E121: Mother’s Day: Childbirth Changes You Even When No One Sees It

Strength doesn’t always look like a highlight reel. Sometimes it looks like breathing through one more contraction, waiting through uncertainty, feeding a newborn on no sleep, or walking into the NICU with a body that’s still healing and a heart that’s carrying more than anyone can see.

With Mother’s Day close by, we reflect on the deep, often invisible power of childbearing and motherhood. We talk about the kind of strength that isn’t loud or performative, but steady, grounded, and life-changing. From the slow build of pregnancy and the massive physiological work of growing a human, to the vulnerability of trusting providers and making decisions mid-labor, we name the everyday courage that deserves real respect.

We also share two recent VBAC stories that couldn’t be more different: one fast and intense, one long and gritty, both requiring adaptability, patience, and support. Along the way, we hold space for the reality of infertility, IVF, and miscarriage, and what it means to try again after fear. Then we shift to postpartum recovery and identity, including the honest worry many first-time parents carry: “I don’t want to lose myself.”

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re “strong enough,” let this be a reminder that strength has many forms and you don’t have to do it all alone. Subscribe for more grounded birth education, share this with someone who needs encouragement, and leave a review so more families can find us.

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Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier 
Music: Michael Hicks 
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood 
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Transcript

Welcome And Mother's Day Emotions

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Andy Roger, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.

