Emily: Surviving a Placental Abruption, Navigating Postpartum Anxiety, and Thriving Through Multiple Pregnancies

Get ready to be captivated. This week, we had the privilege of sitting down with the incredibly resilient Emily, a mother of five and soon -to-be six, who shared her riveting journey through pregnancy and birth. Emily's raw and honest recount of her first birth experience, a sudden placental abruption at 36 weeks leading to an emergency C-section, will leave you on the edge of your seat. But it's not just about the drama; Emily's story is a testament to her strength, a whirlwind of emotions, and the overwhelming relief of finally holding her newborn daughter.

But Emily's story doesn't stop there. She also walked us through the struggles and anxieties that came postpartum. The emotional roller coaster of a NICU stay, the fear of not being able to bring her daughter home immediately, and the subsequent pregnancies and births that each came with their unique challenges. Emily talks about her desire to have a VBAC and the tranquil joy of welcoming each new life into her ever-growing family.

As our candid conversation with Emily unfolds, you'll gain profound insights into her journey with multiple pregnancies, the mental and physical changes that come with each one, and the importance of seeking help. Emily openly shares her struggles with postpartum anxiety, the strength she found, and her trajectory towards a positive mindset. Listen closely to Emily's advice for new moms and anyone grappling with their mental health. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom from a brave woman who has walked through the fire and come out stronger on the other side. This is a conversation you don't want to miss.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The Golden Hour Birth Podcast a podcast about real birth stories and creating connections through our shared experiences.

Speaker 2: 0:07

Childbirth isn't just about the child. It's about the person who gave birth, their lives, their wisdom and their empowerment.

Speaker 1: 0:14

We're Liz and Natalie, the Golden Hour Birth Podcast, and we're here to laugh with you, cry with you and hold space for you. Welcome to the Golden Hour Birth Podcast. I am your co-host, liz, and I'm your co-host, natalie, and tonight we have Emily On from Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2: 0:35

She is a mother of five, soon to be six, and she is going to share her story with her first birth. Thanks so much for coming on tonight, emily. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, so if you want to go ahead and tell us a little bit about you and your family and then we can go into the stories, yeah, I'm married. We've been married for 10 years. We have five kids. Currently I have four daughters. My daughters are eight, six, four and three, and then I have one son and he's one, and we are currently I'm almost 17 weeks pregnant with another son, so we're really excited. He'll be born around November-ish. Oh, the four girls, it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:28

At least you can just do some hand-me-down clothes. Oh, my goodness, all the hand-me-downs. So if you want to share a little bit about your pregnancy with your first daughter, yeah, my pregnancy went really smooth. We had no issues starting out. It was like a pretty normal, typical pregnancy.

Speaker 2: 1:51

When I was 36 weeks, me and my mom went to the BusDye Apple Festival, which is basically one of those Apple festivals. You just kind of walk around, buy some candy apples, that kind of thing and I just was not feeling good. I kept telling my mom I don't feel good. I ended up sitting down crisscross applesauce in the middle of the sidewalk and people are having to walk around me. And I went to the bathroom and I was having a little bit of bleeding, but I had just had an internal check and they told me that that could happen. So I didn't think much of it and so I just tried to keep going and finally I told my mom I've got to go home. I don't feel good. So I went home and I was talking to my husband I was, like you know, I'm having some bleeding and he's very much a rather be safe and sorry kind of a guy. So he asked me to call my doctor and I was like I really don't want to because I know what they're going to say. They're going to tell me to come in. And I was like everything's fine. And he's like, oh, he should call. And we had an appointment the next morning at eight o'clock in the morning. So I was like I'm just going to wait until then. He's like yeah, you're going to call. So I called and they said you know, we want you to come in anytime. There's bleeding. And I knew that was going to be the case. So it's about like 40 minutes to the hospital. So we drove up, you know, and we got there and it was super quick. You know.

