116: Rediscovering Your Belief During Grief (with Madison Snyder) [Miscarriage, Gestational Diabetes, Induction]

When you find out you’re pregnant and you’ve never had more joy, faith, or closeness with God in your entire life, you’re on the mountain top! Then the enemy takes that baby away from you, and everything comes crashing down-how can you recover from such a tragedy? When Madison and Trevor become pregnant for the second time, they were understandably anxious and unable to celebrate in the way that they did with their first, never knowing if this baby was going to go to Heaven too soon too. Questioning her every decision, Madison navigated every step of this pregnancy from the diagnosis of gestational diabetes to the hard push for early induction, and every intervention that she encountered on the day of her baby’s birth. What would they do differently with their next labor? What decisions would they make in pregnancy and childbirth for a different experience? Would her faith ever fully be restored to where it was before? These were questions she was asking herself when her baby was less than an hour old! Listen to every detail of Madison’s gripping story as she shares her heart and mind surrounding her first childbirth experience today, and what she learned along the way.

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(Starts at 7pm EST on 11/10 and goes through 11:59pm EST on 11/13)

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I ended up actually going to the ER that night and saying, like, hey, I'm pregnant. Also, I just had the glucola earlier today. I think my kidneys are just having a hard time processing it. It feels like kidney stones. It feels bad. And the ER doctor was immediately like, oh no, that's that's not a thing. Um, you have perfectly unremarkable normal pregnancy pain. I will never forget that phrase. Because I wanted to punch that man in the face.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hi, I'm Kayla Heater, follower of Jesus, wife and mother of five children, Christian childbirth educator in doula, and your host of the Surrendered Birth Stories Podcast, where we share God-centered birth stories, evidence-based birth education, and our pursuit of surrendering our birth plans to God. Let's get started. Hi everybody! I hope your week is off to a great start. It is chilly here in North Carolina or in Greensboro, anyways. Um, the high today, I think, is only like 45, which is quite chilly for us this time of year, but it's still beautiful. It's still fall. I still love every minute of being outside and looking at all of the colors. It's beautiful. Um, my husband and I got the opportunity this weekend. Thank you to my mother, my amazing mom, who um we were not able to take any sort of baby moon this time. And we've always done that. We've always taken just a couple days away at least um before, you know, we have a baby, just to connect and recharge and you know, have big conversations and just enjoy each other's company uninterrupted. And, you know, it's really good for our marriage, especially going into this time when we're gonna have uh an infant attached to us 24-7. Um, but this pregnancy, we just weren't able to swing that um for a number of different reasons. But she so kindly and graciously gifted us um a hotel room for the night. And then she came and stayed at our house and kept our kids for us while we went out and got a night away. And it was so refreshing and so honestly needed, and we were able to just really connect and have a great time together and talk about you know the upcoming birth and this upcoming season, and it was it was just such a blessing. So thank you, mom, for that. We love you. I did want to mention something fun that's happening this week specifically. So I don't know how many of you have noticed, but on our episode show notes every week, you know, we have a few different links there for a few different things, but one of them is a link to my favorite resources, my favorite, you know, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, must-haves. And there's a link for that there, and you're able to go and it's a you know, really cute PDF file for you to download and has all the links to everything. Well, some of my very favorite supplements that I religiously take during pregnancy and into postpartum is the perfect, it's literally called perfect supplements. Um, the perfect supplements, um, beef liver and the acerola cherry and their magnesium. Um, I also take their collagen and their gelatin. They have a lot of incredible products, but they are having their biggest sale of the year this week from 1111 Veterans Day through the 13th. So Tuesday through Thursday. I think like maybe 7 p.m. Monday night, it actually starts. Um, but I'm gonna link that in the show notes for y'all. Um, all of their products, all of the perfect supplement products will be 27% off. Plus, you can use the code surrendered 10. That's the word surrendered with the number 1010 after it, um, for an additional 10% off for a total of 37% off, which is amazing. And though they don't do any other bigger sale than this. So they don't do like a Black Friday sale that will be bigger than this or anything like that. This is by far their biggest sale of the year. So if you've been thinking about trying perfect supplements or needing to stock up because you already take them like me, then this is your best and perfect time to do that. And now at this point in pregnancy, I take like eight to 10 beef liver capsules a day. So, and I really truly believe it has helped with my energy. It's helped with my iron, it's helped with everything, honestly. And you know what? This is kind of funny and super anecdotal, but I am not losing hair in the shower, if that makes sense, like like I usually do. I feel like it's all playing a factor, but so this is it. So I'll link the sale in the show notes. Again, it starts Monday night, but it's gonna be advertised like Tuesday through Thursday. And it is while supplies last. So if they run out, they run out, and that's the end of the sale. But you can stack those discounts. They're also doing 30% off select bundles, which then if you use the 10% off surrender 10 discount code, it would be 40% off the bundles. So that's like almost half off. That's amazing. So highly encourage you guys to take advantage of this super awesome sale. If you're listening to this episode at a later date, past um November 13th, you can always use the surrender 10 discount at any time and for an extra 10% off at all times. So just so you guys know that, I hope that you're able to stock up on some good stuff. I'll try and talk about it um in my Instagram stories this week, but you all know I'm really not super great at social media, but I'll do my best. Okay, now that all that is out of the way, let's go ahead and get into this week's episode. When you find out you're pregnant and you've never had more joy, faith, or closeness with God in your entire life, you're on the mountaintop. Then the enemy takes that baby away from you and everything comes crashing down. How can you recover from such a tragedy? When Madison and Trevor become pregnant for the second time, they were understandably anxious and unable to celebrate in the way that they did with their first, never knowing if this baby was going to go to heaven too soon, too. Questioning her every decision, Madison navigated every step of this pregnancy from the diagnosis of gestational diabetes to the hard push for early induction and every intervention that she encountered on the day of her baby's birth. What would they do differently with their next labor? What decisions would they make in pregnancy and childbirth for a different experience? Would her faith ever fully be restored to where it was before? These were questions she was asking herself when her baby was less than an hour old. Listen to every detail of Madison's gripping story as she shares her heart and mind surrounding her first childbirth experience today and what she learned along the way. Madison, can you take a minute and just introduce yourself and your family and help us get to know you?

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Yeah, my name is Madison Carroll Snyder. Um, married to Trevor. Um, we met in kindergarten and then went our separate ways, but met back up in college. We've been together 12 years, 12 and a half years now. Married for five, got married in COVID lockdown in the church lobby. That was fun. We just make memories every step of the way. Um, and we have an adorable son, Gabe, who is real cute and sleeps through the night. And I couldn't ask for anything better. He sleeps through the night. Since two months. He's it's trap.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

It's trap.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

He makes us feel like we can have like 17 more. He's so happy.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Wow. That's amazing.

unknown 9:13

I know.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

None of my kids until at least 12 months. 12 to 18 months is when they usually start sleeping through the night.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Wow, we put him down at 9:30. He gets up at 8.

unknown 9:23

It's great.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

I know. Everyone will hear how like different my birth story was. I know every birth story is different, but just kept going sideways unexpectedly. And now I feel like this is the reward.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Like, this is the reward. You had a rough birthday. Here's your super cute baby that's sleeping. It's your super adorable sleeping child. Yeah. Well, let's dig into your journey. So tell us about getting pregnant for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

So, Trevor and I had been married for a couple years. We always said there were a couple of places we wanted to travel and we wanted to buy a house, and we just wanted to get our couple life together. We wanted to make sure we had a strong foundation because we did not live together before we got married. Um, so we we had to learn how to be good roommates to each other before we had another roommate join us. So uh we uh decided right around like three, three and a half-ish years in um that we wanted to have a baby. My sister's wedding was coming up, but after that it was like fair game. And um, he always wanted kids. I also knew I wanted kids, but it was always kind of something hypothetical in the future, right? Like, of course, I can one day see myself being a mom, and one day we're gonna have a family, a multi-child family. But um, it's kind of strange how, especially being like a working female, it just never felt like a great time and um or the right time. Again, I knew like it was gonna be a part of my story, I just didn't know when. And so when that finally clicked in my brain, um I guess two years ago, fall. I have no sense of time. Two years ago, fall, um, it was sudden and immediate. I was like, all right, I'm ready, and I hope I get pregnant today. You know, like it um it's kind of I've talked to other women who like have really demanding jobs and great marriages and things, and they they all kind of deal with the same thing where it's you know, one day, and then as soon as your mind is made up, the impatience is unbearable. You're just you're ready for that next step, you're ready for your life to continue into that next season. Um, me being a data person and very um statistics-oriented, I immediately started tracking periods and I had two different ovulation tests I was taking every day. I was really obsessive about it, not in like a stressful way, but just it actually made me feel better. And I know I was talking to you, Kayla, I was talking to my OB. Everybody was telling me to calm down because it probably wasn't healthy, but it really did make me feel like I had control over an uncontrollable situation. Um, and so uh after a couple months, like no success, I had just gone off birth control in October, early October. And you just hear so many stories about women like, huh, uh, I forgot one pill and I got pregnant, or oh, I went off it and like two periods later I was pregnant and it was so quick. And so I was kind of frustrated that it didn't happen immediately. Um and so Christmas comes around. I'm ovulating on Christmas, so around family gatherings and stuff. We're just like jumping onto each other, and that was kind of interesting to coordinate. Um, and then it gets to uh New Year's, we go on a family trip. I'm just really moody in the family trip. And we get back. I took a pregnancy test before we left, and it was negative, but it was early, you know. Um, we get back, and on January 6th, um, that date is like keeps coming back, is like an important part of our story. It means something to a lot of other people for different reasons, but to us it's our it's our family day. Um, I got the positive test on January 6th. I remember it was, I think, a Saturday. Trevor was in the shower. I was in our bathroom looking at it, and it said, pregnant. And I just walked over the shower and like slapped it up against the shower door, and Trevor just started freaking out, jumped out. We're like so happy, jumping up and down. We're not like overly exuberant people, but we were acting like happy idiots, you know. It was great, and um immediately I went to just pure happiness and joy. You know, we started praying together every night. Trevor really took it very seriously that like wanted to be the spiritual leader of our new family that was growing. We were just really, really close to God at that time. We immediately started telling people. We told our small group, we told our closest friends, we told both of our parents and my siblings. Um, because I said, you know, I'm not gonna live in fear. The reason that you hide this wonderful information inside until, you know, 12, 13 weeks is because you're afraid something bad's gonna happen there, you're gonna lose the baby. And I said, like, I don't, I don't have that. I don't have that fear. Like, God has finally given us this perfect family. You know, we had years and years of tumultuous dating. There was family dynamics. It was being together was never easy. And every day we made the choice to be together. And so it felt like a reward. We were getting rewarded for, you know, all these years, 11, 12 years of fighting for each other and choosing each other and putting God first in our relationship. Um, so we told everybody, and I have never been closer to God than I was in that three-week period. I've never had that much faith in God before. I've always been a believer since I was little. Like we've always been fervent church attendees and small group members, and um, this just was like a whole new level of faith because it was the first time that my control freak self completely gave it up to God and just spent that three weeks worshiping and being so thankful for the blessing. And that's something I think every Christian struggles with, but I especially do is like taking pause to celebrate when God blesses you. Um, I don't always do that because my brain wants to jump to the next thing. And so I really I treasure those three weeks. I love the person I was in those three weeks. Um, so we go to the doctor, you know, as soon as I got the positive test, I called my doctor and they tell you, congrats, we'll see you in three weeks. And then you just are kind of on your own in the wild for three weeks until you get in there. And so we went for our appointment. They call it a confirmation ultrasound, which is the worst name. Like it makes you feel like I'm not lying. Like at the I I'll bring the test if you want.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Like I didn't make this up, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:36

