Collins was breach, and we did what we could to get her to flip, and she wouldn’t. So we ended up in a C section. That one wasn’t a huge deal.
That forced me to think about the fact that I had to make a choice the next time. And it wasn’t like, an easy choice because really they’re trying to push you in the other direction. So we did all the things we could to try and have a VBAC, and that’s not what happened.
By 32 weeks, I’d done a lot of chiropractic work. Like, starting right after the regular anatomy scan, I’m going to do everything I can to try and at least get him flipped. Even if you can’t have a VBAC, at least at that point, it’s supposed to be an easier C section if they’re head down. So we tried, he flipped, he stayed head down. It was great.
Then the second thread that they’re looking for in order to let you have a VBAC is that you need to go into labor on your own, that’s the biggest thing. I wasn’t super concerned. You’re kind of thinking, ‘well, I’m most likely going to go into labor on my own. Yeah. And he’s in the right position. Yeah. So we’re good, right? We’re going to be fine.’
We started doing some Acupuncture too. After the second session, I went into my OB appointment, and my blood pressure had skyrocketed, which had happened the week before, and they had admitted me to monitor for a little while. That’s what had happened with Collins too.
The day before I delivered Collins, I had gone in, and they had admitted me for high blood pressure. So, like, towards the end, with both kids, my body apparently doesn’t love being pregnant. At that point, my OB was like, “you’re at 39 weeks, you’re done.”
She did a lovely sweep. They were like, “we’ll let you try.” And she was like, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I was like, “who’s on call tonight?” She’s like, “don’t worry about it. You haven’t actually labored before, so you’re going to still be laboring tomorrow. It’ll be fine.”
She didn’t deliver Collins either because it’s like, middle of the night. So I was like, “cool.” My OB doesn’t deliver either of my babies.
So we go downstairs. By the time they’ve gotten all the information in and stuff, like, I’m having pretty regular contractions, and they’d barely even started Pitocin. I’m talking like every minute, minute and a half, I was having a super intense contraction.
The next day when she came to check on me, she was like, “yeah, you were, like, slamming those contractions out.” It was kind of crazy. They had already had the protocols that they were going to do- in their head, though: we’re going to give you Pitocin and we’re going to break your water and all these things.
Well, as close together as the contractions were, I was not getting a break. And I was like, “how long do I need to wait for an epidural?” Because if you’re telling me that because of my blood pressure, I can’t get up and walk around anyways, then put a needle in my back, like, I want to be done with this.
I was like, “because if you’re telling me I’m going to labor for 24 hours, I for sure can’t do this for 24 hours.” Next thing you know, they were like, “okay, let’s go ahead and get the epidural in.” It felt like it mostly worked. They went ahead and broke my water. And then contractions came pretty quick after that.
I had dilated to like a seven at that point. So this was in the matter of 2.5-3 hours. So it’s pretty fast. She basically stretched me to a three in the office. I’d been like a one before I went in. She was like, “you’re at a three now.” And I was like, “Cool. Thanks.” Everyone knows that’s really pleasant.
At that point, I was starting to feel everything on my right side. And I was like, “am I supposed to feel contractions still on my right side?” And they were like, “no, not so much.” But he hadn’t loved it when I was on my right side. He was starting to have some [decelerations] while I was on my right side. And they get really cautious when baby starts to have [decelerations], especially when you’re trying for VBAC, because they don’t really have any way of knowing for sure if your uterus is starting to rupture, which is what they’re scared about.
For a VBAC, there’s really no way for them to measure that unless they literally cut you open and can see that it’s like, ripped open. They finally turned it off because I was having contractions so close together at that point. Baby’s not super happy. This is the middle of labor.
Let me rewind just a bit, starting with how I found out I was pregnant. Because this entire pregnancy was hard. And the whole time we kept thinking, “are you going to live?”
We didn’t know. It started hard. It continued hard. It just felt like we were always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The day I found out that I was pregnant, it’ll tie two parts of this together.
My sister had been over and I was supposed to start that day and I was telling her, “it’s kind of weird that I haven’t started.” I’m usually super on time. I usually start in the morning, but I was like, “whatever, it’s fine.” We had ordered Cheesecake Factory and actually gotten cheesecake that night. I started to hold the upper quadrant of my stomach.
My sister was like, “does it hurt there?” And I was like, “yeah, it’s kind of annoying. It kind of hurts.” She’s like, “that’s where mine hurts.” And she was getting her gallbladder out, like, in weeks. And I was like, “cool story.” Already, in my head, I’m like, ‘okay, do I have gallbladder problems?’
