#326 | Trisha's Three Home Births

Finally, after all these years, Trisha tells the stories of her three home births. Pregnancy, birth, & midwifery are woven into her life story, from her early obsession with pregnancy to her decision to pursue a career in midwifery, allowing her to understand every aspect of birth from a physiological and intellectual perspective. Hear how she became a midwife, how she got herself into labor with her first, grueling, long birth, to her wildly different second birth, and her unintentionally unassisted third home birth to her son, who taught her the most important lesson she wants every birthing woman to know: One that could benefit all of humankind.

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Transcript

I wanted North's birth to be on film. So I remember telling Paul, like, you really should go get the video camera, because I think the baby is coming. Midwife was not there yet. She was still about 30 minutes away, and he left the room to go get the video camera and wake up my mom, because she was just down the hall, and as they both came into the room, Paul flipped on the camera, and I was receiving north so there was this period of a few minutes where I was alone in the room, and I knew he was coming, and I just remember thinking to myself, you're on your own.

I'm Cynthia Overgard, owner of HypnoBirthing of Connecticut, childbirth advocate and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the Down To Birth Podcast. Childbirth is something we're made to do. But how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Ready to tell your birth stories?

I guess...

It's been a long time coming. One extra woman tipped you over the edge by asking you to finally share these.

I know, okay, here we go. How did you prepare? I didn't. The only thing I did do was I did look for a few photos to I could share. Since this will be video, that would be kind of fun. Oh,

that will be fun. So everyone can catch this episode on YouTube.

I don't think we're recording. Oh, we are, we are, oh, we've already started.

You restarted. I didn't tell you. Nope, okay, yes. So everyone can catch this on YouTube or Patreon, either place.

Cool, yeah, I have never formally told my birth stories. I've obviously dropped bits and pieces of things throughout the podcast. So I feel like my birth stories are very tied to my sort of purpose in life, like I became a midwife because I really, really wanted to understand birth, giving birth was what I wanted to do. From the time I was a little kid, for as long as I can remember, I was sort of obsessed with pregnancy as a child like I remember looking at my mother's photos of her pregnant with my little brother, who's four years younger than me, and just thinking like that is the most beautiful a woman ever is in her life. And I wanted to grow up and be a mom. That was pretty much all I aspired to be as a mom.

I love the photo of you that we have in the highlights on our Instagram page, our story, and it shows us in our young lives. And it shows you with your college roommate, and you convinced her to put a pillow under her shirt, and you're both sitting there looking pregnant, which is like, I think, the last American college but it's such a cute photo. You're beaming and you're grinning from ear to ear like you've never looked happier than when you had a pillow stuffed under your shirt. It's so sweet. So you really that was real for me? Yeah, that I really did. I had a brief stint of wanting to be a secretary. I do remember that. Wow. I remember my dad used to take me to his office every Sunday. He would go in on Sundays, and he would take me, and I would sit at the secretary's desk, and I would play with the typewriter, and I would organize her sticky notes. And I'm a Virgo, I did this. So it was like, I was obsessed with the organized office space, and I thought, like, Oh, what a fun job to be a secretary and just organize all day. Yeah, that didn't pan out.