Speaker 2: 3:19

They checked me out and I was still having bleeding at the time, but it's not a lot, and so they were kind of like you know, we can't really find anything wrong, we're going to go ahead and send you home. And I was mad at this point, you know, like oh, I knew I shouldn't have come, and now I have to drive 40 minutes home and then come back here first thing in the morning. But I'm getting dressed and the doctor knocks and she comes in and she's like, hey, I just really don't feel comfortable sending you guys home today. She's like I'm going to go ahead and admit you, I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't want to do that either. So they take me up and they get me all hooked up, like with the belly monitors and stuff.

Speaker 2: 4:01

And if we were up there very long when I they kept losing my daughter's heart heart rate and so they'd come in and they'd adjust it and they're like, oh, she's really active. You know they're kind of blaming losing her heart rate and her being active because they had no idea what was going on. So that went on for about three times and then the fourth time, the nurse comes in and she cannot find her heart rate at all. You know she's, she's taken the monitor all over and you know what's coming up with nothing. And you know, all of a sudden she just kind of stood back and I could kind of see she was looking a little bit worried. And my doctor comes in and she's, she's, she's like you need to pull the alarm, pull the alarm. And the nurse just kind of stood there.

Speaker 2: 4:47

And so I remember vividly her like pushing the nurse out of the way and she reaches across me and she pulls the, the chain behind you, that sets off the alarm and she takes my blankets off and I was just covered in blood. You know, blood was like dripping off the bed and they told me later is probably because I was in shock that I didn't realize I was bleeding. You know, my body had kind of gone in shock a little bit and I, you know they had told me before to usually, with a placenta abruption, you experience like a lot, of, a lot of like abdominal pain, and I really didn't experience much of that at all, I just felt unwell. But once that she pulled that, my room just was like immediately filled with tons of doctors and she was handing me a clipboard telling me I was going to have an emergency C section and I need to sign it right now in my, you know, my hands shaking. So I'm trying really hard to sign my name and I remember, you know, after I got that sign, I'm trying to find my husband through the, the, the multitude.

Speaker 2: 5:57

It seemed like a doctor's and I could just barely see him and he, you know I see him, he's got he's like tearing up and he's going, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. And so they just wheeled me out and left him there and took me in and basically they had a mask and they put it over my face and I remember the doctor standing over me with a scalpel or whatever, who ready to ready to cut my daughter out, and there's another nurse beside me rubbing my leg telling me, you know, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. And then I went to sleep. But my husband you know from his point of view, you know he was left alone in the labor room while I was having the C section, you know, and he talks about like how scary that was. You know, he's left in this room. There's blood on the floor. He has no idea what's going on. And he said like they were probably gone. He said probably no more than like 15 minutes before they came back and a nurse came in and said, hey, you have a beautiful baby girl. She was born, you know, that's great news. And she left and he said probably not even.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Five minutes later, two nurses came back in and they told him that our daughter Quinn's lungs and her stomach were filled with blood and he kept asking if there were going to be issues. Okay, and you know they were. Like we don't know at this point. You know we're going to take her to the NICU and and we're going to see what we can do. So you know he was completely alone and he, you know, I can't imagine like. I almost feel like from his perspective it's worse than from mine. I was unconscious, so I didn't have to deal with a lot of the stuff he had to deal with. Yeah, and I brought my daughter to him in one of those incubator things before she went to have her tubes and everything put in. He was allowed to stick his finger in and touch her.

Speaker 2: 8:10

So I wake up in that time and I remember them telling my husband that I wasn't going to remember anything from the time I was put under. But I remember everything. I remember every moment. It was like that for me with my wisdom teeth too. I remember everything after waking up from anesthesia, so it just affects me different, I guess.

Speaker 2: 8:30

But I remember waking up and just, I was in tons of pain. They said something to me about how, when you're under like that, or the way that they put me under, they couldn't give me pain medication until I woke up, or something like that. So I was in a ton of pain and I remember asking them. I remember asking them if my daughter was okay, and the nurses just couldn't answer me. So it was just kind of heart wrenching, as they're really down the hall I kept saying is my daughter okay? They weren't allowed to say one way or the other, I guess.

Speaker 2: 9:08

So I finally got into my recovery room and I remember seeing my husband.

