Pregnancy

In this episode, host Karianne Jean discusses her experiences of pregnancy, the differences between her first and second, tips & tricks & the lessons her experiences have taught her along the way.

instagram.com/groundingelevation

Trimester 1 Queasiness Remedies:

Nausea Sweets: https://a.co/d/3rt5ekq

Nux Vomica Homeopathy: https://a.co/d/7N3G1Eu

Other mentioned remedies:

Magnesium Gel: https://www.rowecasaorganics.com/products/magnesium-gel-4-oz

Magnesium Glycinate: https://smartq.pureforyou.com/products/39410161811490/magnesium-glycinate

Compression Socks: https://a.co/d/3AC2i6x

Greens Powder: https://a.co/d/fPKdQdr

Transcript

[00:03] Karianne: Welcome to Grounding Elevation, the podcast for open minds and open hearts to dig a little deeper and ascend a little higher on a quest to tap into our limitless potential mind, body and soul. I'm Carrie Ann Jean. Mom, wife, daughter, sister, artist, writer, learner, rebel, entrepreneur, psychology enthusiast. I have a deep passion for self improvement that has sent me down many roads of growth and learning and unlearning. I believe that God, universe, whatever you call the highest power, the source from where we all have come from, it speaks and it all but yelled at me to do this podcast. This is my leap of faith in spite of my insecurities and self doubt and humanness. So here we go. Join us weekly as we embark together on a Grounding Elevation. Welcome back to another episode of Grounding Elevation. I am so excited that you're here today. We are talking about motherhood and pregnancy, so tips and tricks of pregnancy. The differences I've noticed in my first pregnancy from this one, the similarities, the magic, the wonder, the challenge, all the things if you are a mama or a mama to be, this is for you. If you are a hopeful mama sometime in the near future, this is for you. If you are fascinated by the magic and wonder and challenge and mind blowingness of pregnancy and creating new life, this is for you. If you are supporting someone through their first pregnancy, this is for you. If you are not interested in pregnancy or motherhood at all, might not be the episode I would listen to. So I am currently pregnant with our second child, another girl. I had our first daughter, Camila in 2022, so she's two and a half. And pregnancy is just the most magical, wild, mind blowing and challenging thing I think that women are privileged and honored with. And also it's the hardest work, it's the hardest thing and it's the most wonderful thing all at once. And I think that that is such a beautiful setup to what motherhood is. It is the hardest thing and most wonderful thing that I've ever done. Um, it's my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing to be. I remember, you know, the rhetoric as a teenager especially, and even in my early 20s was just like I was so scared to get pregnant. Like I was terrified, like my life would be over, everything would, you know, be different and change and, you know, I wouldn't get to be selfish anymore. And what I've realized after having our daughter and being pregnant again, what I realized is it's such a gift to not get to be so selfish. It's not like, oh, I won't get to be selfish anymore. It's like. It's like, whoa, this is awesome. This, like, thank God I don't have. I don't quote, unquote, get to be selfish anymore. And that's not to say that I'm, you know, on the back burner and I don't take care of myself and, you know, I'm, you know, chopped liver by any means. But the things that mattered to me pre motherhood, a lot of it is so futile, and it's so just small. I mean, once you're. Once you create life, like, once you birth life into this world, we are essentially. We're essentially straddling the spiritual dimension and the physical dimension, and we are bringing a new soul from the spiritual dimension into the physical dimension. That is wild. And, you know, of course, God, source, universe, whatever you want to call it, they're the creator of life, right? Like, they're. They're making this miracle happen. But for it to happen to you, in you, within you. And like, it's your cells that are making this new physical human being, and it's your physical and spiritual self straddling these worlds and bringing life from one side of the veil to another. It is wild. It is so wild. And that's just the spiritual aspect of the concept, right? Physically, a woman's body is unlike anything, anything else in the world. I mean, no offense to dudes. Look, I have all the respect in the world for men and their place in this world, and we absolutely need them. And, you know, I'm so grateful for what my husband brings to our marriage and to our family and what all the wonderful men I know in my life bring to our collective experience and our world. They are needed, don't get me wrong. However, their body ain't got. Shoot. Their body's got nothing on the magic and versatility and adapted adaptive nature of a woman's body, especially when she is bringing new life into this world. Everything about your body changes. And it's not in a bad way. I feel like, you know, growing up, I. I'm very petite and very short. Okay, Petite is a nice way of saying short. Okay, I get it. Being. Being five foot nothing, I always believed that I would just be this, like, huge roly Poly. I'd gain £100, I would be gross and feel icky and not be able to tie my shoes and all those stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. You know, it's all this emphasis on getting back to your old body, you know, after birth and, oh, you had A baby, how quick can she look like herself? You know, like she did before. It's like it, it's scary for, especially for a woman like, oh, my gosh, everything in my body's gonna change, meaning it's gonna change for the worse. Now that has not been my experience. My experience is your body changes, but not because you're gaining a billion pounds. I really barely gained any weight with my daughter Camila. It's not that. That's not the big change. Sure, you may gain some weight. Yes. That's totally normal. Yes. You retain like a ton of fluid. Your blood alone, you create more blood. You're like a crazy amount more blood coursing through your body than you did before. Your general blood volume goes up, your liquid volume goes up. Right. You're also carrying an extra. By the time you give birth, you're carrying what, 6 to 8, 9ish