In this special episode, I step away from my usual interviews with inspiring guests to share a personal story—my own birth story. Part of the "Booth Chats" series, this episode is all about bringing my daughter, Montana, into the world. I talk about choosing to work with a midwife instead of an OB, and the ups and downs of my pregnancy. There were moments of doubt and challenges during over 90 hours of labor. I share the emotional journey of longing for a home birth and ending up in the hospital, and the lessons I learned from the experience. I also discuss the importance of creating a peaceful space during major life events and how I navigated through the feelings of not having the birth I'd hoped for. This episode is all about finding strength, learning to accept what happens, and cherishing the moments with my family. Thank you for joining me as I open up about this significant chapter in my life.
Hey, friends. I am here today recording an intro to my intro of this series I'm doing now on the podcast called Booth Chats, which is just me and you chatting about aspects of my life. My goal here is to allow you to get to know me a little more and to be raw and real and vulnerable just the way my guests are. So I did want to come on. I just re listened to the first one that I'm about to. About to hear, and I just wanted to make sure that it was known that I'm telling my story, my birth story, our birth story, in a raw, real way. And I want you to know that I hold the utmost respect and reverence for our medical system. I am so grateful to the doctors that were involved in this birth. I am so grateful to doctors and nurses and practitioners in general. So I'm telling this story from how I felt, from my feelings. I just felt like it was important to presence that and to let you know that I hold so much respect and I know that I am incredibly blessed and lucky to live in a place where I have access to that type of care. So with that little asterisk on the bottom, instead of editing myself and not really coming to you from this place that I want these episodes to be from, I felt it was important to acknowledge that before we get into the feels. So that being said, I hope you enjoy listening to the story of Montana's birth. So here we go. Let's talk about birthing our daughter Montana into the world. So I did not see an ob my pregnant for my pregnancy. I saw a midwife. The reason, there's many reasons for that, but one of the main reasons was that at 41 years old and with the medical history that I have, if you're curious about that, there is an episode where I share a. A deeper, deep. Dive into that. Down. Just scroll down, you'll see it. I can't remember what it's called. Like my personal story, health journey or something. Yeah. Given all of that, I really felt like I didn't want the fear that would probably come my way if I went to an ob. Advanced maternal age and lots of screenings, and given the fact that I've had all these surgeries, I just felt like it could be a bit of a fear factory. And that's not something that I wanted to step into in my pregnancy. So I decided to work with a midwife, which was a great decision. I really am glad that I did. No one's perfect. Nothing's perfect. No choice is perfect. But it was definitely, for the most part, an aligned healthcare choice for me. For those of you that don't know this about me, one of my deep values in this life is medical freedom. I really, really, really believe in all of our ability to sovereignly choose for ourselves and our bodies. Anyway, so that's the choice that I made. My husband and I made that choice together. And, yeah, so I didn't have that many scans, actually. I only had one ultrasound through my pregnancy, and that was at week, I think it was 13. I had a bit of a scare where I ended up in the ER for the most miserable eight hours, I don't know, 10 hours of my life, where I was just waiting to see, with incredible pain to see if. If Montana was okay. She was. She was alive and well. But, yeah, I had an ultrasound then. But then I decided not to have any additional ultrasounds throughout my pregnancy. And for the most part, things went smoothly. I definitely had a lot of pain due, most likely to the surgeries that I've had. That's a topic for another time. But she was doing well and everything was going well. And our intention and desire was to birth Montana at home. That's always. Well, not always, but that's what I'd come to desire. And then we had this big hiccup happen in the later stage. I don't remember what week they do the glucose test, but it's, I don't know, maybe 28 week. 28, yeah, I think around then. And I decided not to do the traditional glucose test where you drink the incredibly sugary drink and wait to see if your. Whatever happens happens. I decided to test my blood four times a day for three weeks. And when I did that, there was. Results came back kind of borderline, right. And the midwives all of a sudden were very different. They were like, well, you know, if you might have gestational diabetes, we