transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] I think my water just broke. I felt like things really intensify.

Speaker 2:
[00:08] She was right there and she was coming. It was an amazing feeling. I'm going to cry just thinking about it.

Speaker 1:
[00:14] I could feel her head. We heard her cry.

Speaker 3:
[00:17] We were squeezing hands and she was screaming.

Speaker 1:
[00:21] I'm Bryn Huntpalmer and you're listening to The Birth Hour. This podcast is designed as a safe place to come together and share childbirth stories. Stick around and join us to hear informative and empowering birth journeys from all over the world. I'd like to take a minute to talk about this episode's sponsor, Aeroflow Breast Pumps. Did you know that breast pumps and milk storage bags, maternity compression garments, even lactation education and support can all be covered by your insurance? Aeroflow helps millions of parents unlock these breastfeeding and postpartum essentials by working directly with your insurance company to get these free essentials shipped straight to your door. Aeroflow offers all major pump brands, including Medella, Spectra, Motif, Lansino, Amita, Elvie, Willow and more. Visit aeroflowbreastpumps.com/birthhour to fill out their free and easy qualify through insurance form. Don't forget to use the promo code birthhour15 in their online shop for 15% off all supplies and accessories. You've got enough on your plate, why not let Aeroflow Breast Pumps help support you on your breastfeeding journey? At the end of this episode, I talk with Kate not only about getting her breast pump for free through Aeroflow, but also about taking advantage of their online lactation classes. So stay tuned for that conversation. Before we get to today's birth story, I want to talk a little bit about our online childbirth course. It's called Know Your Options and this is the course you've been looking for. If you just have that gut feeling that you know you should be taking a childbirth course, but maybe the one that's being offered to you by your care provider is not exactly what you're looking for. It might be more catered towards the type of birth they want you to have versus making you informed of all your different options and how to address different things that happen in birth because as this podcast has shown us, birth is very unpredictable. We would love to have you check out our 12 module course. You can go to thebirthhour.com.com/course to see detailed outlines of what is included in the course. You will also get a bonus course called Beyond the First Latch that is an additional six modules all about pumping, feeding your baby, going back to paid work if that's part of your plan. And we have a special coupon code for you. It's 100OFF for $100 off enrollment. Again, that's thebirthhour.com/course. Another way to get involved with the birth hour community is by joining our Patreon. This is where you pledge your support of the birth hour at $5 a month or more, and you get perks in return, like access to all of our archived episodes. That's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes we've been putting out birth stories since 2015, and those are all available in our archives via Patreon. And you also get access to our private Facebook community, which is a really great group of people who are there to support you, become friends, and just encourage you on this journey through parenthood. So find out more about that at patreon.com/birthhour. Today's birth story guest is Claudia, and she has two birth stories to share, both in the hospital. The first one was with an epidural, and the second one was unmedicated. She talks about how her two postpartum experiences were really different as well. All right, let's hear from Claudia. Hi, Claudia. Welcome to The Birth Hour. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] Hi. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:
[03:35] Of course. We have a couple of birth stories today, but before we get to that, can you tell listeners a little bit about you and your family?

Speaker 3:
[03:41] Sure. My name is Claudia. I'm 35 years old. My husband Matt and I have two daughters, Remy turned five on January 25th, and then Lula turned one the day after on January 26th. We have our dog child, Chosen, who's eight and our 13-year-old just crossed over to Doggie Heaven recently. But that's us. We live in Connecticut.

Speaker 1:
[04:04] All right. Well, let's go ahead and start with your first pregnancy and what that looked like for you.

Speaker 3:
[04:08] Okay. I want to start by saying I'm a PM, a physician assistant. I work in emergency medicine. I've been close to nine years now of doing that. The only reason I mention my profession is because I think it did play a big role in my pregnancy and my birth stories. My daughter's name is Ramey. She's our five-year-old. We started trying to conceive in January of 2020. We had heard about COVID overseas, but it was this vague news and I didn't think about it too much. It was honestly once we started with the idea of wanting to get pregnant, we didn't want to stop. We kept trying and we found out I was pregnant in April of 2020. I think the World Health Organization, I think announced the world pandemic that March. Thankfully, we had a pretty easy time conceiving. Feel very blessed about that. I remember finding out I was just too excited to wait until my period and I remember going into a 6am shift, waking up at like 4am and saying like, I'll just take one just to see. And I thought there was a faint line. So I like woke up my husband at 4am and I was like, hey, do you see something? And he was like, very anti-climactically, like half asleep was like, I don't see a line and walked back to bed and fell asleep. So I was like, all right, whatever, I'm going to go to work. And so I took a couple more pregnancy tests at work and they were all positive. And so it was an exciting time. I remember being like, am I really pregnant? Is this really happening? But my pregnancy, I was 30 at the time, was as a PA in the midst of the COVID pandemic, like the chaos in the ER, the stories that we heard about the healthcare system during the pandemics, the news, you know, all that my baby and I were living it. I remember gowning up from head to toe with gown gloves, everything sweating, you know, through my PPE with a huge belly. And at the beginning, we didn't know how COVID was spread. So I would come home, get undressed. I think all healthcare providers that are listening to this are probably like, yes, I remember that, just taking a shower and, you know, doing it over again the next day. So at the same time, everything was shut down, as you know, like there was no gym, there was no going out to restaurants, there was no traveling to see family. And so, as a first time mom being pregnant in the pandemic, you know, I think only other fellow moms that experience that can understand, but it was all I knew. So I made the best of it. Thankfully, you know, my pregnancy itself was pretty textbook. I had, I would say, like moderate nausea, you know, never to the point of vomiting, but acid reflux was really bad. I lost about 10 pounds at the beginning of the pregnancy just because I couldn't eat much, but all those pounds came back, so it wasn't a problem. Towards the end of my pregnancy, around 37 weeks is when the first COVID vaccines became available. And so I remember talking about it with my OB and they recommending it, and even healthcare workers, coworkers of mine, you know, just being hesitant about getting the vaccine because we didn't really know much about the safety and the efficacy of it. You know, in retrospect now, you know, everybody, well, most people who get vaccines don't think much about it, but it was a really big decision for me at the time. I did a lot of research. I talked to a lot of people and I decided to get it. So I got the COVID vaccine between 37, 38 weeks. So in January, my due date month. Thankfully, like I said, no medical issues during pregnancy really, everything went pretty smoothly. But I will say my mental health started, and I think I was unaware at the time, but looking back on it and having had a second pregnancy, not impacted by the pandemic, I can see how isolating it was for me to be a first time mom pregnant during the pandemic. At the time, my husband and I were living in North Carolina, and all of our families in Connecticut. And so with the travel restrictions, just not knowing what COVID could do or if you were pregnant and got it, everyone was saying how horrible it was in pregnant patients. So my parents saw me pregnant maybe a couple of times. And so the whole pregnancy was like me and my belly. I was isolating, I took a lot of pictures. Thankfully, social media helped stay in touch with everyone. But it wasn't until my second pregnancy when COVID was no longer this gray cloud over us that I realized how much I missed out on during my first pregnancy.

