MOS E24: "Without the two of them, it would not have been possible"

Welcome to Moms Off Script, a podcast for moms who are just trying to figure it out. This week Megg & Mere sit down and chat about Mere's hopes of having a low intervention birth and the strategies she put into place to achieve it, including hiring a doula.

CREDITS: Original content: Megg Abelein & Meredith Finch
Set design, videography: Megg Abelein & Meredith Finch
Music: Matt Beebe
Photography: Michelle Montinieri
Graphic Design: Alexia Dulieu
Editing & Production: Megg Abelein 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When I think about all the people I had in my circle during the birth experience, you've got your doctors, right? Who have the deep medical background, the mediced experience. You've got your nurses who are all going to be there to support you. They are looking at it from a physical perspective, from a medicinal perspective. Magdula looked at the birthing experience from a much more holistic perspective. Yeah. In my experience.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Mir, you want to do this? I am ready to do this. All right, let's do it. Cheers. Cheers. Hey guys, I'm Meg. And I'm Mary. And welcome to another episode of Mom's Off Script. You ready to get into this one tonight?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I'm really excited to talk about this topic. I'm really glad that we're including this kind of in our season one launch of everything because it just feels like something that I'm so passionate about and I'm glad we're going to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Yeah. I'm excited to like dip into our birth stories, but not really like get into them. Like just kind of like a little sample. Appetite. Um and I'm really excited to talk to you about your experience because I know you made a lot of choices early on that led to your birth experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

So I'm really excited to talk about it. Yeah, me too. I I think this is something once I gave birth, I wanted to hear everybody's birth stories and everybody's take on these things. So it's something I'm super passionate about. And like you said, we're not going into the full birth story. Yeah. You gotta come back for season two, maybe. Yeah, we'll see. But we'll we'll we'll tiptoe into that. Yeah, right. For sure. So you had two unmedicated births, correct? Yes, and let's be clear because when I say unmedicated, we probably should say like two births without pain medication. Right. Right. Right. Both my births were in the hospital and I did have pitocin for both births, so they they were medicated in that sense. Yeah. But when we when we're we'll we'll probably just say unmedicated birth, and we're specifically talking about pain medication, like an epidural, nitrous, other types of stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You though had a different path. What did you do?

SPEAKER_03 1:53

I had an epidural for both. I had pitocin for both and an epidural for both. My epidural with my second wore off. Um so that was fun. It's a fun experience for everybody. A lot of yelling going on. But I did. I had not, I had no real plan. I knew my options going into the hospital, but I really didn't know what my plan was. And I kind of just went to the hospital like, if I can do it without pain meds, great. If I need the pain meds, I'm taking them. Yeah. And that was kind of my approach. I didn't really like have a plan. I really had zero birth plan, honestly, which feels very opposite to um what you what you did going into the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

I will say that birth plan was kind of a dirty word for us. We we always said birth preferences because with Arduola, she was very much like, there's really no plan, right? We can have some preferences, you can hope for the best, you can have a vision of what you want, but at the end of the day, the birth is gonna birth. Correct. Yeah, yeah. You gotta kind of go with the flow.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

But yeah, no, we really went with the flow and had like not even a preference. I mean, we had some, I guess we had some preferences, but we just kind of like went in and knew we were gonna leave with a baby. And I feel like a common theme with us is that they were very different approaches. All right, Mirror. So we talked a little bit about at the top of the episode. You had unmedicated births as well as used a doula, which you mentioned. So I want to explore that process with you. Yeah. All right, so talk to me a little bit about like when you first found out you were pregnant and going through this process. Like, what was your thought process and your conversations with Joey about deciding to have an unmedicated birth or deciding to explore that as an option?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, I'm glad you put it that way because at the end of the day, we accepted that like we might not be able to control it, but we were kind of shooting for this unmedicated experience. Right. Really, there were a couple things that were driving me to do it. And I think when people hear like you had an unmedicated birth, so often people go, Why? Even my nurse, when I was giving birth to Teddy, was like, why? And she meant it from a curiosity perspective. She wasn't like, Why are you doing this? But I think that's a really natural question. And for me, there's probably like three main things that I think of. Yeah. I think the biggest and most important thing for me was that I really believed in my body's ability to do this thing. And as women, I also believe our bodies are literally built to give birth. That's not all we're good for, but we are like bioengineered to do this thing. And I really wanted to experience it in its fullest sense. I also know my mom had unmedicated births, so I felt like she had kind of forged this path. And now we get a little woo-woo, so bear with me. But I also feel like going through that experience without pain medication, it reminds me of like my my grandmothers and her mother and her mother and her mother who didn't have access to pain medications in the way that we did. And I just felt more connected to them and their experiences and like the connection to all mothers and birthing experiences in that way. So I liked the idea of it. I felt like it was something I could do. I would definitely didn't feel like if I couldn't do it, that I would have quote unquote failed. We will get into this a little bit, but Joey and I had a uh code word for like, I give up. Give me them, give me the beds that only we knew. So that if I said the code word, he would, you know, act on that request. Yep. So very early on, I was like, this is something I'm interested in. I want to explore. I'm not tying my birth success to not having pain meds, but I do want to try and do this to have what I felt like was a full birth experience in my eyes. I also want to say, I don't know if I've said this explicitly yet, but this was a choice I made because I wanted to do it. I recognize not everybody wants to do this, right? Many people are perfectly happy to get pain medication in any form. And I'm so happy that you have that option. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