can't take that risk and your baby could die if you give birth at home and all of this stuff. It just became really intense. And I went through this whole, I don't know what to call it, like, freak out, I guess, about do I want to keep working with them? I considered free birth. I considered completely shifting my care. I spoke with other midwives and doulas, actually, no, not doulas. I was still going to work with the same doula. I still felt comfortable with them, but I was very, very seriously considering leaving the current midwife practice that I was in, going to a different practice. And in the end, I didn't. I stayed with the midwives, we were able to talk through it. It was a team of four. And there was this one that was pressuring me on this level. And I ended up not working with her as much, if possible, and, you know, voicing my. How I felt. And it was actually a really wonderful experience because I got to. I don't want to use the word stand up for myself because it really. But yeah, you know, stand up for myself and how I felt and my beliefs. And I really deeply felt that I did not have gestational diabetes and that my daughter was not going to be at any risk on that level. And I continued to test my sugars throughout my pregnancy and made some simple adjustments. The thing that I did that helped the most was I just started walking for about 10 minutes after dinner, and that really changed things. So with some simple dietary tweaks and some movement added after meals, I was able to get my sugars to where my comfortable level for everybody. So we decided to move forward with the plan to birth Montana at home. Yeah, the rest of the pregnancy. My pregnancy was difficult. At the end, Doug and I decided to go on one last van adventure, which in retrospect, being 30 something weeks, weeks pregnant in a van and not having a colon was maybe like not the most aligned babymoon. But that's what we did. And we have some really amazing stories to tell from that journey and some beautiful things happened. So any. That's what we did. And then we came back and life happened. Life, you know, continued on. And my daughter was due on May 3, I believe. And on April 25, my friend had just come over. My friend Sabina. Hi, Sabina, if you're listening, had just come over and we'd had a beautiful day together. And I was standing on the porch opening a box from Thrive Market. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, my God, why am I peeing? Why is there water running down my leg? What's going on? Why is this liquid here? And then I said, oh my God, my water just broke. Right. So that's what had happened. Doug came. Well, Doug was home. Just had just gotten home from work and he went into like alpha male mode. He was like, the car seat is not in the car and we have to put the car seat in the car right now. So he's like standing in the driveway yelling at me about the car seat. And I just looked at him, I was like, if you're gonna yell at me about a car seat while I'm in, I'm leaving. So that wasn't like the best moment, but it was all right. Doug got the car seat in the car, and we just went upstairs, called the midwives eventually and let the doulas know. And, you know, things were at the very beginning, even though my water had broken. So if you don't know, something that happens in the traditional medical system when your water breaks is this clock starts. I'm forgetting right now how many hours it is, but it's a pretty relatively small number of hours from when your water breaks to when they believe the risk of infection skyrockets. Right. Because your water is protecting the baby from all sorts of things. And once they're open, then infections can get in. So this imaginary clock has gone off. However, I'm birthing with a team of midwives. We're at home, so there's a lot more leeway into that. One of the biggest mistakes I made, and if God blesses us with another child, which I pray they do, was I alerted my parents. Big mistake. I'm 41 years old at the time. This is their first grandchild. They've been waiting forever. And I don't know how, you know, on board they are with the whole giving birth at home thing. So big mistake. Will not be doing that again. Anyway, so labor starts and Doug and I are at home. And it was like 4:30 in the afternoon. So we have dinner and just try and relax. And I'm having some contractions and, you know, I'm not comfortable at all. But okay, we're okay. The next, like, three days are somewhat of a blur. So that's how long I was home laboring. And the thing that got the most intense for me, I don't remember. I don't think I slept very much for those three days. And it became increasingly difficult to nourish myself because my rectum. Pardon, the, you know. You know what? No, it's okay. We can talk about rectums. It's totally fine. It's a part of our body. I am working on deshaiming that for myself. Anyway, that was the most excruciating part of this whole thing. Due to the surgeries I've had. Just all that pressure was excruciating. And I was