#384 | Military Maternity Care in Sicily: Tara’s Birth Story

I'm Cynthia Overgard, birth educator, advocate for informed consent, 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 Show. 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.

Well, hi. My name is Tara. I have an 18-month-old son. I got pregnant in April of 2024. I was stationed in Italy, so we had a naval hospital. It’s different in that situation because I didn’t have access to a midwife or a doula because I was required to give birth at the base hospital. It was banned to give birth in the neighborhood on the base.

So, yes, it’s not allowed. It was against the rules.

Let me just understand something. So you’re Americans stationed in Sicily.

Yes.

And you have to give birth at the naval... what do they call this?

The naval hospital.

The naval hospital. Is it basically an American facility when you get in, or is it filled with a bunch of Italians with the Italian culture of birth?

It’s all American.

Oh, that’s not a great thing. But I don’t know how birth in Sicily typically is.

Yeah, well, that’s a whole other story, too.

Okay, so of course... Sorry, what would happen if you just opted out and you decided to have a home birth? Would your husband be kicked out of the Navy? Is it very serious?

Well, that was my mindset. I was kind of like, well, what are they going to do? They just won’t pay for it.

Oh, no! Right? No, no. She’s saying it’s banned. It’s forbidden. He could lose his job.

I think if it was planned and I was like, “Oh, we are doing a home birth on the base,” then he’d get in trouble. But in my head, I was like, “Oh, maybe we’ll just accidentally have the baby here. It’ll be a quick birth, and we’ll say, ‘Oh, we didn’t have time to make it to the hospital.’” That was my original mindset because I didn’t want to give birth in the hospital so bad. But that didn’t end up happening, of course.

But why is it banned? What do you know about that?

I think what I heard is that it makes them look bad if we don’t want to give birth at the Navy hospital.

Oh, there you go.

Like their facilities aren’t good enough, or this and that.

There is politics in every corner of life, is there not? You can’t get away from it. You’re in the middle of Sicily, and you can’t get away from the politics.

Yeah, I know. And then, of course, they don’t get any money if we’re not giving birth on base. They can’t bill us.

Right. When you live on base, you have to sort of follow the base rules. This is like taking a little cookie cutter of the United States and plopping it down in Sicily. You have to follow the same rules. That’s really interesting. Didn’t mean to interrupt your birth story, but that seemed like an important piece of information to clarify.

Yeah, and it was unfortunate because, of course, that’s exactly what I wanted. I would have had a totally different birth story.

So anyway, I had a very smooth pregnancy. I am A positive, and my husband... or sorry, I’m A negative. My husband’s A positive. So we knew that whole RhoGAM question was coming up around 28 weeks. They asked me to get it, and I declined. I had declined a lot of things before that, and they actually used the phrase... I was pilgriming? I don’t know what they said. I was pilgriming my way through, or something like that, in kind of a...

They mixed up raw dogging and programming.

Exactly. They were trying to use the nice term for it. But they were kind of okay with me saying no to most things, like flu shot, stuff like that. I was like, no, I don’t need that, whatever.

But then once the RhoGAM conversation came, it was kind of like, you need to get this, and you’re crazy if you don’t get it. So the one OB was like, okay, well, we’ll figure it out. Obviously, take some time to think about it.

Then the next appointment I had was with the other OB. There were only two OBs that you could choose from on this base, and it’s what you’re given. You don’t have any other option. So we had two female OBs, and the second one came in. Of course, this is the one appointment I don’t have my husband with me. She was like, “Okay, so I saw that you rejected the RhoGAM.” She asked me all the questions and then said, Cynthia, you’re going to love this: “Are you sure that your husband is the father of your...”

No! Oh my God, I can’t.

I think they’re not trained.

Oh, unforgivable.

They’ve been trained to say that. They’re not even thinking about the words they’re saying. That just indicates that she has zero understanding of your personal...

Yeah, this was my first time meeting her.

This was your first time meeting her?

Well, yes.

Even worse, I think.

Yeah, kind of very judgy right off the bat.

Yeah.

And I had told a few people that she said that, and they’re like, “Oh, well, you know, it is the military. People...”

Oh, what?

I was like, “Okay, well, not me.”

They’re all trading wives and everyone... Right. You can’t resist the military. Resist all those military guys.

I know. My gosh.

I mean, it would be so much fun if someone asks you that question just to be like, “I mean, who can really know who the father is?”