Quiet Strength That Changes You

Seeing Strength Right After Birth

Pregnancy Work And Trusting Unknowns

Trying Again After Loss

Two VBACs And Different Courage

Postpartum Resilience And New Identity

Mother's Day Blessing And Connection

SPEAKER_01 0:50

My name is Angie Rogier. I'm your host, and today's episode we have um right upon us. I don't know when you're listening to this or where you are in the world, but we have American Mother's Day right on the cusp of um coming up right now. So I want to just do a little shout out to moms, um, if that's okay. And I know this can be a day laden with emotions, both high and low, both happy and sad, both, you know, and all parts of the spectrum of emotions. Mother's Day can be fraught with um feelings of lots of different feelings that people have. Some people love it, some people don't. But I want to just take a positive spin on all of that, if I may, and um talk specifically about um an approach about the strength that exists inside of people who do the act of getting a baby out of their body, right? That's the act of kind of beginning motherhood, is having one baby come out of another body, which is such an incredible process, right? Um, so that's what I'm want to focus on is the incredible strength that exists inside of very ordinary people doing ordinary things that are actually pretty extraordinary every single day. So there's a kind of strength that we don't always recognize in our culture. Um it's this deep-seated um strength of everything, not just physical strength, but it's the strength of everything. It's not loud, um, it's not performative, um, it's quiet, it's steady, it's transformational, and that's the strength of um of childbirth, the strength that women demonstrate in childbearing. So that's growing a baby, um, getting a baby out, going through the birth process, um, nurturing a baby, raising a baby like that, uh, which of course extends into a much longer period than just infancy, right? Um, but that kind of strength, I think, just stretches and it's a gradual stretching. We don't always recognize it right away, but it stretches physically, emotionally, it can stretch mentally and spiritually, and it it changes you, right? It totally changes you, and that that kind of strength kind of goes unseen. And I would bet anyone who's gone through that process would agree that they have been changed, and change isn't something we can oftentimes see from the outside. I had an experience, um, a really, really hard life experience in the last couple of months that was just grueling and it it changed me, right? Like it, I've I came and I'm still coming out of it, but on this side of it, I'm a different person than I was on the other side of it, and because of the hard things that I went through. Now, if you're just to see me walking down the street, you're not gonna say that person's different. Um, like, and even to people who I see every day and see commonly, and people who know about the the hard experience, like aren't gonna say, I mean, some of them are gonna know there's a difference because they know it's difficult, but they're not gonna on on site say, Oh, you are a different person. Same thing with with um motherhood, childbearing. A lot of times we see someone we just take for granted they're pregnant, they're gonna have a baby, um, and life goes on. But there's a change that takes place, and I kind of want to like um do a shout out to that. So when we talk about strength, a lot of times we imagine power, right? Power that moves things um or power that creates things. And gosh, are we creating something? Yes, and yes, we're moving something. It might just be a little seven-pound something, and we're moving it from inside to outside, which is, I don't know, a 12-inch journey maximum. Um, but what a journey it is, right? So a lot of times we think of toughness, we think of endurance, and all of those things come into play when we talk about the process um of that event, which makes one become a mother, right? Getting a baby out of your body. So birth and motherhood introduces to a whole different type of strength entirely. Um, and this is a strength to adapt, a strength to surrender, um, a strength to stay, right? Um, a strength to do hard things, a strength to live in uncertainty and to continue on. Um, and that deserves big shout out. That deserves to be honored at this time. Bringing life into the world asks so much of us, right? Like um, I I just this week I was helping someone um a lactation shift in the hospital, helping her breastfeed. And it had been, I always ask, like, ask whether labor and birth experience. People are ready to talk about them. I love that. Um, they want to talk about them usually. And so I asked how labor and birth had gone. This baby was probably, I don't know, seven hours old at this time, maybe less. And the mom was just engaged with the baby, and the baby was born at, you know, wee hours in the morning, three or four o'clock, something like that. Um, and the cute dad was just, gosh, he was tuckered out. He was sacked out on the little couch cot that they have there for the dads. And yes, he had been up all night and working with her and was probably at a level of exhaustion that he's not used to having. So he was sleeping. He was just sleeping off the berth, and the mom was just sitting there in the bed, one whose body did all the work. Um, she was sitting straight up, she was engaged, she was active, her, she was feeding her baby, she was very curious about it. We had a great visit. Um, later on the day, I was very grateful to go back and see she was sleeping, she was resting really well, and he was um kind of caring for the baby, which is great. But um, see that so, so often, right? Where people around, whether that's grandmas, um doula's even, right, dads, like, man, birth tuckers them out. They are just tuckered and they gotta rest. Um, and then the mom, who did the majority of the work, obviously, like there's just this deep-seated strength that um exists, and it's pretty phenomenal to watch. So that's not just during labor and birth, but in like becoming this strength has been building, the capacity has been building throughout the whole pregnancy, and it continues to build throughout the years that follow that and all the awesome adventure journeys, heartache, sorrows, triumphs, all the things that come with motherhood afterwards. But we're talking about the first few um, I don't know, days, weeks, months, and the process of getting there. So, even just the act of pregnancy, right? That whole journey is human work, right? There's nothing more human than making a human, and the body can do that, it can grow all the organs, it increases its own blood volume 50%, it nourishes another life. This whole complex system, if you think about a whole human and all the incredible complexities of their anatomy and physiology, and beyond that, that is made inside of a body is so cool. Um, and it's always adjusting, right? Just constantly adjusting. We don't become nine months pregnant instantly. Thank goodness we kind of work up to that. Um, and beyond that, we're building this human inside, right? People continue working, they continue caring for others, their families. They can tear, can you sorry, they continue