Speaker 2: 9:12

He was sitting in the chair with his hand and his head and his hands just looking pretty distraught. So I'm immediately thinking, oh no, it didn't go well. But I remember him finally coming over to my bed and I was like how is she? He's alive. And so that out for me was like the first moment, like okay, I can breathe a little bit. And he was like she's alive, she's in the NICU. They've told me she's very sick, so it's going to be some time before we can see her a lot.

Speaker 2: 9:51

So once they finally got me back into my like the typical mother baby suite, they had me hooked up to a blood pressure monitor because my blood pressure was all over the place and people were allowed to come in and see me. My dad kept sending off my alarm because he kept making me cry. He kind of got banned for my room for a while. But I went the first night without seeing her. I know other people were allowed to see her once she was stable. But the second day they wheeled me down in my bed and I was allowed to like reach over and touch her. I wasn't allowed to hold her. Yet the nurses told my husband's uncle that she went in as the sickest baby in the NICU and by the next day she was the healthiest.

Speaker 2: 10:51

So that was something we were super thankful for that's amazing. Yes, it was. It was a true miracle for sure. So I was sent back to my room and I had a lot of recovery to do as well. But the next day I was allowed to hold her, which was pretty awesome because she improved so much over that night that we were finally able to touch her more and hold her more. But I remember seeing my husband with her because he had been in her room taking care of her while I was recovering and I was just so jealous of him because he's going over, he's changing her diaper, he doesn't seem scared of her at all and he just seems so confident with her. And I remember I was like I don't know what to do, I'm scared, but he did and I felt so jealous that you had already had that bond with her and he's still her favorite. But I went back to I was sent home after three days.

Speaker 2: 12:06

So we were home for three days without her and that was incredibly tough. We were first-time parents. We were so excited and we had this room set up, her bassinets all set up, because, first-time parents, we were excited, we were getting that stuff all set up nice and early, which thank goodness we did. But we were home three days without her and we were driving back and forth to the NICU to be with her during the days, and at nights we didn't have her. But then we got to spend two nights in the nesting rooms, which was really nice Because it helped us to feel a little bit more like her parents. We always said that she felt like the hospital's baby. We got to go visit the hospital's baby sometimes, and so in the nesting room we actually felt like, oh my gosh, we're allowed to take care of her. But we were supposed to only stay there one night, and then the next morning we were supposed to be allowed to take her home, and so the doctor came to do our checks, and while the doctor took her, we got ourselves all packed and were standing by the door with our backpacks on, like let's go, and they came back in and told us that we couldn't go home yet, that she wasn't quite ready. So then you know that was devastating. We were absolutely heartbroken. But it ended up only being one more night and then we were able to take her home. But even like, once we got to take her home, I was so scared, you know every little sound that that kid made. I was jumping out of bed, you know, just like on pins and needles all the time, yeah, so she spent a total of eight days in the NICU, wow and yeah. And it was really short compared to what a lot of the other families that were there were experiencing, yeah, but it felt like an eternity still.

Speaker 2: 14:14

But I always think back to like my postpartum base too. I don't think I realized how much I was struggling during that time. I was just super uptight, you know. I just I remember actually saying to my mom when do I start to feel like myself again? And I didn't realize that that wasn't entirely normal. You know now that I've had other babies I have had way more positive postpartum experiences in that one. But it was definitely tough, even in the days and months following. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Going back to your delivery, like when your nurse kind of froze was she seen blood like falling from your bed or? Something I think so.

Speaker 2: 15:02

Yeah, I think so. Wow, yeah, that's scary, that's just really scary. And then, like seeing the nurse freeze is like oh my gosh, that must have been like something was really going on. Yeah, I don't even know at that point if I realized that something that major was going on. Yeah, I don't think it was until the doctor came running and they pulled the alarm. That I was like really like, okay, this is not great.

Speaker 1: 15:31

Was there any cause for the eruption, or was it just spontaneous?

Speaker 2: 15:36

They really don't know. Now I've had hypertension in almost every single one of my pregnancies following this, which hypertension can cause placenta abruption. So my theory, which is not much, but, is that I might have had some hypertension during that pregnancy as well, that may have caused it, but they said typically it's drug use and stuff like that would cause it. And I didn't have anything like that.