pounds of baby. And then also a couple pounds of fluid and also a couple pounds of placenta. Like, all in one spot in your stomach. Yes, Your stomach grows and changes and adapts. But it's not just you get big and then you go back to being small. Everything about your body changes. So you have. There's a hormone that's created during pregnancy called relaxin within your body. So all your ligaments stretch more than they usually do. And it affects the connective tissue so that when you give birth, your hips can literally expand and open and then close when baby comes out. And I think the biggest, like, mind blow for me, after our first, after having a full pregnancy and giving birth, was the way that your body does go back. Now, is it exactly the way it was before as far as, like, your cells are even different, you know, the cells of your baby live in your body for the rest of your life, in your brain, in your body. When you're pregnant, if you encounter any kind of energy or injury. I'm sorry, if you encounter an injury, your baby will create stem cells to heal that injury inside your womb. Is that not nuts? That's unbelievable. That's amazing. That's so beautiful. There's so many things. There's so many things. But what I was shocked by was I not only did I feel that my body went back, essentially it didn't go back, it went forward. But it all. I went back to feeling normal again. And I think that's a testament to, you know, my intentionality. Right? Like, I grew up hearing like, oh, after you have a baby, like, you can't run anymore because you'll pee yourself. Like that was like a common thing that I heard. Well, thank God that I know people that have experience in healing the pelvic floor, because that not only was not the case for me, but I ran an entire marathon. When my daughter was just not even a year old or she was just over a year old, I ran an entire marathon. I not only had my physical abilities, athletic physical abilities back. You know, of course there's a healing period after you give birth, right? I'm not saying I gave birth and the next day I went and ran a mile. No, by no means am I saying that. And we'll get into the nitty gritties of it, but, you know, your. My body didn't just go back, it went back better. I felt more capable, I felt stronger, I felt more mentally tough than I did prior to having her. And I don't think that's talked about enough. I feel like, you know, the struggle and the challenge and the, oh, get back. You know, everybody bounce back, get back. It's like you don't want to go back. And I say that because there's so much more ahead of you than there was behind you. And I mean that in a spiritual way and in a real, you know, reality based way. There's so much more ahead of you than there was behind you. What you are, quote, unquote, losing. When you sacrifice your body to be the growing ground of a brand new life into this world, that sacrifice is repaid to you tenfold, 20 fold, 30 fold. I mean, physically, after, I don't know, I would say probably sixerish months. And that's not everybody's experience, but I was really intentional about the things that mattered to me. Right? Like I wanted, I didn't want. I wanted to be able to run. I didn't want to pee every time I ran. So I was really intentional about pelvic floor rehab and strengthening those muscles and keeping those muscles strong during pregnancy. And, you know, after a couple months postpartum, starting to reengage those muscles again and chiropractic to make sure that, you know, all my bones went back to proper alignment after being stretched and contorted and, you know, adjusted to make room for a human inside my body. You know, being intentional about those things is super important and I'll kind of get into all of that today. But the main thing I want to drive home is that the sacrifice that you make is repaid to you in more ways than you can possibly count. And you don't want to bounce back. You want to go forward because there's so much more and better and more fulfilling and more and stronger. Everything, everything is better on the other side. Rather than going back, even if you could go back, your cells will never be the same. But I was shocked at how my abs reengaged, my ab muscles did reengage and I felt stronger and I felt healthier and I felt I had more endurance and my mental game was so much sharper after having a baby than it was before. Right. Like we always, your body will never be the same. It's like, no, it gets an upgrade. Let me tell you, it's not the same. It gets an upgrade. It is not a downgrade. It's not you give birth and then everything is worse. And that's just the price you pay. Like that's a very negative rhetoric that I very much believed before I experienced it myself. And I hope to give new mamas a more positive outlook that anything that changes was meant to change and that that change is beautiful, that change is needed and that change is in some way going to make you better, even if it's hard to see in the moment. So things that tips tricks, right? With my first pregnancy that I actually didn't know that I learned this time around. I personally feel very sick in the first trimester. And by very sick, I do not mean hyperemesis sick. You know, this is not like nonstop puking, having to be hospitalized. There are very severe cases of, you know, that first trimester sickness that actually for some people last the entire time, which bless you, first trimester is the hardest in my opinion of pregnancy. It was that way with my daughter Camila. And this time around it felt like the sickness lasted even longer. And it could just be because I, you know, have a different lifestyle. I'm chasing a toddler around. I couldn't just lay down and sleep whenever I wanted to or if I was, you know, my work day wasn't sitting behind a desk. That's what it was when I was pregnant with Camila, was sitting behind a desk and doing, you know, check in type stuff, paperwork, managing an office. My job is quite a bit more physically taxing, chasing a toddler around, keeping her entertained and much more dynamic than my day to day was when I was pregnant with Camila. So I felt like the sickness kind of lasted longer for me. But some things I used to combat that were these things. I think they're called Nausea Sweets by Pink Stork, Pink something. I will go ahead and link them all my stories on at Grounding Elevation on Instagram