Speaker 1:
[08:59] Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like we hear that a lot.

Speaker 3:
[09:01] Yeah. So I think the end of it was, you know, the pregnancy itself, I enjoyed what I could. I tried to work out as much as I could towards the end, being very pregnant in January. You know, it's kind of cold, you can't do much, but I tried to stay active. I was definitely busy at work. So moving on to like labor and delivery, I honestly did not prep very much for labor and delivery. I thought I knew the basics and I thought I knew, you know, with the medical training that I have, I know, you know, the emergencies and I didn't really have any. So I just kind of very naively prepared for it in terms of just going off of what I knew already. So that was kind of a big mistake. The other thing to note too, and how my profession affected my perception of birth is that as a PA, I've had training and experience with deliveries. I've had to deliver and assist deliveries a handful of times. It doesn't happen often, but you know, to be clear, none of these times were in a quote normal setting. You know, the deliveries that happen in the ER are usually chaotic, in an emergent setting, tons of post-delivery complications. And so my only hands-on real life exposure to labor and delivery was not very positive. So I didn't really have a lot of personal experience with the normal, like physiological birth. And so a lot of that fed into my anxiety going into labor, and then immediately postpartum, sort of fed into my postpartum anxiety. Another big thing, and I think I touched on this, is that I really had no one around me at the time. And it was just how life was, is that none of my close friends and no family had kids or were pregnant or had gone through delivery recently. So, you know, this is a huge point I want to make, is that community is so important. I remember feeling as the first time I'm pregnant, like wondering, is this how everyone feels? You know, I remember being scared of birth and what it was going to be like. I remember just missing my body and how, you know, my body was changing and feeling guilty about that and thinking, does everyone feel this way? And I just, you know, basic things like what pump should I get? What bassinet should I get? And I had no one to talk to about that. And so, although on paper, it looked like I had a lot of, you know, medical knowledge and resources. There's just so much value in having a friend or a fellow mom to talk about these things with, because it's so personal. So when I look back at that version of myself, I do feel sad for her still that I didn't have a community or somebody to talk to about things. But, you know, it's a big thing that I want to point out is that community, I think, is so important. Whatever that looks like to you is something I didn't have that first time around.

Speaker 1:
[11:52] Yeah, I feel like I hear that a lot with medical professionals too. It's like everyone around them assumes like, oh, you've got this and then you think, oh, I should have this and don't get that extra support.

