SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome to Dual Let's Unhead, the podcast where we tell the unfiltered truth and traps the exception of modern art and parenting.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

We're your hosts, Alex Shaw, and Lacey Morgan, here to cut through the points, share the stories no one else will, and empower you with real talk that's equal to un, funny, and unapologetic. Let's get unheaded.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

We're having a day with technical difficulty. We're having a day. We're having like two weeks. We've both been wild.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

We're both sitting here exhausted. Completely exhausted. Uh so we already recorded this. I don't even know where to start now.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

We had we had a crazy birth. We had many crazy births. Many. I also want to share the Valentine's Day one at some point, not today, but just because she was a first-time mom and it went like ridiculously fat. Like she was the unicorn. And I think that needs to be shared.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Why don't we share that one?

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Okay, we can share that one. Go ahead. So first time mom had many medical conditions. Many, many different medical conditions.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Um and some real serious fear about not being seen or respected or listened to by the medical team. And I think that is why she uh hired Lula.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yeah, a hundred percent. Um she went in for an induction on the day before Valentine's Day, right? Yes. Yeah. Started with sight attack, uh, got two rounds of side attack, was having contractions, then went on a low dose pit, was having contractions that were building in intensity and all of the things. I kid you not, it was I swear it was like a 12-hour induction. It was something ridiculous. What not even? It was hardly 12 hours. Yeah. She pushed that baby out in 36 minutes. This first-time mom, like we tell moms, get ready for four days before you meet your baby. If you're going in for an induction as a first-time mom, it will be four days before you meet your baby. It'll be four days before anything is even getting going.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I mean, for a lot of people, that is true. And I think the reason that we tell them that is so that if it is four days, they're not surprised. Well, like, you're not like if you go in ready for the marathon and all you have to do is a sprint, yeah, like hallelujah for that. Woo-hoo, right? So excited. But if you go in expecting that you're gonna be in and out in 24 hours, and 24 hours later nothing is even really happening, yeah, it can be very um difficult, disappointing, and disheartening and discouraging, and all those dis words, right? Um so yeah, for her, I mean, it just went so smoothly. Yeah, so she went in Friday, had her baby Saturday on Valentine's Day. And then we had another one who went in Thursday and didn't have her baby until Monday. Night, almost almost Tuesday. Yeah, almost Tuesday. Almost Tuesday. Both first-time moms, yeah, both really effective at pushing. Yeah. Um, that second mom pushed for seven hours, which is unheard of. Yeah. And now, in fairness, her contractions were like ten minutes apart, so she was really only pushing six times an hour. Yeah. Instead of what they t try to do is titrate the Pitocin so that your contractions are two to three minutes apart. Yeah. So you would push like twenty times in uh an hour, right? And and so that's very different than pushing six times in an hour. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

So no wonder it took so long.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

The OB, who was there kind of at the end, I mean, I'll say every medical practitioner that she interacted with from Thursday night until Monday evening, Monday night, they were all incredible, and it was almost like the powers that be put the right people there at the right time. Yeah. The first doctor who like was super slow and patient with the beginning part of her induction when she wasn't dilating at all, he continued to encourage her, told her that it's totally normal. And then when uh later, when she was pushing for seven hours, the OB was like, I think maybe we were four and a half hours in, and she was like, Well, you know, I j I generally call it at five hours of pushing, but she's like, if you want to keep going, you look great, the baby looks great, like we'll just keep doing what you want to do. Yeah, um, she ended up having her push without contractions to get the baby out, which is wild, in my opinion. Like, I that is a beast of a job to deliver a baby just with your muscles and not with the power of your uterus. Right. Uh that mom had more grit than anyone I've ever met in my entire life.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Right? And and she she knew we were we had somebody else who went in for an induction at the same time. I think both we had three inductions in one weekend. I think both of the other families delivered before she did. No, the other the other one delivered after her.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Only by a couple hours.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, the other one delivered after her.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Uh but she never she never lost faith. She she stayed the course, you know, like she just kept doing what she was doing, and it was it was powerful, it was amazing to watch. But you know, that's like the gamut of what it can be like with inductions. You could go in and have a baby 12 hours later as a first-time mom. That is so unlikely.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

It's so unlikely, it's so rare. I kept telling her, I said, you are a unicorn. Yeah, you are the exception. Right. Like, this doesn't normally happen. Right. And to push that baby out in 36 minutes as a first-time mom, like unheard of.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Unheard of.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Unheard of.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

And then we had another one uh the following Thursday. Second time mom. She pushed her baby out in six minutes.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yes, I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Six minutes. So good. She's a beast. She is a beast. That was a quick induction. Second time mom. I told I said, girl, this was a nine to five induction.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