in the bathroom every 10 minutes. I started having to, like, wear gloves because my hands were so raw from washing them all the time I was in and out of the shower. That wasn't helping. You know, labor wasn't, quote, unquote, progressing. Now looking back, so many things I would change. I did not protect my peace. Even though during that time when I was considering leaving the midwife practice that I was with, I listened to like a gajillion home birth podcasts. I knew, you know, in theory, that I should be protecting my space and I shouldn't, you know, be letting a lot of outside noise in. But that's not what happened. You know, Doug and I were still deep in the process of building this house and we were looking at tile and our contracts was calling us, and then my parents, you know, God bless them, were out of their minds. So, yeah, it was just a lot of outside noise, a lot of unnecessary stress. And the doula and the midwife were in and out and, you know, we have a small apartment and the dog and everyone was eating and talking and it was just. It was just not the space I needed to be able to open and relax, which is now I understand what really needs to happen. 72 hours goes by. I'm way beyond the medically accepted time frame after waters have been opened and we make the decision that we need to go to the hospital. This was one of the most heartbreaking decisions, I don't want to say of my life, but maybe, maybe of my life. I just was beside myself. I didn't pack a hospital bag because I'm stubborn and I was like, I don't need a hospital bag. I'm not going to the hospital, blah, blah, blah. In the future, God willing, if I get to do this again, even though I will likely, I don't know, I don't know what I'll choose to do, but if I choose to attempt to give birth at home, I will have a bag ready in case we need to go. Because running around your apartment at midnight with a sleep deprived self and a sleep deprived husband and a doula and a midwife telling you you have to go to the hospital, we did not do well in that moment. We threw whatever the heck we thought in the bag. Who knows what. We even threw in a Marshall shopping bag. And yeah, we get in the car and I'm just hysterical crying. I failed. I failed. I failed you. I'm saying I'm sorry, baby, I failed you. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Just beyond beside myself, feeling that I had failed, you know, this failure, this horrible sense of failure because I couldn't handle the pain and I could relax enough to let labor progress. So we go to the hospital somewhere South Nassau, something. We go to the hospital that has a GI team and that our midwives have privileges at, because this way it is still Going to be the midwife that we've been working with, who's delivering our child. Go to the hospital. It's who. You know, I'm out of my mind in pain right now. Rectal pain, really. And I decided to get an epidural, which, in this situation was one of the best decisions I made. I was instantly able to relax, and I wasn't able to sleep, really, but I was able to relax. Doug was super depleted at this time, so we were both able to get a little rest. And I think we went to the hospital on, like, a Thursday at midnight or so. We have to call my parents now, my stepparents, my stepmom and her husband in Long island to come pick up our dog, because we don't have anything to do with the dog. It's just sort of a bit of a nightmare, but it's all okay. And we're in the hospital now, and all of the things I did not want are happening. I have a monitor strapped to my belly. They're giving me a drip of Pitocin to progress labor. You know, they're taking my temperature every five minutes because I am a unicorn. My water has been broken for 72 hours. Everything that I. I did not want, everything that I believe is going to damage my child is happening to my body at this time, to my baby. Constant monitor, Pitocin being IV'd into me in increasing increments. All, you know, vaginal checks, the temperature stuff. They want to give me antibiotics, but I don't have a fever, so I'm able to stave that off. Doctors come in. You know, we've decided not to do the vitamin. The thing in the eye and the vitamin D or whatever. And they come in telling us that we're gonna kill our child. And they're so concerned about how irresponsible we are. You know, it's just the scene that I didn't want. We're in a hospital, all the things, and. Let's see. So. But this is what needed to happen. It's just what happened, right? This is what happened. Anyway, so time progresses and labor starts to pick up. And at this point, you know, on the way to the hospital, I was sort of just feeling like I had to come to the terms. Come to terms with the fact that I was most likely going to have a C section. I'm going to go back a little bit. The GI surgeon that I worked with when I had these surgeries in 2018, the last of them, he said, when you have a baby, you better Have a C section. And so I'm also going against so much, you know, going against the grain to begin