before the birth of her first child.
Crohn’s Disease & Pregnancy
https://www.webmd.com/ibd-crohns-disease/crohns-disease/managing-the-effects-of-crohns-disease-during-pregnancy#:~:text=Active%20Crohn’s%20disease%20raises%20the,as%20compared%20with%20pregnant%20women.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/crohns-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20353304
https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/504701
Audio Transcript:
Paulette Kamenecka: 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.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear the second half of my conversation with Megan. She shares how she was able to identify what turned out to be PPD in herself given that she didn’t originally realize she was experiencing symptoms that were connected to the condition, a useful perspective on managing the difficult transition from one to two children, and insights about what she wished she’d known about her relationship with her OB before the birth of her first child.
Let’s get to her story.
Megan: So I was really scared going into my second birth because I was scared I was gonna have to have another C-section. I didn’t want another emergency c-section.
But I did wanna try to have a V back. So I was trying to balance, I don’t wanna schedule a C-section because I don’t wanna do it if I don’t have [00:27:00] to, but I also don’t wanna end up in the same situation because it was, it was just horrible. emergency C-sections are, it’s terrible. I think they’re, you’re, it’s really painful.
The recovery took forever. It was just not a good situation. But I did have this wonderful, wonderful doctor who really cared about us. She really, really wanted it to work for us. She was also very practical and wasn’t gonna push it if it wasn’t gonna work. So she would tell me what was best, basically.
I learned that I can ask more questions and get more information than I had the first time. But it was really, it was really the birth itself that sort of gave me back to myself in a way, if that makes sense.
Yeah. So so labor started on its own. We went to the hospital and we, we went a bit earlier than most people would because it was a second birth and because I’d had a C-section, so we, they wanted to be monitoring me fairly well. My doctor didn’t end up being the [00:28:00] one who delivered my son, but one of her colleagues who was also wonderful was there.
And so it went sort of similar except for I wasn’t induced. So it was a few hours of sort of active labor, but not. Baby’s coming, pushing out kind of labor. I went into transition this time, I was prepared for it. So I knew like I might be at four centimeters. Once I start hitting those really strong, powerful contractions, I will dilate very fast.
And I let them know that ahead of time, this is what, this is, what will probably happen. And then with him it was different. My water broke very dramatically and he just dropped right down. Wow. The nurse was like, well, let’s check you. And she’s like, oh, that’s ahead. We are having this baby opens the door, calls out, we’re having a baby in here,
And I pushed for about half an hour with him. And I was scared because the doctor, he was. He was kind of doing little frowns and hmms and I was like, what is he stuck? And he’s like, no, no, he’s not stuck. [00:29:00] We are having this baby today. Everything is okay. I just, I wasn’t quite stretching as well as he would’ve liked.
So he did end up doing an app episiotomy which some people are probably gonna be like, oh no, not the app episiotomy. But for me, coming from an emergency C-section that was nothing, I was not even the least bit concerned. I’m like, do what you gotta do, it’s fine. And it was totally different.
So he comes out, they put him right on my chest. I got to hold him for an hour before they even checked him or did anything cuz he was, you know, he was fine. And we had him with us the entire time and it was just, it was absolute bliss in comparison. It felt so easy, , it was just yeah, it was amazing.
And and I was able to nurse him. I nursed him for 13 months and he was this really happy, chubby little blonde boy, and he was just an absolute dream. And then, you know, it’s the whole mothers and sons thing. I was completely in love with him. . It was just ridiculous. His big sister was completely in love with him to, [00:30:00] and yeah, it just sort of, it was really healing, it felt like, cuz I’d also had postpartum depression and I was really angry.
You had postpartum depression after the first one. Mm-hmm. . And it sounds like you changed your doctor. Oh yeah. Okay. So, absolutely did. So maybe walk us a little bit through, through that. How does that process happen? How do you, figure out you have postpartum depression?
I didn’t figure it out strangely until she was about seven or eight months old. That’s when I realized, okay, something is wrong. This is not normal. This is not me. I was just angry. and I’m not usually an angry person. And, and I feel like just for a lot of people, even if you don’t have postpartum depression, having kids can trigger you in ways you’ve never been triggered before.