And we'll talk about this too.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Like, I also want that option, right? This is what I wanted to do, and I want to talk about how I did it. If you're curious about it, hopefully this is helpful. But please don't take this as me being like, you should do X, Y, and Z.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

So you were exploring the unmedicated route, but you still wanted to have a hospital birth. Is that correct? Yes. What was kind of the thought process in wanting to like couple that experience? Or like, why did you want to go to a hospital versus the other options that might feel like the unmedicated route conducive to those other paths?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Totally. Yeah. For me, it was because I loved my doctor. Yeah. My OBGYN was phenomenal. During the course of my pregnancy, I saw all the doctors in the practice and they're all awesome. And they only worked out of the hospital. Right. So if I wanted to be birthing with them, I needed to go into the hospital. I also felt like, you know, God forbid something goes wrong. I want to be in the place where something can be handled immediately without any concerns. So I was very comfortable saying, this feels like a nice, happy medium. I want to go for this low intervention experience in a place where if I do need intervention, that's not going to be a problem.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

We had a planning meeting, a mom's off script little meeting a couple weeks ago. One of the things that you mentioned when we were talking about potential upcoming episodes was knowing that one of your goals was to have an unmedicated birth, that it required a specific type of preparation. Yeah. And we did speak on your like physical fitness type preparation back in episode seven, but that also took like mental prep. Yeah. And so can you talk to me a little bit about what that mental prep looked like and why you decided to go with Abula? Um, because I think that's kind of what led to some of this mental prep.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Definitely. So Ardula was phenomenal. Shout out to Janice. She was pregnant for both of our pregnant. She was present for both of our births. She was actually the second person I texted when I found out I was pregnant for the second time. Amazing. Immediately get on her calendar. But we met her through an interview process. We worked through a what's that called? When it's like a group of practitioners. Practice? Sure. We went through them and they we filled out a survey and they matched us with three doulas that we then interviewed and we picked a first choice and a second choice. Okay. Genie's was a first choice, and luckily she was available for the times that we wanted, and we ended up going with her. She was phenomenal. And I cannot say enough about having a doula because they are a fantastic addition to your care team. When I think about all the people I had in my circle during the birth experience, you've got your doctors, right? Who have the deep medical background, the medicalized experience. You've got your nurses who are all going to be there to support you. They are looking at it from a physical perspective, from a medicinal perspective. My doula looked at the birthing experience from a much more holistic perspective, in my experience. She was care, she cared about my mental well-being. She cared about Joey's mental well-being. She cared about our emotional state in and around the birth experience. She got to know us as people really thoroughly. So then when it came to giving birth, she knew not just what we wanted from a preference perspective, but why and what our mental states were so that she could really guide us through the process. She also was really great about suggesting things to help us prepare for the birth experience. I should also say that when we met Janise, it was 2020. It was COVID time. So she we were fully prepared for her to not be able to be at the hospital. She basically trained Joey to be a doula, like in all the movement techniques, what to get when you get like what to ask for, ice chips and a fan and this thing, and like make sure you have this, this, and this, how to advocate for me when I'm off in quote unquote labor land and I can't talk. How do you speak to the staff? How do you how do you ask for what we need? She was a huge fixture in our preparation. She also recommended birth classes, she recommended podcasts, she recommended books. She really met with us on a regular basis to guide us through the preparation and with the goal of creating this birth preferences guide that we we gave to the hospital staff when we got there. But she really walked us through every step of it and made us think about what our choices were as opposed to this is how the hospital does it. So just be prepared for A, B, and C. She would say, This is the standard. Your choices are one, two, and three. Let's talk about each one. Let me give you resources to understand why this is the standard versus here's your other options. Right. And really helped us craft a really holistic birth preference plan.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