and My personal pages as well. But the nausea sweets were helpful. The motion sickness bands were kind of helpful. I felt like they were a little bit more helpful my first go around, um, than they were the second. But they were still beneficial. And this time I had a little more knowledge and leaned into homeopathy. And homeopathy is actually really wonderful and can, can help, help all throughout pregnancy in a facet of different ways. I use the Nux, it's called Nux Vomica. And that really helped me to like, just take the edge off of the nauseousness so that I could at least eat because I did feel better after I'd eat. But just the thought of food was just brutal in that first trimester. So the next Vomica was super, super helpful. And that is homeopathy. And there is a homeopathy group that this Instagram account that I follow called the. I think it's called homeomother. She runs a group for moms and you can join. I think it's like 20, 20 something bucks a month worth every single penny. And you have access to all of her remedies. And she posts new things all the time. You can ask questions, give specifics. She's like, it's like having an on call homeopathy practitioner in your pocket on this app. And she runs this group. And that was a huge help to me. Um, just in trying out different things that could help with the general feelings that I was feeling in that first trimester. Um, that is super valuable that I definitely recommend to, to any holistically inclined mama. Um, but the first trimester, another trick was always like having something in your stomach. So with my first daughter, Camila, it was crackers. And then slowly we worked our way to peanut butter and jelly and then slowly worked our way to like a bagel and cream cheese before I could actually just like eat regular food. And also just eating whatever sounded good in the moment was, was always an option. So there's that or this time, this pregnancy. Baby number two. I found that crackers were like the crackers that were my saving grace with my first daughter did not work out well for me this time. I was like gagging on crackers and I had a really horrible dry heave situation. Like anytime I'd go to eat anything and I wouldn't actually throw up, it was just like this really annoying dry heave. And it was in the mornings and it was, it was just, it was very, very annoying. Um, but what I found to be my go to this time were apples I. If I always had apples, I'd be okay. And like, if I start to feel like that, really, queasiness coming up and I'd eat a couple apple slices, we'd be in the clear. Um, so you have to kind of try, find what works for you. If something sounds good, just follow that and see where it leads you later on in pregnancy. Nutrition wise, I have found both times around that the more I focus on nutrients, the less cravings I have. I remember with Camila, I really had no interest in food at all whatsoever. Not because I felt sick. I did feel sick at the beginning, but I'm talking second and third trimester. It really wasn't about feeling sick necessarily. It was about. I just didn't, I didn't have a huge appetite. I was not like, typically very hungry. So I would just eat throughout the day because I knew I had to, you know, you have to eat something. But I didn't have like, cravings where it was like, oh, I have to have this or I have to have that, that. You, you know, that's always portrayed in the media and in movies. It's, you know, oh, like the mom, the pregnant mom, she's so angry unless she gets, you know, this one particular food that she wants to eat right at this moment. It was not like that for me at all. When I was pregnant with Camila, I didn't have really any cravings. There were things that I like, preferred, but I always have things that I prefer over other things. I think we all do. I wouldn't call that a craving. I would just call that a preference, really. But cravings wise, I attribute being having my focus be on being as nutrient dense as possible as being the reason why I didn't have crazy cravings. Because they say if you crave certain things, it's because of a nutrient deficiency. Now, hormones play a big role in this. I'm not going to say, oh, if you have cravings, then you're not being nutrient dense. No, that's not it at all. Everybody's situation is different. But what I attributed to the lack of cravings that were like, you know, crazy or dramatic was just putting all my focus on being as health conscious and focused on really quality ingredients, nutrient dense foods. Once I got past that stage of queasiness, you know, in the first trimester stage of queasiness, it's survival. You know, you eat whatever might sound good in the moment, eat it as quickly as you can before that feeling passes, and just do the best you can, right? Like that's like, all we can ask for is just doing the best we can. How can we get the most out of, you know, how do we get calories into this body without puking? But in trimester two and three, just focusing on making sure that you get those nutrients in that was really helpful for me. And that's what I attribute to not being a. Being a victim to the cravings that you always see portrayed on everything. Not to say that you don't indulge in whatever does sound good in the moment, but to just put your focus in as much of your focus as you can on nutrients, vitamins, minerals, making sure that you're getting enough of all the vitamins and minerals that your body needs to pull off a miracle, which is exactly what pregnancy is. It's an absolute miracle. A prenatal that I like. I like the pre mama prenatal. I toyed around with quite a few when I was pregnant with Camila because I just had such a hard time stomaching things at the beginning, and I wasn't really used to taking any supplements or anything. One thing that I found to be absolutely magical in pregnancy is magnesium. I'm a big magnesium fan. Magnesium glycinate is my jam. There's multiple different kinds of magnesium. Having a diverse array of different kinds of magnesium is awesome. But usually either. For me, it was like, pretty early in the second trimester, I started feeling the leg cramps. So I would get, like, achiness and cramping in my calves and in my ankles, just like in my legs in general when I'd go to sleep. And so, like, in the middle of the night, it would, like, wake you up. Would wake me up, like this feeling of just