My dad used to bring me to the office and do the same thing. And the really exciting part, other than sitting his secretary's name was Anne Whalen. I remember her well, she was very lovely, and I used to love sitting at her desk if we were in on a weekend or something. But there was a supply room and, oh yeah, I could go into the supply room and basically take, like, pads, paper and sticky highlighters, a most exciting thing ever. I still love office supplies. I don't know, some people just love that stuff, all right. So, yeah, you that was a brief little flow. That was a brief little stint. Then I went back to, basically, I just want to be a mom. So, you know, I went to college. Oh, actually, I should say, When my aunt was pregnant with her third child, I was a sophomore or junior in high school, and I begged her to, please, let me be at this birth. Please. Can I come to the birth? I want to see a birth so badly I wanted to go to the birth more than anything, and she agreed to have me at the birth. And sadly, I was in a varsity soccer game at the time that her son was born, my cousin, and so I did not get to go to the birth. But I remember, just like wanting to hear the story, wanting to see all the photos my. Mom took amazing photos of it, and I was obsessed with it, and so, yeah, so it really has been in me birth. I just was one of those kids who thought birth and mothering was everything, and I couldn't wait to do all of it. So I went to school for it, and I had no idea when I went to college that I was going to become a midwife. I took general studies as my major. I did all kinds of things, from physics to Russian literature to astronomy to photography to I was all over the board. I was a general studies major, but I took a women's health class. I was always very interested in health. Anyway, I grew up in a very, you know, health conscious family, so health from the perspective of your body can heal itself. Your body knows what to do. Your physiology is perfect. We don't need medicine unless it's urgent, emergency type of medicine. So I knew that I did not want to be a doctor because I did not want to study pathology, I did not want to treat illness. So I took a women's health class in my junior year of college, and I got the book, our bodies ourselves. Do you know that book? I've heard a curriculum. It's an amazing book, still like a Bible for women, and that's when I learned of the thing called Midwifery, or nurse midwifery. So I didn't even consider that. But then this class was taught by a nurse midwife. She was my professor. She's still a very prominent, well known nurse midwife, and she like, opened my mind to, oh my gosh, I could actually study birth and pregnancy and live it and be it and do it as my job. And, you know, do it for myself, and know everything there is to possibly know about it and have a career in it. So after my junior year of college, I took a year off, and I focused on figuring out how to become a nurse midwife, and then I went back, did my senior year, applied to graduate programs to become a nurse midwife, ended up at Yale School of Nursing and started, obviously, studying midwifery. And I was fortunate enough to have a Yale program actually had a home birth midwife on staff as one of the professors. And that's kind of unusual in nurse midwifery programs, and a real blessing, because I decided in my third year of graduate school that I was ready to have a baby. I really could not wait any longer. Lola was the one child that I really felt like I called in like from the universe, like I sat down and I wrote in my journal and said, it is time for you to come. I am ready. Paul had moved out to Connecticut with me. We had been together for years. We were getting married. Okay, it's kind of funny story. I just, I told you at the start of this, how I sat down and I wrote my journal and I called Lola into my world, like I wrote to the universe. I'm ready to have a baby. I'm ready for the soul. Let's get going here. And I, you know, told Paul, it's time to have a baby. I'm ready to do this. I mean, I was, I was like, working with pregnant women. Two women in my class had already had babies. I remember, it was the breastfeeding class that I was in where I was, like, clawing at the table, as, you know, as we're learning about breastfeeding. So eager to do this, couldn't wait. Everything in my body, everything in my physiology, to be everything in my physiology, was saying, Now is the time. So Paul and I had been living together. We had lived in Wyoming together before moving out to Connecticut, and he Yeah, the day that I found out I was pregnant was the day that he had bought the engagement ring. Just coincidentally, no way, yes, yes. So we are going away for the weekend, and we're going up to Vermont, and he had purchased the ring, and I had gone to get a pregnancy test earlier that day, and had not told him that I had gone to get a pregnancy test, and that night we had that we happened to have the honeymoon suite at this place where we were staying in Vermont, and I remember getting the phone call back from the lab because I didn't do like a home pregnancy test. I actually went to the clinic and I did a urine test, and they had to wait like, eight hours or something for them to call me back. And they called when I was in the hotel with him in the room, and I started sobbing. I remember going into the bathroom, and I took the phone call, and they're like, yes, it's positive you're pregnant. And I was so incredibly overwhelmed with every emotion possible. I just started sobbing in the bathroom, and he's out there, like laying on the bed waiting for. You to come hang out with him, and hears me crying in the bathroom, and he's like, What is going on? He's about to propose to me. He's like, comes in the bathroom. He's like, What is going on? Oh my god. And I'm like, I'm pregnant. And you know, he, of course, is overjoyed and hugging me. And why are you crying? And you know what's wrong? And I don't know, it was just so overwhelming. There were just so many emotions. I mean, I was so happy, but I was also really scared. I was like, I can't believe I actually did this. I really did this. Oh, my God. Like, I'm in graduate school, still I haven't even graduated. I'm gonna have to take time off, like, all those thoughts of what it means to become, you know, a mother at 26 and still be in school and not married and getting married, but, like, it was a lot so, but it was time. It was just time for me think women don't, I think they don't expect all the emotions they're going to feel, most of them, especially when they're trying to get pregnant, or they're planning they're pregnant, they know they'll be happy, but it's so many other emotions, other than readiness. It's just like, Oh my gosh. Like, so much nervousness, so much realization that every part of your life is about to change, your body's about to change, your career is about to change. I mean, and what do we tell people? This is huge. I can't even tell people yet, or most people, it's it's just there's no end to the mixture of emotions. It's like, there's no going back. It's a line that you cross, and there's no going back. You are forever a mother. From that moment sitting on that toilet, when I got that phone call, I was like, I am no longer me, just me. I am now a mom. And that is a huge responsibility, and my whole life from this day forward, is going to be completely different. It's that beautiful ways, but absolutely and it's the realization, I think, for me and for most women, is those of us who were not studying Midwifery, in particular, is the feeling that, oh my gosh, the baby is in me, and it's got to get out. There's so much of that, like, this baby's got to get out, right? Like, yeah, I have to go through this whole process now. Like, I'm committed to this process, right? And, you know, on top of it was a little bit like, I did have to explain to my educational program that I was having a baby, and I was the third one in my class to have a baby, and they were kind of like, done with students having babies. Like, okay, enough already. It was cute to have one so everybody could see and we could have somebody to practice Leopold maneuvers on. And then two, they were like, Okay, this is me a little inconvenient by the time I was pregnant. They were like, What is going on with this class? You ladies? Like, did we not teach birth control? Like, where did that lesson go? So they weren't my the school was not happy with me. Let's just they were not they were not thrilled. Okay, now we gotta figure out another student how to get you through and whatever it makes it a little inconvenient for them. They weren't not nice about it. And my home birth professor, Sara, she was my midwife, and she was incredible, and she was so happy, and she was so supportive, and she was the one who told me, you are going to have a home birth. I had a great pregnancy. No, nothing of note to really talk about in my pregnancy. I did not take a childbirth education course because I was in midwifery school, and I was getting actually too much education on birth because I was I do remember now somebody was talking about it the other day, about their first birth and being really afraid of shoulder dystocia. And it kind of gave me a flashback of remembering, oh, god, yeah, I had that same fear with my first birth. I was really afraid of a shoulder dystocia, yeah, nothing of note of my pregnancy. Just, just a healthy, normal, good pregnancy. I went into labor at 40 plus three. I do remember getting a little antsy around 40 weeks, like, Okay, I should be having this baby by now. Like, is, how long is it going to take? What's going on? And, you know, you get a little uncomfortable toward the end of pregnancy. So on 40 plus two, I decided that if I took the day and left Connecticut and went into New York City, I would probably go into labor. My midwife was not thrilled about that decision, but she was like, okay, you know, do what you have to do, but you know that you are three hours away from home because I was planning to give birth at my mother's house in Connecticut. She doesn't live in Connecticut now, but she lived in Connecticut at that time. Simon, Paul and I were living in an apartment in New Haven, and my mom had a nice big bathtub at her house, and I just thought, well, I'll give birth there, and I'll hunker down up there, and I can use her tub. And it just felt better to me than giving birth at in my apartment. But that was three hours from New York City, so pretty, pretty far into Connecticut, I assume, yes, way up north of us are just an hour, okay, yes, Killingworth. So we went into the city. We met some friends. We had we went to Nobu sushi. I had sushi for dinner. Oh, that's a very, very special sushi place. Very special sushi. I didn't realize they've been around for 20 years? Yeah. Gosh, you hear about them more lately, though. And Paul was with you. I always thought he wasn't with you that day in the city.