Now, so I know at my OB practice, there are options to have doctors or midwives from a birthing perspective. What's the difference between a doula and a midwife?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

That's a really good question. And at our practice, we did not have an option for midwives. Okay. So they did not have midwives either at the OBG Ryan or the hospital, which is another reason I really wanted to have a doula there to kind of bring that perspective in. My understanding is that midwives have medical background. They are trained in the clinical aspects of birth. Doula's do not have a medical background in a formal sense. They're there more for the physical and emotional support of the birthing couple.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Okay. That makes sense. So it's kind of like doctor, midwife, doula.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, I would say in terms of like formal medical training. That's how I would think about it. In terms of like how medicalized your thinking is, like a doctor is going to have a full medical background, they have gone to medical school, blah, blah, blah. A midwife is going to have maybe a more holistic view of birth. And then a doula is gonna have less of the medical side and more of the holistic side.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

So you touched on this a little bit already, but after you hired your doula, right? You hired doula? Yes. Okay. What were some of the birth preparations that you worked on with her?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So I'm gonna talk a lot about the physical prep that we did. Okay. Um, on the one hand, and this is maybe more for myself, I don't know that I can't remember if Janice ever specifically recommended this, but I was doing a lot of prenatal yoga. Okay. And the classes I was doing, they would talk a lot about sitting in discomfort, right? And being comfortable with being uncomfortable, right? You can't simulate birth pain, right? But you can practice sitting in discomfort. The way I liked to do it was wall sits. So I would do a wall sit until it was starting to feel uncomfortable, and then I would start counting and be like, okay, how long can I make it through this pain? Feeling uncomfortable. And it wasn't about like, let me get strong with my wall set. It was like, how can I breathe through this and tolerate this discomfort and get used to tolerating that? So that was one thing. And just terms of like pain tolerance building. I also feel like I generally have a pretty high pain tolerance just as a baseline. So I was really intentional about kind of curating my pain tolerance. I've also heard about people I never did this, but like holding ice cubes or like doing other things that are like intentionally discomforting to like force yourself to practice. Like sit in an ice bath. Yeah, like that. The other thing we did a lot of is we did a lot of exercises from spinning babies. I wish I could remember all the names of them, but the I know the forward inversion was my favorite. What are spinning babies? Spinning babies is a resource that encourages proper baby positioning through movement. So you'll hear people talk about it if your baby is breached. They'll say, Oh, you should be doing spinning babies exercises to help spin your baby. Got it. Okay. Yep. So our babies were never breached, um, or at least they weren't, they were never breached close to the birth where it was like a concern. But Janice uh uh recommended them to us just to keep movement to help encourage good positioning, and it was really good for me. It just felt so good. I said before my favorite one was the forward inversion. This is when you kneel. I usually did it on the end of my bed, kneel on the bed, lean forward, and walk your elbows down onto the ground. So you're essentially in like a forearm stand, but your knees are up on the bed. And then I would like stretch my legs to get my hips elevated over my shoulders and just like be upside down, and it felt awesome. Amazing. I want to do that right now. Oh my god. I would I I could have just stayed in a forward inversion for my whole pregnancy, I would have. It was so great. So that was one. We also did the side-lying release. This was one that you like lay on your side, your partner kind of holds your hip and then pulls your top leg. Yep. This is also laying on the side of the bag so it can like fall down and it gives you a nice stretch, releases your hips. Oh my god, it was so nice. Janice also gifted us a rebozo, which is a traditional Mexican birthing cloth. Um, she actually got one like authentically from Mexico. It's like one of my treasured possessions, and she gifted that to us and taught us about oh, it was like a belly shake. So like I would lean over, like I'd be either on hands and knees or like leaning over on the bed, and you'd drape the rebozo, kind of scooping under your belly, and then Joey would hold the two ends and then like over my back, and then you kind of shake it. And it would like gently jiggle your belly, but it would be holding the weight of the baby, so it like takes the weight off your belly and then just kind of jiggles it around. It felt amazing. That sounds really cool. Oh my god, it was so great. So, those were the three main exercises we did just to help encourage good positioning for birth, and then couple that with my pain tolerance exercises, those were like physical preparation that I did. The other thing I did from a mental prep standpoint was listening to birth stories. I really was trying to cultivate this like mindset of visualizing the kind of birth that I wanted to have. I loved listening to birth stories about women who decided to go unmedicated, how they got through the pushing experience, how they got through labor, and just hearing them conceptualize it. Loved it. I could still listen to birth stories all day.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

