Thing 3 was born at home in our RV on April 12th. It was by far the most painful but also one of the most beautiful and empowering experiences in my life. We had a birth photographer so as soon as I get those pictures and can find the time I’ll share the story.

I’m grateful to report that Thing 3 is healthy and thriving. Nursing is going well and he gained his birthweight back plus 2 oz by the time he was 10 days old. I’m recovering slowly and couldn’t be more in love with this little guy.

It’s really cool to have a baby and teenagers at the same time. Not only is it fun to watch them interact with the baby but I have a new much broader perspective and know how fast this time will go. I don’t mind getting up at 2 am for feedings and I’m spending every second I can cuddling and taking in his newborn smell.

An hour after birth.

Here are some pictures of our first week together.

My midwife has given me a “21 day rule”. Meaning I’m not supposed to do much for 21 days until my body heals. At first I was resistant but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. My body went through a lot the last 9 months and certainly during the 19 hours of back labor and pushing out a posterior baby. (I ended up with 15 stitches! Yikes!) Numerous times I’ve heard women talk about how quickly they were back on their feet and how quickly they “bounced back”.

I’m choosing to pass on that “badge of honor”. Instead, I’m going to give my body the time it needs to heal and spend this time bonding with my sweet new baby.

Also I’m not planning to start an exercise routine until at least 6 weeks postpartum and it will most likely be 8+ weeks. Again, I want to give my body adequate time to fully heal. I have nothing to prove. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss being active.  I’m really looking forward to swinging kettlebells and yoga again. In the meantime, I’m learning more about fitness by taking an online course to get some CEUs needed to maintain my personal trainer certification.

I know there has been a lot of baby stuff the last few months. It’s where I’m at but I do  plan to start posting more about fitness again. I have quite a few more videos to edit and I plan on sharing my journey about losing the baby weight. I gained about 41 pounds and two weeks after giving birth have about 20 pounds left to lose. Not only that but we plan to start traveling again in about a month. We are currently trying to decide if we want to head back out west, up to Maine, or perhaps up to Alaska. So there is definitely some interesting times ahead.  In the meantime, I hope you’ll stick around.

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

Keep up with my kettlebell workouts, real food recipes, and more in one of three ways! 1. Sign up to have posts emailed to your inbox. 2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or 3. “like” Girl Heroes on Facebook. Simple dimple!

Journey with our family on the road at Newschool Nomads as we travel fulltime in RV through the United States.

The post Welcome Thing 3!!!! appeared first on Girl Heroes.

So I’ve been eating pineapple and dates, walking, doing spinning babies exercises (don’t ask), and spent more time on my hands and knees these last few weeks than I have in my entire life. (I really should have invested in knee pads.) I’ve also turned in all my Go RVing assignments, written a few drafts for my blogs, cleaned the RV multiple times, and stocked my fridge and freezer with food. I even trimmed my bangs just in case I was subconsciously being stressed out by them and besides labor is uncomfortable enough without being poked in the eyes. Still no baby. Maybe I’m going to be the first woman to be pregant forever and I’ll get to be on the cover of Time or something.

In the meantime, here is Thing 2’s birth story.

After my less than ideal experience birthing Thing 1, I knew I wanted a different kind of birth if possible. Recovering from a c-section was awful but what was worse was not being able to hold him right away and the problems it caused with nursing. With my next baby I was determined to be able to hold him immediately assuming he was healthy and my determination led to a different set of choices.

The Prenatal Days

We started trying for another baby when Thing 1 was a little over a year. It didn’t take long to get pregnant but I ended up miscarrying due to a blighted ovum.  A few months later, I found out I was pregnant again when Brent brought me some Jack in the Box chicken fingers and I almost threw up at the sight of them. Although Jack in the Box could make an 80 year old man feel like he had morning sickness.

Emotional/Spiritual/Relational

This pregnancy was a completely different game than my previous pregnancy. I still went to therapy but only once or twice a month. For the most part, I had overcome the mental struggles and depression. We had bought our first house, a fixer upper, and were busy making it our home. However, the first few years of our marriage had been rough on Brent and I and we faced some problems. It wasn’t fun but he started going to therapy with me and over the course of the pregnancy we began to communicate better and develop an even deeper understanding of each other. I’m so thankful that we chose to face and resolve those problems before our second baby arrived.