Yes, he was with me. That's good. Okay, yes, we met some friends. Okay? And right when we got into the city, literally, after we parked the car and started walking, we're in the East Village, I had to go the bathroom, of course, because I'm late pregnancy, and you go to the bathroom like every hour. So I went into this little pizza joint, and I went into the bathroom and I went pee, and lo and behold, mucus plug came out in the toilet. And I was like, oh gosh, okay, well, I guess things are starting to happen now. And shortly after that, within minutes, I had my first contraction, and I knew, you know, first time, I was going to take a while, so I wasn't even at all concerned. We had dinner plans that was at like, 4pm we had dinner plans at eight. So we walked around, and we stayed for dinner, and at dinner, things really started to get a little bit more intense for me, and I was like, I'm really uncomfortable and having a really hard time sitting through dinner. I was having regular contractions every three or four minutes, and, you know, kind of having to focus on them, and not being able to focus on eating and hanging out with friends. So I did decide to leave dinner. I thought, well, we have a three hour drive home. We better get going. It was pouring rain in November, and you cannot get a taxi in when it's raining in the city, and we were a long ways from our car, so we needed a taxi. So it took it was like the classic movie scene where, like, Paul's out there in the rain waving like my wife's in labor. And, yeah, it took a while to to get a taxi, but we got a taxi. We got back to the car. It took three and a half hours to get home. Wow. We got home at about 1231 o'clock in the morning, and I tried to go to bed, but it was too much like the contractions kept me up so but my midwife insisted that I stay in bed. She said, Do not walk around your house. Do not take a shower. Do not do anything, but lay in your bed. You need to rest. You are in early labor. You cannot stay up all night and try to make this happen so I ain't in bed. And I remember every contraction being like, Oh, I just like, please. Will the sun come up? Please let the sun come up so I can get out of bed. And finally, the sun came up at whatever, six in the morning. I got out of bed, and then I was like, Yeah, I can walk around the house, and I can do things and try to make this happen. And I called her over to the house around 9am because she lived very close by. She was just one town over, which was very convenient. And she took one look at me, and she's like, Wow. I think, I think, like you're really in labor, like you're an active labor. This is, this is great. This is going really well. Should I check you? And I was like, Okay, sure. Why not? Let's, let's, let's do that. At that point in my career, in life, I had zero thoughts about that a woman wouldn't have a cervical exam in labor. It was just ingrained in my brain. This is what we do. We check at the start. We figure things out. We check every few hours for progress. I mean, this is what I was taught. And there is an exciting component to it, of course. It verifies that you're in labor. You kind of I mean, I can see a woman that I understand, the women who consent for especially moments like this when you're first in labor, not during a long labor, but when you're first in labor. It's kind of cool. So what, what was the how far along were you? So I remember, like, I remember her being all excited to check me, and then I could just see the expression on her face change from like, Oh, this is gonna be great, to like, Oh, okay. She's like, well, you're barely, you're you're just barely a fingertip open, like, not even one centimeter. And I was like, what I have been doing this? Wow, hours now, 15 hours, 16 hours, and it's been really intense. And I feel like, how could this be? Like, oh my god, this is going to be hard, right? So I did have that moment of being like shit, like, what's ahead? If it's been that hard all night, what is it really going to look like going forward? But I just felt like, you know what? Okay, let's go. We're going on a hike. Getting out of the house, we're going on a hike. So Paul and I went, and my mom lived at the bottom of a really steep driveway, and I'm very long and. And so we walked. I just did these Hill walks for an hour, two hours, to try to get things going. And that definitely seemed to help everything after that. I mean, I think labor really did start to pick up at that point. And everything is really kind of a blur between there and transition. The next thing I remember, it was so that was 10am by eight, 9pm or so, something like that. I was in transition. I really don't remember what happened in between there, just laboring. There were a lot of times, didn't you have tons of friends and student midwives show up?