Now, going through this whole process, were you concerned about or was there any conversation about a cesarean section? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

I really did not want to have a C-section. Mostly because I was scared of it. I was like, I it's it's surgery, like I've never had surgery. It felt like the recovery would be really hard. It just was a scary thing to me that I was like, I don't want to have to deal with that. A term that is often used in for like Ardula used this term all the time when we heard it in our birth classes was the cascade of interventions, right? So the idea is once you do something, whether it's Pitocin or the fully balloon or whatever, well, if you take Pitocin, your contractions are a lot worse. So then you need to have pain medication because your contractions are worse, and then your pain medication slows down your labor, and then your labor gets slowed down, so things stall, and then you have to have something else. Like it just, you know, cascade of interventions, and you could end up with a c-section, right? When maybe otherwise you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have. Certainly not to say, right, you only have each birth once, you don't really know what could have happened. So, you know, grain of salt. But I really did not want to have a c-section. So I was like, what can we do to avoid a c-section? And I remember Janice saying, like, that's not really a thing. We can try and do things to lessen your chances of going down that path if that's what you're worried about. But like, I don't want you to go down this path being like, let's avoid a c-section, right? And I'm saying that in quotes. So yeah, me personally, I was scared of having a c-section. I really did not want to. So that was definitely a motivator for me. But I was trying to put that out of my mind, right? Like, let's not focus on what I don't want, let's try and focus on what I do.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Absolutely. But the I guess my question was really like the conversation was there. It wasn't you wouldn't go into this conversation or this birth prep without knowing that that was a potential outcome.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Oh, yeah. We definitely talked about like that could happen. I really didn't want it to happen. Right. Um, and you were fortunate enough that yes, I was fortunate enough that it was avoided in both.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

Okay, so now we're heading to the hospital. Baby's coming. Yeah. All right. Talk to me about kind of some of the things that you wanted at your birth, whether it was before baby came, after baby came, that you definitely had to make sure that you instructed the hospital and worked with both Joey and your doula to make sure we're part of your process.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, great question. I would say there was only one thing that I was adamant about. And I said this to the hospital staff. I was like, listen, I know we have a birth preference. I promise not to be one of those crazy moms that wants like exactly everything just so, but there is one thing that is if I if this doesn't happen, I will leave here mad. And they're like, oh my God, what? And I was like, I don't know the sex of my baby. And when the baby is born, I want my husband to be the one to say it's a boy or it's a girl. Nobody say it. They were like, okay, that's easy. We can definitely do that. We did that. Yes. So we wanted to be surprised. I wanted my husband to be the one to say it. I I know we're not doing birth stories, but fun fact, when I was about to give birth, my baby was coming out of my body, I was screaming, nobody say it, nobody say it, nobody say it. And the hospital staff was like, we're not gonna say it. Like that's really, really adamant. And no one said it. Joey got to say it. So mission accomplished. But other than that, so one thing that I found a lot of value in with our doula is that if you go to the hospital and say nothing, right? You're like, you just show up with a baby and you're like, I want to have this baby do whatever you normally do, and you have no preferences. They have kind of a standard operating plan that they'll follow, right? That is the standard of care, shall we say. Having a doula allowed us to go through every step of that and really understand what is the standard of care? What are our options? Do we have to do that thing? What if we don't do that thing? What does that mean? And just putting some thought into what that looks like. Now, I will say for us personally, like 95% of it, we're like, sounds good, right? Like the normal thing was fine. But there were a couple of things that we wanted to do slightly differently. So, one really easy one that isn't that weird is we wanted Joey to cut the cord for both the births. That was no problem. They're like, cool, sounds good. Something that was a little different was that we wanted to delay our cord cutting. We did five like three to five minutes was our delay. I think you hear about people, you hear the term wait till white. So, like when the umbilical cord no longer has any blood in it and it's white, that would be when people cut. I know our hospital was a little scoochy about that. I had asked for wait till white, and they were like, ooh, we don't normally do that. We can try, we'll see. And I was like, how about five minutes? And they're like, that's fine, we can definitely do five minutes. And what's the benefit of that? The idea is that there's a lot of like really I want to say like nutritious blood. I don't know, like, there's like good stuff in that umbilical cord and like stuff flowing to your baby. And if you cut it off too soon, your baby doesn't get the full benefit of all of that, you know nutritious blood. That's not the right term, but you know what I mean. Talk to your doula about it if you have a doula. But there's like good stuff flowing into your baby after birth, and you want to like let all of that get there. If you cut it too soon, you might be like cutting that off.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