carrying the emotional loads. They um keep showing up, they stay, which is pretty awesome, even while their own bodies are transforming and working daily. Now that that's in that is a strength. That's impressive strength and toughness, right? Women are incredibly, incredibly strong. Um, blows me away. I have had um two, well, three or four births this week, but two specifically I'm thinking of were VACs, which were pretty incredible. Um, and I'll I'll touch on both of those a little bit. Um, but birth, like it's unknown, right? Until it's happening, we don't know what's gonna happen. And that's what kind of asks of us is to step into the unknown. So that's a lot, right? Like that's that's kind of um daunting to step into the unknowns. A lot of people express that. Like, I'm nervous because I don't know how this is gonna go. I've never done this before. I don't know how I will respond, how my body will respond. Um, and there's a lot of unknown factors, even if we're having an induction on a certain date at a certain time, there's still a lot of unknowns, even if we're having a planetisarian at a certain date and certain time, there's a lot of unknowns. And some of that is vulnerability, right? Like going into that, seeing how things unfold and trusting, trusting your body, trusting the process it's gonna go through, trusting providers who are around you, nurses, the staff that's gonna be supporting, um, trusting your support person, trusting the whole process of birth. There's a lot of trust involved and the courage it takes to just do that. Like I think, um, I think we take that for granted. If you just walk into any old hospital and see their labor and delivery unit, you don't realize what um life-changing events are happening in every single room, every single day. It's pretty wild. Um, so sometimes that strength is like breathing through contractions, um, with grace or without it, right? Um, advocating for yourself, like sticking up for yourself during labor the labor process or pivoting when needed, right? Changing your plan, adjusting your plan and expectations, accepting help. Like sometimes as women, it's hard to have other help others help us. Um, but I think it's such an act of beauty when someone asks for and receives the help that they need. I love it. Even our most sweet, shy, timid women in labor, gosh, they demand what they need. And I love that. It's uh it puts you in a position to do that. Um, and making decisions, right? Sometimes analyzing things, using critical thinking and making decisions in the midst of a whole lot of physical and emotional and mental stuff going on. And then trying again, trying again after fear. Um, I'm currently working with um a couple right now who's had a lot, a lot of years of effort to get to where they're at. They're expecting a baby in the next two, three weeks. And they've done about a dozen rounds of out IVF, right? So that is a lot of failures to get to this one success and what a journey they have been on. What an incredible journey. That takes courage, right? To try again and to try again after fear. Recently I worked another with another person who had had six miscarriages before they had a successful pregnancy. Also an act of courage, right? Like, um, ah, that's tough. That's an emotional toughness and a grit. So when you see that person, they are changed, guaranteed. Um, so there's not there's not one right way to be strong, right? There's not one right way to have courage, and it's different for everyone, and it's phenomenal what the humans are capable of and what they can do. So I want to chat a little bit about two V backs I've recently um done and the what they required of the people. So one V back was probably one of the smoothest, hmm, maybe not. Well, I've seen many V-BACs like this, but um one of the smoothest and perfectly timed births that I have ever seen. Um, where uh this we did go a week over, so that was kind of hard to sit and wait for a week um waiting for the baby to come. And labor started, and it was nothing to write home about. It was like contractions super far apart, actually, all day long. Not even sure it was labor. Labor kind of picked up um and um this client decided to go to the hospital at a certain time. They were thinking it was about the right time, but on their drive, things changed, and they were definitely glad they were on their way to the hospital. So she arrived at the hospital at 8.09, like into triage, and that baby was born at 8.24. So this is a feedback. Um, she did want to go unmedicated, luckily, because if she didn't, she would have been disappointed. Um, but she was in a triage room and things happened fast. Her water broke at 8.15, and that baby was born um just nine minutes later. So this includes second stage, which is pushing, right? So this first-time vaginal delivery mom had pretty dang quick labor and pushed for about nine minutes, which is remarkable, right? Um, usually feedbacks are a little more dicey than that. Like we have a little more uh strategy involved and we're watching things a little more closely, but that was super smooth. Now there's an element of strength that comes with that, for sure. Like um things are a little chaotic when they go fast like that. Um, but it worked out beautifully, right? And then just a few days later, had another V-back, which was much more typical of VBACs. Um, things went well, but not without a whole lot of work and back and forth. And the work meaning being patient and not knowing, not um knowing till the end if it's gonna work, right? So there was some diesel issues, there was some stagnation of progress issues. Um, and then in the back of her mind, she's dealing with some trauma issues, you know, thing as things come back from last time. Um, and she like had to use a lot of grit to get through this to have a successful V back. And we pushed for a super long time, regular long time, um, but you know, close to three hours, which is normal. It's long, normal. Um, and we had chats of four steps or instrument assisted delivery and vacuum. Um, turns out we didn't need any of that. It was pretty remarkable. Um, so remarkable in its own right. And that has two very different feedback stories, which pulled incredible strength in different ways, different speeds of strength, um, different speeds of courage, different speeds of the body. So there's no right or wrong way to be strong. People just are. It's not measured by medicated versus unmedicated, it's not, it's not measured by vaginal versus cesarean or calm versus emotional or being patient or fast versus slow. Um, it's found in like a tenacity and a willingness to move through this experience and take it one step at a time, right? With courage, with love, with support. Um, that's kind of where the strength is found, which is pretty awesome. Um, and I love to see that. It's a such an honor. And this is what I want to celebrate as we're talking about Mother's Day is the strength of the woman's body who has done this work. It's pretty incredible. And then there comes a different segment of strength that no one talks about, and that's the postpartum period, right? A lot of times we just rush past that. Um, we get right into regular life, but this may be one of the greatest demonstrations of human strength and