Speaker 3:
[12:03] Yeah, or you're just not embarrassed to ask questions, but you second guess yourself a lot. And being in the ER, you know, my job is to make sure I don't miss the emergency. But rarely and thankfully for me, like my birth, my pregnancy was pretty uneventful. But you still have a lot of questions. And so it's important to have that, somebody to talk to about those things. So moving on to my birth of my first daughter. So I actually worked my last few shifts with my waters leaking. So it's the thing that sort of started this cascade of mom shame for me. And I had a pretty straightforward conceiving story, pregnancy story, nothing unremarkable there. But the birth was just took a turn and it was unexpected from like a standard uncomplicated story to like a stressful rushed induction. So I don't want to get too into the TMI details, but I think it might be helpful for some people to hear this because I was not really confident in my decision to wait to call my OB. So essentially my husband and I were intimate and I went to use the bathroom to pee and I wiped whatever. I stood up and I felt a little drop or trickle. And I thought, did I just like not wipe well? Did I just pee a little more? Is this my water? Is this like post-intercourse discharge? Like, I don't know. This is when my time as a medical professional didn't really help. I didn't have any pain. It wasn't a gush. It wasn't bloody. It was just like this drop. And so I said, okay, we're just gonna see what happens. And so I went back to bed. I didn't think much of it. I went to work the next day and I noticed a couple trickles here and there to the point where I was like, maybe I'm just not emptying my bladder and it's just a little pee. And so I put a little liner and I said, I'm just gonna wait 24 hours. But then I noticed like when I would stand up or when I would squat, I would notice it a little bit more. And so I called the OB and my OB group was part of a big academic center in North Carolina. And so it wasn't very personal, a big large group with lots of residents. And I spoke with the on-call nurse. I told her all the things that were happening, how it started happening. And she said, okay, I'm going to talk to the resident on call. They called me back and they said, well, I think it's probably if you're not having cramping, pain, fever, nothing, it's probably just like leukemia or like just discharge related to pregnancy hormones or maybe related to intercourse. So they said, just keep an eye on it and call us back if X, Y, and Z happen. So I said, okay, I'm going to be a good patient and I'm going to just do what they say. There was something about it that I just was like, I don't know, this doesn't feel 100 percent right. I'm already 39 weeks along. But I said, okay, I have work and I feel fine. So I put a liner on, I went to work for the next couple of days, and then maybe the third day of this happening, I noticed, I haven't felt the baby move. Then even then, I suppressed my intuition. I was like, no, maybe I choose to drink water. I kept suppressing this little whisper of concern, and I don't know why I did that. But I essentially just waited for another 24 hours, and I said, I'm just going to wait and see. And I, in fact, did not feel her move as much. And then I started having palpitations, and my heart was just pounding out of my chest. And I couldn't sleep that night, because I was like, why am I having palpitations? Like, what's happening? And in retrospect, I think I doubted my intuition so much. I shut it down in my mind that my body then started saying, like, okay, alert, alert, something's wrong, you know? So I called my OB a second time, explained it all to the nurse on call, and she was like, oh, my goodness, no, no, no, you need to come in right away. You're 39 weeks plus, you have something coming out, like, come in. And I was like, why is today different than three days ago? So we went in and, you know, I got into labor and delivery and I was otherwise feeling completely fine. And so we checked in and we spoke, we met with a resident who I'd never met before, which is typical in big academic centers. He was perfectly professional to the point direct. There's no warmth, you know, in his interactions, which is fine. I can put up with that. You know, like, I just need you to be good at your job. He did a pelvic exam, told me I was completely phased and three centimeters, which I think most of us know, like that can be the case for weeks and means nothing. He did an ultrasound and said, and I still remember like, quote, oh my God, this baby has no fluid around her. We have to get her out. You know, five years later, I still remember the exact words. And so I think it could have been delivered in a more compassionate way. I started crying. I remember telling my husband, this is my fault. I knew it. I should have, you know, come get checked out before. And so it kind of escalated into this, like, this is my fault. And now the baby has no fluid and now the baby's not moving. And the scariest part for me was that, like, my lack of attention to this may have put my baby in danger. The other problem that was in play here was that I was GBS positive. And so with the prolonged rupture of membranes with over three days, they were very concerned about me having an infection, the baby having an infection. And so ultimately they checked on the baby with a non-stress test. They said the baby was moving fine, the heart was fine. I tried to reel in a little bit and gain a little bit of control over the situation. Not so much control, but reset maybe. And I said, okay, can I go home? Can I go home and I'll be back tonight? Maybe I can walk a lot, maybe I can do whatever it is to get things to start physiologically. And the resident was like, no. If you go, you're going to leave against medical advice and you're going to put your baby in danger. And so I said, fine, we're going to stay. And so we started the induction. There was a shift change. And so I actually got a midwife who was great. Energy in the room was completely different with her. It just was the first time that I felt like, okay, I'm in good hands. She was calm. She was compassionate. She explained things to me. She said, you know, this is probably going to be a long induction. You're a first time mom. So you can eat, which is very, you know, as soon as you get into a hospital, they usually say, don't eat. And then you're starving. She said, have a nice meal. And I talked to her and I said, what are my options? And she basically said, well, your cervix is already very soft, so there's no need for intravaginal medications or a balloon catheter. You know, it really would be pitocin. And so I was like, well, let's try to delay that as much as I can. You know, I had just heard that pitocin can just give you really hard contractions. And so she got me on the pump and we started doing pumping. And I delayed the pitocin as much as possible. They started the antibiotics because of my GBS positive status. And so the pumping really just gave me like cute little contractions here and there, but nothing really that stayed. And so at 10 a.m. on the Sunday, they started pitocin. So I got pitocin at 10 a.m. and I started pushing the following day at 4 a.m. and Remy was born at 638 the following day. So I think a relatively fast induction from what I hear. So the pitocin itself wasn't bad. It was fine up until about 6 centimeters when they checked me. And at that point, I was having back labor. And so it's essentially like this. The primary focus of the pain for me felt like it was in my tailbone and my rectum. And it was just getting like a big stab twist, stretch type pain in the rectum tailbone area that shut down to my legs. You know, I tried to do what I could to bear with it. And, you know, I had not done any prep for it. So I really just tensed up quite a bit. So every time a contraction came on, I was just like grabbing on to my husband, clenching my teeth, like scared of each contraction. And then like when it was done, I would relax, which is really like the opposite of what you should do. With the pitocin, you know, they just kept increasing it. I don't remember ever even having the mind space to ask like, hey, can you pause the pitocin? Can you just give me another hour at this dose? They came in every two hours to check my temperature. They came in, I don't know how long, to just kept increasing the pitocin. If I had been more present, maybe I could have spoken up about that and had them pause it for a bit, because it's clearly already working. But I didn't. The pitocin kept doing its job and I got the piggyback contractions. Essentially, one right after the other with very little to no breaks in between. Then I started throwing up with each contraction and I felt like I was drowning. So from the beginning, since checking into the hospital, I felt like the sense of calm, peace, physiologic birth had completely gone out the window. Then during the induction, it just felt like they were doing things to get this baby out and it felt rushed. I felt forced on top of that. There was a sense of guilt of waiting so long to go to the hospital, the sense of loss of control, and most importantly, feeling like I wasn't prepared for any of this mentally and physically, and I hadn't really done much prep work. And so it got to the point where I was not coping very well with the pain, and I remember after a particularly hard contraction, just saying like, why is this effing baby not coming out? And it scared me. It was like the first time I was angry at my baby. You know, and in retrospect, I was mad at the whole situation, but that's when I was like, I need the epidural because I'm not in a mind space to like do well right now. And so I was around six centimeters, I believe, six, seven centimeters, probably based on my experience the second time, I think I was probably entering or like through transition at this point. But again, I didn't know that, you know, I was probably kind of close to being fully dilated. They talked to me about the epidural. I remember barely being able to like have a full sentence come out of my mouth because the contractions were so back to back. And I said, just get the attending anesthesiologist. I just need his pain to go away. And so they said, well, he's held up, so the resident can come. And I said, screw it. Whoever can do it, come have them do it. Unfortunately, the resident tried twice and he couldn't get it. I had to end up waiting for the attending anyways, who came in and got it. I think the worst part, you know, people get scared about the epidural and the needle. Honestly, the worst part about getting an epidural, if you wait to that point of like transition time, is that you have to sit curled up and not move. And I was having back labor and I was throwing up and they were like, okay, don't move, you know, and that was just the hardest part. Once the epidural kicked in, it was this like immediate relief of pain, ease of pain. I was like floating and I fell asleep like within seconds. I have never been experienced that degree of fatigue. I think I slept for about an hour. And then I remember being woken up by contractions and I remember being like, why am I feeling anything? I was pissed. I was like, I'm not supposed to feel anything. Call somebody in here. Somebody needs to fix this. So that had been about an hour or so after the epidural. And then they gave me a little bit more medicine and they checked me and they said you're at 10 centimeters. So it's time to push. I think the epidural was in that situation good for me because it allowed my body to relax. I was fighting my own body when I was going through contractions because I was not in the space where I could relax and trust my body. And so we started pushing. I pushed about an hour and a half. And the pushing part was another part where I felt like I was disconnected from it. I could feel nothing. So I know some women will feel pressure to push despite having an epidural. I felt nothing. They were basically saying you're having a contraction now. Push and I would push. So it was like this instructed pushing phase. So in hopes to try to again, like me trying to help myself in hopes to connect with the whole experience, I said, can I have a mirror? So they had this little mirror standing up on this like stand with wheels. And they put it right for me to look at myself as the baby was coming out to like encourage me to help me get connected with the whole process. And unfortunately, after pushing like an hour and a half, like baby came out into the world and right as she was coming out, a tech walked right in front of the mirror and I did not see her come out of it. But you know, Raimi came out precious, you know, perfect. It's a memory I will never hopefully forget. Just so perfect and pink and soft, like their skin is like thin like parchment paper and warm and just the greatest relief that she was here and the immediate shock of like what this was inside of me was my reaction. And so, you know, I think another point I want to make, something that I wish somebody had told me is that with the birth of my first daughter, I needed some time to process all of it. And one of the things that I felt was that this rush of love or connection was not immediate for me. I remember 100% like caring for her, worrying about her, thinking that she was cute and small and lovable. And I just wanted to kiss her little cheeks all the time, but it wasn't immediate. And I had a lot of shame around that idea. I did not know at the time that that is so, so common to have a little bit of a delayed attachment or that reaction to take some time to come in. What I will say if anyone's listening to this, who has had that experience, like still feels shame around that is that my love for my daughter now five years later is immensely larger than the love I had like immediately post-birth. And back then I had just wished somebody would have normalized it. But it was one of those like seeds of postpartum anxiety and depression and mom guilt that were like starting to get planted in my mind.