Speaker 1: 16:08

Yeah, and how was your pregnancy up until that point? Was it fairly normal?

Speaker 2: 16:16

Extremely Like no issues whatsoever. I felt great. I had no warning signs of any problems at all. Yeah, I'm glad you caught it so early and they will just come on in because it seems like a lot of things already happened. Yeah, yeah, they told me later that a lot of times when you have a placenta abruption, like a complete placenta abruption, you have around two minutes to save mom and baby.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Wow, Did you ever have like? Did any nurses or doctors ever tell you that it could happen again?

Speaker 2: 17:04

Yeah, I mean my chances go up from a typical pregnancy. They say it's like 1% chance of it happening in a typical pregnancy. My chances are 10%. But what they told me right from the get go was okay, yeah, you have a 10% chance of it happening again, but you also have a 90% chance that it won't happen again.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Yeah, how was your mental health like going into your next pregnancy?

Speaker 2: 17:35

Yeah, it was really, really tough. I felt pretty stressed just about the entire time. I was constantly checking for bleeding. They actually had me as a high risk pregnancy, I think mostly for my mental health. When I actually wanted to have my daughter. They admitted me, mostly because of my mental health. They came in and like, yeah, you're scared, so we're going to just keep you, but then I ended up having her the next day anyway.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Did you? When you realized that you weren't feeling like yourself in your postpartum, did you start seeing a therapist or anything to work through?

Speaker 2: 18:17

No, I just really didn't realize that it was a problem at the time. I had no idea how you were supposed to feel in your postpartum. Honestly, I was young, I was 23. Not a whole lot of my friends or family members had started having babies yet. I mean, I had my mom, but when you're so far removed from having babies too, it's a little bit different. I didn't have a whole lot of my friends or family members to ask any questions to see how what's normal and what's not. I just wrote it and looking back is when I realized, yeah, you probably should have gotten some help, try to figure things out. So I didn't have to suffer as much as I did for as long as I did.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Yeah, was there a point that you started feeling more like yourself?

Speaker 2: 19:12

Yeah, I always say it was around the year, point Right around. There is when I started feeling both physically and mentally, more like myself.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Yeah, did your daughter have to have any surgeries right away or anything? I know you said that there was blood in her lungs.

Speaker 2: 19:38

Yeah, she had blood in her lungs and in her stomach. She had tubes down her throat that went through her throat into her stomach. That pumped the blood out. She didn't have to have any other surgeries, luckily, they said she went I can't remember exactly how long she they said a minute or so without oxygen when she was first born. We had to go back for six months after she was born to have her evaluated. She came out completely clean but there was nothing wrong with her. We just feel super blessed by all that. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:21

It's amazing so greatly here. Yeah, that sounds like such a scary experience for you, and then your husband too. Did he have any mental health issues after seeing all that?

Speaker 2: 20:41

I don't think so. He's never said that he has. I feel like even during our second pregnancy, he was always encouraging me that it's going to be okay this time around. I don't know if that was just him being strong or if he truly felt good, but he was just always super positive. He's still like that If anything comes up, always super positive, not really worried about anything.

Speaker 1: 21:12

That's right, we have that word.

Speaker 2: 21:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Yeah, really Kind of like a random weird question Did they ever tell you what your placenta looked like? Because when they take it out it's kind of like good thick thighs. I was just wondering if they ever.

Speaker 2: 21:34

No, I never heard anything of that, because after a typical birth they typically show it to you and stuff. It's like oh yeah, there that is, but yeah, I don't remember hearing anything about the condition of it or anything like that. Yeah, trying to think back, I can't remember them talking about it at all. I think that from the most part they thought everything looked pretty healthy. It's hard to say exactly what could have been wrong with it.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Yeah, when did they tell you what happened? The abruption?

Speaker 2: 22:18

I don't think I heard exactly the medical diagnosis until my postpartum visit, like six weeks later, because everything at the hospital was so crazy I wasn't really thinking about anything like that. I don't think it was until after I went in for that first doctor's appointment that I actually got some information about what had gone down. We were mostly worried about Quinn and what she was dealing with. Yeah, wow, no, don't.