Before we had started trying to get pregnant again, I just been feeling really off. I’d gone to my PCP, and they had run a bunch of tests, and they were like, “everything looks fine.” I had one level that was elevated. I’m not going to remember the name of it now, but it had been elevated when I’d gone, like, three or four months before that. And he was like, “she didn’t ever send you for an ultrasound to check your gallbladder?”
He re ran them then, and then they were normal, but didn’t order any other tests. Like, they were high twice. So as I started holding that side and my sister was like, “yeah, I had gallstones, and that’s where it hurts.”
In the back of my head, I’m like, “awesome, I may have to get my gallbladder out. And here we’re thinking about trying to have a baby.” So the next morning, I still hadn’t started. And what do you know? I take a test, and I am pregnant.
We had stopped trying that month because I’d had to have a tooth extracted. They put you under, and you have to sign a bunch of paperwork saying you’re not pregnant. It’s like, cool. We stopped trying. I was not supposed to be within my ovulation window still at that point, so I thought we were in the clear.
Well, not so much. In our house, we love Jesus. We don’t use expletive language, like, almost ever. But literally in my head, I was like, “fuck, did I just kill this baby?”
So starting off, I already was super scared, not knowing- what did I take? What did they give me? Monday morning, my first call was to the oral surgeon’s office to say, “what did you give me?” And then I had already sent a message to my doctor. So she did a video call with me later that day, and I gave her the list of all the things, and she said, “I think you’re fine. I think all that would have happened is that you would have had a miscarriage already, or the baby never would have implanted.” Wow.
I was like, “okay, well, I’m pretty sure I’m still pregnant because it was positive yesterday.” So the wait from then until my eight week appointment was pure torture. But part of the conversation I had with her at that point too was like, “I think gallbladder hurts, and from what I’ve heard, pregnancy just makes it like ten times worse.”
A lot of women end up having major gall stones and things like that during pregnancy because your cholesterol gets routed differently. I am not a medical professional, so trying to explain that it’s not in my wheelhouse, but it can be really bad. And I was like, “cool, so it’s just going to get worse and it’s already not that fun.”
I get an ultrasound of my gallbladder before we ever get an ultrasound of the baby. Within a couple of days she was like, “yeah, you have gallstones. I’m not an expert about whether you should or shouldn’t get it out, so let’s go see a surgeon. But generally they can do it where it’s fairly safe.”
I go see the surgeon, it’s the end of the year. They needed me to hit twelve weeks before just because lots of the organ systems and stuff like that are developing and they don’t want to interfere with any of that. I think I was 14 weeks by the time I had surgery, and they were like, “yeah, at this point, we don’t monitor baby while we’re doing surgery. It just kind of is what it is.”
They said it’s actually more dangerous to keep your gallbladder in if it’s sick already in pregnancy, because if it ruptures when you’re pregnant, that’s really dangerous and both you and baby could die. What are our options at this point? Thankfully, work was super supportive and it’s not a terrible procedure, so recovery time is not awful.
She sent me some names of doctors that would actually do the surgery at the Women’s Pavilion. Their nurses are all well trained for finding fetal heart rate afterwards and things like that. So we checked before; and the first thing I asked before David was even back there with me was, “is he okay?” And that was the first thing they did was check. His heart rate was there and great. It’s a little slow because of the anesthesia. Because baby does get anesthesia, too. There’s no way to keep that from happening.
So that was like 14-ish weeks. Everything was fine. I had an appointment the next week too, because she was like, I just want to make sure everything looks good. Then three weeks later, we got exposed to COVID at church. So we all went and got tested. I was positive. I [said to my husband], “you better test because if we’re starting our clock, we’re starting it now.” David was positive.
He cleared his throat three times. He was not actually sick ever. I was three weeks out of gallbladder surgery and what, like 17 weeks pregnant. And now I’m like, coughing with COVID. When I was pregnant with Collins, there was just a lot you didn’t know. And there were more people worried about different things.
Pregnant with Daniel, with COVID and the coughing and everything, on top of just having had surgery and then picking up Collins, all of a sudden I’m like, “why is my belly button sticking out?” I ended up with a freaking, umbilical hernia! I still have it.
They were like, “unless you’re certain you’re not going to have any more kids, don’t get it repaired yet.” My [belly button] is like, completely outie at this point. This is a lot. It was a lot. Well, and I actually hang on, I missed [one thing]-backtrack.