with. So that's sort of what I was thinking, like, we're going to the hospital. That's what's gonna happen. Luckily for me and our daughter, maybe. I mean, no knocking C sections, that is a life saving practice that I have no judgment around. But that's not what I wanted. So I am able, you know, things do progress. Eventually they can see her head and I'm able to start pushing. It's a really intense experience as birth is. I'm vomiting bl and just, you know, in it. I do remember though, you know, out of this whole experience, my favorite physical moment was actually when I was pushing. It was just. I left my body. I was in some other realm. And it was just really magical and mystical, that feeling of her emerging. Intense, of course. Intense. Intense. Intense, but just incredible. And our daughter was born at 11:47pm on Friday, April 28. So over like 90 hours after labor started, something like that. And, you know, this is when things for me get, you know, really, in a way, sad. So just been in labor for all this time. All the things, right? I just had a baby and she comes out. And I had said when we went to the hospital, I don't want the cord cut right away. You know, I want all these things, things like anything that we can still keep in place from my original earth mama birth plan. Please, let's do that. And the cord isn't long enough for her to come to my chest. And they don't like the way she's breathing. So the cord is cut immediately. She's taken from me immediately. All the suction, all the cleaning. She's screaming. I'm yelling from the bed, you're safe, baby. You're safe. You're safe. I'm telling Doug to go talk to her. I finally get to hold her and her heart rate is higher than they want it to be. And the pediatrician comes and says, we need to take your daughter to the nicu. I look at the midwife and I say, is this necessary? And she says, I trust this person. And I mean, not that I have any rights anyway, but I'm begging, like, please let me hold her. Please let me hold her. They let me hold her for, I don't even know, five seconds. And then they take her. And it's two hours of pure hell. Just Doug passes out, he's so tired. The doula's still there. She falls asleep. And I'm Just lying in this bed, having just had a baby all alone, and just watching this clock, which I still remember it was on the upper, you know, up to the left of me, just watching the clock. It's midnight. Just like, waiting till 2am when I can go be with my daughter. And. And finally that time comes and she's hooked up to all these things. She's in this tiny little plastic house in the nicu. And, yeah, and she's being pumped full of antibiotics and they're convinced that I have an infection and that she has an infection. And we, you know, the next 48 hours is essentially hell. I mean, any parent that has been in the nicu, I bow down to you because it is such a trying thing. It is so hard to just see your child in this situation, this new tiny baby that you just want to cuddle. I just wanted to cuddle and hold and nurse, being less able to do that. And it was sad. I was able to allow me to stay the duration that she was there, which was really lucky. But there's all these signs in the room about the benefit of having the baby in the room with you, and our baby's not in the room with us. And I'm, you know, having just given birth, like, not even thinking about my own recovery, just pushing myself to be in the NICU every single second, sitting in this horrible chair. Remember, the chair was so uncomfortable on my newly birthed body. And just being with her as much as I possibly could. And we really wanted to go against medical advice in this moment and take her off antibiotics and take her home, and we couldn't do that. We were told that they would call the police because we would be seen as endangering a child. And that was a tough pill to swallow. But once one enters the medical system, you're in the medical system and there's legalities at play that I am grateful to now know who knows, right? I am not God. I do not know. Neither do the doctors. Nobody knows if what occurred with Montana following her birth was necessary. It's impossible to know. Maybe it was. Maybe that saved her life. Maybe that saved her from further problems down the line. I don't know. I have no idea. All I know is that it was tough. And I know that we were super lucky because I saw the other babies that had been there for weeks and months that were in much worse shape. So I understand that given, you know, in the scope of things, this was just a little moment, and we were incredibly lucky. However, in my own telling, you know, My own story, my own life. This was incredibly challenging time. But, yeah, I was with her as much as I could. And we patiently waited to find out that, in fact, she did not have an infection when she was born. She was perfectly fine. And so after 48 hours of waiting for those test results, the entire time she was being infused with antibiotics, iv, and they bathed her and all the things I didn't want, we