Speaker 1: 22:56

Yeah, I don't know. So what kind of mindset like you guys plan your second? Was it like okay, we're mentally ready, like let's start trying?

Speaker 2: 23:12

Yeah, it was almost like one of those things where I was like, you know, because my mom wanted me to be done, she's like I don't want to do that ever again. That was awful. But I knew, you know, my husband and I both knew we wanted a big family and you know we have this 90% chance that this is never going to happen again. And I almost kind of felt like if I let this sit too long, then maybe I will never have any more babies. You know, if I let myself think about it too long, I might never do it again. So I we kind of decided, you know, just jumping right back in there and starting it over again and seeing what happens. You know we both said you know, if it happens again, you know we're out for sure. But you know, my pregnancy with my second daughter was incredibly smooth and our delivery was amazing. So we've definitely felt better after that one.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Yeah, you mentioned earlier that you had a VDAC after that. Were you Kind of is that what you kind of wanted from the get go, or was it like you got to choose between the two?

Speaker 2: 24:27

Yeah, I really wanted to do a VDAC. It was not a positive experience having a C-section that first time especially so I really wanted, you know, to experience the birth as naturally as possible, especially after what we had gotten through. So, yeah, that was kind of my. I was headstrong all along Like I want this feedback, I want this feedback and, you know, luckily I was able to get that. I got that with my second daughter and my third daughter. That's amazing, that's so good to hear. Pretty fairly easy pregnancies with both of them.

Speaker 1: 25:04

You said that you kind of were sick in the beginning.

Speaker 2: 25:07

Yeah, I get some pretty rough morning sickness for the first three months or so, but once I get over that, you know every single pregnancy has been fairly easy. But yeah, especially with those two middles, those were my two easiest pregnancies my second and my third. My third daughter was nine pounds five ounces of zipper, but other than that, oh wow, 23 inches long also. Oh my God. Yeah, we had nurses coming in with like their measuring tape measuring her. Like yeah, 23 inches, I feel like this is the longest baby I've ever seen. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:51

I need to see a picture of her.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Yeah, yeah, I'll definitely send you one.

Speaker 1: 25:57

I don't know. I mean, yeah, a lot of the times with V-becks too, like did they allow you to go into labor naturally, or did they induce you?

Speaker 2: 26:09

I was induced both times mostly because, again with my second pregnancy it was I was starting to have some labor pains and they knew my mental health wasn't super great and so they were kind of just gave me that option. When I was in there for the hospital, you know, and I was like, yeah, let's take it, I don't want to go home. You know, I'm scared of what could happen if I went home. And then with my third daughter, it was mostly because of her size they kind of predicted her being a bigger and they're like we really don't want you to go too much longer, and so I was like 39 weeks with her, so I was farther along. But yeah, I ended up induced and thank goodness I did, because everyone knows how big she would have came out. Yeah, I'm gonna finish.

Speaker 1: 27:01

You don't look like a very like tall person, and I'm just wondering how did she fit inside of me?

Speaker 2: 27:10

I'm five, seven, but yeah, no, not super big, but I was huge, absolutely huge, 23 inches I don't. I just don't think I've ever heard like anything over 20. No, it's not very typical. Well, and her she ended up with corticolus because she was so long and she had, like her one foot was kind of curved in, so she actually had to go through some physical therapy to be able to like. She had some trouble walking and stuff in the beginning, so she had to go through some physical therapy to be able to walk and stuff. She was like 18 months old before she even pulled herself up to stand. How long did?

Speaker 1: 27:53

how long did she have to go through physical therapy to get it? Is it like?

Speaker 2: 27:58

no, yeah, yeah, she's clumsy, but yeah, it's correct, it was about a year, a year of physical therapy. Oh yeah, how was your fourth? My fourth pregnancy was good. I ended up. We my daughter was born on Valentine's Day. My husband and I had a Valentine's Day plant.