Does it really matter?

Or like, “Do you mean who’s my husband or who’s the father?” I mean, just mess with that one.

Which father?

Oh, man. Okay. That’s what you’re going to say next time they ask that question. You’re just going to be like, “Um, which father are you referring to?”

Okay, and they’re asking this because of your negative Rh factor.

Yes.

As if you would know the Rh factor of the random guy you could have been sleeping with instead.

I know. It’s ridiculous.

Anyway, go on. Sorry.

Yeah, and I was like, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Of course, I don’t like crying in front of people, but I ended up crying. They ended up making it so she wouldn’t be at any of my other appointments alone.

Is that why you cried?

Yes, because she was berating me so much about it, and also was telling me, “Oh, you’ve gained 35 pounds. You need to eat less carbs, and you should go see a nutritionist.”

Oh my God.

“One walk a day isn’t enough,” stuff like that. I was like, the one appointment my husband’s not here, and it was rough.

You look like the picture of health right now, so I can’t even imagine when you were pregnant that you looked any different other than just being pregnant. So you cried. Did she have any response to that?

I think she was uncomfortable. She didn’t say anything. She was trying to give me her own personal anecdote that she has three kids, she’s Rh negative, and she’s gotten the shot every single time. So she did tell me that. I’m like, okay, but...

Not helpful. Good job. I’m happy for you.

I’m glad you’re good.

Exactly. So anyway, that was the whole RhoGAM thing. I did end up making a whole document of all my research for why I’m making this decision, and I printed it out and took it with me to every other appointment. Not that I needed to explain myself. My no is no. I know what I’m saying no to. But just for my peace of mind, if they want to give me any more flak, this is my reasoning right here. So I did that, but I didn’t end up actually using it.

Anyway, I had Braxton Hicks contractions starting at about 32 weeks, every single day. I know that it’s not a crazy thing, but I was experiencing it a lot, so I was exhausted by 36 and three.

Another note is that our hospital on the base would not let you give birth there until you were 36 weeks. So before 36 weeks, they would send you out in town to one of the Italian hospitals. I had heard so many crazy stories from all the other military wives about how terrible it was to give birth out in town.

Now, since I’ve given birth, they have fewer resources, and they’re sending people back to the States to give birth. People that gain a little or have too high of a BMI, or twins. They don’t support twin births at this hospital. So if you’re having twins, you have to go back to the States.

BMI? I can’t believe they’re shipping them out of the country for BMI.

Ridiculous! Wow.

I know. That’s so misleading.

BMI can be so, so faulty.

Totally. So in my mind this whole time, I’m so scared to go into labor before 36 weeks. My mom and my grandma both had really early labor, so they kind of put it in my head: “Oh, you’re gonna go early. You’re gonna go early.” So I was so nervous.

At 36 and three, I actually woke up to the contractions, and I thought, oh, maybe this is it. I knew that we couldn’t give birth at home, so I wanted to hold off the hospital as much as possible. But as a first-time mom, you don’t know what real, actual contractions feel like. Of course, you don’t know until you know.

I told my husband, it was like four in the morning, “I think this is it. Let’s go.” He’s cleaning up the house. I’m like, “What are you doing? We need to go.” He’s like, “Well, if we’re bringing a baby home, it’s got to be clean.” Like, okay, that’s fair.

So we get in the car and drive over there at like 4:30. We get there, and they put me on the monitors. After monitoring for a little bit, they come to me and say, “Your baby’s having late decels in his heart rate.”

With all the researching and everything I did, I was like, “What is that?” I don’t know why I didn’t know what it was, but I felt so stupid. I felt like, wow, I’m going to be a victim to this first-time-mom thing. They’re telling me something that I don’t know, and I’m just blindly saying yes.

You prepared so well, and look, immediately, right off the bat, they’re already over your head. You weren’t prepared.

Exactly. And so the OB told me, “This is the worst kind of deceleration.” Would you say? Or heart rate variability? So we’re like, okay.

She said, “So you should induce today.” And this was her reason: “If you don’t induce today, you’ll either probably have a stillborn, or your baby will be severely mentally handicapped.” She used the word “vegetable,” and she said, “I’ve heard the screams of moms that have had stillborn babies, and you do not want to hear that.”

So you’re telling me I need to get induced, essentially.