That's my understanding of it, at least. All right. If you're if you're interested in doing that, talk to your doctor. Yeah, thousand. I mean, that's like a disclaimer across this whole thing. Like, this is what we decided to do. But yeah. Another thing we decided to do was that we wanted to savor our golden hours. So we said once the baby was born, we didn't want to have to do any tests or anything that could be delayed. We asked for it to be delayed for at least an hour. There are some things they have to do right away to like make sure the baby's fine. Yeah. And assuming everything was fine, that was what we were asking for. Obviously, if there was something wrong, I think we should do the Nikki, whatever, like you know, you you handle that the way it needs to be handled. But we said, assuming the baby is fine, we want to have all tests and everything delayed as long as possible. We want to have a quiet golden hour, and we got to have that with both of our babies. And that was just like truly some of the happiest moments of my life. Just like our our nurse would maybe put in and just like, do you want any water and just like check on things? Janice was there with us, and we were able to like decompress on both of our births, like just like what just happened. Yeah. And you know, I was breastfeeding and my baby was on my chest, and it was just like the best moment ever. So I'm so glad we had that. We also decided to delay baths. We and Joey and I wanted to do the bath, so we said at least 24 hours before the bath. So none of those things were like crazy from the hospital's perspective. And when I ran by them, I was so nervous to talk about them with my OBGYN. That was another thing Janice was like, now listen, these are what you want, you stand up for what you want, you advocate for yourself, right? So because I'm in the appointments by myself because it was cold there. So she coached me through how to ask for these things that I wanted. And my OBGYN was really accommodating. The only thing, like I said, they were like, ugh, was the waiting on the cord, and we were able to come to a good compromise on that. Everything else, they're like, Yep, that's not bad. We could definitely do that. Like it was definitely not what they would have done if I hadn't asked, but because I asked, they were willing to accommodate it.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Amazing. Yeah, that's great. So we already know the answer to this question, but you did all this prep, you did all this work. Did you have unmedicated births? I did.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

The first time I did it, I had to have Pitocin. Yep. But after some period of time, um, my body took over contractions naturally. They stopped Pitocin because his heartbeat was decelerating. So they stopped it. And at that point, they never had to start it again. So I went on to have quote unquote natural contractions. From that point on, and was able to use all my techniques and my breathing and my visualization and my pain management and movement and positions and all of that to get through that birthing experience. I will say, during that birth experience, I have a very vivid memory of sitting in the bathroom and I was leaning against the cold tile wall, like feeling the cold tile on my face, thinking to myself, do not do this again, you idiot. This is awful. Why are you doing this to yourself? You're crazy. Get through this one and then don't do it again. It was weird. I never thought about in that birth being like, I can't do this. It was more like for the next one, don't do this again. Like I was committed to that one, but I was like, don't do this again. And when it came to AJ's birth, I kind of said, you know what? I have the experience, which is what I wanted. I don't need to have it again, but I kind of want to. Like if I can, cool, but I don't feel like I need to. We went into our birth experience kind of with the same game plan. I didn't have a code word this time. So I just said, you know, if I need it, I'll tell you. There was a point at which I looked at Joey and said, I need the epidural. I can't do this. I was only three centimeters dilated. I was freaking out. I was in so much pain because I was on Pitocin for that entire birth experience. And Pitocin contractions, holy bananas. Yes. They are so much worse than quote unquote regular.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Regular ones.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Well, you felt the normal the Pitocin ones. So after a lot of time dealing with those, I was like, I can't, I can't do that. I'm only three centimeters. I thought I was gonna be doing it for hours more. I did not realize my doula and Joey understood that I was in transition at that point. That's why it was so bad. And by the time I would have gotten to even talk to someone about an epidural, we we had, I mean, I had the baby like literally 42 minutes later. So they were like, sure, sure, we'll talk about, we'll talk about the epidural, we'll go get someone. I'm like, oh my god, thank you. And they were like, do you need that? Like, like we she doesn't need it, it's fine. This baby's gonna be out in three seconds, which like was which was hilarious to me. Like they were both like, we're not doing that, right? Yeah, no, she's fine.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