Speaker 1:
[26:40] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[26:40] And so it was something that I wish somebody had warned me about.

Speaker 1:
[26:45] Yeah. Super relatable to probably a lot of people listening, but yeah, not always talked about.

Speaker 3:
[26:50] Yeah. So the immediate postpartum was a bit rough, too. Nothing, you know, everything is relative, because I know we're very blessed that essentially nothing too, too bad happened. But the first 24 hours when they were just checking Remy's vitals, they noticed that her heart rate was a little low and her oxygen was low. And so there was a bit of panic about that. And they sent us to the NICU to be watched on the monitor for like six hours. And again, this is all like a retrospect, because at the time I was not aware that this was happening, but the rush of mom shame and guilt that maybe I waited too long and maybe now she has pneumonia and she's going to have this issue with her lungs because I waited too long to come in and she didn't have enough fluid. And so thankfully, after that short period of observation, they essentially said she's okay. And they sent us back to postpartum. They just said it's just her anatomy, physiology, but taking a little bit longer to adjust to air and not being in the womb. So I noticed a couple of things that I again brushed under the rug as like, okay, this must be normal. So one being that she looked yellower and yellower to me. And I brought this up to the pediatricians in the hospital and I asked them, can you do just one more Billy Rubin check to just see where we are? They did it. They said it's still normal, but higher end of normal. So just keep an eye on her. I heard pediatricians should see her in 24 hours. So I said, okay. I also noticed my nipples were bleeding, blistered, and it was intensely painful to nurse her. And I did have the lactation consultants come and talk to me. And I was reassured that, you know, they're learning to latch, your nipples are getting used to it, cure some ice cold jellies and go on your way. And so we did. The first couple of nights at home were rough. There was a period of time where I was like, something has to be wrong because this baby will not stop crying. She would not stop crying. I would nurse her, she would calm down. Five minutes later, it was a horrific cry. So fast forwarding to her appointment, they confirmed that she had lost too much weight and that she was more jaundiced. And so her belly was going up even higher, not enough to go back to the hospital or need light therapy. A pediatrician said that she needs to eat more. This baby is hungry is what she said. Another thing that will be engraved in my memory for all of my life is, you know, your baby's crying because your baby's hungry, which is, I think that providers at this point should have a better way to communicate that with mothers. You know, she said you need to supplement until your supply comes in. And so again, the shame, the guilt of my body is failing me to do this. My baby has been hungry for two days. And that's when my obsession with my supply started. Years later, you know, with my second baby, I saw a very amazing leptation consultant. And through a lot of research on my own and talking with her, I have it's called the breast hypoplasia, essentially like for some reason during your adolescent years, mammary tissue is underdeveloped or like is halted. And so some people call it insufficient glandular tissue. I'm not sure if they're interchangeable, but regardless, you know, essentially my breasts never changed during adolescence very much. They never changed much during pregnancy and they never changed much during postpartum. They did get a little bigger. They got engorged a little bit. But, you know, you hear women saying, oh, my breasts got huge. I had double D's during pregnancy. Like that never really happened to me. And so agonized about every drop. I did everything anyone said. All the oatmeal power pumped. You know, I power pumped for months. No one told me that power pumping is a short term fix of a few days. But I, in the end, ended up only being able to produce. And I have to be careful because even saying the word I only produced can be a little triggering. But I produced about a third of what my baby's intake was in a day. And so for the longest time, I was ashamed to combo feed. I was ashamed that I had to give a formula. And this is how postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression really messes up with your brain. Because I know as a PA that giving a baby formula is completely fine. And giving a baby a bottle is completely fine. But there was that disconnect between reality and what was, in fact, true, that I could not separate within myself. And so I felt like a big failure. And that's when my postpartum depression really kind of got a lot worse. And this is very humbling for me to say in a public setting, but I hated my breasts. I hated my body. I thought they failed me. At my worst, I remember thinking my water slowly leaks. My body didn't go into labor on its own. Now my body can't produce enough milk. And I remember thinking, if I was a cave woman, if I was out in the wilderness, my baby would die because I would not be able to nourish her and sustain her. It's all of the things that now with the experience I've had, you know, I had no one to say like, hey, you're having a hard time and this is not good for you. So it's just a really hard topic for me. Even still, sometimes it stings. Seeing my five-year-old being happy, healthy. We have a great relationship. She's very attached to me. It's something that a first time mom particularly, you can tell her over and over again, like, you don't need to do this. You're a perfect mom, but it needs to come within you to be able to accept it and move on from it.