I’m speechless. I’m speechless that they get away with saying things like that.

Yeah.

I mean, it’s a threat. It’s just a straight-up threat.

It’s so much worse than a threat, too. It’s just evil. It’s sick. I think it’s very sick to speak like that and say things like that.

I agree. What is the benefit of it besides scaring us?

That’s the point. She’s trying to scare you into just agreeing instead of obviously doing the right thing, which is to give you fair, unbiased, informed consent.

And I also find it exploitative on some level of those other mothers, if it’s even true, because I’ve heard a lot of things like this, and I question a lot of them. Famously, there was a story from way back in another episode I shared where a client of mine was told, “Well, I’ve seen a lot of moms die and a lot of babies die.” I just want to go to that woman and be like, “Really? You’ve seen a lot of that? How are you as a provider?”

But to say that she’s heard the screams of those women, if that’s true, I feel like it exploits them to talk about it now. Don’t repeat what you’ve experienced when a woman was suffering for the sake of drama and theatrics and manipulating another woman. That’s not respectful to a woman who has suffered. Just keep that to yourself. Don’t go repeating it later to someone else and using it against them. It’s the opposite of reverence.

Yeah, I agree.

“I’ve heard the screams.” I mean, it sounds made up to talk that way. It just doesn’t sound okay. Go ahead. Sorry.

Late decelerations are worth a good discussion, though. Her language was out of line. Her concern was not.

Yeah. An induction was the second-last thing I wanted. Of course, the last thing being a C-section. My husband was like, “I think that it’s okay. I think we can go home, wait longer. We’ll see until you actually go into labor. I think you’re going to be fine. Our baby’s kicking, and everything’s good. We’ve been good up until this point.”

But we had suffered a miscarriage before this baby, and so I just told him, “I do not want to lose another baby. We’re so close, and I do not want to lose another baby.”

So we talked about it for a little while. Of course, the OB had another surgery she had to be in. She’s like, “Okay, I’ll be back in at 11 when you guys have made your decision.”

We were just sitting there for a while, and then she came back in at 11 with her scrub cap on. She’s got her hands all washed, and she’s like, “All right, let’s do this.”

I was like, “We haven’t even made a decision yet.”

But I figured, okay, let’s do it, because she scared me now. I would feel so guilty if I had gone home and then she was right. So I figured, let’s just start the induction.

They said, “Okay, we’ll start it naturally,” which a natural induction is an oxymoron by nature. But I was like, “Okay, I’ll do the induction if we start naturally.”

So, with the Foley bulb, of course, the Hep-Lock was the first intervention. They failed three times. This is another thing I feel like about Navy hospitals. I’m not sure about other hospitals, if it’s much different, but there are a lot of young people starting in nursing or something like that. They’re giving IVs, but they’re just very inexperienced. I don’t know. It took them three or four times to get my Hep-Lock in. I’m gushing blood.

It’s very common on military bases and teaching hospitals to help young, inexperienced residents, students.

Yeah. So that happened, and then I got the Foley bulb. I’m walking around with it. I’m like, I’m gonna try to do this just as I prepared. I’m gonna stay on my feet and not on my back, of course.

I thought things were going well, and then about 10 minutes into it being in, the nurse came in and was like, “Just so you know, the OB wants to start you on Pitocin.”

I looked at her and I said, “It’s been 10 minutes. Are you serious?”

She’s like, “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

I’m like, whatever. Okay. I said yes to this, so this is kind of just gonna come as it goes. Looking back, I probably should have pushed back a little bit more on that.

But they started me on the Pitocin, and I was doing okay. Probably an hour or so later, I felt like I was going to throw up and had to use the bathroom. I thought, oh my gosh, I’m in transition already! I’m so excited! This is so quick! This is great!

So I take the monitors off, and my husband takes me to the bathroom. I throw up. I feel better. He walks me back to the bed, and the nurse is trying to get the monitors back on my stomach.

As she’s trying to find the heart rate of me or the baby, I look up at the screen and I see 65. I just looked at her and I was like, “Oh, that’s mine, right?”

She looks up, completely freaks out, pushes a button, calls Code Purple. The entire OR team comes in. My OB comes in. The nurse anesthetist comes in. The OB shoots me with whatever the shot is to stop your contractions or to stop Pitocin.

Terbutaline, probably.

Yes, I believe you.