Yes, yes. There were a lot of people in the house. So my three friends, three or four friends from midwifery school were there to help, to kind of be my Doula help, I don't know, learn student observation. They were getting credit for it. I was they were my friends. It was all just part of it. And my sisters were there, and my mother was there. My mother's boyfriend was there. My father was there. My father's girlfriend was there. In the house. Okay? My mother and sisters and the midwife my mid what, the friends of mine who were in midwifery school, were all in the room okay at the time of birth. But anyway, I remember transition being extremely difficult. I very much can relate to that feeling that women have where they want to flee their body. They think they cannot do this anymore. This is the end like I cannot go another step, and the vomiting and just complete overwhelm. But my midwife reminded me that this is the point where, this is the point where, you know you're making good progress. This is good progress. So I got through transition, and finally it was time to push. And I was very, very relieved about that. That was around 10pm and she got me on a birth stool, and I didn't have a super long pushing face. It was only about 45 minutes. Lola was born at 1045 in a squatting position on a birthing stool, and I do remember at that moment that her head was out thinking, Oh my God. What if the shoulders get stuck? I'm going to push with all my life on the next contraction so that her shoulders don't get stuck, but it's not really the right way to do it. So I did, and she flew out. There was no chance her shoulders were getting stuck. She came out like a rocket at the shoulders. And I did have a secondary tear, probably because of that, but I just needed it to be over. You know, I was, I was at that point, so incredibly exhausted after the birth. I do remember also having that feeling of like, you know, being out of my body. And it took me a minute to even, like, kind of come around to being able to hold her, look at her, went over to the bed, and, you know, she was skin, skin with me. I did have a fair bit of bleeding, and I needed some stitches. So all of that little postpartum stuff took some time, and early postpartum stuff, and I think I've shared this on the podcast before, like I was really out of it after the birth. I remember making the midwife stay, asking her to please stay the night and sleep over, because I was very worried that when I fell asleep that I might not wake up. I was that exhausted. So it had been 36 hours, and I probably, you know, I tried to drink and eat throughout, but I was vomiting a lot, so I was probably pretty dehydrated.