I feel like it should be called something else. Um, suggestions are a sippancy or like a meet and greet. It should be a lot happier than confirmation ultrasound. Because that's just a really intimidating thing to say. So we go in and we're again just like nothing but happy. It has never occurred to us that we would not be bringing this baby home. Um, and we go into the ultrasound and seeing stuff come up on the screen and everything. And I ask the ultrasound tech, you know, what are we looking at here? I'm just seeing some blobs. And um, she says, Oh, your doctor will talk to you about that. And now I know that that's code for something bad is about to happen. Um, ultrasound techs, you know, are not allowed to diagnose, they're just there to do the imaging. Um now I know that that was like not gonna be good news. But we still were just like, huh, that was weird. I mean, I guess, you know, my limited medical knowledge, I knew they weren't allowed to diagnose. So I told Trevor, it's it's fine. Like, I'm sure we'll we'll go into the doctor's office, it'll be fine. They escort us into my OB's office, and she's like, So you're measuring small. I said, What does this mean? And her and the tech had both asked me multiple times about like when the last day of my period, are my cycles normal? And I, since I had been tracking that three different ways, I was like, I these dates are correct. Like, again, I'm not lying, like these dates are correct. And they said, Well, it's just it's measuring small, and we're not seeing a heartbeat, and that's not good. It was a Friday, and they said, you know, sometimes this can, you know, maybe the dates are off. And I said, Well, they're not, but okay. You're telling me that the only reason this is good news is if they are, then maybe there is a chance I'm wrong. I'm rarely wrong, which um maybe there is a chance. Um, so we leave and we're just kind of trepidatious. We still we're kind of like numb a little bit. At that point, we know there's probably a 50-50 shot. This is not good news. Um, but we're still we'll still have moments of happiness. And this was on a Friday, and so they took my blood to try to, I guess, measure the HCG levels and everything. And they said, come back on Monday, we'll retest and we'll do another ultrasound and we'll see what happens. So I kind of took the rest of the day off work. I just wasn't really feeling mentally great about how everything transformed. It felt like there was a lot more they wanted to say, but they weren't. Um, they just kept asking me, Are you sure you haven't had any bleeding? Are you sure you haven't had any negative symptoms? I said, No, I've I felt great. And they're like, Well, how great? Like, have you had any morning sickness? Have you had I was like, No, no sickness. It's been wonderful. Like, I think I'm really lucky. And now I know that the lack of symptoms is not a good sign. Um, so that night um we go home and after dinner I go to the bathroom and there's a little bit of blood, and I start panicking, and I'm like, oh no, this isn't great. Unfortunately, I have several friends, one of them being like one of my best friends that have gone through miscarriages before. And I said, you know, there's a little bit, it's Not a lot, but there's like a little bit of blood. They're like, that's fine with a vaginal ultrasound. Sometimes that can happen. Like that doesn't mean anything. If it gets worse, let us know. Um, so we went to bed and I woke up in the middle of the night just in a pool of my own blood. Um and in excruciating pain. And I made it to the bathroom. Trevor's up, like trying to figure out what's going on. And we both end up kind of sleeping in the bathroom because I'm just like hemorrhaging blood. Um, but again, unfortunately, I have several friends who have gone through miscarriages. I knew that's what was happening. And they said there's um, there's really no point in going to the ER at that point, that you're just gonna be sitting in an ER waiting room going through this like devastating thing. Um, they're gonna say, you know, when you stop bleeding, we'll do an ultrasound. They won't give you pain meds just in case you still are pregnant. There's just there's nothing they can do at that point. Um so I didn't want to go to the hospital. So we just kind of stayed there. And I, the way I've kind of figured out how to put words to it is that I never knew you could feel like you were dying from physical and emotional pain at the same time. Before that point in my life, I'd gone through physical pain, you know, hurt injuries and hurting myself and stuff. And I'd gone through things that felt so bad. It felt like my heart was physically breaking, but I'd never felt both at the same time. Because you just know what's happening. So the rest of the weekend, we just stayed around the house. We went Monday morning and they said, Yeah, the baby's the baby's gone. And um, you know, just the wording lost the baby, miscarriage. I hate those words. They're just like the worst descriptors because it makes it seem like you did something wrong. Like you, as a woman, weren't able to fulfill your womanly duty, quote unquote, you know. Um, so a lot of talk with the doctor. We over the weekend had already kind of talked together and had the hard conversation. Are we going to immediately start trying again? And um, I still had that like tug in my soul that like I had made this decision that I wanted to be a mom and I wanted it now. And um so we decided we did want to start trying again pretty quickly. And we talked to our doctor who said, you know, it's it's gonna be like six to eight weeks before you get your cycle back. Um, if it's any longer than that, let me know. Um, otherwise, I really hope I see you in at least six months. I'd be surprised if I don't see you because everything else about your health is all looking really good. You know, um, before that point, I had spent a year working so hard on my physical health, getting my autoimmune diseases like in order. Um, I had lost a ton of weight. I was the fittest I'd ever been in my adult life. Um, and she said, You've got you've got everything going for you. I'll see you soon. I know I will. So we go home, and it's just a rough couple weeks. Um, to go from feeling as close as you've ever felt to God to being violently angry with God is very jarring. It's very jarring. I'd never felt that ever. Even experiencing the you know, death of friends and family members and you know, terrible tragedies every day. Like you I'd never gotten to that point so physically angry. Um I even I just said that uh for the first time in my life, I said, I don't know if God exists anymore because this is hell on earth. Like, how? How can this be allowed to happen? Especially after, again, like I'm an achieving person. I felt like I had done everything right, not just in that pregnancy, but in you know, years and years of spending so much time in the Word and praying every day and spending time with God and just really I felt like I had checked all the boxes, I'd done all the work, and it was our time finally, and then for it to not be was just awful. Trevor and I immediately like stopped praying together. He just grieved very deeply with me. Um, I didn't go back to work for about a week or so, and when I did my work suffered, I was just not not myself very much shell-shocked about the whole thing, and so much anger towards God. And I remember texting you, Kayla, texting Chris, your husband, um just about being angry. And I don't know, I don't know if it was you or Bess, my friend that you know kind of helped me through this whole thing. Um, I said, I I'm just so angry at God. And somebody said, That's okay. He's God's a big boy, he can take it. And no one had ever told me that it was okay to be mad at God. You know, you you read the book of Job with the lamenting and everything, but um no one had ever said it was okay to feel every day like you're actively having a screaming match in your head with God. Um that's kind of where I was at. And it was slightly comforting that I wasn't a terrible person or a terrible Christian for feeling that way. I knew I couldn't let that be my heart for forever, but it needed to be for a couple months. I just needed to feel my feelings. I'm very much like I consider myself a highly emotionally intelligent person. Um, I don't just fly off the handle at things. I'm able to assess a situation, be sympathetic or empathetic for other people, control my reaction a good portion of the time. I'm not perfect by any means, but I just I'm not an angry person. I really, it was a lot. Um so after a couple months, then even our dog got cancer and he passed away, and that's when the anger really got bad. I thought I was angry before, but we had kind of tried to keep it together a little bit and go about life. But after Bubba passed away six weeks after we lost the baby, it broke us in such a big way. It was a uh Wednesday evening when the doctors told us that the cancer was like all throughout his body, and we had to let him go. And we just sobbed all night and we got up and we just packed up the car and we just drove to the beach. We just need to escape because our reality was falling apart. Um, I'm not a crier either, geez Louise.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

These are cry-worthy stories.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

Yeah, it felt like God was taking away my desire to nurture. I just wanted to care for something so bad, and the dog I'd raised from the puppy was gone, and my baby was gone. There's just so many questions, and just everybody starts asking how could this happen? But it just happened. I knew bad things happen to people all the time. Bad things that happened to me in my life, but that's when I felt forgotten that I got there for a wow. Um, Trevor got even more depressed too. I mean, it really broke us. He didn't want to pray at all. I didn't want to pray. We didn't go to church for a couple weeks. Um, it was all just like way too much. And in that my uncle also got diagnosed with cancer, and he passed away shortly after. And I the last text I have from him is, you know, Uncle Donna, I don't really believe in praying right now, but I'll say a prayer for you. Um, I'm gonna pull up what he said because he was just a much better person than I am, and always knew the right biblical thing to say. Um he said, Thanks, Maddie. I struggled some too given this diagnosis. Remember that God's view of things is much longer than ours. Romans 8, 28. And if he in the face of terminal cancer could say that I knew I had to get myself together, but it was gonna take some time. So we um we started trying to find normalcy again, still angry with God, but trying to find joy in some some of the little moments and things. We went and visited friends out of town. It was great to just again depart from reality and go spend time with people who cared about us and must have worked. I guess sometime during that, I was still tracking, you know, all of my ovulation and everything. Um, it already been two or three months of trying and it hadn't happened yet. My cycle had come back, and shockingly, it was fairly normal pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Um, and a couple weeks later, end of April, my family actually has this interesting hobby that we race cars. Um, and we were at a race in Texas, and on Friday, I'd gone out for my first drive, and some guy who had just gotten in a car for the first time that day totally T-bones me and takes me out like in the first lap.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

Um, and I had never had any kind of like accident in the race car before. I was fine, you know, you're in a five-point seat belt with a neck harness and the helmet and the cage and everything.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Um, I wasn't hurt or anything, but I just mentally felt a little foggy after that for the rest of the weekend. And before I had gotten in the car that day, I had taken a pregnancy test just to be sure because I didn't want to get in the car if there was a chance I was pregnant and it was negative. So I was mad. So the night before that, I had had quite a significant bit of alcohol and had a great evening. And then I got into a race car accident. So the rest of the weekend I just couldn't shake it.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

I just felt like I had this mental cloud fog, something hanging over me.