Physical

Like Thing 1, morning sickness was pretty rough but around 12 weeks it went away. I still didn’t know much about exercise and nutrition but I knew I didn’t want to gain 70 pounds again. Especially since I hadn’t lost all of the weight I had gained with Thing 1. I also knew that eating a pint of ice cream and multiple packs of candy a day wouldn’t help anything so I ate much better in comparison and ended up gaining about half the weight. I hadn’t started strength training at that point in my life but we were busy fixing up our house so without knowing it I was doing all sorts of functional fitness. I remember  shoveling huge piles of dirt at 6 months pregnant as well painting, sanding, and gardening. I was on my feet working and taking care of a toddler for hours every day.

Educational

It never really occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to do a VBAC (vaginally birth after cesarean). In fact during that time VBACs were actually more common than they are now as I would find out eleven years later. In 1999 the ACOG recommended that a doctor to be immediately available to perform a cesarean resulting in many hospitals banning vbacs over the next few years. Luckily, at the time of my pregnancy my hospital had not issued a ban. Unfortunately, the hospital has since changed their policy. Anyway, having a vbac didn’t seem like a big deal or a risk at the time. It seemed like what any healthy woman should do if they so desired.

It should also be noted that due the increase of c-sections (It’s now 1 in every 3 women.) in 2010 the ACOG released less restrictive guidelines on VBACS and said, “most women with one previous cesarean delivery with a low-transverse incision are candidates for and should be counseled about VBAC and offered a TOLAC” (trial of labor after cesarean). Unfortunately, many (most?) doctors and hospitals still stick with the old guidelines even when a repeat cesarean carries more risks compared to a vbac. Even the mainstream Mayo Clinic says,  “The risks associated with a vaginal delivery are lower than the risks associated with a C-section overall.”

All that to say I was determined to experience a natural birth and was willing to take the extra steps in education to make that happen.

We decided to take a Bradley Childbirth Class this time around and read the book, Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way: Revised Edition. It has the worst pictures in a birth book ever but has some really great advice especially for the partner. I also read the The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. A really good read btw.

Instead of using my previous doctor who was supportive of vbacs, I started seeing a midwife at his practice and planned for a natural birth. We hired the same doula that we had used for our first birth and since I was facing my fears this time around I hoped I’d actually be able to lean into her for support unlike the last time.

Birth

This time around I was impatient and a little worried about having a big baby again so I decided to drink castor oil and have my membranes stripped the day of my due date. Whether it was the castor oil or just a coincidence I don’t know but it worked. I went into a labor a few hours later. I have a few words to describe labor.

Back labor was hell.

It felt like someone was drilling into my spinal column without anesthesia. I moved from my bed to the tub and back again. At one point, I felt like I was going mad and ran around our bedroom screaming. All my preparation felt useless and it became a living nightmare. I wanted to kill anyone said labor could be pleasant or enjoyable. Those women had clearly never experienced back labor. (For the record, I am still hopeful that labor can be pleasant and doesn’t have to be painful but we’ll see in the upcoming days.)

Despite the worse pain in my life, I was determined to have a successful vbac and had learned that the longer I stayed at home laboring the better chance I had of achieving that goal. After what felt like 10,000 years I started to get the urge to push and my doula, who was a midwife in training, checked me to find out I was dilated to 8 cm. Time to go to the hospital.

Getting to the hospital was a blur. I road in my doula’s car “just in case” and Brent followed us. After checking in and getting a room, a nurse scolded me for pushing because my midwife hadn’t arrived. My doula whispered to me and said if I wanted to push gently I could. Thank God because it hurt like hell to not push.

My midwife arrived and checked me I was still at an 8 cm. At this point I was mentally and physically exhausted and felt like I would do anything to get rid of the pain. I asked for an epidural and despite being so far along in labor my midwife thought it would be a good idea so I could get some rest before I pushed. A few minutes later I felt the relief of the epidural and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep for a few hours.