She went in at 7:30 in the morning. And you know, it takes them a while to get started. So realistically, they started at nine. Yeah. And she had her baby by five o'clock. I was like, what? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Especially after all the previous ones that week. Oh my gosh. And the month, like it it's we started the first or the second. We had babies, the first or the second.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, it was it was a crazy month. But you know, I sometimes the nurses are like, oh my gosh, you're gonna go from here to another birth, you know, like you aren't you exhausted. The one time the nurses at Paoli uh offered me to go take a nap where the OBs take a nap. Uh they were like, we need to just give you a room with your name on it so much. And and I was like, Yeah, but I love what I do. It is the hardest thing that I could think of doing because you never know when you're going, you never know when you're going home. Like, you don't know what's gonna happen, you don't know who you're gonna meet that day, whether they're going to love doulas or not. But I literally can't like conceive of any other job that I would love as much as I love this job.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Even though I was in the shower before recording this, contemplating whether I should get a corporate job where I sit at a desk. Yeah, contemplating all my life decisions and where to go from here. I ultimately decided that I wouldn't want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Obviously, when you got to your conditioner, you were like, mmm.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah, no, I would never want to do anything other than the work that I do. I agree. So I guess the the first question here is um like why and how did you get into this work? So we thought we thought the folks joining us might be interested in our origin stories, and so that's that's what we're gonna talk about today. Yeah. So Alex, why don't you start and tell us how you got into the work?

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Yeah, so I was doing um, I was in the women's health field before I got into birth work, and in my mind it's like I just like diverted a little. Like I'm on this like women's health path, and I'm still doing women's health, but in a different capacity. So I was doing, um, and I still do to this day here and there, um, testing hormones, menstrual psychoanalysis. I was working as a nutritionist, um, I was working as a pre-postnatal exercise specialist, so like many different facets of women's health I was immersed in.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

So tell us a little bit about the hormone testing. What does that entail?

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Oh my gosh. So I um partnered up with a company called Precision Analytical. Um, they offer what is called the Dutch test. And if you follow me on social media, I talk about it immensely because it is the best, it is like the cream of the crop in terms of hormonal testing. It's not like going to your PCP and asking for a blood draw, right? Of like, what's my estrogen doing today? What's my cortisol doing today? That blood draws are snapshots in time, right? And so the Dutch test is it's an acronym and it stands for Dried Urinary Test for Comprehensive Hormones. Uh, so you pee on some pieces of paper over like a 24-hour period, you send it into the lab, and then they can see what your hormones are doing over a 24-hour period, which is phenomenal, like it's amazing. And you get to see how how like your estrogens are detoxing right from your body, which is super cool. Um, yeah, you get to see a lot.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

And then what do you do with that information?

SPEAKER_02 10:46

And then, right, so it depends on what you find out. Let's say one of your estrogen detox detoxification pathways um are not functioning effectively, right? Then you use nutrition or supplements or lifestyle changes to help that particular pathway to work effectively, right? So, like you can have a ton of estrogen dominance. Um, and so it's like, okay, well, how do we clear that from your body instead of it just recirculating, causing estrogen dominance and havoc in your body, like acne or weight gain or you name it, uh painful periods, you name it.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah. Do you ever work with anybody who is trying to get pregnant and can't?

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yes, and a lot of it's like um they were on hormonal birth control, right? And your body needs time to come off of that and re-regulate. And a lot of it is also like just having intercourse at the wrong time. And so, again, if you follow me on social media, you hear me talk a lot about cervical mucus. Um and it's and some eggs, for some women, there's research that says um for some women the egg can only be viable for four hours.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Which is crazy. It's crazy that anybody gets pregnant with that kind of a timeline.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Right? Most of the time it's 24 hours. But if you're one of those women that your egg isn't viable for a full 24 hours, like of course you're not getting pregnant.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

You know, or you're having intercourse on the wrong time, like the wrong day. You're having it after the egg drops versus before the egg drops, or even before, like before, and and and it's too late. Like you it there's not enough time, you know?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, yeah, cool. All right, so then you're doing all of these things, and then why the pivot? Like, how did you get to do a work?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Yeah, so I eventually enrolled in midwifery school. I was fascinated and still am so fascinated with just gynecological care, right? Like the cervical mucus, like that's so cool. STIs, all of the all of the gynecological um care in women's health. I absolutely love it. And I was like, I'm gonna go to midwifery school, like I want to do more with this. Um eventually I found you guys. I found KOP doulas. I had already trained to become a doula. Um, and I reached out to you and I was like, hey girl, so like you guys hiring? Like always hiring. Yeah. And you were the shit. Oh. Oh my god. Girl, I know. I loved you the minute I met you. I was like, you know, like some people are just so authentic and real, and especially women. Did you make a comment recently? Maybe it was in the beginning of this. I didn't, I yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So I said that I have never really liked women. And sometimes I really question how I ended up in a field that is all women. My staff is all women, the people that I associate with are all women, my clients, yeah, primarily all women. I mean, obviously, there's the partners to the other half, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