And the sleep deprivation, I feel like for me, I know that’s a big factor, but also just the trauma and all of the, dashed hopes, and everything was you know, and it was just, it was this [00:31:00] huge transition and I did not take to it as well as I was hoping. I absolutely loved my baby from , before she was even born, would take a bullet for her without a thought, loved her.
And also staying home with her drove me nuts. She wasn. A difficult baby, but she wasn’t an easy baby either, and she, she really likes attention still . Yeah. And I’m an introvert and I’m with this person who just wants me to pay attention to them.
Yeah, so I’m an introvert and now I’m with this person who wants my attention 24 7, like all the time. And it’s exhausting. It’s just really exhausting. But I also wasn’t getting out or seeing friends.
I didn’t really have friends to see. And so it was really isolating, but also you’re never alone. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m sleep deprived and my body’s been through all this trauma. So yeah, just all of those [00:32:00] things came together and , I was just mad. The thing is, I don’t think I realized because I wasn’t feeling down and blue and depressed, I was feeling angry and resentful a lot of the time.
So it wasn’t until about seven, eight months that I realized, okay, this isn’t normal, something’s wrong. And I talked to my family doctor, and she said, I agree, something’s going on here. What would you, how would you like to handle this? And so I didn’t go on medication, but I did end up speaking to a mental health therapist a few times, and that was so helpful because I was able to just, Let it all out without worrying about hurting her feelings or upsetting her because she cared about me because she, you know, she was an objective, not emotionally involved person.
Yeah. So I could just say anything on all of the things and just release it. And she just validated my feelings and gave [00:33:00] me some tips on maybe trying to get out of the house a little bit more , have some time to myself. And it didn’t like go away, but it helped a lot with managing it. Yeah.
that’s the other thing , you know, the fourth trimester is shockingly hard.
Mm-hmm. , I remember even to get a shower and I’d put the baby in the bassinet. Even that felt like a a tiny bit of release cuz you don’t have to hold this person. I remember the baby Bjorn, one of those carriers once my baby was big enough to go on the carrier, , I was walking around with my arms up in the air.
Like I’d won something . Cause I, cause I could, right? Cause I could put my arms in the air . It, it is really hard to become mm-hmm another per another person’s source of everything. It, which is like a step up from what pregnancy was, right. Pregnancy or just renting your body. But, but motherhood feels like you sold it.
Oh yeah. You don’t belong to yourself anymore. You don’t have the same freedoms and you won’t for a very long time, if [00:34:00] ever . Yeah. Cuz I mean, I know from watching my mom that even when they leave, you still worry about them. You still are available on the phone. twenty four seven.
Yes. Yeah,
just. You’re never, you’re never quite your own ever again. And I think I struggled, I struggled with it more because I also was like, this is not how I planned to feel . This is all I’ve ever wanted. And now that it’s here, I’m finding that I don’t actually want it as much as I thought I did.
And I feel terrible about that. And I’m mad, , why, why is it happening this way? So yeah, it was a big shock. I’ve heard somewhere that the first baby , it’s like a bomb going off in the mother’s world. It just totally rearranges you, it rearranges your life. It’s not quite as big of a deal for other father.
And then the second baby, that’s when it hits the dad because now you’re. You’re each dealing with a [00:35:00] child all the time, so there’s no, one person can take the kid and the other person can do whatever anymore. It’s like one-on-one, then you have three and it’s like, forget , forget taking a break anymore sometimes.
But yeah, that’s how it felt. , I don’t even know who I am. I’m not the same person. Everything has changed. I’m just trying to , put the pieces back together of myself. Cause I don’t, it’s all just sort of exploded everywhere.
But it sounds like you figure out how to do that before you decide to have a second because you do decide to have more kids, right?
Yes.
somewhat. Yes, we did. We kind of, we kind of got things somewhat figured out. Thankfully she, she was never a really terrible sleeper, so that helped. But also with each of our kids, we’ve also chosen to have them because we felt really strongly that there was a kid for us. I, I mean, after the first time, I don’t think I would’ve had any [00:36:00] more at all, if not for that feeling, because now I know how much work it is and how much it, you know, takes a toll on you physically.
It’s a lot of mental and emotional work. It’s not all cuddles and, it’s really exhausting. Each of my children, I felt really strongly that I needed to have them, or I wouldn’t have had more than one. Probably
So talk to me a little bit about that, is it a spiritual thing or what does that mean?