Early in the morning, my midwife came back and found I still had a “lip” around my cervix. In other words, I wasn’t 100% dilated so she pushed back the lip and asked for the epidural to be turned off. What?!?! No, I begged for it to be left on but she insisted that the baby would be out before it wore off.

Wrong.

What we didn’t know (or if my midwife knew she didn’t tell me) was Thing 2 was posterior or facing up instead of being in the ideal position of looking at my backbone where the smallest part of his head comes out first. This was why I was having such ferocious back labor. His skull was grinding against my spine. The same with pushing. For over two hours, I pushed what felt like a stuck bowling ball.

If you remember from Thing 1’s birth story I had a few issues with birth. While I was no longer totally grossed out by birth, there was no way I was going to look in a mirror and Brent was not allowed to look down there either. (He doesn’t have any issues with birth but totally respects my feelings.) My midwife suggested Brent sit in between my legs and we would both pull on opposites ends of a towel while I pushed. Ummm….no. But my midwife insisted so she draped a small towel over that area and would periodically peek under to towel to check my progress. In hindsight, it was kinda funny. The towel pushing also really helped me to push more efficiently and it felt good to work as a team.

Finally two hours later, I saw Thing 2’s face looking right up at me. He never did turn and came out posterior. My midwife took my hands and slipped them under his armpits and I pulled him the rest of the way out and up to my chest. A completely different experience than having my baby whisked by me in the operating room.

We spent the night in my hospital room and he never left my side. It was wonderful. The nurses on the other hand were less than wonderful. It seems they had to come in every five minutes for something. At one point, I was falling asleep and someone came in rudely insisted I get out of bed and sit on a sitz bath. Later, another woke me and Thing 2 up and said we “had to nurse”. But after my previous birth I really didn’t care too much. They were just doing their job and I was just happy to have not been sliced open and have my baby by my side.

Postpartum

I don’t know if it was not having a c-section or being in a better mental space or both but postpartum was much easier this time around. Recovering from a vaginal birth wasn’t a walk in the park. I had torn and had stitches but it sure was a heck of a lot easier than a recovering from a c-section. I did have some postpartum depression but it wasn’t as bad as the first time.

Nursing went well and my milk came in much quicker than with my previous delivery. I wasn’t hooking myself up to a breast pump for hours a day. That was a huge relief.

My biggest challenge was Thing 1. He and I were so close (we still are) and he wasn’t particularly excited about his new baby brother. In fact, a few days after bringing the baby home, he grabbed my cheeks in anger and screamed in my face. It broke my heart to see him so upset but with time he realized that he was still loved.

What I learned

I learned that hard work pays off. I spent hours educating myself and preparing for a vbac. I learned you have to stay flexible. Getting an epidural wasn’t part of my plan but it turned out to be a good choice because it allowed me to get some rest which helped with the two hours of pushing that followed.

I learned that nutrition makes a difference. As I said in my other birth post, I ate a terrible high sugar diet with Thing 1 and gained almost 70 pounds. While my diet was far from perfect with Thing 2, I did “watch what I ate” and gained about half the weight. Thing 2 weighed a full two pounds less than Thing 1.

Most importantly, I learned love multiplies. Before Thing 2 was born, I remember thinking how could I possibly ever love another child as much as Thing 1. I know that may sound weird but it was something that would cross my mind every so often. I’m not the kind of woman who necessarily bonds with my babies while they are still in utero. I wish I was but I’m just not. For me they feel more like aliens than babies until that first look. However, within minutes of holding Thing 2 I was in love and just like Thing 1 that love grew stronger every day until I thought I would burst. I still think that even with an almost teen and teenager.

If You are Interested in a VBAC

Choosing to have a VBAC or a repeat cesarean is a very personal decision. What is right for one woman may be very wrong for another. What is important is understanding the facts for each choice and finding a care provider who is a straight shooter instead of fear monger.  You need a provider who educates truthfully, listens and respects your body and your choices. For me having a VBAC, while hard, was worth all the effort. For women interested in VBACS I suggest the following sites.