like, oh, it's like achiness that you need to stretch, but you can never stretch it enough. So to combat that, my biggest helpful tip is compression socks, because compression socks are magical and amazing. I originally discovered compression socks because my concern was varicose veins, because my mom said that her varicose veins started when she was pregnant with my me. Hello. So I was like, oh, I don't. I want to try to mitigate that. So I was very focused on that. And so I wore compression socks all the time, but I found that when I didn't wear them, I had the leg cramps. So wearing compression socks all day or for most of the day meant that my legs felt good during the night, which was really helpful. In addition to wearing the compression socks during the day, I would also put a magnesium gel on my legs on My calves and on the bottoms of my feet at night. And that also helps mitigate the leg cramps a lot. So compression socks, magnesium gel, and taking a ton of magnesium. I like magnesium glycinate. Another pregnancy problem is **** problems. Right? Our intestines, when we're pregnant, they squish and move, and they'll move behind your uterus. They'll move to the side of your uterus. The way that our bodies adapt to fit a baby inside of us is nothing short of a miracle, nothing short of magical. And it can result that between that and the hormonal changes, you got **** problems sometimes. Okay, let's just woman to woman, you know, it's true. And I am a professional **** problem person because growing up, I was, like, constipated all the time. So it's not a challenge. That is lost on me. I felt like I really. When I'm not pregnant, I have it so dialed in. It's wonderful. But that's not always the case. Pregnancy breeds **** problems for me. So things that help me combat that. Getting pooping, keeping pooping. Magnesium, magnesium, and more magnesium. And my midwives say, you can't really overdose on magnesium. You know what will happen if you take too much magnesium is you'll just like, have diarrhea, essentially, which sometimes I'm like, that would be nice. I'd enjoy some diarrhea. That'd be preferred to the alternative. So I go hard for the magnesium I take. At this point, I'm up to like over a thousand milligrams of magnesium, which is a lot. And that's not including the topical magnesium that I use, but it gets the job done. Other things to help get the **** flowing. Aloe juice. I think it's Lake Lakewood or Lakeside. It's. It's a brand of organic pressed juices, but they have an organic aloe juice. I love that it does. I mean, it doesn't taste like, I don't know, olive juice is like a really specific taste. It doesn't. It doesn't taste like anything that I could explain that I could compare it to besides aloe. But drinking aloe juice, you can add it to other juices. That's really helpful. It helps coat your stomach. It can also help a lot with, like, acid reflux type stuff because of its coating tendencies and its healing tendencies on your esophagus and all the places that the aloe juice touches when you drink it. So. Aloe juice, magnesium, greens powder. Big fan of greens powder. I like the amazing grass, the original amazing grass. It's got a ton of nutrients in it and it has a ton of fiber and probiotics. I also take a probiotic called Happy V. It's got the strains in it that also help with gbs. And taking a probiotic is like a non negotiable for me. I always take probiotic, but this particular one seems to be pretty good. Other stomach stuff, I take an enzyme. I think it's called ultimate enzymes or something. I'll tag all these products in a post or something on our grounding elevation Instagram. But taking an enzyme really helps to try to break down some foods because you know your body's building a human being so it's might need a little help doing things like breaking down foods. And I take an enzyme anyway because it's just there. There's certain enzymes in this particular supplement that are helpful for your immune system. Helpful for all the things. I was so grateful to not have any stretch marks or loose skin after having my daughter. My first, my first little babe, hopeful to be as lucky this time. A lot of it is attributed to just skin type. I have really stretchy skin. Evidently I do have stretch marks in other places just from growing as a kid. So I know I'm capable of having stretch marks or getting them. But you know, besides just having a certain skin type that's not super prone to getting stretch marks easily having a really great oil or body butter or something along those lines on the, on the growing belly is super helpful. And the *****, because those babies grow. Something that I noticed in my first pregnancy that I have not experienced this time, which must be just a first time. A first time mama situation is the craziest sensation like in your ***** when you're pregnant for the first time. To me, and I don't know if this is like a unique experience, but to me it felt like little laser beams shooting through my nipples, through my *****. And I was told that that is the development of your milk ducts. So your ***** are developing capabilities to feed your child, right? But it can feel like, yeah, like laser beams. Because it's like there's like nerves, there's like a ton of nerves in your *****. And it literally felt like somebody was taking like a laser shooter and shooting through my nipple into my different areas of my *****. And apparently that's the creation of different milk ducts. Or the widening or the creating or the. Whatever happens in your ***** when you're pregnant was the wildest Sensation and it's not one that I have encountered this time. So it must be just like a first time mama situation. Now, besides the physical experience, there's a lot of anxieties and fears that need to be addressed while you're pregnant, right? And I'm of the belief that the things that come to the surface during pregnancy are, they come to the surface to be healed before you become a mother, which is so beautiful. And the lessons never stop, right? Like the journey is never done. You're always learning, you're always growing, you're always healing something else within you that needs to be healed. And there is nothing like motherhood too accelerate your growth spiritually on this planet like becoming a mom. It's, it's the, it's the most growth and most evolution that you'll ever experience is the journey