For, for us, , I would say it’s a spiritual thing just because that’s sort of my background or our religious background, but for us it usually starts with me. I just feel very, very strongly , Hey, I’m waiting kind of feeling. And I’m not always happy about it, necessarily at first.
Sometimes it takes a little while for me to get on board, takes my husband even longer to get on board because he was like, holy cow, kids are so much work. This is exhausting. [00:37:00] But yeah, I don’t, it’s hard to describe. It’s just, it’s, it’s kind of a gut feeling in a way. Uhhuh, , it’s time, time for another one.
And then of course it took months. You know us to be ready. Yeah. And husband to be ready. Cuz we have to both be on board. I’m not just gonna keep having babies if he’s not also willing to have these babies. Cuz once they’re out, they’re equally his responsibility. So.
Yeah. Yeah. Good to get commitment up front for sure.
Mm-hmm. . And so skipping ahead again. What is your postpartum experience with your second one now that the birth is much closer to what you were imagining in the first instance?
It was definitely different. It was just as hard, just in different ways. So transitioning from one kid to two kids is another equally enormous transition.
It’s really difficult. I mean, you have this kid that you’ve been used to giving all of your focus to. All of your [00:38:00] attention, all of your affection goes into this one child. So there’s kind of, at first there’s some guilt, oh, they’ve been used to being the center of our universe and they’re, they’re no longer the center of the universe.
There’s this helpless little baby that needs a lot of time and attention and being held and all this stuff. And so there’s that adjustment, which once he’s, if, if your older one really loves the baby, it helps a lot. Cuz then that’s really, that’s even better. Seeing siblings just adore each other is even better than just having your one.
But yeah, there’s the whole, the sleep thing comes back. If, if you started to get more sleep, now you have a baby, you’re probably not getting much sleep anymore. And you have a two-year-old to deal with and she was a very two, two-year-old. . So it was definitely tricky to figure out [00:39:00] how to balance the needs of two children who often needed very mutually exclusive things at the same time.
So yeah, it was tricky. And when we were both home, it was a lot easier because you’re, you’re one-on-one, you can handle this, you’ve got this when it’s just you with the two kids, it’s, it’s really, it took a, it took a lot. So I think that my postpartum depression did come back, but not as severely as before.
And also I was more prepared for it this time. I was more aware of what I needed and of asking for what I needed. And so, yeah, it was, it was there for sure, but I was able to manage it much better because I was prepared this time. I was, I knew what to expect. I knew the warning signs. So yeah, I think it’s still,, my youngest is almost three and it’s [00:40:00] still kind of flares up in a way.
If I’m especially tired or especially stressed. I can feel the anger building and, and sitting there . But, the same thing, I, now I know what to do. I need, I need more sleep, I need a break. I need to talk to somebody. You know? So I kind of, kind of know how to handle it now.
So yeah, those are three big ones, right?
The loss of sleep is the quickest path to crazy, right? , I remember in those early days when you get three hours in a row and you’re like, I’m a new human three hours in a row, , good lord, I’m, you know,
I’m rich. Amazing .
Which just gives you a sense of how, how just dramatic the sleep deprivation is.
So that is a really hard thing to go back to for sure. And how much space is there between the second and the third?
I think about 21 months. Okay. I got pregnant a lot faster than we expected to the third time. Second time took about five months. Third time took no time at all. . And we were like, oh, [00:41:00] okay, well, whoops.
Yeah. Didn’t meet snack clothes together.
The that’s the flip side of the easy pregnancy, right. ,
oops. Wasn’t expecting. Well, I mean, I’m, I’m in my thirties, so I was fully expecting it to take longer each time. Yeah. Didn’t, so we’re like, what? All right. . That birth was an absolute dream. I had a midwife this time and I had him at home and I could rave about home birth with midwives all day long, it was amazing.
It was absolutely amazing. It was hard still, but it was amazing.
And so even though you had the good experience with the second one, why do you choose to have the third one at home?
I’d heard multiple relatives that had home births and just hearing really good things about midwives and how they’re much more relaxed about the whole thing than doctors send to me.
And just not being in a hospital, cuz we had to stay in the hospital for about 24 hours after my son [00:42:00] was born and we were fine, but we were just waiting for our pediatrician to come and say he was fine. Everyone could see he was fine and I was fine. , but we had to wait this whole day in a hospital and I didn’t wanna do that again.