Improving Birth
International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN)
VBACfacts
Birth Without Fear

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

Keep up with my kettlebell workouts, real food recipes, and more in one of three ways! 1. Sign up to have posts emailed to your inbox. 2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or 3. “like” Girl Heroes on Facebook. Simple dimple!

Journey with our family on the road at Newschool Nomads as we travel fulltime in RV through the United States.

The post The Birth of Thing 2 – My Successful Vbac appeared first on Girl Heroes.

Still no baby here. My “due date” isn’t until April 5th so while I’m more than ready for his arrival and really uncomfortable I’m not worried. After all due dates are really just “guesstimates”. Babies come when they are ready not when they are “due”.

As I’m preparing for the birth of Thing 3, I decided I wanted to reminisce and reflect on my previous births. While my first birth was far from a tragedy, it was on some level traumatic and far from ideal. It left physical and mental scars that took time to heal. Perhaps in sharing my story someone else will feel less alone or less crazy or more hopeful or something. If anything it’s nice for me to look back and see how much I have learned and grown since the birth of Thing 1 and, of course, to remember falling in love with Thing 1 all over again.

The Prenatal Days – A Huge Bag of Mixed Emotions

I found out I was pregnant with Thing 1 about a month and a half after a trip to India where I had gotten really sick. I actually went to the doctor and asked for antibiotics because I thought I was still sick with a lingering stomach virus. The doctor advised me to wait over the weekend and if I didn’t feel better he would do some testing. A few days later, I took a pregnancy test and was surprised to find out out I was pregnant. It wasn’t particularly “good timing”. I was getting ready to move to a new town, finishing college, and on top of those things I was struggling with depression and had been recently diagnosed with a personality disorder (Borderline).

Emotional/Relational/Spiritual

It was a long 9 months. We had recently moved to Ventura from Santa Barbara and I had very few friends. Most of my days were spent at home crying. If you have ever faced the true despair that real depression brings you’ll understand what I mean. It’s more than a “bad day”. The days were long, lonely, and empty. During this time, I started going to therapy 2-3 times a week. These were dark days, probably some of the darkest of my life, but even in the midst of the darkness God gave me a few candles to guide my steps as He always does. First and most important was Brent. He was and will always be my best friend and my rock. We clung to each other through that dark tunnel and came out the other side stronger than before. Second, was my therapist and my parents who made therapy possible. I really don’t know if we would have made it through the darkness without them. Thirdly, we started going to a new church and the pastor’s wife took me under her wing. She would pick me up and take me with her while she “toodled around town”, i.e., ran errands. She listening without judgement to my endless lists of fears and worries.

For reasons I won’t go into, I really wanted a boy. The thought of having a girl terrified me more than the thought of giving birth itself. I prayed constantly that I would have a boy. Seeing that my mental state was where it was at the time, we decided it was best to not find out the gender. A few days before I went into labor I went to the mall and bought a pink dress because I figured I’d better start accepting the fact that my baby had a 50/50 chance of being a girl.

Physical

Back in those days I didn’t know much about health and nutrition. Prior to getting pregnant, I had been an unhealthy vegetarian who lived off of cereal, pasta, and canned lima beans. Once my pregnancy cravings kicked in all I wanted was meat and I never looked back.

During those 9 months I took eating for two literally. I remember sitting in class one day and eating a packs of peanut M&Ms, Kit-Kats, and Twizzlers, one right after another, when I noticed a girl staring at me. This is how I ate my entire pregnancy. I ate a full pint of ice cream almost daily. I didn’t get full blown gestational diabetes but did have to take the the long 3 hour test because of the results of my first test. It was no surprise that I put nearly 70 pounds on my 118 pound body.

Before I was pregnant exercise consisted of an occasional run around the track at college. I thought if I could run a mile it meant I was “healthy”. Once I was pregnant forget about running. I didn’t do any exercise until we joined the YMCA late in my pregnancy and I took up swimming a few days a week because it felt good to be weightless even if it meant swimming in a plaid tent.