to motherhood. And it's different every time, right? Like the concerns and fears I had when I was pregnant with my first are different than the concerns and fears that I have this time. You know, it's always changing, it's always evolving. But the things that come up emotionally, they come up to be healed, to serve you in your next phase of growth, which is be actually becoming a mom. When you have your baby and they're on the outside and you're like, holy ****, I have this human to take care of. This is wild for me. I learned so many important lessons. The main ones were surrender. There was a lot of surrendering that had to happen. I like to be in control. I like to, I like to be in control of situations, and you're not really in control. You have to surrender to the process, you have to surrender to the changes, you have to surrender to the lessons, and you have to surrender a thousand times. I jumped down the rabbit hole of uncovering a lot of commonly held beliefs about, gosh, about. I felt like I was unraveling beliefs like crazy about birth, about health in general, about wellness, about how to take care of yourself, about the reality of the industries, of the baby industries, the medical industries, the business of birth, the business of babies, the corruption that is rampant throughout all of it. I took a deep dive and I'm glad I did because it informed my decisions and made me really confident in the decisions that, that, you know, we ended up making from everything to, you know, the systems and processes in place in hospital birth compared to the systems and processes in place under care for a home birth, what physiological birth looks like compared to what the media portrays as birth and what is encouraged and supported in A hospital setting. There's just. There's so much to uncover everything from. From birth to, you know, infant care to, you know, pokey schedule to the invested interest that big corporations have into these practices. And it. It was so much uncovering and so much unraveling that I actually developed fear around, you know, I started to swing so far the other way, Meaning I was, like, scared of the hospital. I don't want to have a C section. I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be. So I want to say controlled in that situation or push down a rabbit hole of interventions that lead to a C section or complications. I start. I started to develop such a fear of the hospital setting and such a fear of, like, the medical world that it wasn't balanced. It needed to balance things needed to balance. I was not scared of birth before I got pregnant. Growing up, I had a fear of birth, um, because, you know, what do you hear? It's the most painful thing in your whole life. Everything is so scary and so hard, and it's the hardest thing you'll ever do, and it's the most pain you'll ever feel. And, like, all those things are just. It's just noise. And when you're pregnant, for whatever reason, everybody wants to tell you all their horror stories. And it's like, can you just not fill my head with that? Can you not fill my head with everything that could possibly go wrong? Because, like, that's enough, thank you. But I developed. I went. I feel like I didn't have a balanced outlook. I had a lot of fear around the hospital setting. And so when I, you know, midway through my pregnancy, my thyroid wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. It wasn't keeping up the way that, you know, it should, I guess. And I really didn't have any, like, underlying issues. Like, I didn't have any chronic autoimmune antibodies that were signaling a continuous issue by any means. But they say that sometimes just the hormones of pregnancy affect everyone a little wonky. And if your thyroid can't keep up, it can leave you feeling really horrible and can be neurologically damaging for babies. So I ended up biting the bullet, taking a teeny, tiny bit of a pharmaceutical for my thyroid. And that was hard for me. It was hard for me to almost, like, accept help in that way. I wanted to. You know, it's almost like your body's not doing what it's supposed to do. There's something wrong, right? It just feeds anxiety and it feeds doubt. Within your body. And you. You don't want to have doubt. You don't want doubt going into a birth. You want confidence that your body knows what it's doing, and it does. So that was hard, but I felt like it taught me, you know, there's a place for medicine, and I've always said that, but there's a difference between saying it and then actually experiencing it. Experiencing, yes. You know, I need pharmaceutical help was tough for me because I got big beef with Big Pharma. But there, There's a place. There's a place for all of it. There's a place for moderation of everything. So surrendering to that and saying, okay, I'll take this, you know, pharmaceutical. I really didn't end up needing it for very long before it overcorrected the other way. And then I stopped taking it all together. But just that surrender of, okay, I'm going to accept this help was hard and was a. Was a moment of growth for me for sure, and a hard lesson. Another one was the actual birth. So I was adamant about home birth. I had a home birth team and my sweet, stubborn girl. I was not expecting to be in back labor for over 30 hours. But shortly after labor really got going, I didn't feel anything in my uterus. I didn't feel. I didn't feel contractions anywhere except for my back. And it was like fire, essentially, like fire knives stabbing into my spine is the only way I can explain it was not expecting that. Hung hung in as long as I possibly could for almost 30 hours. You know, made it all the way to the 10 centimeters. And her positioning was so wonky. It was like she was turning her head weird. Classic Camila trying to do it herself. It's. It's a little bit amusing looking back at it for me, because her birth is very much in line with her personality, which is like, let me do it myself. Like, I'm in charge, I'm in control. And like, it not really working out in her favor or mine. But she kept turning her head, like, the side of her head. So even if I was able to get, like a push, which was really hard because I was in so much pain in my back, even if I could get a push, the midwife said she was, like, coming out and then going back in because she kept turning her head. And after she was born, like, she was only, gosh, a