resilience that there is. So we just go through the labor process, um, the recovery process. A lot of times there's some exhaustion involved. And regardless, like recovery is not a joke, right? We need to take that time to recover, regardless of how well or how smooth or how fast or how long the birth was, how comfortable it was taking that time. And then we add healing with that, and we add feeding a baby regularly, constantly, functioning on very little sleep, learning a new identity. I had an appointment this week with someone, and so we were talking about kind of what her fears were. She did not want to forget who she was. Um, they're having expecting their first baby. She goes, I just want to remember who I am. I don't want to lose myself. I like who I am, I like what I've done in life, and I want to remember that. So, um, and we talked a lot about that, like shifting into a new identity and keeping parts of yourself and growing other parts of yourself and her and her partner. That was a big focus of our visit, which was it was beautiful. It was actually pretty wonderful to have her articulate that so well. It also um, you know, this postpartum period is carrying an immense responsibility for herself, for healing, for an infant, for a human, like a whole human life, and that feels really big as well. And women do this while caring for maybe other people, maybe there's other children or employment or um parents, aging parents. They're you know, that there's a lot of a lot of roles that women fulfill, which is so incredible to me. So mothers are asked to give of themselves um while they're changing, while they're growing, while they're stretching, while they're hurting, um, while they're tired, while they're recovering. And that deserves all kinds of acknowledgement in my mind. Um, the other day I was as working at the hospital that I was walking past the entrance to the NICU, and I saw a woman standing there getting ready to go into the NICU to see her baby. And she was in, I don't even remember what color, pants, like soft, stretchy pants, standing upright. I don't even remember what color shirt she had on, it doesn't matter. But um, she was standing there, and if you just saw her, you'd say, There's a woman standing there at a door, right? Um, and it just struck me as I looked at her, I'm like, she has gone through a lot. Her body has gone through a lot recently. And I have no idea her story. I mean, you know, I don't I don't working with her specifically, but maybe it was um maybe she's exhausted, maybe it's hard to walk to the elevator to get up the stairs. Um But as we see, like you just look at a body and and you can't see what's on the inside, right? Like um, same thing with the heart and the mind, right? What's going on on the inside? That's where the change is taking place, and it's pretty incredible. I wanted to just hug her, but I didn't. So today I want to to those listening, and if you feel the role of motherhood, awesome. Maybe you don't feel if you love it, if you like resist it sometimes. I think we all take turns being in different phases of how we feel about that, where we are in that. Um, there's lots of different uh uh attitudes to have about that. And again, no right, no wrong. Um, it's just how it is. So to all those listening today, I just want to gently, powerfully too, say um to those who birthed easily, to those whose births were complicated, to those who are grieving, to those who are exhausted beyond belief, um, to those who are celebrating, triumphing, to those who are thriving, um, to those who do it without enough support, which in most situations could be almost anyone, um, despite the efforts all around us, I think um nobody can do it for you, right? Nobody can do everything that you can do, and that's hard. But I want to the message I want to leave is that you are stronger than you know, you are so powerful. The capacity you have is endless. Um, that's physical capacity, emotional, mental. And I want to take a pause to acknowledge self-care for sure. Um, we do not have to do it all. You don't have to do it all. Are you capable? Are you willing? Yes, maybe, maybe yes. Um, but you don't have to do it all. And so shout out to you. Great job. Also, take care of yourself. Um, you are incredible and you need self-love. You need that self-care and support. Um and yeah, your capacity, your strength, your courage is incredible. But um it's the power that you have is um, I think hard to understand. And even though you're not perfect, even though you have struggles, um, but you continue. You continue on to love, nurture, support, adapt, and rise up again and again to keep trying. That is, I think, worth celebration. So wherever you're at on your motherhood journey, however you feel about it today and every day, it has a lot of emotions. Um hug yourself, give yourself a hug. Hopefully you can feel joy, gratitude, some grief, um, some longing, some tenderness, and allows space. Allows space for those feelings. Um, be in them, just love being them. So wherever this day finds you, I hope you can pause long enough to recognize something. That the bodies and hearts and minds of women are capable of extraordinary things. Your body, your heart, your mind, no matter how it's been for you, is a place of great power. Not because it's flawless, but because it's human. You are a human doing very human things, and that is a beautiful, beautiful situation. Um, and hopefully you realize that. Um, so for someone who's been had the honor and privilege been able to witness thousands of births and postpartum journeys and prenatal journeys, I can honestly say that women are absolutely remarkable. Um, not in a polished, unrealistic way, like perfect, beautiful, no rough edges, but in a real, grounded, messy way, sometimes in an every everyday way that matters most. That's the quiet strength, that steady perseverance that's worth honoring. So happy Mother's Day in whatever form you want to take it, um, in whatever form you want to be or feel like you're a mother. Thank you. Thank you for doing this work in your body, in your heart, in your mind, and in this world. We need you. Um, we need you so much. So happy Mother's Day to you. Shout out to all the moms out there, wherever you are, whatever you're doing in the world. And hopefully you know that you're enough. You're amazing and capable. Um, wherever you are in your journey, I see you, I feel you, I want you to feel valued and deeply appreciated. Um, and the honor that um I, the, the kind of place I hold women. Um gosh, I wish I could convey how I feel, but um wow, just super impressed by all those I know. So thanks for letting me be part of your journey if I've been able to. And Or anyone around you. Like thanks for sharing in your journey with those around you and letting us feel in your power and your strength. It's such an honor to do that. So happy Mother's Day to you. Hope you have a good one. And as always, please reach out and make a connection to someone in your life. Human connection is important. Find someone to connect with today. Thanks for being here on the Ordinary Doula Podcast, and I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Episode credits will be in the show notes. Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.