Educational

Although childbirth is an act of nature, it is so important to educate ourselves especially at this point in time when many (most?) doctors want to turn it into a medical condition. Not to to mention how the media falsely portrays childbirth conditioning most women to think it “has” to be awful and painful. Like most new mothers, I took a class but was so TERRIFIED that I zoned out every time I was there to cope with my fear. I fully embraced that birth was going to be excruciatingly painful. Not only did the thought of giving birth scare me but it disgusted me as well. Of course I read What to Expect When Expecting which is the WORST pregnancy book out there but at the time I didn’t know any better. Unfortunately, my lack of education showed when it came time to birth.

The Birth – Classic Path to a C-Section

I went into labor on my own on April 21, 2000. I can’t remember much except that it hurt. HURT!  Of course, it did because that was what I was fully expecting to happen. If only I had listened and took the time to learn the pain management skills that were taught in my class. What would have been even more important would have been to take the time to work through my fears and preconceptions regarding birth. But I was where I was and that was at a place of fear.

What followed next was a classic path to a c-section. First, I went into the hospital too early at only a few centimeters dialated. Next, I asked for an epidural right away. I’m not 100% against epidurals (I do think it’s healthier for mama and baby to go without but so far I’ve never done that) but asking for one during early labor can slow it down which is exactly what happened. One intervention lead to the next. I was put on my back (not good) and since my labor slowed they gave me pitocin. Pitocin can make contractions unnaturally strong which can affect the baby’s heart rate. The pitocin, laying on my back, continuous fetal monitoring, and fear was a recipe for a c-section. After many hours of a slowed labor and a the baby’s heartrate going up and down, the doctor decided it was best to have a c-section.

I don’t blame my doctor’s decision. He is a great doctor and was wonderful during the c-section. They took me to the OR and upped my epidural. Brent came in and stayed at my head under the sheet looking at me with intense love and reassurance the entire time. I can’t imagine what it would have been like without him.

Before they cut me open, I remember asking my doctor if I was numb. He asked if I could feel him pinching my skin. I couldn’t so he proceeded with the surgery. The surgery didn’t hurt but I could feel pulling and tugging. Thing 1 came out and the doctor said, “It’s a boy.” For a moment, I forgot I was in the middle of surgery and was overcome with joy at having a boy! A BOY!!!!!! Our new little boy had a less than ideal apgar score and there was meconium staining so they took him to the NICU for observation.

I only got a glimpse of him, much less a chance to hold him, while they wheeled him by me in a cart. It would be 18 hours until I got to hold my baby. That was the worst part of the whole ordeal.

The next thing I knew I was given a shot and went out like a light. I woke up later in a recovery room and then later in the room I would stay in for 5 days. The only thing I can remember about the next few hours was being in the most pain I had ever been in in my life and pressing a button that gave me pain medicine. Oh and I was thirsty, so very thirsty, but they would only let me have ice chips.

The following day nurses came in to poke or prod me but I still had not seen my baby. Brent was going back and forth between me and the NICU. Finally, a midwife who owned the birth center where I had taken my childbirth class, was visiting someone in the hospital. She stopped to see me and found out I hadn’t seen my baby. Immediately, she went to the nurses and asked that I be able to see him. It wasn’t long before I was put into a wheelchair and taken to the NICU.

Thing 1 had his own room and was soooo big (Almost 10 pounds!) compared to all the other babies in the NICU. Although there was nothing wrong with him he was still under “observation”. It broke my heart that he had to lay there all alone when his mama was just down the hall. I didn’t know enough nor did I have the confidence at the time to question hospital protocol so I kept being wheeled down there every few hours to see him. Finally after a few days they released him to my room. Then a few days later I was released to go home.

For me, it had been a confusing, emotionally draining, and verging on traumatic five days.

Postpartum – Things Get Worse Before Better

Recovering from a c-section sucks. I don’t think I had ever or have since been so sore. It felt like someone had forced me to do 5 million sit-ups at gun point. But that was nothing compared to the emotional pain I felt at not being able to nurse my baby like I had planned.