I love women. I think I've always loved women. Like, and I think it's because I grew up with all boys, and so I'm I can like really get down in the dirt and like be that masculine energy, right? Like I can hold my own in many different arenas, but like the whole just women's health, it's it is such a passion and supporting them and and just being on the birthing journey with them and it edu helping them like gain information. Like, I just there is nothing more that than I love than doing this work and supporting women. Yeah, I love it so much because it like it's a balance. Like I feel like so, and I I made a comment earlier before we started recording. I was like, you know, I was just in the sauna with all my bros, not my brothers, just the bros in the gym. And it's like it's such a balance.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

I find that I have like it's so great. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Yeah, yeah. Alright. Um, it's not that I don't like women, I guess I should clarify. I kind of like them. They're like, um I don't want the Dola who doesn't like women. What I what I have always found difficult because I am very direct.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Right? And I'm very intentional in my language and in my communication. And for better or worse, I think I was raised in a household that was not very nurturing of feelings. Um, and so I perhaps lack some social um normalities of the female persuasion.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Right? And and so I find that women tend to communicate in these nuanced ways. And, you know, I never in high school and college, like I never bought into the drama that women engage in. Like I always preferred the more masculine energy where it was like, I'm gonna say exactly what I mean. Yeah, I'm not going to beat around the bush. I'm less concerned with your feelings and how you receive what I say. Um, but I got into this work because with my first baby, I uh I really like I did my research, you know, like my mom introduced me to the miracle of life, that movie, when I was like five years old. Yeah, right? Like m maybe six, right? And and I loved it. I just couldn't get enough. And then I watched all the baby shows on TLC and 16 and pregnant, like I my whole life I consumed birth and and babies and all of it. And so when I had my first, I was really knowledgeable. Yeah, and when the doctors were making recommendations for me that I didn't agree with for my personal care, they would try to use their fear-mongering tactics and I would shoot the facts back at them. Yeah. Which we know now the physicians in this area seem to lack the actual data. They use the rhetoric, but not the data. Uh, you know, and and I left every single appointment mad at my doctor's. Like my blood pressure was elevated. I left mad at my doctors. And um I remember the, you know, the last appointment that I had, I asked for a letter to be written out of work because I just didn't want to work. It had nothing to do with the pregnancy that everything to do with. Like, I'm done. Well, I was teaching like third or fourth grade at the time, and you know, like you get to a point hormonally where you don't want to interact with other people's kids. Yeah. Right? And I just wanted some downtime to focus on the end of my pregnancy and enjoy my baby and rest and whatever. And she said, I want to schedule you for an induction of 41 weeks. And I said, No, thank you. Uh, Dr. Coulter, who is no longer in the area, who caught me when I was born, was the doctor in the practice. Uh, you know, and he had said he was totally comfortable with me going to 42 weeks, which I was a hundred percent prepared to do. And this other doctor, uh, you know, she said, Well, we're gonna induce you at 41 weeks. And I said, The fk you are, right? I'm absolutely not showing up for an induction at 41 weeks. And she said, Then I am not writing you out of work.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

