Backstory
Before I get too much further into present day, I want to go ahead and share some very important back story that led me, and my family, to where we are today. This journey that we are on now truly began almost 13 years ago. I do not want to diminish the amount of time a process like this can take by jumping to where we are today. There was a lot of life that happened before we decided to ultimately take the plunge and do what we are doing now. I think providing all of this context will make our story - and our journey - a lot more relatable.
Some time in 2011, my husband and I became committed to healthier eating with the goal of losing weight. We started making all the typical changes - ground turkey instead of beef, whole grains instead of white, no more soda - and we began to cook more meals at home instead of eating take out. We had the mindset pretty early on that we weren’t dieting - we were changing our lifestyle. This is something that is so important for long-term success and personal trainers, health gurus, dietitians, you name it, have been shouting this from the mountaintops for years now. You see, “diets” come to an end - they are temporary changes. What happens when the diet ends? You’ve lost those pounds but now what? If you go back to eating the way you were before you were “dieting”, those pounds are just gonna pop right back on and you’ll be back on that diet. From the start, we didn’t want to think of the healthier choices we were making as temporary - we wanted to make changes that would last. What WAS temporary, was how much we were eating of those healthier foods.
In 2012, I became pregnant with our first daughter and then it wasn’t just about me anymore. I knew that everything going into my body also went into hers - food, drinks, drugs, all of it. Because of this, I became even more vigilant about the choices I was making and this effected what I was eating, drinking, doing, and how I planned on giving birth. My mama had raised me to use medicine “only when you need it” so I already had that skeptical mindset of questioning the necessity of medication before I used it, anyway, so I was already primed for questioning the need for medication in childbirth. That, coupled with having committed to a more natural lifestyle in regards to what I was eating, sealed the deal on my desire for a nonmedicated, natural childbirth. I researched, extensively, the way childbirth is handled in the United States. I watched videos, read books, and skimmed through medical studies and I was blown away by what I was finding. This research planted the seed for me to begin questioning… well, everything. Did you know that the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate when compared to long list of developed and industrialized countries? And not by a little. By like, A LOT.
For the sake of updated statistics, that graphic shows data from 2020, but in 2013 when I was doing my initial research, the numbers were just as grave. Now, I’m not going to go into all the possible reasons why this is, but I will say this: if you are reading this and you are a pregnant person, I implore you to do your research and take an active, informed role in your healthcare. Do not assume that what your doctor is telling you is the end all be all or your only option. Ask questions. Use your voice. If your doctor doesn’t want to listen or wont provide you with answers, find another one. Your life may depend on it. And most importantly: don’t be afraid. Childbirth is a natural, biological, process - it is not a medical procedure. Are there times where medical intervention is necessary? Yes, absolutely! But for most childbearing people, it can be done on its own. The problems come when we fight the natural process - when we are afraid of the discomfort and pump our bodies full of drugs to avoid it, when we try to rush the timeline, or when we forget that people had babies for centuries before modern medicine was a thing.
So, back to our regularly scheduled programming. After all of my research, I had determined that I was going as natural as possible - no interventions, no medications, unless absolutely medically necessary. I hired a doula, I was under the care of the midwifery department at one of our local hospitals, and I attended birthing classes focusing on the Bradley Method. I was writing a birth plan and doing labor prep exercises with my husband. I felt confident and overall, pretty great, about my decisions and my plans. I had also started planning for after the baby was born - cloth diapering, homemade baby food, exclusively breastfeeding, nothing pink… I was also eating chick-fil-a spicy chicken sandwiches damn near every single day and had a good week where all I wanted (and ate) for dinner was spicy garlic chicken wings from Buffalo Wild Wings, so for those of you thinking I was a perfectly infallible hippy dippy natural mama… there is a bit of humanity for you.
Here is a little more. At 41 weeks pregnant, I was told that if I hit 42 weeks, my prenatal care would be transferred from the midwifery department to the Ob'/Gyn. department and they would almost certainly schedule me for a c-section as soon as possible since at that point, I would be considered “high-risk”. It is worth mentioning that nothing else suggested a high-risk scenario. My blood pressure, and my baby’s, were still completely normal. No preeclampsia, no gestational diabetes, no protein in my urine, no other complications at all, but simply because my pregnancy was taking a little longer than “the norm” I was now high-risk. So, under medical guidance from my midwife, I began natural methods of inducing labor. Castor oil is disgusting and I still, to this day, cannot eat or smell almond butter. At 41 weeks and 3 days pregnant, labor finally started. And. I. Panicked. My doula had had a family emergency and could not be with me. The discomfort I was feeling was what was described as what I should be feeling much later on in the labor process than I was at the time. And I freaked out. Even after all of my research and all of my preparations, I was still a human being, experiencing something for the very first time, afraid of what was happening, with no one by my side to reassure me that it was normal and okay. So, we wound up going to the hospital. Way too early. I wound up with all of the interventions that I had not wanted - I got the pitocin, I got the epidural, I was hooked up to IVs, I wasn’t allowed to eat, or drink, I was stuck in the stupid bed, unable to manage my pain (the epidural settled in my left hip and did nothing for the labor pain) and after approximately 41 hours of labor, my daughter was finally born. They placed her on my chest, I held her and smiled at her and so rightfully exclaimed “You made mommy work her ass off” and then, soon after they took her to clean her up, I fainted. Turns out, my placenta didn’t want to come out, and I had lost a lot of blood during delivery - the equivalent amount of blood lost during a c-section. They had to manually remove the placenta while I was in and out of consciousness recovering from the blood loss. Those things, right there, were medically necessary interventions and what modern medicine should be used for. I did not regain full consciousness until two hours later, when I woke up in a panic, not knowing what had happened, or where my baby was, or if they had had to give her formula to feed her. Nothing had turned out the way that I planned, or the way I wanted, but it was a good lesson for me. Sometimes, we can do every single thing right, we can plan and research every detail, and still not get the outcome we desire - but - that does not mean that all of our work was for nothing. I may not have had the beautiful childbirth experience that I wanted, but I did gain an expansive amount of knowledge leading up to it that enabled me to make more informed decisions for myself and my family, both that day, and for years to come.