Since Thing 1 had been immediately taken away from me, I had not got to nurse him much so my milk was sooo very slow to come in. When it did finally come in there wasn’t much. This isn’t uncommon for c-section moms. If you haven’t nursed a baby it’s hard to describe the desire to nourish them. It’s overwhelming and, for me, it defined the next few weeks of who I was. Since I wasn’t making enough milk I saw myself as a failure and became crazy obsessed with increasing my milk supply. After almost every feeding, I would pump for about an extra hour. This added up to 8-12 hours of pumping a day. It was painful physically but mentally excruciating. In hindsight, I was not well but we didn’t have much of a support system at the time nor did we know better.  Brent and I were fumbling along together. I, desperate to nourish my baby, was feeling like a failure and fighting postpartum depression. He, desperate to provide love and support to me, was taking care of our home on very little sleep.

Those few weeks after birth were long, dark, and lonely but eventually, my milk supply caught up with the demand. Well mostly, I still had to supplement with formula a little bit. I walked in my college graduation with a forced smile. My c-section healed and we eventually found our new normal as a family of three. Day by day, I fell in love with our new son a little more. In the process, my depression and severe emotional struggles faded to what would eventually become a memory.

What I learned – God Heals and Babies and Birth Matter

First, I learned that God heals. Not to get all “religious” on you but this is the only way I can put it. He not only healed my physical wounds but the emotional ones as well. Having our first son was a huge step taken towards wholeness. It may not have been what I had planned for my life but it turned out to be what God knew I needed. Fourteen years later, I can’t even begin to imagine my life without Thing 1. He is an amazing child and one of the best “surprises” I have ever been given.

Secondly, I learned the importance of educating myself about childbirth and facing my fears surrounding it. For many women, including myself, it’s not enough to read What to Expect When Expecting or go to any birth class. There were fears that needed addressing and I should have taken the time to learn about the possible consquences of interventions. I’ll never know what the birth could have been like had I not chosen my first intervention, the epidural. Perhaps I could have had a natural birth and breastfeeding would have gone more smoothly and not become the mental nightmare it was those first few weeks. Or not. I’ll never know.

People often say to mothers who have had a less than ideal birth, “At least you have a healthy baby”, as if that’s all that matters. While I understand the sentiment, it’s not the full picture. A healthy baby is not all that matters. Healthy babies are important but so are healthy mamas and positive birth experiences. 

I was determined that when the time came my second birth would not be a repeat of my first birth. In the meantime, I fell deeply in love my surprise baby, Thing 1.

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

Keep up with my kettlebell workouts, real food recipes, and more in one of three ways! 1. Sign up to have posts emailed to your inbox. 2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or 3. “like” Girl Heroes on Facebook. Simple dimple!

Journey with our family on the road at Newschool Nomads as we travel fulltime in RV through the United States.

The post The Less Than Perfect Birth of My Perfect Baby, Thing 1 (and what I learned from my “emergency c-section”) appeared first on Girl Heroes.

Ten years ago today a brand new chapter of my life was opened.

I gave birth to my son via an emergency c-section.

I was a senior in college and struggling with a severe mental illness
but
with his birth I God birthed a new me.

While life has not been perfect since (it never will be) something magical happened that day in the delivery room.  From that day on, the most severe of my “symptoms” subsided. (Some day I will share more details…maybe.)  Oh I still struggled with depression and “emptiness” from time to time (who doesn’t) and in 2008 I was hit hard with the mallet of depression but the words “check her in”  were never muttered again at least not by a psychologist. Soon after I was off my meds.  I was on my way to wholeness.  Maybe it was a shift in hormones.  Maybe it was a shift in brain chemistry.  Maybe it was the very new and tangible sense of purpose that comes with having a child.  Maybe it was spiritual.  It was probably a combination of all those and other things beyond my understanding.  Whatever it was I’m am grateful.
Thank you, Brent. Thank you, son.  Thank you, God.

Happy Birthday my dear kind creative son.
(Although you don’t read mommy’s blog.)
I doubt you’ll ever know the depths of healing your life brought to my life.
You are worth every fat cell, stretch mark, scar, and so much more.

I love you.

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

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