So the chaos kind of settles, and the OR team moves to the side. The OB and nurse anesthetist come up to me and say, “Okay, your baby’s heart rate dropped really low. It was very bad, and this is not good. So we want to give you a C-section because of this. That’s your option, basically.”

I was like, “Is there any other option?” Because this doesn’t seem like it’s that much of an emergency. I just kind of knew everything was fine. I did. I think if actually something was wrong, I would have known and said, yes, let’s do this. Let’s get this baby out. But I really felt peace that everything was fine.

The nurse anesthetist said, “Okay, well then, your option is we can either give you a C-section or we can give you an epidural, but you’re probably going to end up with a C-section anyway.”

And note, this nurse anesthetist is the only male that I saw my entire birth.

Anyway, they step out and give my husband and me a second to talk. I’m, of course, so emotional. I’m like, “Well, then let’s just get a C-section. If they’re going to keep pushing this and doing that, and I’m going to have to go through all this anyway to end up with a C-section, we might as well just do it now and get it over with.”

He’s like, “Let’s take a breath. I know you don’t mean that.”

I’m like, “Okay, you’re right. Let’s do the epidural. If we need to do every other thing that they push on us to avoid a C-section, let’s do it.”

How can they be recommending an epidural as an alternative when a side effect is fetal distress in your baby?

Yes. What’s going on? What’s happening with your baby in this moment? I’m so curious, because 65...

What was that?

My heart rate.

Okay, so I think it was mine.

I think it was mine. That’s what I believe.

Or it was the baby’s, because 65 is pretty low for mom in labor, although it could be. But it was just very briefly the baby’s heart rate. Did they turn off the Pitocin?

They did. Once they shot me with that, they turned off the Pitocin.

Okay, good.

Yes. So that was my options, and I ended up saying yes to the epidural.

I don’t get it. I just don’t understand why they were saying C-section or epidural. If the heart rate restored, I don’t know. They were just pressuring you from the beginning.

Yeah. I had known that this hospital on base gave a lot of C-sections. We knew a lot of people that worked there and a lot of moms that had C-sections there, whether it was there or when they got put out in town.

I just hope the listener can appreciate, and we don’t know the rest of your story, but I hope they can appreciate that even for women who are strong and solid and informed, how easy it is to abandon the plan because they really scare us. You know that there’s a voice in your head saying, “I just don’t want to take any chances.”

Even when she said, “You’re probably going to get a C-section anyway,” you had the visual of getting a C-section anyway, so fine, get it over with and let me meet my baby. But they don’t understand. When you’re in that situation, you’re not sitting around with the luxury of visualizing your dream birth anymore. You’re really not going to take chances. When they use the right language, we’re thinking, okay, the worst thing is I cause a bad outcome here because I got too attached to the birth I wanted to have.

It’s not easy. This is not easy for women.

Also, this is a great example of one of those scenarios where if you’re getting the choice between going for a C-section and getting an epidural, your baby’s not in crisis. There is no urgency here. There’s no crisis, because if your baby was in crisis, you would not get that choice. It would be, “Tara, we are going for a C-section. I need you to understand that your baby’s life is now at risk.” Whatever they’re going to say. “We need... Do we have your consent to go to the OR?” It’s not, “Or you could get an epidural, and we could just see how it goes.”

Even when they do give another choice, it’s so true, Trisha. They’re saying, well, then we need to crank the Pitocin, which I thought they would say, or we’re going to do an amniotomy. But to give you the thing that slows labor after giving you the thing that stops labor, it’s like the opposite of being in a hurry. It doesn’t add up.

It does not add up.

It is so ironic. Little did I know, I didn’t know this before, but they do have time limits on labor at this hospital, of course, which they tell me later. But I think that’s why they said, “Or you’re probably going to have a C-section anyway,” when they were like, you can have the epidural.

Yeah, so in their mind, they’re going, okay, let’s let her get the epidural, get her comfortable. She won’t complain. The baby’s heart rate’s going to go down again because she gets the epidural, and then we’re just going to have the easy transition to the C-section.

I’ve heard so many births where this same thought comes into my mind, and this is one of those births where it feels like the staff is coming at a woman, and they’re like, “Oh, we really need to do a C-section. I’ve seen things like this. We have to do it.”