It was hard, it was hard to be away from my oldest that long. , I wanted to get home to my first baby and I just didn’t, I didn’t wanna do that again. So we went with a midwife and it was the best. I wish we’d done it the first time. Honestly, it was amazing. It was the best birth experience.
It’s so much more relaxed. You’re in your own space. The midwifes, , they’re not strapping you to monitors, they’re checking on you just as much, but you’re not strapped to stuff. It’s just, much more relaxed. And then afterwards you just go to sleep in your own bed while they tidy up and that’s all they come to you, you know?
It’s just really nice. So, and it was the fastest birth. [00:43:00] I think from start to finish, it was four and a half hours. Oh wow.
It was really quick. That’s like a long lunch.
Yeah, it was , it started early that morning. I was like, oh, I’m having real contractions and they’re regular. And then, four hours later I’m just about ready to push and I pushed for 10 minutes and there he was
Wow. Well, and I honestly think that a huge part of that is just, I was so much more relaxed. It’s easy to get tense in a hospital and that slows things down and it makes things harder. And I was just really, really relaxed and felt very safe and confident that everything’s gonna be fine. And, and if it wasn’t fine, the midwives knew what to do and how to deal with it.
So I just let go and there he was and he was one of those amazing. One in a million babies that sleeps really well. So that was a, that was amazing. . [00:44:00] That was, that was just cheer. I mean, it’s always just cheer luck. You never know. You never know what kind of sleeper you’re gonna get.
But yeah, he, he slept really well right from the very beginning. He nursed super well and quickly and not super often either. So, so it was just like, wow, freedom. It was really nice. And I felt like transitioning from two to three was not nearly as hard as transitioning from one to two. So, except for being outnumbered
Yeah, my guess is the outnumbered bit will be harder as that, as that continues. But it sounds like the progress from the first birth to the third birth is pretty amazing. Mm-hmm. , they’re almost diametric opposites, right? The first and the third.
Yeah, and I needed that. I needed to most likely end on a good note after that first experience and how hard it was and how it kind of affects, it does affect your relationship with your child.
Not necessarily negatively, but I tend to worry [00:45:00] more and be more protective of my oldest than I am of my voice because their, lives started in much more happy, relaxed, easy ways and we were able to bond immediately and things weren’t as difficult. Whereas with my, you know, with my first, it took us a few months to kind of get into our stride with each other and figure things out.
So,
yeah. That’s amazing. So it seems like you learned a lot on this, on this trip.
Yeah, I learned a lot about how it all works and how I work and how to , seek out what I need rather than just accepting whatever is offered to me, I guess.
The self-advocacy is a super important thing to come by. And I guess what’s interesting about your story to me in part is I am also an autoimmune person.
[00:46:00] Hmm. And even though I had some self-advocacy in that space, I’m not sure I took it with me to the birthing space.
I think I was worried about the effect of my Crohn’s disease on pregnancy and birth. And so I overly trusted the doctor more than I should have. I wasn’t asking enough questions and I wasn’t.
Doing my own research enough. You can definitely take that way too far as well. But there’s nothing wrong with asking questions and if your doctor doesn’t want you to ask questions, you should find another doctor. Yeah. You know, , just finding things out and going to where you need to go to get what you need is really important.
And I wish I had known that the first time , but I learned it and ended up having a really amazing birth experience at least once. [00:47:00] So ,
that’s good. Yeah. That sounds amazing. And it is a, it is a, I feel like it’s a a story of victory for you who did not want another C-section to have these other births that didn’t involve that at all.
Mm-hmm. . . It absolutely was. I was, I was terrified, , that that was gonna be it. Cuz I, I had met a few people who had had c-sections the first time who ended up just always having C-sections. And I didn’t wanna do that. I wanted to do this on my own and just basically proved to myself that I could not, not to the point of like endangering my baby ever.
I was always clear on, you know, if it becomes dangerous, absolutely do what you need to do, but if I could do it, I wanted to do it.
So. That’s awesome. That’s a very that’s a, that’s almost a made for TV movie . Because it has such a, it has such a perfect arc. , [00:48:00]
there you go.