SPEAKER_03 31:03

So Sunday, Trevor and I are sitting like in the technical trailer. Um, he's just kind of working. I'm just hanging out in between times when I'm allowed to get in the car and go on the track. And I was like, ugh, this has been such an awful weekend. I just mentally am not in this, and I don't know why. It's either from getting hit or I'm pregnant, and I need to go take a test, and whatever it says, you know, I'll either not drink or you can drink for two. I needed to go get some wine and calm down a little bit. Um, so I went into the garage at Circuit of the Americas, a really famous like track in Texas. Went into the garage, pee it in a cup, took the pregnancy test in the cup back into our trailer and sat it on the counter, and surprisingly, it popped up pregnant. And Trevor said, Well, I guess I'm drinking for two today.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

I said, I guess you are, and I guess I'm probably not getting back in the race car.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

And we proceeded to get into a fight that lasted three weeks because I wanted to be happy again. I still couldn't trust God. I couldn't give this to God the way I had the with our first baby. But I I wanted to be happy so badly because we'd been so sad for so long. And I wanted Trevor to react happy, but he's always the realist, always the um non-emotional realist. And he said, I'm not gonna get happy. I can't waste emotion on that. I emotionally don't have capacity for that. And I just got so angry. I'm like, what am I supposed to do for the next three weeks until my doctor will have us in for the meet and greet, you know, the meet and greet ultrasound. What am I supposed to do? And he said, I don't know, but I'm still not there. I just can't be happy yet until there's a reason to be. And he said, but I have this test, there's a reason to be. And I I know he was just his sweet Enneagram 5 self. He was still drained and he just hadn't gotten filled yet after all those months of sadness. So we fought bickered for three weeks that I just I just wanted him to be happy. So I felt I could give myself permission to be happy, and he was trying to protect his heart, which I completely respect, but it was a rough time. Um we're just absolutely dreading going in for the meet and greet ultrasound. Um, and they put you in the waiting, I don't know why my OB's office does this, but they put you in the waiting room with all the pregnant women, and then they put you in a back waiting room for the ultrasound machines, I guess. And there's more pregnant women in there, and all we could do was just complain about this is mean.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Why can't there be a waiting room for people who have had a loss?

SPEAKER_03 34:16

This is rude, and um, there was a long wait, and it just we walked into the ultrasound room just in the worst of moods, um, and physically held my breath while the tech, you know, was trying to find the baby. And then she said, There's your baby, and I sobbed. I know I just cried, but I just don't cry. And Trevor is crying, and it's just I said, it's just so great to see something on the screen. And that there's something there, there's a person there. That was a great day. Lots of happy tears that day.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Whether you are pregnant with your first baby or wanting to have a different birth experience for a subsequent delivery, this is the fully comprehensive Christian childbirth course for you. The Surrendered Birth Course. With over 10 years of experience as a childbirth educator, a birth doula, and having had five kids myself, almost six, I have created a course fit for every mama out there who wishes to be fully informed on all things pregnancy, labor, birth, postpartum, and breastfeeding, while remembering to keep Jesus at the center of it all. Our God created a beautiful design for birth, something to look forward to and not something to be feared. Not only will this course get you prepared for your birth, but it will also get you excited for it. It will answer questions you never knew you had and teach you things you didn't realize were so incredibly valuable and central to the entire birthing process. I've had numerous couples on their second, third, or even fourth babies who've taken this course and said how incredibly glad they were and that they learned so much more than they ever thought they would. With over 12 hours of video content, five modules, numerous lessons, detailed PDF printout notes, and endless resources, we dive deep into pregnancy, labor, the risks and benefits of interventions, inductions, immediate and extended postpartum for both mom and baby, everything you need to know about breastfeeding, and basic newborn care. This course covers everything. Once you've taken the course, I am available to you for any questions you might have during a monthly live QA Zoom call, exclusive to our online course audience, as well as through email. The course is on demand. So as soon as you purchase it, you'll be able to start right away and re-watch any lessons as many times as you need. Whether you are planning a medicated hospital birth or an unmedicated birth at a birth center or home birth, this course will prepare you in every way that you can be prepared. While I understand the desire to take a specific hospital or home birth course cater to your specific birth plans, birth doesn't always go how we plan. And having the knowledge of how birth can go in other environments outside of our plans is essential. Most importantly, I will help you to surrender these plans to God. And in return, the Holy Spirit will provide you with the peace that only He can give. For more information on the course, to read testimonials of others who have taken it, or to sign up for the course, just click the link in the show notes. And lastly, remember, just like we say here every week on the podcast, learn all that you can, make the best plans, and then leave it in God's hands.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

So we make our future appointments. It's still a first couple months of struggling with God still. That like, well, thanks for this, but we can't celebrate yet. You know, we're not out of the woods yet. And it's such a purgatory-esque emotional place to be that you want to be happy, but you don't want to get your hopes up. And it's just a not fun spot. And then I started feeling like uh flaming dumpster fire 24-7 pretty soon after that.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

I don't think I've heard anybody describe it that way before.

SPEAKER_03 39:18

Oh, it was bad. It was hot garbage. I I just felt like I got hit by a bus every second of every day for nine months.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Which is a good sign, honestly. Yeah. So you're kind of in a catch 22 of you don't want to feel like trash, but it's it's very confirming that you feel like trash.

SPEAKER_03 39:42

I feel like trash and there's no relief. Um but I don't feel like I'm actually going to puke. Like the exhaustion and nausea hit me so hard, I couldn't get enough sleep and I still felt like I hadn't slept at all. And the nausea was, I told everybody, it's a six out of ten. It's just enough to be prohibitive for me to actually function as a human, but it's not bad enough that I'm actually puking my guts out. It's just infuriating.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yeah, it's annoying.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

It's annoying. So between the exhaustion just bopping me over the head and that nausea always being there, I was just a grumpy person. I already was trying to like be a realist. And you know, after you've had a loss, every milestone, you know, we made it to the the seven-week, the meet and greet, the sippancy. They should allow you to bring cocktails in. I understand why, because you're not supposed to have them. But you know, like they shouldn't allow you to make it celebratory.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

So we made it to the seven week. I'm pretty sure there were cocktails brought into your labor and delivery room.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

For sure that happened. Not for me.

SPEAKER_03 40:55

Not for everybody forgot about me, but um the yeah, the we made it to the seven week, and then your next goal is the 10-week. And I made it to that, but I just felt so awful. Um, and I was like, Where's where's this glow? I don't have this glow, I just feel awful. And because I felt awful, again, I worked super hard to improve my physicality, to be as healthy and fit as I possibly could. And immediately my ability to be mobile and to exercise just like tanked.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