We're good, we're good. Oh yeah, it was it was really funny. All right, so obviously you can't speak on the differences between a medicated birth and an unmedicated birth. Um, but what did your recovery look like? And why would you recommend an unmedicated birth and or a doula to women that are interested in kind of exploring that as an option?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Yeah, I would say if you're interested, if you're listening to this and you're like, hell no, girl, give me an epidural, then that's good for you. I'm not I'm not gonna recommend it to you. That's fine. But if you're like, oh, maybe, like this is what I experienced as the benefits, not to convince you to do it, but to give you information to help you make a decision. I think the biggest thing for me was movement, right? Not once you have the epidural, ideally you don't feel anything below the waist. So you can't move. You can't move on your own. You could have other people try and move you. But without having the epidural, I was able to move, I was able to walk, I was able to change positions, I was bouncing on a ball, I was leaning over a ball, I was laying on my side, I was laying on my back. I got up to brush my teeth at one point because I was like, I eat too many truffle fries and I'm burping truffle and this is disgusting. I'm gonna throw up. Got to go to the bathroom. I was in and out of the shower many times. They didn't have birthing tabs where I was, otherwise, I would have been on a birthing tab, but they had a shower, so I was in there all around. Like movement was the name of the game. Before, during, and after, right? So after giving birth, basically immediately they were like, well, maybe in an hour. They gave me my golden hour. But then they were like, we want you to get up and go to the bathroom and move around and make sure you're doing okay. So pretty much right away, I got up, I went to the bathroom. They had me kind of walk around the room. They're like, You're looking great, this is awesome. They would not let me walk to the recovery room. They were like, uh no, you're saving me in a wheelchair. So I was like, all right, fine. But I think that was the biggest thing was being able to move throughout the birth, being able to respond to what felt right in my body. That's kind of the second thing, is that yes, you feel the pain, but you also feel everything else. So because I feel like I went through classes to understand what was happening anatomically in my body, I really felt like I could feel it. Like I was like, okay, like, especially with AJ's birth, because it was the second time around. Like, I felt her drop into position and my body started pushing. I was not pushing. My doctors were like, stop pushing. I was like, I'm literally, I literally can't. My body is doing it. I like I promise you, I'm not doing anything. And being able to feel where she was and what was happening in my body was kind of crazy, honestly. But it allowed me to respond to it, right? Like when I felt her shift into position and my body started pushing, I was yelling, something's different, something's different, even though they had checked me like within 10 minutes and they were like, Yeah, no, you're fine. And I was like, No, something is different. Check again. And they looked and they're like, Oh my god, you're 10 centimeters. Like, she's coming right now. And that was crazy, right? Like, and I could feel it happening. Like I felt the change in my body. Even like this is weird, but like, even her coming out of me, like I can to this day, I can feel her little elbows, like just I can feel that feeling of her coming out and being like, Oh my god, here she is. Like, and that wasn't painful. Like, I just want to be clear. Like, when it was time to push, I was like, Oh thank god, like the contractions were painful when it was pushing. I was just like, Woo woo, she's here. So, like that feeling of her actually being born was like such a relief and such a rush. And like, man, I'm so glad I had that feeling. Like, fit the physical sensation. Sounds like you want to have another baby. No way, I am done. But like, I'm happy to have the memories of it. And then from a recovery perspective, obviously I have nothing to compare to, but I felt my recovery both times was really smooth, especially the second time when I had AJ. I've got a toddler, so I'm running around, I'm trying to get up, I'm trying to chase after him, so I was moving a lot more. And knowing that I didn't have to, you know, baby a scar or an incision or a you know, a wound on my back or anything like that, like I'm just back to normal-ish, like in terms of my body, like my body is my body, and I wasn't having any other stuff going on, right, felt amazing. So, yeah, I think for me, my recovery felt pretty smooth both times. Yeah. And I remember a nurse saying, in I think it was after Teddy's birth, when she got me up to go to the bathroom. She was like, This is my favorite part about epidurals that you can get up, or not having an epidural, is that you can get it right away. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Yeah. So those are some recommendations or reasons you would recommend it. Tell me about advice. What advice do you have for women that are looking to either do an unmedicated birth or hire a doula?