Speaker 1:
[32:43] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[32:44] So we white-knuckled through, we kept pushing, we kept going. Essentially, like the combo feeding, because when you're combo feeding, you are doing all of the things that exclusive breastfeeding moms are doing. You're pumping every two, three hours, you're doing all the things, and you're also bottle feeding and washing the bottles. We did that for about seven, eight months was when we started weaning. I went back to work when she was four months old, back to the ER, the crazy long shifts, going back to work and working long hours. It's impossible to pump every three hours, at least for me at my job. So my supply dipped even more. I did what I could for as long as I could. Then at seven months, I decided she's got teeth, she's eating really well. I think it's time. And I thought it was going to be a big deal. I was like, oh, I'm going to be so sad, and this baby is going to be so sad, and she's going to miss me. That baby did not care. And I honestly don't remember the last time we nursed. I don't remember it. It's over and it was fine. It feels so huge when you're going through it. Then at around nine months postpartum, I remember doing my hair, looking at the mirror and thinking, is that a bulge on my neck? Like is that, has it always been there? Is it just like my trachea? And it was lopsided, sort of looked more like bigger on the right side. So I thought, again, I don't know why I did this. I suppressed my intuition so much in my first year as a mom, but I said, it's probably I'm losing weight. Maybe things are just looking a little off. I don't know. I asked my husband, he has no idea. He was like, oh, it's probably nothing. Cause what are the chances? And so ultimately I got it looked at, and that bulge in my neck was thyroid cancer, hurdle cell carcinoma. I was formally diagnosed when my daughter was 10 months old. And a week before her one year birthday, I had the surgery to have my thyroid removed. I won't get into it too much, but I had to do that radioactive iodine therapy, which is this radioactive liquid that you drink and essentially like zaps off any lingering leftover thyroid or cancer cells in there. Because you drink this solution, you're considered a little bit radioactive, at least like your bodily fluids are. And so they tell you to be really careful at home. And so, make sure the baby, your husband, they don't use the toilet, they don't use anything that you come in contact with, your bodily fluids. And so I actually just decided to rent an Airbnb and stay there for two days, to just kind of prevent any, I just didn't want to make myself more worried about the whole thing. So that was the first year. That was the first year as a mom for me. Again, I want to emphasize that we are very blessed that in itself the year ended up turning out well for us. And I know people have it much harder. Everyone has their own story. I'm very grateful for everything that happened to us. But it was, it was a very hard 2020 to 2021. Yeah, you know, the first year really like broke me.

Speaker 1:
[35:53] Yeah, that's a lot.

Speaker 3:
[35:55] Yeah. So I dealt with a lot. So like the time period in between my first and second pregnancy, I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of postpartum depression. Because a lot of my depression came in after being pregnant, given birth because of my personality, I just sort of ignored it. I suppressed it. I was like a functional anxious depressed person who could go to work and enjoy parts of her life. But things started to get out of hand. My depression was not, and depression feels differently for people. For me, it was that everything felt hard. Everything felt difficult. I was moody, I was snappy with my husband, the day-to-day things, the baby crying, the baby whining or like nails on a chalkboard. I ended up feeling like I didn't want to wake up in the mornings because everything just felt so hard. I kept doubting myself and I kept saying, well, I just had a baby, I'm working the ER and that's hard, just went through COVID and that's hard. Again, this is where I wish I had community, where somebody could have been like, hey, this is what I'm seeing. Do you think that you need to talk to your doctor about your anxiety and do you think you could be depressed? I suppressed it so much that my body, again, started telling me something is wrong because I developed horrible migraines, horrible debilitating migraines. I couldn't function when I had my migraines, and so I was physically unwell and then that made everything much harder. That's when I started doing a lot of self-work, and like I said, the time period, and this is like the meat and potatoes, hopefully of my story is that the most important part to my story is like the time between my pregnancies, where I essentially like rebuilt myself. I put so much work in my mental health. It was the hardest time of my life, but I knew we wanted to have another child, and I knew like I'm not going through that again. That cannot happen again. You have a baby or a child, you have a husband to be there for. And so I started doing a lot of self work, and some of the things that worked for me were meditation and visualization. You know, like for me, for some reason, that really clicks. Visualizing my intrusive thoughts on a cloud and the wind taking them away, you know, like meditating breathwork to release physical pain and tension. It was like magic. And it wasn't until I tried it that I was like, this is really good. It all sounded kind of fluffy to me from the outside. And I was like, what the heck? What am I going to do meditating? I'm going to fall asleep. But then I tried it. And it was like the key to helping me get better. That led to hypnosis because I found out that meditation and visualization really worked for me. I tried hypnosis and it was life changing. Hypnosis helped me in my second delivery. So that I can briefly talk about that then. But I started taking medications. I started taking an SSRI. And the lowest dose has been life changing to me, life saving. Good. I found a therapist. And again, I'm not the type of person that ever liked having therapy. I thought talking to my therapist made everything harder. I always came out feeling worse. I felt like we were just talking and talking and talking and nothing felt like it got better. And so the last thing that I found for myself that helped me tremendously was my therapist. And now Alana, who is amazing, and I'm so grateful for her. But that's like half the battle is like finding the right therapist.

Speaker 1:
[39:36] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[39:37] And when you're already not feeling well, it just seems like such a tremendous task. But just some things that helped me that maybe somebody says like, oh, that sounds like I could also try. And I think the message would be, if you're thinking about having a baby and conceiving, spend more time in your mental health and creating a community to surround you, work on your relationship with your partner and getting to know yourself, like what helps you when you're sad, what helps you when you're anxious. Put more time in those things instead of temporary, albeit fun things, but like decorating your nursery or like what's on your baby registry. Those are the worthwhile things that I think we as moms need to be encouraged to do, as we're preparing to have a baby.