And I was only eating what sounded decent, which was not a ton of anything because the heartburn hit me near immediately, like the heartburn and the reflux. So I'm nauseous, and there's acid in my throat at all times. So I wasn't able to eat hardly anything, but was it felt like if I ate air, I would gain weight. I was just gaining weight like crazy. Um, and then that's depressing. And, you know, I actually had never even heard the term prenatal depression before. I actually think I saw it for the first time on a pose from um Virginia, Virginia Simonato, um, said that that's something she had struggled with. No one talks about that. That you can getting pregnant could possibly be depressing because there's so many hormones and chemical imbalances and all kinds of stuff. No one had ever told me that. Ever. Sorry, it's a thing. It's a thing. It's a thing, yeah. And so then I feel guilty because, like, okay, I'm not celebrating God right now, and I'm just unhappy. I wasn't snapping at people, I wasn't overly emotional or anything. I was just unhappy, um, which was hard to fathom because I was also, you know, after the loss of the baby, my OB had said, listen, you're you're going through a lot. I'm gonna prescribe like the most mild dose of an antidepressant. Because if you're saying you want to start trying immediately, like you've got to be healthy, mind, body, everything. And if you're struggling a lot, just let me know. And at the time I said, no, no, I'll be fine. Then the day after our dog passed away, six weeks later, I messaged my doctor and I said, I'm gonna need that. I'm gonna need that low grade antidepressant. And so I had continued taking it because she said, It's so low grade, there's no risk to your pregnancy. So it still is kind of confusing to me. My chemist body chemistry must have been so off that even that medication couldn't overtake just the storm cloud that I felt like was over my head that whole time, you know. But you keep getting to the milestones, you get to the 10-week, and then you're at the 15, and then it's anatomy scan time, and everything, every time I have to go in that ultrasound room, it's another holding the breath and holding hands and just hoping it's all good, but not really knowing. And frankly, not being optimistic, which it felt like all the joy of being pregnant had kind of been ripped away from me. So then I kind of went into another wave of anger at God. That why do all these other women in the world get to be happy when they get the positive test? And we weren't. Why did they get to be happy every time they go through an ultrasound because they just have some inner confidence that it's gonna go great? So I really struggled with that through the whole pregnancy, that it felt like I was robbed of joy at these major milestones. It was always a relief to get there, but you're not supposed to just feel relief. You're supposed to also be joyful and happy because you're having a baby just like you wanted, and it's great. So, yeah, I still don't know why that medication didn't work at that point, but I stayed on it because I didn't want to go off it. I don't know where I would have been if I had gotten off of it. Um, so we pushed through and we just kept going. Um, tried to re-establish some friendships. Obviously, with like a rough six months at that point, we had isolated ourselves quite a bit, honestly. Um, so many amazing people in our lives, family included, had said they were there for us and said, you know, they really wanted to support us through this, but we just needed some time together, alone, quiet. I love our friends and family for how they were there for us. I'm so thankful to you and Chris for how you were there for me. I mean, I I don't know who I texted more during the that year just to know that like people were there to listen and to support. And it it didn't need to be fixed, it just needed to feel heard. It was a lot. Things only started to really turn positive, like after that anatomy scan that you know, we found out we were having a boy. Um, again, I'm really impatient. I wanted multiple data points, so I did a sneak peek and then we did a gender reveal and I did the blood test with my doctor, so we were very sure it was a boy. Um, and we knew all along that his name was gonna be Gabriel because um Trevor and I, having been together for so long, had years before started a note on my phone, all the baby names that we wanted. Some were jokes, a lot were jokes. Um were really serious, and the one that was at the top of the list was always Gabriel. And we knew, as I said, we wanted to travel a lot before we had kids. And one of the places we really wanted to go was Israel, which we had done the year prior. And we had hired a tour guide to take us to Nazareth, which is a little bit of a drive outside of Jerusalem. Um, and so we get to this church that has been built around the traditional, they say traditional, the traditional house of Mary, um, mother of Jesus. And he's like, you know, stick with me. There's gonna be a lot of people. Um, we'll get our tickets and we'll do the tour of the church, and you'll be able to see everything. It'll be great. And we go in, and there is not a soul in that building. It and our tour guide just keeps saying, like, this never happens. I don't know what's going on. I want to say that hour that we spent there, just Trevor and I and our guide, like maybe we saw two or three people. Maybe. And that's where I really feel like I made the decision I was ready to start a family. Being in that holy place and um knowing that our top name was Gabriel, and that's the angel that came to Mary to tell her that she was going to be the mother of God. And I just I felt a piece there that, like, that's gonna be our son's name. I know it. So as soon as we found out it was a boy, that's Gabriel. That's his name. And then his middle name is Taylor because that's the name of the dorm Trevor and I lived in when we met back up at college and lived in the same dorm at Wake. So his name means a lot to me because it's a callback to that time where we were we were given a special gift to be in a holy place with God, and it just felt incredibly unique and special. So we we get the anatomy scan, everything looks great, and we start to actually feel positive for the first time. You know, you and I are talking a ton about what I want my birth plan to be. I really wanted to be natural-ish. I knew I was going to try my absolute hardest to not tap in for an epidural, but I wanted to do as much as I could naturally. But I I think I told you I reserved the right to change my mind, is like my my tag. It's like your catchphrase, yeah. It's my birthing catchphrase. Um, and then we go for the diabetes test, the gestational diabetes test, and we do the one hour, and they come back and they say, so you failed. And I said, Well, tell me more. They said, Well, your fasting was too high. Um, so you failed because that was too high, and you couldn't process all the sugar in like the one hour. So you have to come back for the two hour. Two hour, three hour, the multi-hour. Um, I was like, oh, okay, well, I have always had fast high fasting blood sugar. I know this. Um, I've been testing my blood sugar since I was a kid when my older sister got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and my grandma had it as well. So we always knew the signs. Um, all of us checked our blood sugar. I think even my dad has high fasting blood sugar as well. It's just a it's just a thing. Um, so I go in for the three hour in October, and they call me and say, I failed again. So I've officially been diagnosed as a gestational diabetic. And I said, again, like tell tell me how. This word failed. And that's the word they used over and over emphatically, that drove me absolutely nuts. Again, as a high-achieving person, you're telling me I failed, which means something within my control I didn't control. And it's 100% my fault. Even though now after research, I know it's not. It's just not. But um, at the time it felt not great because they kept saying, no, it's black and white, you failed. And I said, again, why? And they said, well, again, you couldn't, your levels were too high after an hour. Eventually they came down, and that's fine. But because you had too many readings above that level, because your high, your fasting was high, and these levels were also high, it's too many readings that are above our thresholds, and so you officially get this diagnosis. No matter how hard I tried to say, like, well, this does kind of feel it feels like it's a spectrum thing. Like, why you don't have my baseline of my fasting blood sugar before I got pregnant. So, how can you really and they just would cut me off every time and say, no, you failed. You have it. So, with that came a lot of new rules and things. My practiced as rotational. Um, I have the same OB, but like it could be any one of like seven people that actually ends up delivering your baby at the hospital, whoever's on call. So they start rotating you through at different appointments to see all the doctors. Um, and all of them started really pushing induction. And I really didn't want to. Really bad. But then everybody was using words like policy and saying, This is our policy that you have gestational diabetes, so you have to get induced. Um, your blood sugars aren't looking good right now. At that point, I was checking my blood sugar four times a day. So it's not looking good. Um you need to just start preparing for getting induced at like 38 weeks. Um, so I asked for a continuous glucose monitor because I felt like by the time I got up in the morning, brushed my teeth, worked out a little bit, got ready for work, and went downstairs to where my blood sugar meter was to check my blood sugar before I ate something. It was on the high end of average. It was still average, but it was on the high end. So I was like, I'm I want to know what my blood sugar is when I first gained consciousness in the morning. Um, so they were really open to it, thankfully. They did call me in a continuous glucose monitor, started wearing that, and found that when I gain consciousness in the morning, my blood sugar is perfect. But then my body kicks into high gear, says, Oh, she's gonna need some energy to get going and start her day, and releases sugar into my person. Again, I am not a medical professional, but that's how I'm choosing to describe it. But it is kind of, I'd go from perfectly in range to the highest end of average that you can be before they start saying, Oh, that's way too high. That's bad. Um, so the CGM was great. I have been telling everyone I possibly can this thing about having kids. Like, don't do the diabetes thing. Don't do it. It's so not fun. Because I had actually, at the end of the three hour that evening, I had such excruciating kidney pain. Like, it was so bad. The drink didn't taste that bad. My body could not process it though. I ended up actually going to the ER that night and saying, like, hey, I'm pregnant. Also, I just had the glucola earlier today. I think my kidneys are just having a hard time processing it. It feels like kidney stones, it feels bad. And the ER doctor was immediately like, oh no, that's that's not a thing. Um, you have perfectly unremarkable normal pregnancy pain. I will never forget that phrase. Because I wanted to punch that man in the face. Um, unremarkable. Uh, I've had kidney stones before. I know what it feels like. It felt like that. Um, so we did some monitoring overnight. They said did an ultrasound. They said I didn't have kidney stones, that Gabe was fine, that everything was fine, and it was just normal, which it wasn't. I know for a fact that my kidneys just freaked out. I'm not a sugar person, I'm not a sweets person, and I think my body could not process that. And so I just I just didn't I tell everybody I can't don't do it. Don't do it. Don't drink the glucola, don't drink the glucola. Um, you know, for future pregnancy, I'm gonna tell my doctor, just put me on the CGM, put me on the CGM, I will wear it the entire pregnancy, but don't make me drink that stuff again, please. But um, with that diagnosis of gestational diabetes, a lot of the other doctors and my doctor started using the word policy. And I don't respond well to policy because already with this whole gestational diabetes process, I've been trying to say, like, I feel like this is a gray area, this is a spectrum. Like, what does this mean for me? You're just telling me there are these metrics you need me to hit that I'm not hitting, and I get that, but do I get no credit for being close? Um, and they just say, no, it's not gray, it's black and white. And they say, it's our policy that since you have gestational diabetes, we're gonna induce you at 38 weeks. 38? 38, yeah. That's what they had said. And I was like, well, why? And they said, because traditionally, babies of mothers with gestational diabetes are really big and it can be a very traumatic and scary birth and can cause fetal death. And I'm like, well, you threw that out there real casually. Um, we're just throwing out the most extreme circumstance that could happen. Uh, so what are my options? Like, what if he's not measuring big? And they said it's still our policy. Make it make sense. That's kind of a general theme I saw throughout, you know, these last year and a half, two years, it's like it's one size fit-all medical policies. And it's just, I wish there was some other option. I wish there was a way that medical care and obstetrics could be a lot more personable. I know they have to use studies and rules of thumb, but every time they quoted a study at me, I have a master's in statistics. I went and looked at the study and I went to see the sample size and I went to see peer reviews of everything. And they did not love when I came back with questions. Um, it really kind of agitated them and they just kept throwing up, well, this is our policy. And I even asked the question, okay, with my next baby, if I don't want to do the gestational diabetes test, if I don't want to drink the glucose syrupy terribleness, um, to avoid feeling like I'm having kidney stones that are unremarkable, um, what what would happen if I just refused to do the test because I know my body? And they said, we'd immediately start treating you as if you have gestational diabetes and we required extra tests, you know, non-stress tests, and we would still say we need to induce you early. I was like, okay, I really don't like this. Um, we get more weeks down the road, and um yeah, it just is more of the same. They're really saying from like the 32-week mark, they're saying that they're gonna start measuring every time the what is it, the fundle fun. Yeah. And um, they keep measuring, keep measuring, and they say he's measuring like a few days big. And I'm like, well, that doesn't sound severe at all. Um, as we get even closer to the you know, 38-week mark, he's measuring right on target. And I'm able to continue to push them and say, like, I don't want to deliver early. I had this feeling that his lungs were not gonna be ready. I was born with lungs that were underdeveloped because I was born three weeks early um without induction. I've I've just been impatient since birth. Um and I just I had this gut feeling, his lungs aren't ready. Like, I cannot have this baby at 38 weeks. Also, selfishly, that would have been like two days before Christmas, and I didn't want to deal with all that. I didn't want to be in the hospital on Christmas because I had this fear I was gonna get the subpar medical professionals didn't want to be trapped with like crappy doctors. Um, just a weird fear ahead. Uh so we get closer and closer. I at that point had been able to prove with the continuous glucose monitor that like my blood sugars were under control. They tried to tell me before I got the CGM that my blood sugars were still way too high. And I said, Well, these are just points in time. I want to get a continuous graph of like what's happening when it's happening. So I started logging my food and logging my blood sugars based on the CGM instead of just the blood sugar meter. And suddenly the doctor's tunes totally changed. And they were like, Oh, this is fantastic. You must have started working out and eating healthier. I've been Doing that the entire time. But they'd been giving me the lecture: you're clearly not like prioritizing your health because this is getting worse, not better, and your blood sugars are all over the place. Treating me as if I'm a type two diabetic, which is a bit controllable in most cases with diet and exercise, instead of having genetic high-fasting blood sugar. So once I got the CGM, I had changed nothing. I was still working out, still eating healthy, still tracking my blood sugars, just doing it continuously instead of ones off. And then they were like, oh, everything's great. You know, maybe we can, you know, push it past 38 weeks. So they kept monitoring, they kept measuring. Um, and we get pretty close to 40 weeks. And everyone at that point was telling me, oh, you're probably so done. You're probably going to push them to induce you at 38 weeks. I didn't feel crappy. It had been like a rough pregnancy because I had to go off my ADD meds. So I just felt like a bump on a pickle. I felt like garbage all the time. I wasn't even that nauseous. I just felt exhausted and I never woke up a single day feeling refreshed. I never got the nesting like surge of energy. All I wanted to do was sleep at night and during the day lay on the couch. I had no mental or physical capacity to do much anything else. Um, but I wasn't done. I was the same level of miserable I'd been the last, you know, nine months, but I wasn't at 38 weeks like dying for him to get out. Like I was, I felt fine. So I was able to kind of buy myself more time. And we got to the due date. And I said, All right, they've been telling me for so many weeks that he was slightly above average. And then they started saying, Well, there is a bit of margin of error, but he could be pretty big and it could be a very challenging labor. And it was like the day of his due date when I started panicking that maybe they were right. Maybe it was the hormones that you kind of taught us in in the birth class that we get very like meek and subservient and things, but it was really a very last minute. All of a sudden, I started listening to them. Like my very opinionated, determined self flew right out the window. And suddenly I was listening to everything they were saying, which I knew they had good intentions. But again, the general theme I saw was one size fits all health care. And I just passionately hated. I hate it so much. So they kept telling me this. And I finally said, all right, why don't we do two days from now, schedule an induction, and I'll do everything I can in the next two days to try to help him encourage him to come naturally. Um, we had already written the birth plan saying, like, I really didn't want to be induced. I didn't want potosin. I didn't want lots of different things, but I started feeling that meekness and just feeling like I needed to depend on the professionals. So I scheduled the induction. You were kind of helping me with the doing midwives brew. I was walking my stupid steep driveway trying to get things going.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:04