At twelve weeks, we were leaving a Christmas thing from my aunt’s house, and she has a bit of a sloped driveway. I was carrying Collins, and my ankle turned and I fell. So I fell on my right knee and twisted my left ankle and get home later that night and I have a bunch of spotting. It didn’t continue, so I was like, ‘okay, I think it’s fine.’
It didn’t happen again until a week later. All of a sudden I was spotting again. It was a weekend, and so I call the after hours, [and they said] “you need to go to your closest ER, like, right now.” It’s Sunday morning; we were going to get ready and go to church. And I’m calling my sister in tears saying, “can you come watch Collins? We need to go to the ER.” They were like, “husband can’t come in with you until you’re in a room.”
I have to sit there in the lobby by myself, terrified, until they call me back to a room. Thankfully, they weren’t super packed. They do the ultrasound, but the ultrasound tech doesn’t tell you anything. They can’t. So then it takes, like, another 45 minutes for the doctor to finally come in. And he was like, “it’s fine. Baby looks fine. By the way, the only actual emergency in a pregnancy is an ectopic pregnancy.” He was like, “I mean, if you’re miscarrying, there’s really nothing we can do about it.”
Okay, thanks for being so considerate. Do you have kids or a wife that’s ever been pregnant? How could you be so callous? I know ER doctors see so much, right? But at that moment in time, I’m like- this is us. This is our baby, not somebody else’s.
We were worried about the tooth extraction. Then I spotted after I fell, and we were worried that the baby wasn’t going to be okay, then we have to get the gallbladder out. Then we all get COVID. So it was just like, all within 20 weeks, we were like- can we be done, please?
Thankfully, at the 24 week scan, everything looked good. And I think after that, everything was normal. I kept telling the nurse practitioner, “I literally just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Honestly, I selfishly really wanted a normal pregnancy with him because with Collins, I was pregnant and we saw no one. Like, I got really excited about going to my OB appointments because I got to go somewhere. But you’re still a little bit terrified because you’re like, what if I get COVID going to the OB and they tell you getting it pregnant, especially before vaccines or anything like that. So it’s just terrifying. Everybody was scared. {For reference, Collins was born August 2020 during the height of COVID.}
I was like, I just want to have a normal pregnancy where we can see people, maybe we have a normal baby shower, all the things that we didn’t really get to have with Collins and then all of that mess. So I definitely threw some pity parties in there.
Thankfully, I have the most supportive husband in the world. He is a total godsend and is such a good dad to both of the kids. Thankfully, [Collins] would let him put her to sleep and things like that because I’d been rocking her to bed still. I couldn’t pick her up anymore, and I couldn’t rock her to sleep. My mommy heart just died a little bit during those times, too, because I was like, I can’t even be a mom to the one that’s here.
That part was hard from an adjustment perspective. I kept thinking, okay, once [the baby] gets here, it’ll be easier. And so selfishly, that’s why I wanted to have a VBAC. I didn’t want to get cut open again a second time and have restrictions again for another six weeks where I couldn’t pick up Collins. I knew it was going to be a struggle for her just welcoming baby brother into the house. And so I was like, I want to be able to be there for her however I can.
I want to be able to easily get up and feed baby. It’s hard enough having a newborn. I didn’t want to have to do that again.
So fast forward back to we’re sitting there, laying there. I finally have the epidural. Since it wasn’t working on that one side, they were like, “okay, we need to redo it and you need to lay on your right side so that it will take on that side.” Well, Daniel didn’t like that. He did not like me laying on my right side. My nurse was fantastic. She kept trying to get me to switch sides and see where he was going to be happier. And the next thing we know, we look up and there are like 14 people in the room.
They were like, “maybe he’s not happy. We’re going to add some water back to your uterus and see if he’ll calm down a little bit,” because that’s a lot for a kid, right? I went from 3 to 7, matter of a couple of hours, they broke my water and he dropped really quick. The contractions were back to back to back. They were like, “he is not tolerating this well.”
And the doctor who was great- he was like super calm as a cucumber- I looked at his face and I was like, ‘he doesn’t seem all that concerned.’ He said, “I’m willing to give you another 20 minutes that we can try and see if he’ll kind of even out and his heart rate will steady.” I looked at him and I was like, “if we were to do a C section right now, would it be emergent or would it just kind of be still a relaxed environment?” And he was like, “oh no, we’d go quick.”
The way he said that, I was like, you just told me everything that I needed to know. I said “more than I want a VBAC, I want an alive baby.” So I looked at David and he was like, “whatever you think, that’s absolutely fine.” He was fine with a C section from day one, but he was like, “this isn’t my body, this is yours. You need to do what you need to.” Like, if you don’t want to have another C section, then let’s try.