And I said, Fine, I'm still not going to be induced at 41 weeks. Like, this is coercion and I'm not participating. And this is of course at the beginning of my appointment, and now she's going to do a vaginal exam, which God help me, I've no idea why I consented to that, right? I like I I knew things, clearly, I didn't know all the things. Yeah. And um, and so she stripped my membranes without my permission during that vaginal exam. So between that and she and I getting into a very heated argument where she said to me, You need to be induced at 41 weeks because if you aren't, you're going to have a dead baby. Do you understand the risk of stillbirth doubles? You will have a dead baby, Lacey. A dead baby. To a woman who is 41 weeks pregnant. Or 40, I was what was I? It was 40 in three days or something, right? I'm like, who do you think you're talking to, right? So between the membrane sweep and the elevated blood pressure, my body was like, get this baby out of here. Uh, and I didn't have a doula. Even though my mother lived across the street from one of the midwives who worked at the birth center in Brynmar, who specifically said, Come birth with us. But because of the 1970s decor, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Why? I don't know why that mattered. But the woman said, if you're not going to come deliver with us, hire a doula. And I was like, do what now? Right? Like a doula? Nah. And so I go into labor. Uh, I guess that was, I don't know, on the 9th or the 10th, which was my due date, um, or the day after my due date, and I labored all night, all the next day. I thought I was feeling pressure in my rectum. Ladies, you're not feeling pressure in your rectum. You're you're just especially as a first-time mom. Yeah. When you when you think that you're feeling pressure, you're probably remember that you're not. You're probably not. And so I went to the hospital and it just stalled. Like it was just so long and drawn out and just really difficult. My daughter was posterior, right? So she was sunny side up, facing the wrong way, and I had all back labor. And And I mean I had grit, my husband at the time had grit. My okay, I had an entourage. I had a million people there, right? So that was a strike against me. A posterior baby was a strike against me. I had um a serious distrust of my practice who had made me angry the entire pregnancy, right? And I just I I felt like they were a dangerous situation to be releasing my baby into. And so I've got three strikes against me in this labor. There was no way that baby was going to come out. Like there was there was almost no chance that I was going to birth a child in that situation.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Safety is key. Safety is key.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

You have to be where you feel like the people around you have got your back.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

You know?

SPEAKER_02 22:57

And if that's not a hospital, then I highly encourage you to explore other options. There are other options.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah. You know, and and I was foolish in that that the idea of birthing anywhere else was kind of like foreign, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Because possibly more scary.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

No, I don't I I have a Facebook post where I said, um, maybe I'll just have my mom catch the baby. Like that that was where I was at at the very end of my pregnancy, was like, screw it all. Yeah, I'll just have a baby, free birth at home.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

So I went from one extreme to the other. Yeah. Um, anyway, and so then they were pressuring me because they didn't feel like the labor was progressing quickly enough. Which was complete bullshit, right? Because she was posterior, so they should have been focusing on positioning. Yeah. Right. Uh, but I think really at that time, which, you know, now is 14 years ago, they weren't, they just didn't think about the positioning of babies. That, you know, they the knowledge wasn't as um accessible, available, yeah, or commonplace.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Common, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, I don't know. And so they decided they wanted to do Pitocin. I had been awake for like three days at this point. I was exhausted, and um I consented to Pitocin. However, I told them that I needed an epidural before I could have Pitocin, which now as a Dula I know is not necessarily the case, but I had this vision of Pitocin as being the devil and being awful and causing these intense contractions that you can't control. Right? And and so um I asked for an epidural, my baby, her heart rate dropped as a result of the epidural. Um, and even though I was 10 centimeters at that point, and um they let me push three or four times and tried to use the vacuum, uh, it popped off of her head three times, and so then they called it and said I needed to have a c-section. Um, and I didn't consent. I I was like, I don't consent to this. You know, I think if you listen to Emily's podcast, you know, she talks about this idea of like, I'm not having a c-section, right? Like I will give up the life of my child of not having a c-section. And um I was in that place where I was like, I want to talk about how does this uh impact my future fertility, right? Because if I have a unscarred uterus, I can make more babies, but if you screw it up, I knew that there were risks to future fertility, and there are so many risks to a cesarean. They act like it is just a commonplace surgery, and they don't talk about what happens to you for the rest of your life, and they don't talk about the future fertility and safety for all of your future babies. Yeah, right? And so I'm like, I don't consent. How does this affect my future fertility? And they're wheeling me into the OR, and they say, We'll talk about that afterwards. Yeah, and then they proceed with the surgery after I literally told them no. Yeah, and so uh, you know, this this happens, my daughter gets cut on her arm, which all the things that I was worried about with a C-section, it never even crossed my mind that the baby can be cut. Yeah, right? So my baby gets cut on her arm, and then they don't even say anything to us. They hand me a baby wrapped in a blanket with a band-aid on her arm and don't say a word to us. And so I come out of this and I'm like, you know, looking at my baby, I unwrap her and I'm like, why does she have a band-aid on her arm? And they say, Oh, she just got a little nick during the procedure, and I take the band-aid off. It is not a nick, it is a V-shaped slice in her arm. Now it's maybe only a centimeter long, on my brand new baby.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