Speaker 1:
[40:24] Yeah, I agree 100 percent.

Speaker 3:
[40:27] Yeah. So moving on to Lula, my one-year-old conception with her was thankfully pretty straightforward and simple. Again, we tried a couple, two, three times. We found out again, actually, I was pregnant in April, the same month as Raimi in 2024. Pregnancy was very similar to my first. A lot of the same symptoms, everything just felt like it started earlier, maybe a little bit worse. The physical aspects of it were a little harder. I found a great pelvic floor PT, Kaylin at Lotus Public Health here in Connecticut. It was amazing. And she really helped me with any issues that arose. Like I had a lot of a side pain, hip issues and so forth. She actually also, we did a session of just prepping for labor and delivery and positions and things that I could do. This second time around, I was like, I'm gonna have community. I'm gonna find everything that I didn't have the first time. So I found a doula, Melissa, diary of a doula here who was amazing and I still text with her. Again, the first time it was very isolating. I didn't have anyone to talk to. And the biggest thing I think for me as a medical person is that any mom is going to need help, a confidant, a guider. That's what the doula is there for. You know, like the doula is there for the mom. What does the mom need? Her focus is the mother, which I think is tremendous, and I wish everyone had access to it. And so I decided it was the right fit for us, and she helped a lot with birth prep, helping me find my therapist. She led me to my therapist, who is probably the best thing that I could have done for myself. So I can't say enough good things about what a doula can do for a mom. So getting into the labor and delivery, my contractions started the day we were celebrating my oldest birthday. So they're a day apart in their births. And we were throwing a big party for my oldest on Saturday. And I thought I felt some contractions here and there, but I also had been having some for the last couple of weeks. So I didn't think much of it that week. And I'd also worked like 50 hours that week. And so I was like, I'm probably tired. I need to hydrate, take Tylenol, I need to rest. And so I was so tired, I was able to take a nap. And then I woke up around six dinnertime, 6 p.m. And I was like, they're still there. They have never lasted this long. So I was like, OK, I casually told Matt, casually told my doula. We said, OK, we're just going to rest, watch, hydrate. I actually fell asleep. Like they weren't intense enough to keep me awake. I fell asleep and I woke up around 9 p.m. and noticed that they were definitely there, more frequent, more intense. And so I told myself, I think this is actually going to happen tonight. So I just got back in bed and I had read this book about the Bradley Method. And I, for some reason, I remembered that the best position apparently to labor in is on your side with your leg propped up, leg, knee, foot on a pillow. And so I started doing all of the things that I knew already worked for me, like visualizing floating on the ocean and body scanning from head to toe, relaxing all my muscles and my hypnotist actually had recorded a session for me. So I listened to that, that was about an hour. And I remember, I don't know whether I fell asleep or I was in a little bit of a trance, but I remember waking up and I had somehow fallen asleep, you know, and contraction essentially woke me up. And so it was around 11, 10, 11 p.m. I texted, you know, my sister said, I think it's gonna happen tonight, we'll let you know. And then the 10 p.m. to like three or four a.m. period, I essentially labored on my own in my bed, my husband was completely passed out next to me, unaware of what was happening. But it was like the complete opposite of what my first birth had been like. I did not feel the need to wake up anybody. I didn't want the lights on. I wanted quiet. And so during that period, I just laid down and I did a lot of breathing. My faith is really important to me. I put worship music on and kept rotating from left to right. And the other way back and forth around 4 a.m. is when I felt like I needed to start moving. And I was not able to be as quiet anymore. And so I woke up Matt and I said, I tried to explain to him what was going on. And he was half asleep and just kind of like realizing that I had been laboring for several hours on my own. So he held my hand and he was like, OK, what do you want to do? What do you want to do? And I was like, I just want to lay down and I want the lights off and just stop asking me questions. And so we lay down, he held my hand and I just kept, I just needed like somebody to be aware of what was happening and I needed like an extra, like just a handhold apparently, is what my body was needing at the time. So kept having contractions. Matt went back to sleep because he can sleep through anything and around 5 a.m. I just was like, I can't do this anymore. And that's like the quote I feel like most women say is like, I can't do it anymore. I stood up, I was like standing, bend over my bed, just feeling that pain in my tailbone and my rectum. It took me back to the first birth, that feeling in that area. We communicated with the doula, we told her and she said, well, we want to wait as long as we can, as long as it's safe to, so that you're as comfortable as you can be. So let's see what happens in the next hour or so. So then I said, fine, we hung up, and then I just like, almost like that phone call, like told my body, like, you can like go now, because I started vomiting. I felt like I had to have a bowel movement and I was afraid to go in the toilet because I was like, is that going to be the baby or is that going to be? And so I cleared out my bowels and then is when things started to pick up. We called, again, my doula. I called the midwife on the phone who heard me have a contraction over the phone, asked me, how far away are you? I said, probably less than 20 minutes. She said, just go head on over. It's fine. You're probably very close. So we did. We called my mother-in-law who had been on standby. She came around 5 a.m. or something. And I think like when you're so close to giving birth, you are so hyper aware of things. It's like survival mode is that I remember everything about that time period, what I was wearing. And I walked from my bed to the car, maybe 50 feet, and I had to stop three times because I had three contractions. And so I started feeling very sick to my stomach. I started throwing up and I felt like I had a bowling ball stuck in my rectum. You know, Matt was like, okay, you got to sit down. I was like, there's no way I can sit down. So I just went on my knees facing backwards and I hugged the seat of the car and off we went. The rest of the story is very fast. You know, in the car, I was, I heard myself grunting and throwing up. And I, in retrospect, I think it's like it was my body subconsciously trying to bear down and push the baby down. I kept asking my husband, how much longer, how much longer? He kept saying, we're almost there, we're almost there. And I said, stop lying to me. You've said that four times. Do not lie to me. So then he just like was very cautious about what he said to me. My husband says that 617, we looked at the clock in the car, we were waiting at the last traffic light to turn into the hospital, and Lula was born at 633. So we were very close. When we pulled into the front of the EAD entrance, my doula was waiting for us, saw me in the car and said, okay, we got to go walk in. And I said, no, I can't, I can't move. I'm stuck. I'm not moving. She tried to very nicely tell me like, we really need to get moving. And then she gave me that little tough love that I always needed and said, do you really want to have a baby in the parking lot? And so I had one last contraction in the car and I waddled in. Again, I remember details all about it, like the ER waiting room, people looking at me. I had a contraction in front of everyone. Somebody offered me a wheelchair. I said, there's no way I'm sitting. So in between contractions, I would like quickly waddle in upstairs. And we got to Labor and Delivery. And the midwife, amazing, amazing midwife, I think God put her in my path because she was just amazing. She said, you need to sit on the wheelchair. And I said, no. And she said, you have to. It's faster. And so I sat like on my one side. She was like, oh, great. She's one cheeking it. She must be close, I guess, you know, because I couldn't sit. And so we got there and I was like immediate fear. I was like, wait, I don't want you to check me. I don't want you to check me. What if I'm like five centimeters? They were like, we have to check you, Claudia. And so we had decided that they weren't going to tell me how far along I was because I didn't want to know. Only my doula and my husband would know. And so they checked me. They didn't say anything. Nothing about the energy in the room changed. And I just kept saying, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. They said to get on the bed. They didn't say how they didn't help me. I just climbed up on the bed on all fours. And that's where I stayed. The contractions came and came and came. And it was this intense, unexplainable pressure in my rectum. And I kept saying, it's in my butt. It's all in my butt. And my doula, Melissa, noticed that when I would have a contraction, I would almost like run away from it. So like I would tilt forward on all fours. And she was like, don't run away from it. Give in to it. And that like something switched in my mind where for some reason, I was like, okay. And so anytime I felt that sensation, I would just like not bear down, but I would just like squat deeper in all fours. The midwife came over to me and she said, you have worked so hard for this. This is your time. This is the time where all your hard work will pay off. This is your redemptive birth. You can do this. And I just, I don't know, that was like what I needed, what my body needed, whatever it was. And three pushes, I don't really think I actually pushed. I think I just, when I felt the bearing sensation, I just kind of like squat it deep and vocalized very loudly. After the third, you know, second push, they said their heads right there. They asked me because I wouldn't want to catch her. They said, do you want to catch your baby? And I said, I can't. I felt like I couldn't move. I was like stuck in this position. So I said, Matt, you catch her. He had no time to watch his hands. He had no gloves on. He just went and he grabbed that baby, came out. So he was the first person that touched our baby, Earthside. We have a video of it and it's amazing. And he, you know, passed her to me in between my legs. And I just, I grabbed the baby who screams and cries and I just stare at her. I'm just looking at her like, what? Still blown away that this happens, you know, that birthing people can do this. And that's how Lula was born.