Speaker 2: 28:26

Well, we were going to go out to eat the day before and you know, we were so excited Like I tried to eat very small meals so that I could have lots of room to eat lots of food and so we go to my doctor's appointment and we were going to go out to eat right afterwards. We were so pumped and I go in and they told me my blood pressure was high and I was going to go to the hospital and I was like, no, no, no, no. So we call the place and we're like, if you could, you know, move our reservation back a little bit, we're going to be a little bit late. And you know, we ended up calling them probably three or four times until finally my husband had to call back. We have to cancel.

Speaker 2: 29:07

But yeah, I went in and my blood pressure just was not going down. So they told me, you know, we're going to do a C-section. And so that's when my C-section streak started back up. But she ended up being a C-section. But other than that, you know it was a very typical C-section, which was nice, because you know what I was remembering. You know, when they first told me I was going to have a C-section, you know my heart was like I was really nervous, and so they. You know the whole experience was completely different. You know I was way more laid back. You know my husband was in there with me and you know I got to see my baby right away, which was a whole new experience as far as C-sections go for me. But yeah, it was. It was a pretty typical C-section and delivery with her.

Speaker 1: 30:06

You were okay.

Speaker 2: 30:08

What was that? You were awake, yes, I was awake. You know just the whole. Yeah, I got to experience the whole thing, which was so much better. Is there a reason?

Speaker 1: 30:19

that they wouldn't Just try to induce you and let you.

Speaker 2: 30:28

With that one. I think what happened with that one was just because of how high my blood pressure was that they just didn't feel comfortable with me doing the V-Back. Yeah, with your history too. Yeah, I think that was part of it too, the history and my blood pressure not acting nice. How was your recovery? Physically, it was way better, way, way better than with my first C-section. I think it was like a cleaner cut. They had time to do it. Where the first cut it didn't look as good as this one. I had a lot easier of a time recovering and definitely mentally, I had no mental issues that time around. Yeah, and then your fifth. It's my fifth.

Speaker 2: 31:27

Yeah, I fought and fought and fought to have a V-Back with him. I wanted one so bad and I thought I was going to get it. I found one doctor in the practice that kept telling me I'm on your side, we're doing a V-Back and we got all the way down to the end and she's like they're not going to let you have a V-Back. I was like what, why? And she's like your blood pressure. Your blood pressure has just not been good and they're not going to let you do it. So I ended up having a C-section with him as well, but probably overall it was probably my most positive. It was definitely my most positive C-section experience, going through it once and having those nerves calm after my first C-section. I went into this one knowing that it wasn't going to be like the first one, which was nice, and they brought him right over to me, got to hold him and it was wonderful.

Speaker 1: 32:30

That's good. Yeah, like do you feel, I guess, ready to go through it again? Or like did your body feel ready? Like you know? I know that scar tissue kind of build up there.

Speaker 2: 32:50

I'm just, I guess I hope I'm not prying too much there. Oh gosh, no, Now you're feeling it. No, you can ask me whatever you want. I feel really good. The thing with the C-section scar area, you know it can still hurt. You know, like you know, sometimes I say like if my pants hit it just right, you know I can really feel it. But yeah, I feel ready, I feel good. I mean knowing that. It's always kind of like a surreal thought knowing that you're going to go through that again.

Speaker 2: 33:25

You know, C-sections are crazy. Your arms are pinned down. You know you can feel them cutting into you. Not feel them cutting into you, but like your body's like jerking as they're cutting into you and it's just, it's just a crazy feeling all around, so that I mean that's hard to get used to that thought that knowing you're going to be doing that again. But I feel like overall, physically, mentally, I feel like I feel ready and to do it for the last time, no more.

Speaker 1: 34:00

That's so amazing that you like feel so good. Like, I'm so happy to hear it, especially since you're. We have a one year old, your son's one.

Speaker 2: 34:11

Yeah, he'll be two in September. Okay, I'm like so amazed by you, like how you're pregnant with your six.

Speaker 1: 34:21

Like I'm feeling so exhausted being pregnant with a toddler.

Speaker 2: 34:25

Yeah. So, could I see you? I take lots of naps. Yes, good, definitely need those naps.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Good, you deserve it.