And I say, How did this happen? And they go, We're not sure. We're not, we're not sure, we're not sure. Everyone I ask, we're not sure. Somebody says to me, Oh, she got cut on a bone spur on your hip. Now, I think I went in Tuesday. So I had been up Monday morning to go to work. I was up at 6 a.m. and I I didn't have the baby until 2.02 in the morning on Thursday. So I had been up since Monday morning. It's now Thursday. I haven't slept because you know what happens when you have a baby, you're like super alert, right? And and they say you it's a bone spur on your hip, and I go, Oh, okay, okay. And then a few hours later, my brain kind of like clicks in, and I'm like, That makes no sense. I called the nurse and I hit the call bell, and she comes in and I said, Um Make this make sense. No, I said, Why are you guys not checking me for internal bleeding from the puncture wound? And she said, What are you talking about? And I said, Well, my baby was cut on a bone spur from my hip, which means that a fragment of bone punctured through my uterus and sliced my baby, which means there's a puncture wound and potentially a larger slice in my uterus that probably needs to be addressed. But nobody has come and done an ultrasound, like nobody is checking to make sure that this is not going to be a problem. And she's like, um, hang on for a minute, and leaves the room. Next thing I know, the nurse manager comes in the room, and she's like, Tell me what's going on, and I said, Well, my baby was hurt, and I have like, you know, I'm I'm having a yeah, asking all these people and what happened, and everybody's telling me they don't know. Then somebody tells me that she was cut on a bone spur on my hip, and obviously that's an internal injury for me. And the nurse manager looks at me and goes, What? No, they cut her during the procedure.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Come again? They cut her during the procedure? Why wasn't I told this? So thankfully, uh, it wasn't an injury that prevents her from using her arm. She has a little scar to match my not so little scar, and she's fine today. But then I go home and I am devastated by this really unnecessary cesarean that was caused by the interventions that the hospital pressured me to use, and I'm very vocal, right? Because that's who I am. And everywhere I turn, people are like, just be happy you have a healthy baby. I don't have a healthy baby. I have an injured baby, injured by the unnecessary cesarean that I didn't want, right? But everywhere I go, just be happy you have a healthy baby. You know, it's not that big of a deal, right? I'm just discounted every direction I turn. And so I struggled for like a solid year through that postpartum experience, feeling completely alone, completely isolated, frustrated by the system and the physicians and the lies and betrayals and and all the things. And I was like, this can't happen to people. This this is not okay. Yeah, right? And so I'm like, oh, what'd that midwife say? Hire Adola? Mm-hmm. What let me look into what they do. And I find out that they get to go to births, they're not medically responsible for people's lives. They get to offer information and advice and help you to navigate the system, and they hold space for you when shit doesn't go as planned. Yeah. Right? And I'm like, I could do that. Like I could make a difference in the birth culture in this area in people's lives.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Women's lives.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah, so I train as Adula and um I start a better birth because that's my goal is to help people have a better birth. Um you know, years go by and then it becomes King of Fresh Adulas, and that's who we are now. Um but yeah, it was always about supporting families and making sure that people maintained agency and autonomy and were given true information and alternatives, right? Like I I knew my shit, but when I was in the throes of labor and my prefrontal cortex had shut down, I wasn't able to think. And my family, as wonderful as they are, they were not saying don't do it. My nurse, God, I loved her so much. She said when the doctor came in and wanted to do Pitocin, she looked at me and she said, You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Yeah, love that which was her telling me not to do it. But I couldn't process that information. You know what I mean? Like my brain was so far beyond coherent thought that I couldn't process that information. Um anyway, so uh it was always about empowerment, right? And and I I mean, I you know, I say it in in jest a bit that I don't like women, but the truth is I love them.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

I love them so much.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Right? I do I love, I'll tell you what I love is the individuals that we support. Yeah. I don't love any collective group. Yeah. Um but I do. I think we have the most incredible job. Yeah. Whether the birth ends up in a home birth in a pool or a surgical delivery that was planned, and everything in between, I feel like we make a difference when our clients feel educated, empowered, maintain agency and autonomy when they're the ones who make the decisions and they do so not under duress, but in confidence. I feel like we make a difference, and that is always for me what this has been about.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

I highly recommend hiring Abula, even if the midwife who lives across the street from your mom works at a place that's got a 1970s stakeholders and it makes you skeevy. Hire Adula. They're not a stranger by the time you deliver. There's gonna be lots of strangers in the room. Hire Adula. I am sure that it would have made a difference in my first birth experience. But I also know I would not have become Adula if that hadn't happened.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Yeah, yeah. Alright, well, I guess we'll wrap up there. Say until next time, yeah? Yeah. Peace out. Peace out, y'all. Thanks for getting unhinged with us today. We hope this conversation challenged you, validated you, or made you laugh out loud. Birth and parenting aren't meant to be perfect or polished, and neither are we.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

If you love this episode, share it with someone who needs real and raw truths. Leave us a review and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what we're unraveling next. We're Alex Chop and Lacey Morgan reminding you that your voice matters and your experience is valid, and you're allowed to do this your own way.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Until next time, stay on the hinge.