She hesitates, or she pushes back, or she declines, or she asks for more time. Rather than granting more time because it really was never an emergency, I feel like the next thing they say, of course, they phrase it differently, but I feel like the next thing coming out of their mouth is, “Well, can we at least do this then? Can we at least give you an epidural? Will you agree to something?”

Yes. I feel like that’s really what’s going on in a lot of these moments.

Yes. It’s funny you say that because I actually called in. It was on episode 352 that you guys did. I called in. This was a January Q&A and asked, would my baby have been okay if I didn’t get the induction with these late decels? And you said, “Can we get this woman to do anything?” Which is kind of what they were doing, I think.

Well, they showed their hand when they said the alternative is an epidural, which can cause fetal distress and a slower labor. So again, it just doesn’t...

Okay.

Yes.

We are having so many reactions to this that it’s not easy to let you... Chrissy. Sorry, I keep saying we’ll stop now, but go ahead.

I love it. I love it.

Anyway, I get the epidural, and of course, he tells me no eating or drinking, everything like that. It ends up not working all the way. So my legs are that weird numb feeling. My upper abdomen is like that, but my lower abdomen, of course, where you can feel everything, I can still feel it.

He says, of course, you never know if an epidural is actually going to work because it can be very... He said it’s like a spaghetti noodle or something, and wherever it goes, you never know if it’s actually going to work.

So he says, “Okay, well, we’ll just keep pushing more.” He said “bolus.” I don’t know if I’m using the correct term. You know, push the button, it’ll just push more and more and more.

I was pushing it, pushing it, and I could still feel everything down there. I was complaining to him about that because, of course, in the back of my mind, I’m getting a C-section. So I’m like, if I’m getting a C-section, I don’t want to be able to feel down there.

That was my fear. It wasn’t even the pain or anything. I was scared I was going to be having a C-section.

So I’m telling him, “This is not working,” and he says, “Okay, well, you need to lay on your back, and then maybe it’ll settle, even out, and help the epidural do its job.”

I was like, “No, no, thank you.”

It’ll help even it out? Why don’t you get on your back? It’ll help even it out? What?

I know. It was pretty crazy.

Even it out.

Yeah. So I didn’t. I just stayed the way I was. I was laying down, obviously, because I couldn’t do much. I was up, but not completely on my back. It still wasn’t working.

Of course, they also gave me an amniotomy. Then hours go by, and it’s still not working.

I have this amazing nurse that comes in, and I was like, “Just please do everything to keep me off my back.” She’s got me on the peanut ball, going side to side. She puts me on the Miles Circuit. My husband’s helping her lift me up with the sheet and moving me. She was amazing.

But anyway, it’s still not working, and it’s about 8 p.m. now. It’s been a while, so I’m still feeling all these contractions. He said, “I put the max amount of what I could put in you. So if it’s still not working, the only thing we can do is redo your epidural.” Take the entire thing out and redo it.

Of course, I’ve been in labor for 16 hours. It’s been a while. I’m shaking. I’m bent over. My husband’s holding me. The nurse is still trying to get the monitors on my belly while I’m hunched over, and the nurse anesthetist is putting the second epidural in my back.

But they do it, and it worked, thankfully, which was wonderful.

So I’m still in labor. Of course, the OB comes back. She went home to take a nap. She comes back, and she says that she’s not seeing what she needs to see on the monitors.

This is where I found out that they do have time limits. The nurse that was really kind to me was telling me, without the OB in the room, that they do have time limits, and, “You’re not dilating or contracting enough, so we want to start you on Pitocin again.”

The OB didn’t tell me what it was she was looking for. She said it’s some weird calculation on the screen when you’re seeing with the monitor, between the contractions and the timing. She said it was some sort of calculation that, of course, she didn’t explain to us or let us see. She just told us that she wanted to see this calculation.

So she left the room, and the nurse told us, “I’m seeing what I need to see, but she is telling me she’s not. So she is going to come in here and ask you, or tell you, she’s giving you Pitocin.”

So she did. She came in. My husband is really mad at this point because they have been so not great. She said, “Okay, we want to start you on Pitocin again.”

He said, “Isn’t that the thing that made our baby go into distress and my wife into distress, and you guys called a Code Purple for? Why would we start her on that again?”

The OB said, “Oh, well, we don’t actually know if that’s what caused it. It could have been anything. We just don’t know.”

My husband’s like, okay. She’s clearly never heard these questions asked of her, I think, because she didn’t have an answer for any of them when we were asking.