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Yeah. If you want to hire a doula, no, I have no problem recommending saying do it. Right? Unmedicated birth is not for everybody. Hiring a doula, I think everybody could benefit from it. Like if you can afford it, because that is a factor I know not everybody is in a financial position to hire a doula, but most doula's have like different, you know, stages of involvement. Um, if you are interested in it and you can afford it, I 1 million percent recommend it. Like, I see no downside to hiring a doula. Like it's only good things. And I will say, my husband, who is like Mr. Stoic and logical and practical, was like when we got um pregnant the second time, was like, so when are we calling Janice? Like he wanted her there a thousand percent. So yeah, no reservations, hire a doula. Um, if you are hiring a doula, make sure you interview them, talk to them, make sure it's someone you click with, like approach it like you would a therapist, right? Like you want someone who's going to listen to you, that clicks with you, that wants to get to know you and your experiences and support you through it, and that you have the right vibe with that matters a ton. As far as unmedicated, I think my advice is twofold. I would say one, try and do a lot of physical and mental prep, which I talked about, right? Like practice being uncomfortable. I know that's not fun, but like practice how do you talk to yourself in those moments and what is your inner dialogue when you're going through something difficult. Practice telling yourself you can do it and being really positive. Also tell your partner what you need to hear, right? Like, I was really clear with Joey. I was like, I need you to make me feel like a badass warrior goddess of the earth. Like, that's what I want to know is like how strong and powerful I am. He's like, okay. Like, so like he knew the exact language that I wanted to hear. He was, you know, really talking me up and hyping me up during the whole thing. I'm so proud of you, you're doing so great. Like, I literally could not have done this without him. So think about practicing discomfort. How do you talk to yourself when you're uncomfortable? What do you want your partner and your doula to be saying to you and be really clear about what kind of messaging you need? And then advocacy is the other thing I would say. Like, when you're in the hospital setting, we were really lucky to be in a phenomenal hospital setting. They were really willing to do whatever we wanted on our birth plan. They were really comfortable working with Abula. They did not see Denise as like intervening or like a threat to their thing. Like they saw her as a teammate and really brought her right into the fold, and it was phenomenal. Not every hospital is like that. We have done a lot of prep around this, and it's not uncommon to be in a setting where they're gonna look at Adula and be like, you're in my way. Or they're you're gonna say, I don't, my epidural's not working, or something, and the hospital has gonna go, No, it's fine, right? Like, you need to be ready to speak up and advocate for yourself and what you want. And it might be really hard in a setting where a doctor and four nurses who've all gone to medical school, medical school, who all know what they're talking about, for you in pain to be saying, I need this, I need this, they're gonna be like, okay, like, and trying to just do their jobs, like even with good intentions. Like, this is not meant to like knock medical staff. They're doing their jobs and they're doing what they think is right and they're doing what they've been trained to do. If you want something different than that, then you need to be ready to speak up and ask for it and push for it. Another thing Janice worked with us a lot on, and thankfully we didn't have to use this at all, was if you have a nurse or a doctor in your room and you don't like them, you can ask them to leave, right? Like you can say, like, please leave. Like if they're like, I need you to move, they're being gruff, if they're throwing off your vibe, like so much of your birth experience is dependent on your how you're feeling. If you don't feel safe, if you don't feel empowered, if you don't feel comfortable, everything's gonna stall out. So if you had a nurse come in your room and order you around and boss you around and be like, you can't do that, move around, what are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, like can immediately throw off your vibe. And Janice was really clear that like you are in charge of who's in your room. If a nurse comes in and you're not vibing with them, you can ask them to leave. You can say, I want a different nurse, please. And if Meredith, you're like off in labor land, Joey, that's your job. You can say, You're not working, please leave. And we didn't have to do that at all. Our nurses were phenomenal. But if you are in a different setting where maybe you're not vibing with your hospital staff or it's not working out well with those nurses, like don't be afraid to say, I need you to leave and switch it up. You're allowed to do that. Thank you so much for sharing all that with us, Mayor. Oh, it was my pleasure. I literally could talk about my own birth story forever. You do love this stuff. I love this stuff. If you can't tell, if you're listening to this and you're like, I wish I had someone to tell my birth story too, girl, text me. Just just send me an email.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Send uh send mom's off script an email and it's just gonna like.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