What do you think about the fact that you felt like you might just die? I remember you've shared that before. What? What? How can you explain that? Were you just depleted, or it just sounds so you sound so vulnerable and scared. Was it simply depletion?

I think I had lost a lot of blood, right, and I was really weak, right? And I just I had never felt like that before. I had never felt so depleted and exhausted, and it just felt like my body's just going to, like, give out. I never looked back on my birth as anything short of what I expected to be. It was just long and hard. I have a photo so it didn't change your expectations. Really, you didn't have many expectations, I guess.

I mean, I think I expected a first time birth to be long and and difficult. Here's, can you see that? Okay okay, so here in the photo, you can see there's Paul and Heather and Shannon, two of my very dear friends still who are midwives and somebody they're listening to the heartbeat that's in my mom's room and this I'm covering I'm covering it up so we don't get flagged for pornography. There's the squatting position Paul holding me and the midwife here, and the big, bold flash. Light, the big mag light right there, so they could see what was going on.

That's a great photo in the shower. I think that's about all I have so many positions now I'm in the shower. Now I'm in my mom's bedroom. Now, so many stages of this labor. There she is, just after birth. This was probably the next day.

So in the tub, year, breastfeeding, Yes, yep, in the tub breastfeeding, which many mothers are told that they shouldn't get in the tub after birth, or the baby shouldn't get wet. Not true. Totally fine. Okay, okay, so on to Ruby's birth, two and a half years later, Ruby was born, and she was another home birth, of course, and this time I was working now as a home birth midwife, so I had been going to birth as a as a pregnant mother. In fact, somebody wrote into Instagram the other day about I had, I don't know I had shared a photo or something. I can't remember now how it came up. She was like, Oh my gosh, you were at my birth. I mean, you were pregnant and I was pregnant. And I just have such this beautiful, vivid memory of us, two pregnant women, just like, sitting together, working through contractions. And it was, like, so beautiful and uniting, because I was right on the verge of having a baby, and there she was having a baby, and yeah, it was kind of special to be a midwife assisting other women through birth. When you are about to give birth yourself, or you're pregnant yourself, absolutely. Her birth was very different. So there is hope for those women who have very long first labors like I did. Her birth was very quick. I definitely did a little bit more focus in her pregnancy on trying to, I think, focus more on, like I did more prenatal yoga and more sort of affirmation, and I read some books that were, you know, different than what I was studying in midwifery school. Midwifery school was a lot of medical and I did have some of those fears in my first birth, and I didn't want to bring those into my second birth. So I read birthing from within, and I read gentle birth, gentle mothering, by Sarah Buckley, which I think is one of the most amazing books out there. And I do think I focused more in that pregnancy on trying to have a more calm, peaceful. I mean, not that low's birth wasn't calm and peaceful, but just less fear. There was, there was, there were those subconscious thoughts because of being in Midway free school and because I was surrounded by hospital birth at that time. So I did find, this morning, a little Ruby's birth book, and I actually did write her birth story, which is great, because it was really fun for me to read. So Ruby's birth story, June 10, Sunday. Both Ruby and lo were born on Sundays. She was born at 12:31am the day before you were born, Mama, Nana and grandma and Lola and I all took a long, hot walk along the ocean. So my mother and my mother in law were at Ruby's birth, which I actually did not remember. I rode the seesaw and the swings. Saturday was a bit of a rainy day, and I spent much of the day nesting and taking care of last minute errands, including a trip to the toy store for a princess castle for your big sister. I had a few strong contractions during the day, but I didn't suspect anything until the evening, when the occasional contraction felt quite different. We prepared a fancy full steak and lobster dinner. And by the way, Ruby still has lobster dinner every year on her birthday. And we finished around 9pm I had one big contraction that made me think, Oh, this is for real, but I didn't want to get overly excited. Grandma suspected the birth would happen soon. The kitchen was cleaned and I put Lola to bed. Lola knew you were coming soon. She insisted that Mama put her to bed, and she touched my belly, saying, I see little feet. Lola convinced me, and so I called Vicki, the midwife around 930 just to warn her before bed. I took a long soak in a warm tub and had just two contractions. I thought that I would try to go to bed, but soon realized there was no way contractions were coming every three to five minutes, I called Auntie Heather and Auntie Ashley. Auntie Ashley is my sister, and Heather is the midwife who was at my first birth. I checked my cervix around 10pm I have no recollection of doing that. I checked my cervix and it was three centimeters or so. Daddy pumped up the birth tub and we began to fill it with water, changed the bed sheets, got the herbs going in, warm blankets. Very soon, I was contracting every three minutes or less. I called Vicki, the midwife, to come. I was desperate to get into the water. Finally I could, and things only went faster. Contractions came every two minutes, and they were hugely intense. But quick, I hung from the birth sling and moaned open. I remember that I did do a lot of that practice prenatally, and that was really helpful. And the other big helpful thing with Ruby's birth was that I hung the sling from I hung a sling from the ceiling.