But anyway, we said no. I was like, “We’re doing fine. Baby’s fine. I’m fine. We don’t need any more Pitocin. We saw what happened with that.”

So anyway, I took a nap, which was great. I had heard so many stories, “Oh, I took a 30-minute nap. I had a 24-hour labor. I took a 30-minute nap, and I woke up and I was ready to push.”

That’s pretty much what happened. I took that 30-minute nap, and I woke up, and they checked me again. I think they said I was at zero station.

This is funny. They put... I don’t know what it’s called. I’ve never heard the name of it. But they put a certain monitor into the wall of my vagina to...

The internal fetal monitor? Do you mean that?

I think...

That wouldn’t go into the wall of your vagina. That would go into the baby’s...

The baby’s head, right?

Yeah. Maybe a pressure catheter to try to determine the strength of your contractions. Did they do that, Trisha? Did they put...

Oh, yeah. An intrauterine pressure catheter.

And it was funny. The reasoning for it was because the belly monitors are not very accurate, which is hilarious because that’s exactly what they based my induction off of. So those aren’t very accurate, so we’re gonna put one inside that’s a lot more accurate.

Were they trying to get more accuracy of the baby’s heart rate or what your uterus was doing contraction-wise?

I actually can’t... I don’t know.

Okay. Yeah, because the exterior belts monitor both your uterine contractions and the baby’s heart rate. So the fetal scalp electrode is the thing that goes in the baby’s head to get a more precise heart rate, and then the intrauterine pressure catheter is the one that helps get a bit more precise indication of what’s going on, whether or not your contractions are productive or strong enough. They measure them.

Yeah. I think since I had the epidural, that’s why they were doing that because they’re like, well, you can’t feel it, which I could actually feel when a surge was coming.

I was able to push very well, thank God, because I was so worried about tearing and everything like that. But I ended up pushing for about an hour and a half, and there were, of course, a bunch of dips that made them freak out.

The OB told us after... Well, my husband actually was able to catch our baby, which was so amazing.

That was one thing that I was going to mention earlier. One of the nurses came in and was looking over my birth plan and was like, “Yeah, we can’t do any of this now.” Basically just threw it out.

But it was one of those things I did want. I was like, “Please, if nothing else, please let my husband catch our baby.” And he did.

So he was able to see, because the OB told us, “Oh, the cord was wrapped around, so it was a good thing we did blah, blah, blah, blah.” My husband was like, “I caught the baby, and it wasn’t. It was barely anything.” They just had a quick... and he was fine.

But it ended up great. I didn’t tear. It was 17 hours from the start of the induction, 24 hours from when we had gotten to the hospital, and everything was fine. My baby was fine. He was crying right away, eyes open. He was great. We waited to cut the cord, everything like that.

It felt really great because it ended up being okay, and they scared us so much into thinking it wouldn’t be and that the C-section was our only option.

And you actually had a remarkably quick labor for a first-time mom with an induction, with an epidural, with the possibility of fetal distress, which may have just been a total fluke and mistake. Obviously, whatever had happened in that moment was not persistent. And the decels that they picked up on prior to the induction obviously were not significant either, because your baby had good Apgar scores and you had a vaginal birth, and everything was fine.

Yeah, totally. They had the pediatrician there because, I guess, before 37 weeks they will have the pediatrician there just in case, since they don’t have a NICU.

Which, of course, I was worried about. I’m like, what are they going to do if there’s something wrong with my baby? They’re going to have to ship him in the ambulance over to the Italian hospital.

At the Italian NICUs where we lived, you’re only allowed to see your baby for 30 minutes a day.

What?

Yes. That was my biggest fear. We had a friend that had an emergency C-section at 32 weeks there, and she was only able to see her baby...

That’s abuse.

That’s literally abuse. It’s child abuse, and it’s maternal abuse. It’s abuse.

It is child abuse as well. That’s just unbelievable.

So, one thing I’m wondering is, whenever I listen to a birth story, I try to imagine that I’m that woman and feeling everything. And I imagine, I’m just guessing though, that your perspective on your birth changed a lot from the day after you gave birth to now.