few days old, a week old, she was trying to hold her head up. So I'm like, man, that. That neck strength that she had, that Was way too early. She should not have as much neck strength as she had. Was not serving us for her. But her positioning was just not ideal. And the midwives had said that I was starting to swell, and they were concerned that if I started to swell too much, then we would, you know, get into a situation where we have a stuck baby, which we don't want. So I ended up transferring to the hospital after 30 hours of back labor. I was more than happy to go. I pretty much didn't care about anything at that point. And because I was in that state, my fear of the hospital was kind of irrelevant. I was just like, whatever we have to do, like, we need to get this baby out. Like, I don't care what it takes at that point. Um, but that whole situation, right. I go to the hospital, they gave me an epidural shortly after the doctor came in. He was so kind. He was so nice. He was actually able to turn her with his hands. So I was able to complete a vaginal delivery. Did not have to have a C section. Um, and she was born within. Gosh. After I caught the epidural, she was born within maybe 30 minutes or so. Ish. But it was all the things that I'd feared about the hospital was not the case in this situation. So, you know, I had a lot of very specific requests that typically systematically across the board, hospitals will fight you on. I wanted to birth the placenta before we cut the umbilical cord because I wanted to make sure that all of the blood that was hers went to her and not into some kind of weird blood bank because it is heavy with stem cells and iron, and it's. The blood that's in the umbilical cord is the baby's blood and should go to the baby. And that was really important to me. I didn't want a two minute delayed cord clamp. I wanted no blood left in the cord. And my way of getting that request met was to birth the placenta before the cord was cut. And, you know, that's something that typically. That's not their standard of practice. So that's typically something that's met with some resistance in a hospital setting. I did not want any shots given to her. I did not want any ointment put on her eyes. I did not want her to have a scrub down two seconds after she's born. I basically didn't want them to touch her at all. They weighed her, they got her her weight and her length and. And that was it. And my requests were not met with Any resistance, they were met with the utmost respect. The midwife team that took care of us was so considerate, so sweet, so thoughtful, very respectful of my requirements in my plan. They understood that, you know, I didn't even want to be in the hospital to begin with. So they were very sensitive and empathetic and just so incredibly kind. The doctor was awesome. He was so sweet. Um, I had, you know, I was scared about pushing on my back, but I was like, man, like what? I don't want to tear. You know, you don't want your ******. Tearing is essentially like pretty painful and it just takes, you know, a little bit more time to heal. And, you know, they did everything possible to make sure I didn't tear and I didn't even pushing in a position like I was on my back, even having, you know, the doctor have to basically guide the baby out from the cervix out. Even with all that, still didn't have any issues with tearing. So a lot of my fears around a hospital setting that were legitimate because of the standard practices that are associated with hospitals, it just showed me that that's not always the case. And it just gave me a more balanced view and it gave me, it gave me a more well rounded opinion, if that makes sense. It gave me hope, a lot of hope within the hospital setting that you can still have a great birth, because when you hear enough horror stories, it becomes a scary place. And so that whole experience, I was, I'm convinced, had to happen for me to have more of a balanced view of the medical field and, you know, the practices and that it can work out well. And, you know, the cascade of interventions is not always a guarantee when you're dealing with the medical world. There are wonderful doctors who are more integrative in their approach and more educated on, you know, physiological birth and things like that. So it was challenging to say the least. It was definitely not what I expected when I started learning about, you know, birth and physiological birth. But the best thing, I'm still grateful that I chose to do what I could at home because I feel like I was able to avoid a lot of those cascades. Who knows, you know, if my labor had gone on that long in a hospital setting, they could have administered certain things to try to speed it up and then it could have been worse. And you know, oh, no, now this happened. Oh no, now that happened. Now we got to do this, now we got to do that. You know, there's. It's impossible to say, but I'm grateful that I was able to do what I did for as many hours as I was in labor at home. And I wouldn't change that. Even knowing that I ended up in a hospital setting, I wouldn't have changed that. Because if I had been in a hospital setting, I can guarantee you, even if everything went exactly the same, I would have gotten an epidural way earlier and wouldn't, had, wouldn't have had less exposure to the epidural because epidural is drugs. I mean, it's, it's drugs being put into your spinal cord. So the least amount of that that I could do the best. So I'm grateful for that. And this time around, I am planning a home birth once again. I am confident that this time it's going to work and then I'm gonna have this baby at home and everything's gonna be great. So cross your fingers for me. But the, the best thing that I did in preparing for that experience was take the pain free birth course on. You can find her on Instagram. I will tag her also on my, on my Instagram in the grounding elevation Instagram. But pain free birth, she does a whole course and the most. The tools that she teaches you on, like how to manage pain in birth were so helpful for me. I never would have lasted days in labor if it wasn't for her course. No chance. There's no chance that I would have been able to manage that long if it wasn't for, if it wasn't for the tools that she taught in that course. Not only that, but what she does such a great job of doing is educating on what