I don't think I've ever seen a steeper driveway than yours, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

I love my home. I hate that driveway. Um, and so I was trying everything I could, and he just wasn't super ready. So we get to the day of that I'm gonna go in at midnight. It's January 7th. He had been due on the 6th. The 6th, another theme. That was the first, that was the day that we found out the first time that we were pregnant. And then that was Gabe's due date. So all the feelings about like the redemptive quality of that day. Um, so we get to the seventh. I'm going in at midnight, I'm texting you, you're helping me with the midwives brew. I chugged it multiple times. I think I lost my mucus plug at some point. Um, they'd also been telling me for about three weeks that I was a centimeter dilated, but it was never more than that. I also learned from you that's super arbitrary too. Um, and a method that can be used to scare people. They're like, oh, well, you're already a centimeter. You can be a centimeter for weeks. You can be more than a centimeter for weeks. Everything you would kind of said, the doctors were gonna tell me 100% happened. But until that point, I had been really good at kind of fighting it all off. Um so we do that. We end up going in at midnight for the induction. They hook me up to the IV, which I said I didn't want, but they said that I had to. So we get to like about 3 a.m. I'm in the bed, I'm comfy, everything. They're like, okay, we're gonna start the potosin. And then I said, Well, I'm already like kind of dilating, I've been taking the midwives brew. Like, maybe, maybe you could just kind of leave me here for a couple hours. They're like, you came for an induction, you're getting one. Okay, thanks so much. But you had told me the best tip, which I now tell everyone possible, after you get there, get checked in, get everything, ask for the ambient. Get sleep. That has been the number one thing I have told everyone possible. Is like it's a marathon, not a sprint. You aren't gonna be we tried to sleep like that afternoon and that early evening, and you can't. You're full of adrenaline and like all hyped up and everything. So there was no sleep that had happened. And uh, so I asked for an ambient and I got like three power hours of sleep before morning, and it was great. Um, then those contractions started, those Pitocin-induced contractions. And at first I was like, okay, this isn't super bad. And then I kind of blacked out. You were there, so you can probably elaborate more. But I remember asking for the bouncy ball, the like yoga ball, and like sitting beside the bed, just kind of hanging out, um, and going through those. And I just kept saying, like, am I doing good? I don't know. They were kind of like about three-ish minutes apart, do you think, maybe when I was on still on the ball?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:01

Yeah, you're they were like probably anywhere from three to four minutes apart, and they were very intense. And I mean, you were a champ. You were handling them like a rock star, even though you may not have thought you were. I know. I mean, you keep saying that.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

You said that, and I was like, oh, I feel like I wimped out because I knew I was open to an epidural. Um, but I wanted to see how far I could make it. And 11 a.m., I think is when I finally tapped out, and I felt like a weenie.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:31

But you started the nitris first, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

I did start the nitrous first, yeah. So, like on the bouncy ball with the nitrous, I feel like I was on that position for at least like two hours or so, and it started out fine, and then it got really not fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:46

Really not fine. You held on for a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:50

I tried, I tried. I need you to keep telling me that I did really good and I stayed longer than most people do.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

You made it to about six, I want to say six centimeters. Yeah, which is like in deep into active labor, like you know, a labor that was being forced on you, which is that much harder to handle.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:11

So I tapped in for the epidural. By the time the anesthesiologist got there, it was pretty bad. He kept having to tell me to sit still. That's another thing they don't warn you about, is they clear the room, like no one could be there. And at that point, I'm full on like childlike, trying not to cry, really wanting my mommy and my husband, and they had to kick out all your support team. And it's just the nurse who at that point, that awful nurse.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:39

Oh, you did have a bad nurse.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:41

Kylie, the nasty nurse. She just showed up at 7 a.m. with an attitude for days, and uh, so she had to hold me up at the front while the anesthesiologist is going in the back, and I'm like, she wants to drop me.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:55

I know she's just this kind of attitude, she doesn't want to be here. Yeah, I don't know what was going on with her, but she clearly did not want to be there or to be working or to be being a nurse that day.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:08

It was crazy. Another thing they don't really prepare you for with the anesthesiologist, is not just like they show up, you know, they get behind you, they get in their back, and they're like, All right, I found the spot, here we go, and then you're good. It's a lot of um almost like an eye doctor test, like better or worse, better or worse. And at that point, you're in so much pain, you can't think straight. And so I don't know if I screwed up or if he screwed up or if both of us just couldn't communicate properly, but I thought uh he was like better or worse. And I'm like, I don't know, it still kind of hurts. Um, so it had like a couple times of poking and thinking about what the level of pain was at that point, and it finally started feeling a little bit better. Uh I had like a couple minutes, you know, of them just checking to make sure it was fine, and then they laid me back down, brought everybody back in. I started feeling calmer. I was like, this is great. Um, and then my mom told Trevor, like, we're at a great point now. It's like bright at noon. They're saying, you know, she may have a baby in just a couple hours. So why don't you take a nap? And I was like, I'm taking one too. Bye. I think we were down for 10 minutes before I shot up and was like, nope, nope, this is not working. This is not working. So I asked Kylie to get the anesthesiologist to check what was wrong. And she's like, Are you sure it's not just like fine? It's not fine, Kylie. Please go get the anesthesiologist. So he came back in, checked everything, and what did I say? He thought he said, like, there may have been a kink in the tube, something or other. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:48

Yeah, but is that when he bullused your epidural though, and like up, yeah, like re-upped it?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:54

Yeah, which again felt great for like 10 minutes. And I was like, okay, this is fine. And then it got really not fun again. And for the last like three weeks of my pregnancy, I felt a ton of I knew that Gabe was like head down on my right side, kicking me in the ribs constantly. And I felt him like pushing in my pelvis. I I constantly felt like whenever I stood up, the downward pressure, like tons of pressure into my the right side of my pelvis and into my pubic bone. And and then I was getting the pain from the contractions.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:29

And your catheter. Oh, the catheter. Kylie placed the catheter, and that thing hurt like hell. It was not burned.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:39

I have had a catheter before, and that one felt like she put barbed wire up inside me. It was awful.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:46

And I told her- I don't think it was placed correctly.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:49

I told her it was awful, and she's like, Well, you can't remove it because you have your epidural. I was like, Can you try? Can you just try?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

Well, and then later we had your OB come in and like re-examine the catheter to see if that, you know, if that was an issue. And she kind of did a little bit, and she said she thought it looked fine, but they never actually tried taking it out and putting it back in. They she just kind of looked at it and was like, Yeah, it looks fine to me. But I've seen many a woman with epidural have catheters and something was not right about yours.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:24

No. So that like felt like burning in my bladder. Plus, I've got this petosid contraction plane. Plus, for like the past three weeks, I've had this like pelvic pubic bone pain pressure. And then in the middle of like pushing and everything, at the time we called it a butt cramp. I just felt like my whole left like glued hamstrings area was like so tense that I was just so done.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:56

So wait, are we jumping to pushing? Are you ready to talk about pushing? I jump in jumping to the pushing. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:02

Because oh man, that was so this is later that evening. This is like what like it's getting to like four o'clock, five, five, six, some dinner time. I know I pushed for a while and they broke my water.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

You push for a couple hours. Yeah, push for a couple hours with a few breaks, but like not great breaks. Um, there is no break with pedos and contract.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:29

So your epidural is not working very well, it's not very strong or it's not very effective. Your catheter is bothering the heck out of you. You have this crazy pressure pain in your pubic bone that the epidural is not even touching. And we can go ahead and say to everyone that your baby was OP.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:50

He was sunny side up, sunny side up, even though they've done the ultrasound.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:55

Yeah, we tried to get him to change position. We tried to get you, you were on your hands and knees, which your nurse was amazed how well you could move. Um, because she thought you shouldn't have been able to move like that because of your epidural. Oh, okay. This is what made me upset. I vividly remember this. So we get you on your hands and knees to try and get um, they weren't gonna learn. Right. But then you proved to them that you could do it. I did, which is your OB was okay with it. Oh, I know, but your nurse was not.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:24