You tell me, but on one hand, there is this triumphant story. Thanks to your husband, he really, really saved the day. He was very instrumental. All the hard work was yours, and we’re giving him zero of that. I just want you to know. The takeaway is not thanks to your husband here. But yes, thanks to your husband, he did change the outcome of the birth by keeping you grounded and keeping your best interest in mind when he also could have felt a lot of overwhelm. So really admirable. God bless those military men.

But I imagine right after the birth or in the days after, you had to feel, I’m just imagining, maybe proud of yourself, like, we dodged a major bullet. Thank God this happened this way.

But tell me if that’s off from how you felt. Now that time has passed, there’s also this story of, could you guys have just left us alone? They badgered you and hammered you with pressure the whole time. How has your perspective shifted on your own birth?

Yeah, that’s a really good question because now I’m feeling great. The day after I had him, or actually the day I had him, I looked at my husband. I was like, “I cannot wait to do this again.” Not this exact story, but I cannot wait to give birth again because it’s going to be so much different, and I’m so excited to do it.

When I tell people that, they’re like, “There’s no way you said that. You said that right after you gave birth?”

I’m like, yes. I was like, I’m ready. I’m ready to do it again because it’s gonna be so great.

But I was very upset. I was for probably a year. It took me a while to fully come to terms with that fact because, of course, I thought, well, I failed myself. I failed everything that I prepared for. All that time, all that preparation for nothing, in a sense, is what I thought.

I thought, well, I just threw it all away the second I said yes to that induction. It’s obviously not the case. I did not fail. I delivered a healthy baby, and I was fine, and he was fine.

Actually, by the way, there was no sensitization. They tested his blood and my blood afterwards, and he is A positive. But there was no sensitization, so I didn’t even need the shot that they were begging me to get.

But yeah, it took a while to come to terms with it.

It made me so passionate about birth. So passionate. I told my husband I want to get my doula certification now because I don’t see myself going to med school anytime soon to become a midwife. But it has given me this fire inside of me.

I just feel so connected now to any pregnant mother or any woman about to give birth or any postpartum woman. I just feel this connection. And even small babies. I don’t know what it is, but I guess because I had such a hard time...

It’s because you saw what they’re up against.

Yes.

You saw how easy it is to be funneled down the path of one intervention to the next, leading to a completely different birth outcome. It would have been very, very easy for you, as we’ve already said, to just have agreed to that C-section when your baby’s heart rate was 65.

Exactly. And I think that is what has caused me to be so passionate about it because every time I try to tell somebody about natural birth or anything like that, I get such a look like, you’re crazy, you’re a hippie, you’re so crunchy, or whatever they say.

I’m like, no, this is just how our bodies were made to do it. We’re not scared.

I was just gonna say, when you watch Friends or anything like that, and you see them giving birth and stuff, I almost skip it now. Actually, when I was pregnant and I was watching, I’m like, skip, skip! I don’t want this negative birth story in my head.

I love when Ross says, “Three? I’m dilated to three?”

Yes, with Carol. Oh my gosh, that is so great.

And when Joey is talking about how much pain he’s got with his kidney stones. She’s like, “Are you kidding me?”

Her birth actually wasn’t...

They didn’t make her birth crazy in Friends, thank God.

No.

What I was gonna say is, all those women who say to you, and these women are everywhere, and you hear this, it’s just a cultural thing, like, “Are you kidding? You’d have a... Are you crazy? You’d go for a natural birth?”

How the heck does a natural birth scare them more than all the stuff you just told us you went through? That scares me. I don’t feel courageous enough to go through all those things. I feel like the natural birth is the easy way to slip through the experience.

I agree. But do you know what the reaction was? It was, “Well, thank God you were in the hospital.”

Oh, always. I know. Of course, of course.

All of these doctors and nurses and everybody was coming in and telling me all of these things, but I knew that everything was okay, and I knew I was peaceful. I knew what was going on just instinctually in my body, what was going on.

So I was listening to that. Of course, I was hearing what they were saying and telling me, and seeing all the monitors and everything like that. But I just listened to my intuition and my body and my baby, and everything turned out the way it was supposed to.

I kept the conversational cadence intact, including the interruptions and overlapping reactions where they carry meaning, while cleaning the Otter artifacts and obvious medical-term transcription errors.

Thank you for joining us at the Down To Birth Show. You can reach us @downtobirthshow on Instagram or email us at Contact@DownToBirthShow.com. All of Cynthia’s classes and Trisha’s breastfeeding services are offered live online, serving women and couples everywhere. Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.