Yep, and you used that, yeah, leveraged a little weight against it, and then you could, like, bear it helps to bear down, doesn't it? It helps to bear down. And I think it helps to stretch the body. And remember how, in our episode with body ready method, right? She talked about opening the rib cage, yeah, opening the rib cage opens the cervix, yeah, and that hanging does the same thing. It just stretches. So I did that Norse birth as well, and that is something like, I feel like I could never give birth without that. That was so helpful. So okay, I hung from the birth sling and mount open with every contraction. Vicky arrived and listened to your heart and you were perfect. Moments later, I felt pressure in my bottom, two contractions more, and I was spontaneously pushing. I heard a pop. My water broke, and then I felt burning inside. I reached down, and I felt your head only an inch inside me. I pushed again, and I felt it opening me. A few more gentle pushes, and Mama received your head into my hands. I will never forget that feeling of guiding your head, your hard round head, into my hand, and the amazing relief when the tension released in your head was free. Your shoulders came out easily, although it was awkward to reach them from the front out. You came with your mouth wide open. I brought you slowly to the surface, and you cried as your face came out of the water. No one else touched you. The room was quiet, and you and Mama looked at each other as I held you close to my left breast, I still assumed that you were a boy, and it was several minutes before I reached down in between your legs in search of testicles, but they were not there. I was shocked. I looked at your hands and feet, relieved to see that you had all your fingers and toes. I was surprised by your nose, as it was quite turned up at birth. Remember my mom commenting on that?

What did she say? That Ruby looked funny? Yeah, yes, her nose was, like, completely turned up. Oh, like she must have been squished up against the side of my uterus with her nose up. Like, I mean, it was all I was like, Oh, no. Like, this is, this is, you know, not ideal. Anyway, it flattened out normally. I just gazed at you, wondering who you were that I did not know as a girl. For nine months, I was so convinced she was a boy. I was absolutely sure I was having a boy. So it was very shocking when I when she was a girl. Hmm. We stayed in the warm water, and Mama pulled out your placenta. The tub turned red, but I didn't want to let you go. I didn't want to let you go. Yet you found the breast and you latched on yourself. Eventually, we climbed into bed together, laying skin to skin. Finally, I let daddy hold you as mommy ate. I forgot to mention the vomiting, which felt so releasing as the contractions built. Lola held you too. And finally, we settled into bed. I couldn't sleep much. I still had too much birth energy in my blood. You slept well, and we were all up at 8am to begin your first day in the new world. You were born on your due date, and Mommy wrote to you in the morning telling you it was time to come. You were born on Sunday, just like your sister.