I was like, I've got to get on my hands and knees, and Kylie said, You can't, you have an epidural, you can't do that. And I was like, If my epidural was working, could I do this? And like started throwing my legs around. And she was like, It is working. Well, everyone I've talked to had said, like, I had a bit of control over my lower extremities, but I couldn't move them that much.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:48

And you were like whipping around on the bed, like like nobody's business. So you I remember you're on your hands and knees.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:55

I had put myself there and they were like, You need help to get over on your hands and knees. I was like, if you won't help me, I'm just gonna do it myself. And then I remember hearing Kylie like call more nurses in, and this sweet, like very southern, tiny little nurse was like, Okay, I see what you're doing. Are you oh, you're doing it, you're doing it yourself. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:17

Well, the issue, okay. Here was the issue. This is this was your nurse's issue is that when you were on the hands and knees position, the monitors were not picking up the heart rate/slash contractions. Like they weren't able to pick them up. It had been fine. But because you were on PETOS and you had to be continuously monitored, and the issue was, and she said this out loud. I couldn't believe your nurse said this. She said, Well, if you're in this position, I'm gonna have to sit here and hold your monitor on. And I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:55

I didn't hear her say that. If she had, I would have donkey kicked her in the face.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

I looked at her and I was like, Well, if you're not willing, basically, I would have said, if you're not willing to do your job, like, I was like, I can sit here and hold the monitor, it doesn't matter to me. And she's like, Well, you're not allowed to hold the monitor. And I was like, Well, um, this is what the mom needs. The mom needs to be in this position. So, like, get on board with it. It was crazy. So then when your OB came in, your OB was like, Yeah, hands and knees. This is great. You should be in this position to try and flip. And she tried to she tried to manually flip your baby without success.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:33

But um I remember that's when I got in even more pain. She was trying when I was on hands and knees, and then she's like, Okay, maybe we need to like flip over and try that way. So I got back on my back in the in the throne position. They hit the bed, right? You know, up into the terrifying throne position. And then with all four of these different pain points that I was working through, it wasn't just the contractions, it was so much going on. Then they said, All right, you're gonna grab the backs of your legs, and then like, I know you were reaching for one, my sister was reaching for one, Trevor was reaching for one. And they're like, No, no, she has to hold them themselves herself. I don't know why in that moment I got so irrationally angry about that. I was like, Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:17

I'm doing everything else, and no one can even hold my legs for me. Like, I don't know why.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:23

We were allowed to hold them between contractions, it was during contractions while you were pushing. They wanted you to have the livery. Do you remember then when they poured the baby shampoo? The baby shampoo all over your vagina to try and help lube it up.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:40

My doctor's in there two-handed trying to flip this kid who we now know had a 94th percentile head.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:47

Um and he was sunny side up, so it was sunny side up. She's in two-handed, so then that also hurts. So that's a fifth pain point. And it burned, it burned. That's what I'm saying. The shampoo burned. I'm like, it burns. Because she'd already been in there so much. I don't know if I had had like micro abrasion.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:09

I think you had already like had some little like tears on the inside. It was and the shampoo got in. Through salt and a wound.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:17

It was yeah, we had six pain points now, curry. And again, I think I screamed, there's too many pain points for me to focus. And uh, I also remember screaming, this is not the magical birth experience I was promised.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

Well, it wasn't the relaxing epidural experience you were promised.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:36

No, I had done so much research on epidural. I had heard, you know, my mom talk about, like, oh, my epidural with you was so good I couldn't feel my eyebrows. And like talk to friends who had gotten them, both like early in labor and later in labor. They're like, oh, it's just so great. Like you suddenly feel like you can catch your breath and you can sip on water and you can like just take a minute and then the baby comes out and it's great. No one I've talked to had an experience the way I did. Again, I don't know if I didn't communicate properly to an anesthesiology at first when he was saying, like, right or left, right? Or and I was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:11

No, it's not nothing to do with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:13

I kept saying, I'm in so much pain. Is the epidural even working? And I think the doctor said, Well, you can do a bolus, you can give yourself a hit on the thing. And my mom was just like hitting the buttons constantly, she was trying, and then Kylie said her mother already gave her some. So mom said that's when she almost punched her in the face.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:34

Did I tell you that I had that nurse again?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:37

Yes, you told me. Like it was just a few weeks later. Same room. A couple weeks later, same room, same nurse.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:42

And I was like, Oh boy. Ugh. Okay, so you're pushing for two hours. I'm pushing, and we're doing all the things. We're flipping your position, we're pushing on your side, we're pushing on your back, we're pushing on your knees and knees.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:53

Two hands in.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:54

Your doctor was trying to pull every I mean, it was it was like everything, everything, everything. And then I heard them whispering and talking about prepping the OR.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:06

Yeah, and that's of every I had compromised on everything else. And I had said, you know, screw the birth plan. I just need to do what feels right in the moment, for better or worse, you know. Um, but I said, I don't, I don't want a c-section. I've never had like a major surgery like that. Um, I didn't want to start bin. I I didn't want to deal with all that. I just really, I've never been the person to be like, I really want a c-section. Um, I didn't want that at all. I was pushing for my life. Um, and I know they had started assembling. The room got very full very quick. And like you had warned us that that was probably going to happen in birth class, but it seemed like there were a lot of extra people.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:49

Um well, and that's because they recommended the vacuum.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:55

Well, yeah, that's they had started trying to do the vacuum. She'd done it twice. Already.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:00

Well, she she she went to do it the third time. I was gonna say, she's usually so, and we're not gonna give away your doctor's name for privacy reasons, but she ended up giving the epesiotomy, I think, when she realized that the vacuum may not do it. And she she really didn't want you to have a C-section either. And I can tell that. Like I could see that she did not right. She didn't want to do the OR. And so she um she did the vacuum twice. And when I say twice, I mean it popped off twice. And you're really not supposed to put it on a third time, like you're not, but and I was too like out of it at that point.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:38

But my sister said, like, when it popped off, blood went everywhere, like it splattered all over.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:44

It did, it splattered all over your doctor's face.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:47

Yeah, like a horror film.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:49

Um you're poor, you're poor mom and sister.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:53

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:54

At that point, Trevor's hysterical and he was crying. Brittany, my sister, is just like, he's fine. He's just emotional. My mom's crying. I am terrified. You know, my doctor in the appointment before I had put on the birth plan, like no epesiotomy. And she had said, that's not an issue. I have done less than five in my entire career. And then she's like, after it popped off the second time, she said, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to do the appesiotomy. And I said, Do it, just like get him out, please. And I turned to Trevor and said, I'm scared. And I'm crying, he's crying, everybody's crying. I knew there was we were probably gonna survive, but I didn't know what state we were gonna be in surviving. It was truly terrifying. It felt like a life and death situation.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:41

It was a lot happening in a very short amount of time at that point. Do you remember the sweet nurse who came in who was beside me, her and I trying to look you in the eyes and trying to get you? I love that sweet nurse. She I've been with her at many, many births.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:59

She kept looking over at my mom too and telling mom, like, everything's great. You don't you don't need to pay. She was like calming everybody down at the same time, which I appreciated.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:09

Yes. Um so she goes for the third time.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:12

Yeah, she goes for the third time. It doesn't work, and you ask her, that's the third time. Is that all she gets? And she says, I'm gonna try one more time, even though like the policy.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:25

Well, pol no, it was it was after the second. So policy is two. So I asked her after the second one, like if she was gonna like do this again, and she put it on for the third time. And that that's when she wasn't supposed to. After it's popped off twice, you're supposed to have a C-section, but she said, No, I think we can do this, like I think we can get this baby out like this. And so that was the when she put it on the third time, and you pushed and she pulled that was the final. Yeah, oh yeah, she has to pull. But like it it was the third time of it going on that it finally did the trick.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:01

Thankfully, you were there taking clandestine photos and videos and things, the photos you ended up getting of my doctor, who you know, she and I had had our disagreements throughout everything, but ultimately she was really great during like the panicky times. She stayed super calm, which I appreciated. She's happy and laughing, catching Gabe as he slithers out with his crazy long self, um, like 80 plus. I think he was like 90, close to 90th percentile for length. My mom's like, I thought she was gonna drop him. He just kept coming out. Um, oh man, everybody talks about like the relief about when the baby comes out. I don't even know if I felt that. I was still in a lot of pain from a lot of different things, honestly. I know I got to breathe out when he came out, um, but I didn't get the immediate overwhelming sense of relief because there was still just a lot of pain points happening, you know. Um, and everything I had wanted on the birth plan, again, totally out the window. They put him on my chest. They immediately went to go get the cord going and asked Trevor if he wanted to cut it. I know I had the clarity to ask, is there any way we could delay cutting? And my doctor said, no. And then I she said, we've really got to get him checked out. And I looked down and I realized like he had that massive wound on his head from the vacuum. And then I got extremely sad. And I was like, oh no, the first decision I made as a parent, my kid's gonna be like maimed for forever. No, um, you hear about all these terrible things about like babies' neck snapping when they get vacuumed out. It's terrifying. Um, and they didn't know at that point if it was how deep like the wound was. It was a massive, almost the entirety of his head was one big circular wound. So I only got to hold him for a few seconds while Trevor cut the cord. And then even more people came in. At that point, my little sister is just seeing, she's out in the hall because we had reached our capacity for visitors. She's in the hall. Um, I was in room one, so she was able to be like not in the hall, in the hall, but just like around the corner. And she's seeing so many people go in the room. And then she said the OR team was scrubbed up, ready to go, standing in the hall, waiting for the door to open so they could rush me down. Um, that's when she started the panicking. Um, and so they they go and they take him across the room to the incubator. He's got a whole team, I've got a whole team. And I have to remind my mom, I wanted my mom there because I wanted Trevor to not leave me, um, no matter what kind of situation had occurred. And I wanted my mom to go with Gabe. And I had to, I think we were all just a little bit shell-shocked at that point. My mom forgot. So I had to be like, mom, go check on him. Like, I don't know if he's fine. And she said that was really scary because suddenly he has a team of like NICU doctors there, and he's got this massive bloody wound on his head, and they're sitting there trying to clean him up, do the apgar stuff, but also, like, she said they had tweezers, they were just carefully trying to see what was going on with his head. And it was a couple minutes she said was really scary. And then they said, Oh no, most of this is mom, as they're picking pieces of me off of his head. Yeah. It was terrifying. And then they had to do the placenta and everything, even that, that still was just so painful. Because I know she had to pull a little bit, which I didn't want, but at that point, it was let's just be done with this. And then the stitching from the epesiotomy was like not great. After the fact, at my sixth week, I told her, like, you had just told me you've only done five epesiotomies in your entire career. She's like, and you know what? You were my second that day. It was just a day for that. I don't know. Really strange. After all of that terribleness, like, I'm still covered in blood. Doctor is covered in blood, she's stitching me up, gabes in the corner. They let my little sister in, and she comes around the curtain and just gets a straight shot at what she calls, quote, the eye of Sauron. Um she's like, Where you were supposed to have multiple holes? There was just hole. There's just hole. And I see her phased, and she just looks mortified. And I said, Is it that bad?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:30