is actually going to be happening inside your body and what's actually happening within you so that you have such a deep grasp and deep understanding of how the baby even comes out. Like, you know, like you're pregnant and you're like, this just doesn't make sense. Like, this baby's huge. How's it going to come out? Such a small space. But she does such a good job of educating you on how that happens. And really it dispels a lot of fear because pain is made so much worse when it is amplified by fear. When you're fearful of the process and you're scared you're going to be more tense, you're not going to be flowing with the, the whole process of labor in the way that you would if you're going into it from a really confident and calm standpoint. So even if you're planning on, you know, epidural ASAP and hospital birth and all those things. Even if that's your plan, I strongly recommend taking her course and just getting educated on what actually happens within your body physiologically so that you just, you have an awareness and, and you can kind of work with your body and not be scared of it. That was a really, really helpful thing for me. Was my birth pain free? Absolutely not. But it was, you know, more than worth it by the time it's over. Honestly, I was. Everybody says this and I'm like, yeah, yeah, sounds good. Until it happened to me. Once the. Once the baby is there in your arms, it really, like the. How much pain or discomfort or challenge or things that didn't go the way you wanted them to go. Like, in that moment, it really. Not to discount feelings of, like, discouragement. There was a lot that I had to process after her birth, but it was just like, but she's here now and everything is okay, you know, like, but this baby is in my arms and like, that's all I can think about in that moment. Um, and you know, with time, you do end up kind of processing everything and, you know, you have to process things that went well and what didn't and all that. But for me, you know, by the time she's in your arms, it's just like, but she's here now, you know, and everything is great. Everything's fine. Everything's great because she's here now and I'm happy. Um, another lesson of surrender that I had to, you know, once again find balance with is I didn't even entertain any option besides breastfeeding. There was no backup formula. Absolutely not. Like, I'm like, if I want to breastfeed, I'm going to. Like, that's it. That's. There's just not. There's like, there was like, no. I really didn't even think about an alternative option. It's like, I'm going to breastfeed. I know that that's. That's nutritionally superior to anything I can find in a box. Like, didn't even give it a thought. And then six, seven days postpartum, we realized that my daughter was showing signs of dehydration. Like, she was not getting any milk. My milk was like next to nothing. I don't know if anything was coming out at that point. She was, you know, crying, crying, crying. And to me, I'm like, well, babies cry. Like, it's okay. She can cry, it's fine. But we realized after, yeah, like six is days, maybe seven, that she was dehydrated. And we Ended up calling the pediatrician and she was like, you gotta go get formula, like, right now. And so my husband had to run to Target and find the best of what he could on the shelves there, which was, you know, not ideal. Um, I. There was no time for researching. There was no time for, you know, investigating. It was like, this baby needs to eat now, and that's such a scary place to be in any way. And that was a really, really tough. I mean, postpartum, your hormones are crashing. You're already so emotional. I mean, I. I was not. I wouldn't call myself, like, overly hormonal, like, during the pregnancy. Like, obviously your hormonal. You have tons of hormones coursing through your body. But I didn't find myself to be, like, overly sensitive or overly weepy. I mean, I was a little more than usual, but not crazy. But postpartum, like, when all my hormones crashed, like, super, like, super sensitive, super weepy, everything felt like just so much more than it was. And, you know, my birth doesn't go the way that I planned, but it's fine because she's here, it's all good. I go to breastfeed and it doesn't work. And I. You know, at this point, the pediatrician is like, you need formula, so friends goes and gets formula. I will never forget the look on my sweet baby's face when she was eating for the first time. Like, she had this stare in her eyes, like she was, like, on crack. It was like the sweetest and saddest thing I'd ever seen because essentially she had been starving for days. And it was so humbling because for me, I had to overcome a lot of feelings of inadequacy. Like, I am her mother and I am supposed to be able to feed her. And this is not how it's supposed to go. I'm supposed to be able to feed her if I want to feed her this way. I'm supposed to be able to. Like, that's like such a basic need is to be able to feed your baby. And to not be able to do that because your body literally didn't cooperate in that way was so crushing for me. It was like, you know, and I felt it many, many times. But just feeling inadequate and feeling like you failed as a mother is so hard to overcome. And I also had this, you know, irrational fear of formula. Oh, it's trash. It's not good. She's going to be sick. She's not going to be nutritionally taken care of. You know, all these things, these Ingredients are what I want to feed her. But the reality was that she needed to eat and she was able to eat with formula and she was fed and she was happy. And I continued to work with the lactation consultant on a regular basis. There really was nothing wrong. What they attributed to the issue was likely a very long, traumatic labor can sometimes cause your body to not produce. I tried all the herbs, I tried all the tactics, I tried all the pumping strategies. I would sit on our bathroom floor while my husband held our sweet new baby daughter with the pump and just sit there for 30 minutes and get maybe a fourth of an ounce out of both sides. And I eventually just surrendered to the fact that that's all I was going to produce and I would give it to her. And we called it her wellness shot because she was still getting the antibodies. And I was actually informed that no matter how much milk you produce, even if it's a tiny bit, it is still has the