That's so sweet.

Yeah, I was I forgot about this, and I was really happy to find it so sweet. So Norse birth is probably the one that I have talked the most about on the podcast, because he was the unintentional, unassisted, home birth in the water. There isn't a whole lot to say about his birth, because it was just really quick, and I was, you know, on my own. Once again, I had a very healthy, easy pregnancy. I really didn't do any prenatal care with him. It was my third baby at that point, and I did like an initial prenatal visit. And, you know, maybe by the time I was 36 weeks, I went every couple weeks or something. He came right around 40 weeks. And I was watching a movie with Paul, a terrible movie, um, Black Swan.

Oh, yeah, psychological thriller, yeah, not, not great vibes at all.

Oh, it put me into labor, I guess because it was disturbing. I don't know well, that usually would tighten the cervix and prevent labor. So I think he came despite that you were watching maybe like that, but you definitely should have been watching something that would make you feel in love again, right? Oxytocin, yeah, yeah, that was not it, no. So I am trying to think if there was anything significant leading up to his, his birth. I think the main, the main. Thing with North was that I was really dedicated in that pregnancy to take the proper postpartum care of myself. I did not do that with Lola. I did not do that with Ruby. I was, you know, baking pies on day four postpartum. It was Thanksgiving when Lola was born, and I was baking pies on day four, which was crazy. And then with Ruby, we had to actually go to Canada to go to camp on her 11th day of life. So I got in the car and drove 15 hours with her to Canada, breastfeeding her every hour and a half to two hours along the way. It was a long journey. And then I was at the at the summer camp. So the nice thing there was that I didn't have to do any cooking or cleaning, but it was also I was surrounded by tons of people and kids, and it was hard to rest, and I certainly didn't take the two weeks in bed. So I was very dedicated to doing that with North and --

Did you think he would be a boy?

Yes, I was absolutely sure about North, although I was absolutely sure about Ruby too. Although I do think Ruby has some of that male energy, so I must have been picking up on that boy energy with North. I Yes, I had had two girls, and I really wanted a boy, and I do remember saying that I'm going to have a third and I'm going to have a boy, and I know exactly where and when he was conceived, which was in Canada. And Paul and I were taking a hike, and I came down from the hike and onto the trail, and there was this Hawk that flew down and, like, landed in the tree right in front of us, and was just staring at us. And I remember staring at the Hawk, and the hawk staring at me, and I turned to Paul, and I was like, we're having a boy, so I like it, boy, you, you, you, yada yada. How you conceived? You're like, we went for a hike, yada yada yada. Came down, team down the trail, and Hawk stared at us. So that sounds like a fun conception? Yes, and a Woods boy, a Woods baby, very cool, very nice. And now everyone who goes to your camp is listening and going, What the heck are they doing in the woods? Are you kidding me?