And she goes, pure carnage.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:37

Um they get me sorted out, they get Gabe sorted out and cleaned up. His wound was still huge and crazy, but I remember them wheeling us to recovery. And Trevor's still like hairs crazy, like there's blood on his face. I don't know how it got there, but there's blood on Trevor's face. And I look up at him and I'm like, so like, let's workshop this. What would we do differently for the next kid? And he's like, uh, you just went through like a lot. Can we table this?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:09

You weren't even holding your baby.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:12

Like that shock disassociation that happens. Oh man, it was crazy. The other thing I tell people is um everything you told me about I was not prepared for breastfeeding. I thought, like, oh, it'll be intuitive. It was not. Um, I tell people, make sure that when you're still at the hospital, you have them check for a tongue tie and a lip tie. Because the next 10 days was just like another wild adventure you had to help me through. Um, that we took him to the pediatrician. We said, like, he's just screaming all the time. He won't eat. This is like not great. They said, he may have a lip tie. Um, and we said, Okay, what do we do? Pediatric dentist. And you wonderfully sent us to uh your pediatric dentist who was amazing. And he looked at Gabe for like two whole seconds and said, This is a very severe tongue tie and lip tie. So now everyone I know going into the hospital, I'm like, make sure they check your baby before you leave. I don't know how we spent, you know, two and a half days there, people constantly touching me and touching him, no personal space, and no one looked in his mouth ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:23

So part of that is because they're not technically certified to diagnose that now. Right. Because they're around babies literally all day, every day, they should have an indication to at least say to you, you need to take him to a pediatric dentist so that he can be diagnosed and fixed. Yeah, yeah. It's because the pediatric dentist is technically the only one certified to actually like make that diagnosis. So they're like, you know, they kind of you know, walk on eggshells around whether or not they can say that to you. But seriously, there are so many babies that they see every single day, they should at least be able to say, like, yes, you're gonna want to get that checked out as soon as possible.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:06

Right. You would think. I mean, it was just kind of crazy that first like 10 days where he still had this massive wound on his head. We didn't know what kind of damage it was gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:19

I've never seen a wound that deep before. Oh vacuum.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:23

Terrifying. I was afraid it was gonna be like lifelong head trauma kind of issue.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:28

But it wasn't. His head is beautiful, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:30

It's fine. He still has a little bit of a scar, but he's growing hair through it now. So he'll just have pretty blonde curly hair, it looks like, to cover.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:38

Now, let me say that night, even despite his head wound, if you weren't looking at the head wound itself, Madison. I've been to a lot of earths. Okay. I've seen a lot of newborn babies. Um, mine included. Um he is was and is, is and was one of the most beautiful like children I have ever seen fresh out of the whim. Like they usually look pretty weird at first, and they got all alien-like, and you know, they're all mold and squinty and all the things. But I remember that night, because I think Trevor was like going to get his parents, and like your mom I don't was going to get your dad, and it was like just you and I in the room. And I was like, I can't stop taking pictures and videos of him because he is so gorgeous.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:30

Like, I know I even have a video that you took from your perspective. It was like our first real skin to skin time after they had him checked out and everything, and you're like, he's so cute. And I was like, you don't have to lie to me. No, tell me the truth. And you're like, no, I don't say this, but like he's so cute and he's so alert, like immediately he was eyes open, trying to track sound. Like it was crazy how alert he was immediately. And I asked every nurse in that hospital, I'm like, you gotta tell it to me straight. I know you see a lot of babies, and a lot of them are ugos. Please tell me if this baby is cute. Otherwise, I'll just post less online and like I'll just pull back my adoration. Like, just tell me, is he cute? And everybody was like, That's a really cute baby. Like a really cute baby.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:17

He is so cute, so cute.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:20

So, like looking back, there's this moment that I had, I don't know if everybody has it, but like holding this tiny human, and of course, looking at this massive head wound, asking myself, have I made the right decisions for this kid before he even came into the world, like months ago? And I still wonder to this day, did I make the right choices, even with like labor? I don't know. He was born eight pounds, eight ounces, which is slightly above average. It's not a massive baby for a baby born 40 weeks and two days. You know, he had some lung issues. The doctor said it could have been that he took in some merconium ahead of time, but it could have just been that his lungs weren't ready, um, like I had thought. I know in my heart that that at least would have been more severe if he came earlier. But to this day, I really don't know if I made the right or wrong decisions. Because you don't know if I had kept going and just waited to go into labor naturally, would he have been too bad? I knew he was stuck. I knew that beyond a shadow, I knew he was stuck and that he was going to have lung problems. Um, would he have gotten himself unstuck and into the birth canal if I had done nothing? Or would I have gone into labor naturally and then it gotten to such a critical point that I would have needed a C-section? Or did I do the right thing by inducing, but maybe I should have waited even a few more days? Like, I still don't know if I made the right decision, but I did kind of come to terms with the fact that I know I didn't make the wrong decision. And that's kind of the thing. You never get full clarity as a parent. Now I see it in six months. If you're making the right choice, there's really no such thing as long as your kid is happy and healthy, right? Um, you feel in your gut when you know you made the wrong choice, and that doesn't happen very often because there are parental instincts that occur. And I think that really was what I felt when I knew he was stuck and I knew he was gonna have lung issues. I just felt that in my core. So I don't know if I regret all the interventions, but I know with my next labor, I want to try to do a lot less. And I know, like when I say that publicly, people are gonna be like, oh, you're gonna go super crunchy.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:42

Hey, there's nothing wrong with going super crunchy, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:45

I know. And I just again, this one size fit all health care is really a problem for me that I feel like is a problem societally. And there's gotta be an option for people like me that aren't gonna blindly follow medical words, but are going to actually look into the studies, but I'm not that crunchy. Like I'm just educated enough that I'm gonna ask questions, but like not gonna birth in a field, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:12

Like there are well, I haven't done that either, but too many bugs, too many bugs.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:19

Oh, yeah, sure. So it's just I wish there were more pathways for someone like me who, like, because of my medical history, I really feel more comfortable delivering in a hospital, but I wish I could just not be told the word policy 50 billion times. So that's I feel like there's a gap there in like the medical world. Um, I also think like it should be part of the birthing process that you get a team of people assigned to you and your baby, a pediatric dentist to check for that tongue tie and lip tie. After dealing with that, I know for a fact that in history there had to have been hundreds of thousands of babies that were diagnosed with colic that probably just had a tongue tie or lip tie. There's probably 15 other reasons why babies have screamed over the course of time, but the immediate positivity we got from that small procedure to fix his tongue tie and lip tie, I am sure that's one of the reasons why we have an extremely happy baby today. So I feel so bad for parents who don't get this diagnosis who feel like they're failing because they can't feed their baby without it being an absolute fight. So I hate that. So I feel like there should be a team, pediatric dentist, obviously a counselor for both you and your spouse, because you're going through a lot, a lot when that happens. The hormone dump is real. You feel crazy every day. Even if you get sleep, if you do like what Trevor and I did and like do shifts, still feel crazy every day. Gabe, when he started moving around and stuff, he was moving only to the left side, which is the side he was pulled out of. He was on my right side, so that's his left side, sunny side up. Yeah. So he was only going left. So we took your advice. We got him to a pediatric chiropractor, and within two weeks, he was meeting milestones, he was doing fantastic, his digestion got a lot better. Like, so you need pediatric dentist, pediatric chiropractor, a counselor, pelvic floor physical therapist. These should all be services everyone has access to. And it's wild to me that I've spent a small fortune getting all these things, and it's the only way that we've been able to get to some semblance of normalcy in six months postpartum. Like, yeah, I don't, I can't even imagine someone going through all of this without any of those resources, let alone single mothers, superheroes. Like, if I didn't have Trevor to tap in when I was about to lose my mind, and both of us have had these moments where we have hollered at the other one and said, You have to take the baby. You have to take the baby right. I need to lead the room.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:07

We call that tapping out at this house for like, I'm tapping out, your turn, you're in.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:12

Um, it should be talked about more than asking for help postpartum is not failing. Everyone should have access to these services because again, I I would not be, I would not have been able to go back to work within two months. Um, we would not be having a baby that's like actually doing halfway decent at sleeping through the night. Yeah, I just feel like there's got to be more education that more often than not, I can only imagine there are women postpartum that need these services that don't even think they can ask for them, let alone if they exist. Um, it's just it's just really opened my eyes a lot to the healthcare industry and the major gaps that I see in obstetrics specifically.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:59

And lactation consultants. Oh my gosh, saints. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:04

All right, okay, that's quite a list. Okay, so we've got pediatric dentist, pediatric chiropractor, um, pelvic floor, physical therapist, counselor, lactation consultant, all these people, and then whoever your provider was, too. Like if you were had a midwife or an ob like them as well. Yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of people, but it's a lot of people having a baby is is pretty much the biggest deal. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:32

And then we're just crazy enough to do it again.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:40

You know, not gonna start trying, but not gonna start not trying. And what do you know, near immediately we're gonna have another baby now? I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:50