Speaker 2: 34:39

Is there anything else you wanted to add from like any postpartum or pregnancies? I don't know, I guess just. I guess just that like it got progressively better every time. You know, I guess, like, like what you're saying, you can't imagine how I did it, but it's. I always tell people. It's not like I woke up one day and somebody handed me five kids. It was a progressive thing.

Speaker 2: 35:10

And you know, through I felt like after every pregnancy, after every birth and after every delivery it got progressively easier, you know, not just the postpartum like mental health type of aspect, but just like feeling confident in raising these kids. You know, every time I felt like I was a little bit more equipped. And my, you know, with my fifth I felt really good. After having him I felt really good, you know, with him as a newborn and you know, even with having those four other kids running around you know, it was I don't know I just felt more confident. You know, I've done this before, I can do it again, kind of an attitude. And with that first one I feel like if somebody would tell me after my first kid that I was going to do this five more times, I'd be like you're crazy, I'm never doing this again. But like now, after my fifth kid, I was like, oh yeah, I can do it again. So I don't know, I guess it's just it gets easier.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Yeah, I feel like that was my first too, just like watching my husband change the diapers and I'm like over here, like can you show me how to swaddle?

Speaker 2: 36:26

Like, yeah, my husband's that same way. He's the swaddler in the house, you know, he knows how to do all that kind of stuff. I was like, hey, can you please swaddle the baby? I can always get it wrong and it always looks sloppy when I do it.

Speaker 1: 36:43

Break out of it right away.

Speaker 2: 36:44

Yeah, he could get them in their nights and tight, I feel like I was always afraid of hurting him, right, he's just like wrapping him up in there and then with the on my second.

Speaker 1: 36:57

Well, we did. We've skipped swaddles and just got the Velcro one. So like yes, definitely more comfortable.

Speaker 2: 37:05

Yes, those are the best.

Speaker 1: 37:07

They are the best.

Speaker 2: 37:09

Yeah, we still have our daughter and her like halo one from the hospital, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:15

Those are awesome yeah. Oh, thank you so much yeah thank you guys, Again bye. Yeah, do you have like any advice for new moms or anyone struggling with their mental health?

Speaker 2: 37:31

Man, I would just say, you know, if you just don't feel like yourself, look for help. Look, even if it's just like talking to a friend and talking to a family member. You know. If you need extra help, get the extra help you know, because there's no sense in suffering through not feeling good, not feeling like yourself. It's not good for you, it's not good for baby or your marriage or any of that. You know, get help.

Speaker 1: 37:57

Yeah, nice. Well, thank you so much again for sharing your story. Yeah, like, definitely our first time hearing.

Speaker 2: 38:10

I've never heard about a placental adruption, so I'm so happy to like, show awareness and, you know, give you your space to share your story because it's so important. Yeah, no, it's definitely therapeutic in itself to share things like that, because you don't always get a chance to tell people you know those stories, so it was nice to have a space to do that Good.

Speaker 1: 38:33

Well, amazing. So yeah, we will definitely link to that.

Speaker 2: 38:38

We will definitely link how people and listeners can connect with you on our Instagram and, if you have any questions, just hopefully Emily and listeners can connect. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Golden Hour Birth Podcast. We hope you've enjoyed our discussion and found it insightful and beneficial. Remember, the Golden Hour Birth Podcast is made possible by the support of listeners like you. If you appreciate the content we bring you each week, consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform or sharing the show with your friends and family. Your support helps us reach more people and continue creating valuable episodes. If you have any questions, suggestions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us on our website, wwwgoldenhourbirthpodcast, or connect with us on social media. We value your feedback and want to make sure that we're delivering the content you want to hear. Before we sign off, we'd like to express our gratitude to our incredible guests who joined us today. We are honored that they trust us enough to be so open and vulnerable. We're grateful for their time and willingness to share their stories with us.

Speaker 1: 39:52

If you're interested in taking the conversation further with us, join us on our Facebook group, the Golden Hour Birth Circle. We'll be back next week with another exciting episode, so be sure to tune in. Until then, stay golden and remember to take care of yourself. We'll catch you on the next episode of the Golden Hour Birth Podcast. Bye.