Maybe I should write a book. I was gonna say congratulations on that.
That’s good news. So now your kids are, are they seven, seven.
Six, four and two.
So three under six is no small feet? No,
it’s . Birth spacing is a whole nother subject.
And does this mommy section look how you thought it would look?
What do you mean by that? You had ideas about what birth would look like and what you wanted. And it sounds like you grew up with the idea that you would be a mother. Yeah. It, it’s obviously hard even in that in all the years you spent not being a mother, thinking about being a mother.
No one ever imagines the tantrums or the dirty diapers or they won’t eat the food or all that stuff. But on the whole, does this experience kind of, is it what you were hoping for?
It’s [00:49:00] different than I. Was hoping for. So I was always , oh, I’m gonna be a stay-at-home mom. That’s gonna be my career, cuz that’s what my mom did. And so I quit school in the middle of a bachelor’s degree because I was pregnant and I was like, I can only focus on one thing at a time and that thing is gonna be my child and I probably shouldn’t have, it probably would’ve been better for my mental health to have had something else as well that was just mine.
And also just exercise for parts of my brain that feel like they just turn to mush after the baby. And so while I still wanna be home and available to my children, I also want to stretch myself and, build a career for myself in ways that don’t make my family sacrifice too much. , but just realizing that I have to, I need these things in order to be the mother I want to be.
Because if I just put myself completely on hold, I get resentful, I get bored out of my mind. [00:50:00] It’s a lot more boring than I thought it would be. Yeah. It can be mind numbingly boring to be home with kids all day. And you, you find yourself scrolling through Facebook just because you’re like, somebody rescued me.
I need something . I need something interesting to look at or read or just something that’s not this. So I’m definitely not the exact kind of mother that I thought I would be. It’s definitely a lot different than I expected. I think. Some days I do really well and some days I really don’t. But I’m also learning that that’s just part of it and you do the best that you can.
And so if you’re having a day when you’re not doing well then you need to figure out what you need to be able to do better. Because, you know, I don’t lose my temper with my kids because I just can’t be bothered to control my temper. . Yeah, yeah, yeah. I lose my temper with my kids because I am not able to do better in that moment, for whatever reason.
So I have to [00:51:00] figure out what do I need? Do I need a nap? Do I need to take a break? Do I need to call my mom and Vince? So whatever it is I need to do so that I can come back and be the calm mom that they need. And also, I’ve just learned to apologize a lot, , because I can’t, I, I’m not, I can’t be perfect all the time.
I can’t be calm all the time. I, I don’t know how I’m trying to figure it out, but I don’t know how. And so I just have learned to. Take responsibility and tell them I’m sorry, and try to do better and Yeah. No, and I guess the answer is no. It does not look the way I thought it was going to at all. In some ways it’s better because your actual real kids are so much more interesting than imaginary kids.
Yeah. Also, it sounds like as hard as it is, that’s true that any job, any job you have some days are great. Some days are not so great. Some days you [00:52:00] lose your temper. Some days you can’t do it. But it sounds like you are honest and human with them, which is so much more than , , people give to a lot of jobs.
Right. That seems to me unbelievably valuable for your kids to see, people make mistakes, people get angry, and this is how you handle it when that happens. Because guess what? That’s gonna happen. I hope so. ,
that’s the hope, right? That that’s what they take from it, rather than, oh man, mom’s always angry.
I’m not always angry. Sometimes it feels that way, but I’m not . , I mean, it, it happens to them all the time too, right? They fight and they get upset and they, they just try to figure out, do you need a break? Are you hungry, ? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We try to figure out why, why is this happening and what can we do about it?
And we need to apologize when we’ve hurt somebody or yelled at them, or whatever it is. So, yeah, I don’t think, I, I think my husband has had a similar, I don’t think being a dad [00:53:00] is at all the way he thought it was gonna be either. But we’re figuring out how, how to do what We have the reality . Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Parenting for us, because it’s different for everyone, right? Just dealing with it as it comes and whatever happens, we figure it out.
That, that sounds like the messy, beautiful project of family. Right? That’s definitely messy for sharing . Yeah. That, that’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your story.
I totally appreciate it.
Oh, thank you.
Episode 88: Developing skills of Self Advocacy to create a better Pregnancy, Birth & Postpartum: Megan’s story, Part II