I will say, as hard as it can be to have two needy children at the same time, it is also like maybe the sweetest thing in the world. When they interact with each other and love each other and like laugh with each other and take care of each other. It's it's like a gift that only parents with two or more kids know. Yeah. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:15

It's great having Gabe right now because he's such a happy baby and laughs and smiles all the time. People ask me, like, how do you get such great photos of him? I'm like, the kid's just photogenic. He just loves people and smiling and laughing. It really was a trap because he slept and he was happy. And we're like, we could do this three or four more times. And look at us now. Now he's regressing.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:37

But well, it's a phase. It's short. It won't be forever.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:40

Yeah. It is interesting, like post-loss going through that and then having a healthy baby. Oh, one of the worst things going through all my appointments when I was pregnant with Gabe was um the nurses asking me, all you know, what's your name? What's your date of birth? All right. So this is your second pregnancy, first baby. That just hit me like a ton of bricks every time, like every single time. So I'm really not looking forward to that question and upcoming appointments and things. Um it's been great having this happy, healthy baby, but I'm still looking in the toilet every time I go to the bathroom. You know, it's like that sense of dread is a lot smaller now that I do have Gabe, but it never like goes away. So I've just been probably very vocal. I mean, after our loss and our dog passed, I put it out on Facebook that like we're going through it. And I was very specific about what we were going through. And the amount of positive feedback I got that so many women I know have experienced loss as well, which is crazy. Um, and people just don't talk about it. And it never, it never really goes away. I don't know if it'll ever go away, even if we have four healthy children. Like there's always going to be that little bit of paranoia, I think. So yeah, we're only six and a half weeks into this new nugget. Um, so we got our first appointment in a couple weeks, and we're a lot more positive than we were with Gabe, but it's still like the cautiously optimistic, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:23

I'm not feeling fantastic, so that's a good sign that things are going.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:28

Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:29

Yeah. So yeah, it's uh after loss, it's just never quite the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:37

A couple questions for you. So first, what do you feel like God specifically taught you through those first two pregnancies? The loss and Gabe's, you know, pregnancy and birth and postpartum experience. So think about that. And then next, now that you're pregnant again, because I've I've heard you give a lot of advice through um the episode and and through the end there, but now that you're pregnant again, in that moment in the you know, in the hospital room when you had just had Gabe and you looked at your husband and said, Okay, how can we do things differently the next time? Now that it's been six months, um have you thought more about what you want to do differently this next time? As your friend in doula, I have thoughts on that, but I want to hear what you have to say.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:35

Yeah, I think that through the first pregnancy, God showed me kind of how it can feel to trust him fully. I'd never felt that ever. The closest I had was right before Trevor and I got married. Um, you know, our families didn't want us getting married, and so we had to really make sure we were choosing each other and that God was with us and was going to bless our marriage. And that took a lot of trust in God to feel like we were making the right choice. But that didn't even come close to the amount of trust and reliance I had on God. I I say 100%, because it was not 99%. Like I 100% trusted he was going to bless me in that way. And so I feel like he showed me that to know what the pinnacle of like inner peace feels like. I was so peaceful and so happy, and I want to get back to that. I don't know if getting to 100% is ever possible, but I feel like through Gabe and everything, the Lord showed me that you can get really close, like really close. Even with all these hurts and disappointments and things, to go get to full, there is nothing that will prepare you for full reliance on God, quite like going through the birth process. Um, you really have to lay yourself down and just depend on God fully. You can't depend on any other human in the world more than at that moment. You really have to give it all to him. So I think it's just what I've kind of learned about God is that that I can trust him and depend on him, even when frankly, I really don't want to because of past hurts and things. Um, I felt like this extreme pain and betrayal, but I also felt guilty for feeling like that. I'm like, there are people who have had stillbursts, there are people who have gone through so much more trauma, and women go through this every day. So I don't know why I'm struggling so much. And I need to just be grateful for what God has given me. And I still don't feel we are intimate friends the way we were before that. There was a lot of naivete, you know, um, in that. But the level of reverence has definitely meandered back ever since I've had Gabe. Just like the miracle. The miracle of birth, you know, the Jesus saying, but really, um multiple times I didn't know if I was gonna get through it, if Gabe was gonna get through it, and then you know, it was all just part of God's plan all along. So yeah, that's been it's very meta-existential. My relationship with God now is just really it's very different. I don't know how else to say it.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:27

I'm curious to see what that journey continues to look like throughout this next pregnancy and birth, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:36

Yeah. Things I would do differently. Again, like right now, it's super early. I really feel like you say natural birth, and again, it sounds so crunchy.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:48

Um to me, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:50

It sounds like I've already started kind of a list of questions, two lists of questions, actually. First of all, a list of questions for my OB about like now that I know the birth process, I'd never been like a patient in a hospital before, before that. So now that I know what to expect, I know what I want. I really would like to not be induced. Um, since I know that I have this high fasting blood sugar, once we get to the 10-week point, I want to ask preemptively if I can get on the CGM. Um, I want to ask if I can either not do the glucose test or if I can do the, you mentioned like the fresh test. It's like the more natural kind of alternative than drinking straight sugar.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:36

But you also can just, if you have the continuous glucose monitor, you can just use that and turn in those numbers too. You don't have to, because that's all they're concerned about. Sure. So you don't you wouldn't even have to do the fresh test.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:51

Yeah, that would be great. I would love that. I would love to just have that ahead of time just so they can see if I could start wearing it at around the 10-week mark. I feel like that's a decent baseline before you get to the 24, 25-ish kind of week mark where they want to check for that. Um, again, so the one size fits all healthcare does not get thrust upon me so that they can really look at my levels and determine what's best for me and my baby. I would like to avoid induction at all costs. Again, I think like dealing with this chance of gestational diabetes is the first step to that. Because once that came in, it was a hard push towards induction. And I really, I really don't want a C-section, but I really don't, I never like felt a natural contraction. They said I had gone in for those non-stress tests. They said I was having contractions, but I never, I never felt them at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:46

Um, so I don't really know what my body is naturally capable of. I believe you when you say those pitotion contractions hit different, and I would like to not feel those. So um, yeah, I think I yeah, I want to do everything I possibly can to avoid induction this time. So it's not like, oh, all I want is a natural birth. It's more so I saw everything I did not want, and I really want to avoid those things.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:15

Would you consider switching providers?

SPEAKER_03 1:49:19

I would. Again, like I started making these lists, um, two different lists. One, all these questions comments that when I get to the 10-week mark, uh, I plan to have a really straightforward conversation with my provider. I love my doctor. I did not love the rotation through all the different providers in the practice, but my doctor has been my OB for years. And then she was the one who thankfully was on call when Gabe, you know, was delivered. And despite like all the interventions and things, I still really appreciated her tone. Like she had command over the room. She was not bossy, she was encouraging, but not fluff. And too, if she had been too frilly, I would have lost my patience so fast. Um, she was the right kind of person, I feel, but the interventions were obviously not great. So I've got a list of questions slash comments that at my 10-week appointment I plan to go through. And if I get more no's than yeses, then I I probably will start looking at other providers, at least for the birth part. Then I've developed a second list of questions to ask the nurse that I'm assigned when I get checked into the hospital. Not another Kylie. I will not do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:30

Well, okay. So if we're just gonna go back to that one more time, I told Trevor he could fire her. Then he can go and do that. I wasn't allowed to do that. I'm not as the doula, I'm not allowed to go request a new nurse, but he can go request a new nurse. No, and I think I told your mom that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:48

But it's you say all of those things, but in the moment, you just there's so many other things going on, you forget that that is not just something you can do, but like your right to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:01

Um, yeah. So I think we're gonna have a better, maybe we come up with like a safe word or something that if I say pineapple, that means like get her. Get me a new nurse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:11

Um most of the nurses there are great. That one in particular.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:15

That's the thing. All of the ancillary nurses were amazing. That one having a bad day, and apparently had another bad day with your other client a few weeks later.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:23

Um, which made me question whether it was a bad day or just maybe this isn't her profession. I don't know. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:30

So, yeah, coming up with questions about um that I want to ask the nurse that comes in, you know, the top one being, have you read my birth plan? And do you have any personal issues with anything on my birth plan? Because Kylie was constantly trying to crank up my potosin. And I was like, Can I just have a minute for you to not do that? I realize now, working in the hotel industry, they had me check in at midnight and gay was born at 653, and she kept chip pumping me up. I'm like, they needed time to clean this room and get somebody else in here by midnight.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:06

It's crazy. I mean, if they can get someone else in there, then they will. I know.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:10

So it's uh it's a business. Yeah. I know it's a business. I I I see that now. So those are kind of my first two questions on the nurse list is have you read my birth plan and do you personally have any issues with it? Because if they say no that to either of those things, we're gonna have to make a change.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:28

Well, no to yes to the I got. I understand what you're saying. I'm starting to, it's the time I told you the crazy dreams started the first day I got the positive test. Now I'm starting to say some weird stuff, and I'm like, how did my mouth get that far ahead of my brain?

SPEAKER_00 1:52:45

Pregnancy brain, it comes on quickly. Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on and sharing your experience, sharing your story, giving your advice, and being transparent with how it really was and how it really felt and what the experience was really like. And I really, I just really appreciate that. I appreciate you taking the time to do this and being honest with us. People need to hear that. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. You can reach me at Surrendered Birth Services on Instagram or email me at contact at Surrendered Birth Services.com. Be sure not to miss an episode by hitting the follow button. Also, we'd love for you to leave a written review of the show so that more people's births and lives can be changed by the love of Jesus and the empowerment of accurate birth education. If you really enjoyed this episode in particular, please take a screenshot of it and post it to your Instagram story tagging Surrendered Birth Services. If you would like to be a guest on the Surrendered Birth Stories podcast, please click the link in the episode show notes to fill out your interest form. Also, if you're interested in taking my childbirth classes, birth consultations, or having me as your birth doula, please click on the link in the show notes to take you to my website for online and in-person options. Just as a reminder, this show is not giving medical advice. So please continue to see your personal care provider as needs arise. We hope you have a great week. And remember, learn all that you can, make the best plans, and then leave it in God's hands. So you can you still only see my headband?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:43

That's so funny. Like you can't see the rest of my face.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:47

No, this one little sliver of like two inches of my screen is functioning. And everything else is right now, it's cool stripes. It changes colors.