Today’s season 3 premiere episode shares a birth story with birth class students and podcast listeners, Lucy & Cam. They share how Lucy had hoped for a physiological birth and how surprised she was in coming to the U.S. from the UK that midwifery isn’t the default standard of care. As she goes through her pregnancy working with an OB, over time she realizes she’d prefer more patient-centered care so she switches from OB care to a hospital midwifery practice. Once she has something to compare to, she breathes a huge sigh of relief and feels like she’s found someone she can totally trust to hear and respect her birth choices and not intervene unnecessarily. When Lucy’s told she needs to go to the hospital immediately to be induced for low fluids at 41 weeks, it becomes clear things won’t fully go as she had hoped. However, you’ll hear Lucy share how it was still a positive, empowering experience overall because of her careful choice of a care provider with whom she felt truly aligned and who helped her discern each step of the way when interventions were truly medically indicated.

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In this final episode of Season 2, we'll hear a theme of gratitude. Laura communicates lots of it in today’s birth story as she shares the story of a well-supported metamorphosis into motherhood, her matrescence. Laura’s story is another pandemic birth story in which she equipped herself and her partner with birth doula support early in pregnancy and then also hired a great postpartum doula to support her for several weeks afterwards. She shares how, while the birth didn’t play out totally as she had hoped, it was still a positive experience largely because she had great support and received respectful care. Then in postpartum, only 9 days after birth, she and her husband start having Covid symptoms and find out he tested positive while their birth doula was visiting them. She describes some details of that challenging time. Finally, Laura shares how her eyes were opened to some of the terrible racial injustices and disparities that exist in our maternal health care system and how she wants to do her part to effect change.

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When Evelyn & James conceive their baby, they have no idea they’ll be giving birth during a pandemic. As a dancer and trainer, she even keeps touring for a while with her dance company and teaching Pilates classes for part of pregnancy and just before Covid gets real. Once the pandemic hits, they decide to abruptly leave NYC to be closer to Evelyn’s family to give birth down in Houston, never thinking that it might just be a permanent move away from NYC. Ultimately, they decide to give birth at a freestanding birthing center, not wanting to give birth in a hospital given the risks of Covid-19, and then they have a postdates waterbirth supported by doulas, her husband and midwives. Evelyn and James share their son's birth story today but then Evelyn also shares a bit about her postpartum healing journey, and describes some of the work she’s doing now to virtually support pregnant and postpartum parents as a physical trainer.

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Scharisse felt like she was getting lackluster care in her pregnancy at a hospital under Medicaid but thought she just had to deal. She was being told she should just schedule a cesarean because of her age and being overweight, and it didn’t sit right with her. Then one day, when she was around 30 weeks pregnant, she encountered a doula who encouraged her that she deserves to have respectful care and a great birth. This empowered her to switch to giving birth at home -- something she never thought someone on Medicaid could do, thanks to some flexibility on the part of her midwives and a community birth fund. She shares today about the radically better, deeply respectful care she received when she switched to working with homebirth midwives and doulas and details specific ways in which she felt heard and safe.

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Actor-singer Aimée discovers she’s pregnant right after her and her husband’s honeymoon, which they returned from just before the pandemic shutdown and experiences both a healthy pregnancy but also sadness of not being seen by friends or family throughout her pregnancy. Today Aimée will share her baby's birth story in which she intentionally labors at home for a good, long time and then gives birth in a Manhattan hospital with the support of her husband and doula and without pain medications. Despite the fact that she had a great birth, you’ll hear how she began experiencing postpartum anxiety & depression around 4 weeks out from birth, how the anxiety skyrocketed around 6 weeks when her son became colicky and began having long crying spells, and how critically helpful it was when she sought out a therapist at the Motherhood Center who specializes in the perinatal period.

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Sasha planned to give birth with a midwife and developed a birth plan for a peaceful, unmedicated birth. Some of her plans necessarily go out the window when, at 37 weeks Sasha is diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and has to immediately come to the hospital in the snow to be induced for the safety of her and her daughter. This story will help expectant parents think through their choices in care providers both in pregnancy as well as for baby, and also drives home the value of hiring a doula.

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Today Emily shares her two pregnancy stories and a birth story. First, she describes experiencing pregnancy loss at 11 weeks. It surprises her when the grief was longer-lasting and more complex than she expected, but shares the essential support she discovered to help her through the journey of loss. Then Emily tells the story of conceiving her rainbow baby shortly after the Covid-19 shutdown and the many ways she and Scott prepared for giving birth, including hiring a team of 2 virtual doulas. She provides detailed strategies that helped her have the kind of birth she had hoped for (an unmedicated vaginal birth), including not only support from her husband, virtual doulas and nurses, but also laboring at home for most of labor, experimenting with a variety of positions, music, hydrotherapy, and more.

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So it was a very stressful situation to be sent to the hospital and be told if you can't get your blood pressure down, you're being induced today. It's sort of the worst thing you could tell somebody who's trying to -- but what I found was I would put my headphones on, I would lie down on my left side and I would start to listen to my Hypnobirthing  tape and I would just really focus on the relaxation and my breathing. And my blood pressure numbers would just drop. And they would come in and sort of shake their heads and say, "Okay, I've never seen this work before, but I guess you can go home." And this actually happened a couple of times. It was really instructive to me to see how that kind of relaxation and breathing could affect my body in these really significant ways. And honestly it gave me a lot more practice too, for the hypnobirthing techniques.

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What happens when you grow your family from an only child to two children? Today Danuta & Jacek share two birth stories -- one hospital birth with an obstetrician and one birthing center birth with a midwife, both so fast they barely make it to the birthplace in time. They compare and contrast the two birthing environments and care provider models, which will be helpful for anyone trying to make these choices before or during pregnancy. You’ll note that last week’s and this week’s episode titles both center on grief. Grief is a necessary process in any life change, and all kinds of grief can be challenging. Last week you heard about grief of losing a parent whereas this week you’ll hear a mother describe the surprising sadness she experienced toward the end of her second pregnancy as well as into postpartum in the transition from having just one child to focus on to having to divide attention between two. You’ll hear how important support was for Danuta as she expresses gratitude for the ways in which her doula and fellow moms normalized and validated her feelings of grief along the way.

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Today Sarah & Steve share their daughter Molly’s birth story as a special way to celebrate and honor her on her 13th birthday, which is the day this story is airing. It’s a story of an unmedicated vaginal birth at home with a homebirth midwife in Brooklyn. Interesting, perhaps, to note that Molly has recently become interested in becoming a midwife and has listened to every single episode of this podcast! Sarah shares how giving birth and becoming a mother stirred up a new wave of grief over the loss of her mother, which was about 7 years before she became a mother. This sharing was also a special way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of losing her mother as it was recorded the day after it. She’ll mention a couple of things that happened during pregnancy that seemed like messages sent from her mother. As a professional in literacy as well as an anti-racist educator, Sarah provides a number of great book recommendations, including the recommendation to expose little ones to diversity and representation in books that you read to them as early as possible.

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