I resigned myself to the fact in that moment that this isn’t what I want, but this is how he needs to get here. All of a sudden, beds moving, everybody’s getting us ready. Thankfully, the epidural had worked on both sides, so they didn’t have to go through any of the steps to actually give me a block or anything like that. We were kind of ready to go once we got to the OR.
By the time they started to cut me open, his heart rate [decelerated] down into the 60’s. Nurse looked at me and she said, “mom, you made the right decision.” At that point, I was just like, “oh, gosh, should I even tried this?” All the guilt feelings start to go through you about putting your baby that’s not even here through that.
By the time they’re pulling him out, he’s like, pooping, too. He was just done. He was like, “get me out of here. What are you all doing?” And within, like, 10 seconds, kid was screaming. That was a little indicative. I should have known- here we go. But that was also the best sounds that I’d heard all day. Like, he is here. He’s screaming, he’s fine.
All that I had asked when we did the repeat C section at that point was, “can you drop the drape so I can see when he gets here?” Well, they didn’t get to do that. It was too quick. The second they got him out, what I wanted, too, is for them to be able to leave the cord attached for about a minute so that the rest of the blood could get back into him. That’s what they’d done for Collins, too.
Neither of those things got to happen because he wasn’t awesome at the moment. They needed to make sure he was. So, like, I get it. I wanted him to be okay, clearly, but that Mommy and me wanted to be able to connect in that way. Like, if I couldn’t push any of my babies out and bring them straight to my chest, I wanted to at least be able to see them, bring them out, have some kind of experience, knowing that it felt like a different connection, and we didn’t get to have that happen, and he didn’t get to stay connected.
David’s, like, by me. And I finally was like, “go to the baby- I can’t be there. I need you to be there.” And then when he looked over at me and he was like, “he’s fine,” I was like, okay.
It wasn’t the birth experience that I’d wanted, but in my head I just kept telling myself, ‘but you have a baby and he’s here and he’s alive and he’s healthy and he’s fine.’ And I shoved all of that down for a really long time and it really affected my relationship and bonding with him, but I didn’t realize it for a while.
He was a hard kid. Number one, the first two weeks are just awful. I looked at David in the middle of the night one night, and David was breathing too loud, but I was trying to sleep and the baby wouldn’t stop moving. And then he was fussing every 30 minutes. So finally David was awake with him, but I think he had a cough. I don’t even remember. But I couldn’t sleep even though David was up with a baby.
I finally just got out of bed and I was like, “I hate this stage so much.” I know it gets better because we have a two year old, but I was like, it’s so awful. The stage is so awful. Keeping a tiny human alive is really hard. And at that point, I was still trying to exclusively breastfeed. And my supply with neither of my kids was where it needed to be.
Then when David finally went back to work, then it was just me at home with the baby. And all of a sudden I was like, “what are we doing here?” The first couple weeks he would do fine. He would sleep- that fourth trimester right? Then at night, I’ll bets are off.
I would not let anybody fall asleep with Collins on them. And second time around, I was like, if I’m going to survive and he’s not going to sleep anywhere besides on one of us, then we’re going to have to figure this out. So I would put him on my chest. I put pillows under my arms and like the nursing pillow here, and I put his head on my chest and I took a muslin blanket and put it into a triangle shape and I wrapped that around him and tucked it behind my back so he couldn’t fall.
It was totally an Instagram ad that- if you’re going to fall asleep while holding them, try this so that the baby doesn’t fall on the ground. It worked like a charm. I did it often, but then that’s the only way we got some sleep at the beginning. And in the back of my head I’m like, ‘this isn’t safe sleep. This isn’t safe sleep.’ But I was like, if Mama doesn’t sleep, nobody is going to survive in this house.
I think we were getting some 3 hours of sleep stretches at least. So it wasn’t necessarily like feed to feed. He got a little bit better sleep at night, but then during the day he just was like, ‘no, you can’t put me down.’
There was a day and I was like, “kid, I have to pee. I don’t know what to tell you.” And I put him in his bassinet in our room and I went to the bathroom and he was just, like, screaming his head off. And you know that mom response in you, right? It’s that fight or flight that just goes off and you just cannot listen to it and do nothing about it. You just can’t.