We'll do a zoom call and you can just tell me all the birth stories that you all send us.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Are you ready for the lightning round?

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Oh, good. I if I'm not ready for the lightning round on this topic, I will never be ready.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

So all right, let's do it. All right, quick fire answers. Go to the hospital on a full stomach or bring lots of snacks to snack on. Both. What is your go-to labor snack? Oh, oh, um, dried mango. Oh, that's a good one. The sweet ones are like the the ones with sugar on them? No, no, just plain dried mango and honey sticks. That was the other one. Love me some honey sticks.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

What is your preferred birthing position? I really thought I would give birth on my knees both times I gave birth on my back. That was a side effect of being in the hospital. Urge to push or wait to 10 centimeters.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Oh, urge to push, don't just push at 10 centimeters. Okay. Um, what was your favorite birthing apparatus? Oh, oh, my spiky ball. I had bruises on my hands for like days after that. Okay. Um, who told you about Adula?

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Sammy, our guest Sammy Esposito. She's the best. She wants us in her episode too.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

Um, did you have a mantra?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Oh, I I know I did. Oh, I know it. I know it. Um no, that was my newborn mantra. My newborn mantra was you are stronger than your stress.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

Okay, you did not have one during the birthing process. I don't think I did. That's okay. Yeah. Um, what's the most memorable thing that Joey said to you during your first birth? I'm so proud of you. What's the most memorable thing he said during your second birth? Probably like holy shit. Because that was the craziest birth ever. First meal after baby one.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Oh, um wine. No, we had um we had steak, like a good rare steak. After baby two? Sushi. Ooh. Yeah, that's a good one. So good.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

You passed. Yay, I did it. You did it, you did it. That was a pretty straightforward lightning, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Truly, though, when we came from the hospital, my father-in-law like brought wine within 20 minutes of being home and like poured me. But like, did you not eat in the hospital? No, we ate in the hospital. We they give they give us the hospital we were at had a specific like morning of mother, like the morning after you gave birth breakfast. And I got steak. It was not rare. That steak was not rare, but my first like by choice steak was delicious.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

The hospital that we were at gave us like the next meal, like you had 24 hours to order, like your new parent meal or whatever. And it came with like a bottle of martinelli and cute.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

I remember we had that like steak dinner that was delicious, but I remember more breakfast with Teddy because he was born at like three in the morning. It was like French toast and sausage and eggs, and it was hospital eggs, and I was still like, oh my god, I was so hungry.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Delicious. Amazing, amazing. Well, thank you again for sharing all your wisdom about having an unmedicated birth and the process that you went through to hire doula. Yeah, it's always sounded amazing. I mean, an unmedicated birth is not something I chose to do. It's not for everyone, it's not for everyone. But I really appreciate you taking the time to kind of share all that with us.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Absolutely. I'm gonna give one last shout out to Janice, our incredible doula. I love you so much, and a shout out to Joey because literally, without the two of them, it would not have been possible. I would have definitely given up.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

We'd have a good support system.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Amen. Amen. All right, so you can catch clips from this episode on TikTok and Instagram. We are moms off script. You can also catch YouTube Shorts. So you can listen to this wherever you get your podcasts, including watching us on YouTube. And you can shoot us an email, share your birth stories. Did you have an unmedicated birth? Did you have a cesarean section? Did you go in and vacuum and forceps and all the things? Um tell me all of it. I want to know everything. Mare wants to know. So shoot us an email. We are momsoffscript at gmail.com. You can also hit the send us a text link in the show notes here. And that's all we've got for now. So we will see you next Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Moms Off Script is created and developed by MikeAbiline and Marvel. Mike Design and Video. Mike Adeline.