same amount of antibodies as if you were producing ounces and ounces and ounces of milk. It's just more concentrated now. You're not, they're not going to get as much of the calories and the fats and the things like that, but they're still getting the, the antibodies and like positive benefits as far as their immune system is concerned from your breast milk, even if you're only producing a teeny tiny bit. So that kind of kept me going to pumping as much as I could and just giving it to her and calling it her wellness shot and then feeding her formula on the other occasions, on all the other times that she needed to eat. And we did that for. I think I was able to do it for about six months postpartum before I just dried up completely. And I giggle when I'm talking about it now, but it was very painful for me. It was very sad and a hard lesson to surrender to that once again, like sometimes your plans do not pan out, but that's okay. Like everything is still okay. The sky did not fall because I could not exclusively breastfeed for a year. Like that's the paranoia and the fear around it that I felt had to be dispelled. And this is how God decided to do it. And now going into this pregnancy with this baby, I am very confident that the birth will be much easier. Everyone has assured me that the second time around, like the issue that I ran into is very common first time mom issues. It just happens sometimes. And you know, sometimes you just don't produce milk the first time. And that is also pretty common. Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen the second time. But now I am going in with a lot less fear around the birth and a lot less fear around being able to provide breastfeeding wise. I'm going to have the formula that I love that has been great for Camila on hand in the occasion that my ***** decide not to cooperate once again. And I know because I have seen this, you know, Camila is incredibly healthy, she's incredibly smart, she is incredibly strong. She's just, in my very biased and humble opinion, an absolute superhuman. And she's been fed formula for majority of her life and she's perfect and it's okay and everything's okay. Sky did not fall. Earth did not open and swallow us all up. It wasn't my preference. But it's not the end of the world. And now I can, you know, I already know which formula has the better ingredients that I prefer. I will have it on hand. I will try, you know, to make my ***** make the milk. I'm, you know, gonna do a few things differently. I'm gonna start trying to pump a little earlier. I'm going to, you know, there's many things that I'm like, okay, I'm going to try to get ahead of this. I'm going to give it my, you know, best college try. But at the end of the day, you know, if it doesn't work, then thank God we have access to another form of food for a newborn. You know, thank goodness we're in a situation where there is formula available which is not always a given. And you know, there's a great option that I know is okay and that I've seen has not created, you know, any issues within my daughter. She's got an incredible microbiome, she's got an incredible gut. She's these. All these things that you know, give me pause and made me so scared and nervous have kind of lost their fear tactics which thank goodness, you know, I'm so grateful for. So if my birth does not go the way that I want it to, I know where, what hospital I'll be going to. I know what team I'll be requesting right. Like, you know, and I know that everything is going to be okay. So just that peace of mind of that only experience can bring is a big difference this go around from my last time because of the lessons that I was given. Now I'm hopeful, I'm really excited and hopeful for being able to bring this baby into the world at home and all the things that go along with that. I'm expectant for positive results, but the lessons of my first go around have just allowed a little bit more peace. Now that doesn't mean I don't have fears and anxieties and all the things, they're just different. The fears are different, the anxieties are different and they're things that are just coming up to be worked through. And I know that. So even though my birth did not go the way I expected it to with my first, it didn't necessarily change the way I view birth, if that makes sense. I still feel it's, you know, supporting physiological birth is important. But how lucky are we that medical care exists, you know, within the snap of a finger? How lucky are we that medical care exists when we need it? You know, how grateful am I that I had that to turn to when it was necessary? And it just gives me great reverence and great respect and great love for that field. Now if you are a soon to be mama or currently pregnant or trying to get pregnant, I'm going to on our Instagram at grounding elevation. I'm going to provide just some awesome accounts that were really encouraging to me and really helpful for me when I was getting ready to birth for the first time and just a lot, a lot informing for me a lot of the decisions that need to be made as far as the care of your baby going forward. So I'll share a lot of my favorite accounts that are very holistic based. We have an amazing integrative family care physician that we love that, you know, not only respects our choices as far as what we are willing to, what we are willing to engage in and what we aren't. And they have, you know, awesome, awesome tips for things like an ear infection, like have you taken them to the chiropractor? Like their ear infection protocol is garlic, oil and colloidal silver. And my daughter has yet to have any kind of severe issue when we combat it with those practices, which we're really grateful to have those kind of tips and tricks. It's not just a prescription or nothing. They're really, really cool. So I'll link them as well. They've got a lot of really great resources, even if you're not a patient, but if you are in the Nashville area, they're an awesome option for pediatric care for your babe when they are born. But I would love to just connect with other mamas and hear your stories and if any of this was helpful to you or you can rel I would love to connect with you. Feel free to message me or just interact with me on the At Grounding Elevation Instagram page. I'm gonna just post as many resources as I can on the topic there. Until next time, I love you. Ciao.