Speaker 1:
[51:46] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[51:47] And postpartum was completely different. Postpartum was my redemptive postpartum. I had very little anxiety, I would say as you would expect, you know, a little bit of hypervigilance about things, but it was a completely different experience. And I want to share that with folks and that like, it does not have to be that way, that you can have a redemptive postpartum experience. There are things for you to help yourself and have a much better time if you decide to have other children. Again, it was life-changing. It was, you know, I wouldn't change either story because they both have taught me so much.

Speaker 1:
[52:27] Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing both of them with us. Do you want to share any resources?

Speaker 3:
[52:31] I've probably touched on it already halfway through my story. I think two things that I would say would be that I used was the Expecting and Empowered app. I believe they're on social media. They're essentially just an app that walks you through proper exercises to do throughout your pregnancy and then postpartum as well. That was really great. And then listening to other women's stories like at The Birth Hour. If you don't have a big community or have no one to talk to, I think this is a great resource as well.

Speaker 1:
[53:04] Awesome. And then where can people find you online?

Speaker 3:
[53:06] So I can definitely share my email with you. I think that's probably the most straightforward way and easier to follow up with. I'm in Connecticut in the Hartford area. So I have done a lot of research about the resources locally here. So if anyone's listening in Connecticut and it's me guiding you somewhere or telling you where to go for PT or therapy or doula, reach out to me and I'm happy to help you with that.

Speaker 1:
[53:32] Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Claudia.

Speaker 3:
[53:35] Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:
[53:37] Now I'm going to chat with Kate about Aeroflow Breast Pumps and how you can get your breast pump and other things for free through insurance like their online classes, accessories, all kinds of great things. All that is at aeroflowbreastpumps.com/birthhour. All right. Let's hear from Kate. Hi Kate. Thanks so much for coming on The Birth Hour today to chat with me about Aeroflow Breast Pumps. Yay.

Speaker 2:
[53:56] Hi Bryn. Happy to be here.

Speaker 1:
[53:57] Awesome. Well, you reached out via Instagram about Aeroflow and your experience with them and I was so excited to talk with you. So will you just tell people a little bit about how you found Aeroflow and the process you went through for using their services?

Speaker 2:
[54:11] Yeah, for sure. So it was actually through The Birth Hour, through your podcast that I heard about Aeroflow and decided to just fill out a form, it's like a very simple form you fill out online, where you put in your insurance information and then Aeroflow does the rest. So they got me a free breast pump. I think it was the Spectra is the one that was the one I chose through insurance, but Aeroflow will actually show you all of the different pumps available to you, how much they cost through insurance. Some of them you do have to pay a little bit, and then they show you the ones that are fully covered. So I decided, yeah, I chose the Spectra and they sent it to me, and then I think I got an email or a text that said like, hey, thanks for using Aeroflow. You should also sign up for our lactation classes. You get tons of those promotional emails.

Speaker 1:
[55:06] Right.