I’ve tried to explain it to David and I’m like, “my stress level goes from zero to 100 in like 0.5 seconds and then I’m not okay. Unless that baby stops crying, I’m not okay.” And he’s screaming, screaming, screaming. I finally picked him up. I wasn’t even finished peeing. I was so mad in that moment. I was like, I just need a minute to myself. I picked him up and I took that baby and I looked at him and I said, “Shut up.”
Like I screamed. I said “shut up!” And in that moment, I was like, ‘I just scared myself.’ None of my other mom friends had said, like, yeah, I screamed at my baby. I felt like a terrible mom in that moment. I texted my husband and my mom and I was like, “I think I need some help.”
Thankfully, I had a really good counselor who I was able to get into pretty quickly and we’d done EMDR. I think it was two sessions, but I needed somebody to look after him while I went through [them]. David said, “well, my mom has told us that she could come over.” And I’m just like, “cool. So I’m going to be like, sobbing upstairs while your mom is here.”
She’s fantastic. Like, I have a wonderful mother in law. She didn’t say a thing [and] she would never right? But in my head, I’m just like, ‘is she going to think I’m lesser of a mom because I need help?’
My pride just had to get swallowed, and I realized, like, no- you need help.
{What does EMDR help with? What does a session look like?}
A lot of past life stuff with some family drama that had happened. I knew that it was really helpful and that it helped me work through the deep seated memories and emotions that I didn’t even realize were causing so many problems. It took all of two minutes before my counselor was like, “all right, you ready to start?” And so she walked me through a lot.
While you’re doing this, when you’re actually in person, you hold what they call tappers, and they help to align the right and the left side of your brain. So the emotional and the cognitive [sides]. What it does is it keeps you from really staying in one side of your brain, just lets you think about the emotion and gets you super hyped up.
You can do the same thing by tapping right and left, and it’s like a slow right and left. If you do it too fast, then it just brings all of your cortisol levels and things like that higher, and so your stress levels get higher. So it has to be like a slow right and left, and it just kind of helps to ground you a little bit more and allow your brain to think through: Okay, that’s not rational. I’m blaming myself for all of these things or insert whatever feeling it happens to be- with the counselor’s help, right?
Like, start to be like, is that true? Is it true that you’re a bad mom? So we walked through a lot of that, but the biggest thing that we walked through was I was resenting my pregnancy and then the way that I had to give birth because it wasn’t anything that I wanted it to be.
I selfishly wanted my pregnancy and birth to look a certain way because I didn’t get to experience that the first time. And nothing about this pregnancy or birth was the way I wanted and expected it to be. And it was all hard, like, emotionally, physically, just, like, draining. Then all of a sudden, all of that hard has happened, and boom, you have a newborn.
I took that resentment, and I was channeling it towards this poor little baby, right? Like, it wasn’t his fault, but it felt like it was. It took a long time, and it took that counseling session for me to really be able to verbalize that, because I felt like such a bad mom for blaming this tiny, helpless baby that didn’t ask for any of this.
It was the hardest session I think I’ve ever walked through. And we walked through a lot of hard stuff and counseling over a lot of years because it made me really face some of the realities of some of the ugly emotions that I saw in myself, realizing that you’re one person and you have weaknesses, too, and you actually need help from time to time.
Finally realizing those things was a little freeing, being like, “oh, I don’t have to do all of this on my own.” It’s not a magic pill. But I was able to hold Daniel later that day, and it was the first time I ever felt truly, truly bonded to him, where I was like, you’re mine. I’m your mom. I would lay on top of you and die myself before I ever let anything happen to you.
I knew cognitively- I’d made those decisions along the way because I’d had to. But in that moment, I just cried. I was like, “I love you.” But it was the first time I’d really, really felt… like I knew in my head that I did, but the first time my heart really felt that.
So I’m not going to say it was all, like, rainbows and butterflies after that. Having a newborn is hard. I was kind of mad at myself because I felt like I had wasted a lot of my maternity leave with a time that I wasn’t actually being able to bond with him. And so that part was just hard, coming to that reality.
I shared that with my counselor, and she was like, “but you have now. You’ve done the work. You’ve done the work now.”
As women, we so often blame ourselves for even the things that weren’t all our fault. And it’s like, oh, I should have, or I could have, and we play that what if game, and it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. That kind of changed the view of motherhood for me a bit in those moments, because I realized, number one, it’s okay to get help.
I was a huge proponent of getting mental health help before, but I still realized that society has told us that your mom, you’re a woman. You can and you should do it all.
This is your family. This is your life, and it can look however it needs to be.
It was a freeing revelation to just be like, this is our journey, and it doesn’t have to look like everybody else’s.