Yeah. Okay, so his birth was very quick. From the time I had my first contraction, it was within three contractions. I was calling midwife. It was late at night, and I felt bad. I remember feeling bad like, oh, I should wait. I shouldn't call her. She's sleeping. I don't want to disturb her. But a few more contractions later, and I was like, you really should get on your way. And barely got the tub full. I got it maybe up to my midsection, but it still felt incredibly relieving to be in the tub. I had the same setup with the with the Maya wrap hanging from the ceiling, so I could use that traction, which was so helpful, and I wanted Norse birth to be on film. So I remember telling Paul, like, you really should go get the video camera, because I think the baby is coming. Midwife was not there yet. She was still about 30 minutes away, and he left the room to go get the video camera and wake up my mom, because she was just down the hall. And as they both came into the room, Paul flipped on the camera, and I was receiving north so there was this period of a few minutes where I was alone in the room, and I knew he was coming, and I just remember thinking to myself, you're on your own, like whatever happens, you're in charge, like nobody is here to do anything. Like you just have to stay calm. And you know what to do. You know how to catch a baby, just let it happen. And I just did. And He came out very easily, and he was wrapped around his cord quite a bit, so I had to unwrap him a little bit, and he wasn't breathing at first, but I could tell that his tone and color were fine, but he, you know, a lot of babies don't breathe right when they're born. Unlike Ruby, who came out screaming, he was quiet and not breathing. How do you know he wasn't breathing? I don't think he had taken his first breath, because usually when babies take a first breath, there's a little bit of a sound with it. So he was just still okay, but his color was okay and his tone was okay. So I knew he was okay. And I remember thinking I might have to help him a little because he was birthed so fast. Babies who come really fast are a little bit stunned sometimes, and it takes them a little longer to take their first breath. And who knows what was going on at the time of birth. I mean, his cord could have been compressed a little bit. He never had a single heart rate check. So I have no idea what was what was going on in labor, but I knew. That he was okay also, because I looked down at him, and he reached his hand up and he touched my face, or like right here, like my neck. He just reached his hand up and touched me, and that's the one I knew, Okay, you're fine. You're fine. But I still do. I did go down to his mouth, and I blew a little bit into his mouth just to help him out. And then he did open his mouth. He didn't really cry. He just kind of made a little sound, but I knew that was enough. And he was so calm, he never cried. And I just sat there in the tub with him, and I waited for the midwife to come. And my placenta probably had separated, but I didn't really want to deal with that on my own, so I just waited for the midwife to get there, who got there about 2530 minutes after he was born, and she helped me get the placenta out, and then we climbed in. So the placenta was born in the water, just like with Ruby. And then we climbed into the bed, and it was the sun was coming up, and I had breakfast, and he was with me and breastfeeding, and it was just beautiful, perfect, and I did not leave my bedroom for 12 more days. And you've described that as the happiest days of your whole life. Yes, I had beautiful sunlight in my room, and the windows open, and it was spring, and I just remember every morning like the sun just coming in the room every day, and he and I just stayed there, just in love with each other, breastfeeding, sleeping, breastfeeding. I let my mom and Paul completely take care of me and the other kids. And the kids would come in, Lola and Ruby would come in and get in bed and snuggle with me for a little bit of time, and then leave and go do their thing. And it was it was bliss. It was blissful. I love that time.

So those are my births.

What did each of your three births teach you?

Oh, wow, okay, because you were studying professionally. And still, when we experience it, it's going to be a complete it's a complete awakening. It's something you can't, you can't possibly get, no matter how many textbooks you read. So yeah, I was just wondering. I think the biggest thing that I learned through all of my births, really is about the importance of the postpartum time. And North birth really taught me that, like the uninterrupted skin to skin time like if there is one thing that I could tell the world to make the world a better place, it would be to stop separating moms and babies at the time of birth, like those, minutes and hours after birth with your Baby are so important, and it makes birth go better, and it makes your body adjust to post birth better. It protects you. It protects your baby. It starts all the cascade of hormones for your baby and yourself and your breastfeeding off on the right track. And I just think it's transformative, like in the big picture of life is profoundly important, and we are constantly disturbing that and constantly interrupting that, and we don't know what the real consequences of that are. So stop. I've learned that with North like, just stay together, stay in bed, enjoy that time. It is precious.

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I do know that I wrote Lola's birth story, but after her birth some time ago, and I do not know where it is, Speak of the devil, my goodness, that's Lola calling. Okay, weird, yeah, I'm gonna want to grab it. No, I'm gonna just tell her up, call her back. Why does that's such a strange expression, what is Speak of the devil? Why is that? I don't know.

We should look that up from. Where's that come from? Speak of the devil. Maybe beautiful, very intuitive child, honest to God, no coincidence that she called me right as I'm beginning to tell her birth story.

Okay, okay, so medieval superstition. In the 16th century and earlier, it was considered dangerous or taboo to mention the devil by name. People believed that speaking of him could summon him or bring him mis or bring misfortune. The full phrase was along the lines of Talk of the devil, and he is bound to appear over time. The phrase became less literal and more idiomatic, especially by the 17th and 18th centuries. By the 19th century, it had evolved into a humorous or ironic expression used when someone just mentioned suddenly shows up.

Okay. So, so yeah, it's okay. It's fine. It's good vibes, okay. It's not bad energy, not at all.