Speaker 2:
[55:07] I didn't think much of it. I was like, okay, whatever, I'll take a look at this later. Then I started looking more into it and I was like, oh, actually these classes look pretty cool. They were fully virtual and they were covered by insurance. And so I decided, you know, I was like, what the heck, let's do it. And I signed up for, I think, four different classes. I only made it to two of them, but the two that I went to were Lactation 101 and Pumping 101. And they were, they're just like such great classes. I was like so surprised by the quality of the classes. They're taught by, is it IB?

Speaker 1:
[55:40] IB CLC.

Speaker 2:
[55:41] Yeah. And they just gave a ton of good information about starting breastfeeding off right. And so it also would be helpful too for people who are newly breastfeeding, just kind of work through some potential breastfeeding issues like latching or positioning. But yeah, I contribute a lot to my success. So my daughter is four weeks old now, and we had a pretty solid start to breastfeeding. I've been exclusively breastfeeding, and I contribute a lot of it to having that support from the class. The way the class is run too, they're live.

Speaker 1:
[56:19] Oh, cool. That was going to be my next question.

Speaker 2:
[56:22] Yeah. So they're virtual, so you can learn via Zoom.

Speaker 1:
[56:25] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[56:26] But they're live, and so the instructor is there teaching the course. They're also really just like super good teachers. I felt like the way they presented information was really good. They had tons of visuals and videos, live demonstrations where they have a baby doll, and they were showing different positions and ways to get the latch. So they are live, though, so you can ask questions, and so you're able to ask questions in the chat. You can unmute and have a conversation back and forth. So, very helpful for, if you have specific questions, too, about lactation.

Speaker 1:
[57:04] Yeah, that sounds amazing, especially, like you said, even after baby arrives, to be able to look at the positioning of the baby doll and position your own baby on screen and be like, you know, like this, or that's great.

Speaker 2:
[57:17] Yeah, it's really helpful. And the pumping 101, I had never, this is my first baby, and I had never pumped before. And so I got, I had the same pump that they were using in the demo, the Spectre.

Speaker 1:
[57:28] Oh, nice.

Speaker 2:
[57:29] And so it was really cool to get, I kind of like walked along with, you know, like did the demo along with them on the same pump, which was just really helpful having never used a breast pump before.

Speaker 1:
[57:39] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[57:39] They looked kind of scary. At least to me, they looked really scary. And so it was nice to like be able to sort of walk through with the instructor and get a demo.

Speaker 1:
[57:50] So when you were signing up for it, was the scheduling, were there like several a month or like lots of options?

Speaker 2:
[57:57] Yeah, that's a good question. It was pretty convenient. They gave a few times a month, I want to say. And like different, I want to say they were like different hours too. Okay. But it was like scheduling was really, really easy. I remember like, because they have all your information, like they have insurance information already. And so they do all the back-end work of clearing insurance because they are there, classes run by professionals and they do cost money, but insurance covers the cost. And so they would like take attendance at the beginning of the Zoom call. And then they did like all that back-end work to make sure it was covered by insurance. And so I didn't have to do anything except like put in my name and email to sign up. So yeah, like really easy.

Speaker 1:
[58:43] Awesome.

Speaker 2:
[58:43] And again, like kind of going into it, I was like, you know, I'll give this a try, kind of see what it's like. And then I was just like, captive. I remember after getting up, particularly the Lactation 101 call and just like being like to my partner, like, oh my gosh, you've got to hear like what I learned.

Speaker 1:
[59:01] Oh, cool.

Speaker 2:
[59:02] Like I, he was like, wow, you like, you're like an expert now with lactation. I was like, I feel like it. Like, I feel like I'm like, I have a lot of good solid information. So yeah, like super pleasantly surprised at how informative and just helpful the classes were.

Speaker 1:
[59:18] Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I think that I had posted about Aeroflow on Instagram and you responded like, their classes are amazing. And so I knew you were passionate about it enough to like respond to an Instagram story. So that's very cool. And I knew they had lactation education, but I wasn't fully aware of the format and everything and the fact that they're live. I mean, that's like having your own, you know, virtual lactation consultant. So that's amazing.

Speaker 2:
[59:40] And I had taken like a childbirth ed class, paid for, like it was a community one that I paid for here. And I live in Minneapolis and it was like we went over one of the weeks, we went over lactation and it was like similar information, but like free, you know, like I was like, and also like some, it was kind of went more in-depth because the Aeroflow class was specifically a lactation class, like the lactation 101 class, what I'm thinking. So yeah, it was just like very quality, like good information.

Speaker 1:
[60:15] Awesome. Yeah, I'm going to add this definitely to our resources on the website and our childbirth course because we go over a lot of that stuff as well, but the live aspect I think is just so great, even if it's a refresher for, you know, second or third time, or you already took a class, just something to kind of get a refresher and ask questions and things like that, so.

Speaker 2:
[60:35] And there are some other classes, like the other ones I signed up for, I didn't end up making. There was like one on like maternity leave, like in your kind of like, I think, lactation stuff around leave and like going back to work.

Speaker 1:
[60:50] Right.

Speaker 2:
[60:51] But yeah, they were all covered through insurance.

Speaker 1:
[60:53] So very cool. I'm going to have to reach out to Aeroflow and audit these classes so that I can talk about it more as well. But thank you so much for shining a spotlight on it.

Speaker 2:
[61:03] Yeah, for sure. Highly recommend. So don't, when you get that email or that text that says, hey, do you want to also sign up for the classes? You should do it because I was like, like I said, I was kind of like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever, like promotional email for Aeroflow.

Speaker 1:
[61:19] Right. And we're all paying so much for insurance. Like we might as well get as much out of it as we can.

Speaker 2:
[61:24] Totally. It was well worth it.

Speaker 1:
[61:27] Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Kate.

Speaker 2:
[61:29] Yeah, of course, Bryn. Thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker 1:
[61:31] Thank you so much again to Claudia for sharing her stories with us and to Aeroflow for sponsoring this episode. To get more information from today's episode, head over to thebirthhour.com and search for Claudia's name in the search bar to find her show notes page. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, head to thebirthhour.com and click become a member to pledge your support. And as a thank you, you'll get an invitation to join our private Facebook group and access to exclusive episodes. Your vote of confidence and support means the world to me.