I had told myself over and over again- so many people don’t have a husband that’ll get up in the middle of the night with a baby. So you have it better than a lot. So you shouldn’t be (insert emotion of the day) however you feel about how hard this is. I finally just have to say, “it is hard for you.”
Regardless of the support that you have, you might have to ask for more. Motherhood is such a dichotomy of the hard and awful and, like, the best thing you’ve ever done in your entire life. And you feel selfish saying, what about me?
Oh, there’s this one pointed moment. My mom was there. David was there. I’m in Daniel’s room trying to nurse him, and he’s losing his mind, and Collins is losing her mind, like, standing there. She just wants Mommy. I was like, “can Nana please read you this book?”
“No, mommy reads me the book.” I was just like, I can’t be two people right now. And so we’re all three sitting there. I had Collins sitting on the left arm of the chair. I had Daniel nursing on the right, and I cried. The baby cried. Collins cried. My mom was standing there like, what do you want me to do?
I know every mom has had a moment like that where you’re just like, I can’t do this, but somehow you get through the moment. One of my biggest lessons…I’ve joked with David that God knew I needed two kids. Otherwise I was going to continue trying to control our whole little family for the rest of our lives.
For us, that first source of help was the Lord. David relied on the Lord, too, through all of this, to support me. He’s the best in Scripture, it says, right? “Give us this day our daily bread.” And so the Lord has to remind me over and over and over in the mornings, it’s daily bread. It’s not like, okay, you prayed yesterday. No, it’s daily. So for me, that’s been a huge, huge lesson, that my relationship with the Lord has to be front of mind.
That is the way that I draw all my strengths for parenting, for working, for wife-ing, like, all the things, right? It’s all hard, but it’s possible because of the Lord in our life.
{What do you know you have done right?}
I’m not sure if it would be a really specific example, other than really knowing through all of that and having friends really remind me. Part of the answer is I reached out, I asked for help when I needed it and asked my village for help, for prayer, for words of encouragement.
They also helped remind me that God chose me to be their mom. So whatever way I show up is okay. Not to say somebody else couldn’t parent these kids. They could, but that’s not how it works. You were given the kids you were given, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
It’s the best job I’ve ever had. It’s just the hardest job I’ve ever had.
I would say just being thankful, too, even in the hard moments, and trying to really look at these kids and be thankful for the blessing that they are. And that’s the mantra that I kept playing for myself when I would feel like I couldn’t do anymore. I was like, “oh, but be thankful that they’re here and they’re healthy.”
I think it’s a slippery slope, you can be thankful in the same moment as also still needing help. It’s a hard truth to realize. It’s not that you’re not being grateful for the kids that you have here [by] saying it’s hard; but I think for too long moms have just said “I can do it.” I’m going to grin and bear it and they just get completely overwhelmed and then all of a sudden they blow up and lose it.
I’m not saying I don’t have my moments because I do. Just ask David about dinner last night. (hahaha)
I think if we don’t give ourselves some of the freedom to say I need some help and some breaks built in that we’re doing ourselves and our kids and our husband a disservice because they’re not going to get the best us if we don’t also take care of ourselves.
{I reached out to this mom with a few follow up questions and she wanted to include the following update: “Since we talked the “hard” has just continued. And after conversations with family and my therapist and coversations with The Lord, I started meds today. It honestly feels freeing to say and think, maybe it doesn’t have to be this hard.” Please see below for more resources. Thank you for reading.}
All content and information on this blog is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your doctor for advice on your particular medical situation.
Photo credit: Kali Alayne Photography
For more information on VBAC deliveries, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) has a detailed article. If you prefer a shorter list of requirements to attempt a VBAC from UT Southwestern, Click Here.
The JAMA Network ( a peer reviewed journal article database which stands for the Journal of American Medical Association) has information on gallstones in pregnancy– it states that 8% of women will develop gallstones during pregnancy due to increased hormones, but that only 1% will have symptoms.
Parents.com has an article about how to deal with an umbilical hernia during pregnancy.
For information on bleeding and spotting during pregnancy from the March of Dimes, click the link.
ACOG talks about delayed cord clamping which this mother had with her first baby, but wasn’t able to with her second.
For more information on safe sleep for babies according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Click Here.
The EMDR Institute has more information on this “treatment designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories”.
For further reading about Maternal Mental Health, see the World Health Organization. If you or someone you know needs immediate, non-judgemental assistance, please visit Postpartum Support International, or call 800-944-4773.