were able to take her home. And the blessing was that we ended up. You know, one of the conditions of us taking her home was that we had to have a pediatrician appointment set up within, I think it was 24 hours of leaving the hospital. And we. The original pediatrician that we were going to work with wasn't available, but we were able to see their nurse practitioner. And that ended up being really wonderful because we ended up really, really enjoying working with that person. And it was much more financially accessible than the original pediatrician. So, yeah, that was a nice blessing in disguise. So we took Montana home after 48 hours in the hospital, and life ensued. And I definitely, you know, I learned a lot in that time in that birth. And there's things that I did after we took her home that I don't know if I would have done had our birth been, you know, this smooth process where she was placed on my chest and I got to snuggle her and she nursed and da, da, da. I don't know. I don't know if that would have changed anything. Who knows? It's impossible to know. All I do know is that I did a lot of work, as much as I could around the trauma of birth, and I accept what happened, and I am grateful for, you know, the. I'm grateful for all of it. I'm grateful for the lessons, and I'm grateful to everyone that was involved and to Montana for being exactly who she is in this world. And, yeah, that's our story. I'm trying to see, like, if there's anything else that I want to share about that. I just. Yeah, I don't think there's anything else I want to say about that. I think I'll just leave it at that. I really just wanted to share that story mostly as a way to just get to know me and my family, and I can't believe that that was almost two years ago. It's. It just feels like another lifetime. Time is so nuts, especially in motherhood. It's definitely super surreal to have a walking, talking, funny little girl now who is no longer a teeny, tiny. Oh, by the way she was 5 pounds, 9 ounces when she was born, so definitely not large, definitely did not have gestational diabetes, nor did any of her sugar drop or whatever. You know, none of that happened. Nothing related to that was actually a reality. So, yeah, I think the lesson that I walked away with was mostly that it's so mysterious. You know, you can do, anyone can do, I can do. I could have done XYZ differently. But I have to believe that she had the birth that she was meant to have. One of my mentors said, you know, maybe she had some karma to clear in this life and she wanted to do it right away. And, yeah, I have to believe that. And I held her close for many. I mean, I still hold her close. Right. And I was so intentional about that closeness because I felt like I had to make up for, you know, not being there when she was first born, even though, I mean, I was there, just not in the way I wanted to be. Right. I couldn't hold her 24 7. So for those first 48 hours. But, yeah, I think that she had the birth that she needed to have. And there will be unraveling and there will be, and I will tell her that story one day when she is older and ready to hear it, and we will talk about what that might have meant for her life and anything that she feels that holds for her, and we can process that together. And, yeah, it's important for me, I think, to just recognize that I didn't fail. She's here. She's alive and thriving, and we could do it. We could get through that. So thank you so much for listening to my hour birth story, and please let me know in any way you can send me a message on Instagram or if this resonated for you, or if you want to hear more of these booth chats where I'm just going to share little bits about my life. All right, let's do, like, a quick little feng shui thing. What do we want to talk about today? Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of energy that happened in our home, obviously, after the birth. So I think just getting into a regular practice of cleansing your space energetically is so powerful. And it doesn't have to be a whole, like, walk around with a stick of sage situation, but you can clap in all the corners and, you know, you could have a meditation where you send light throughout your house. You can use salt. I have a lot of this stuff. I have a free resource called Space Clearing Without Sage, so you can check that out. But yeah, I just think acknowledging that all of the emotions and all of the words, everything sort of gets absorbed into your walls and your floors and your drains. And so really understanding that, just like we want to clean our space physically, we want to be in relationship with clearing the energy when big things happen. So illness or birth or an argument, and also just in general, people coming in and out of the house, you know, things accumulate. So I think being mindful of how powerful it can be to just do a simple clearing in your space with intention is really beautiful. All right, friends, I hope you have a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.