Cocoon

It’s often the long view of life that is the clearest. We know where we want to go, where we want to end up, but it’s the getting there that is difficult. If we are serious about what we want, we do whatever we can to stay on track.

When Grace Poulsen was 28, she had just finished breastfeeding her 2nd daughter. Her husband, Dave, was working through his residency as an ophthalmologist. And their life in the Bronx, New York, was busy and mentally and physically taxing.

And then she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The next year of their life became a mess of doctor appointments and cancer treatments—as well as a last minute attempt to preserve the Poulsen’s hope of having any more children.

We talked with Grace and Dave about the cancer—which derailed their already very busy and stressful lives—about Grace’s art, her changed body, and about how they plan to get back on the path to where they always hoped to be. 

When you are pregnant and on your way to becoming a mother there can be so many worries and wonders you have about what is going to happen to you—what is happening to you—and your family. Some of those worries are physical, but they can be mental, emotional, and spiritual as well. And who can you turn to to help you explore all those things you are facing as you enter this new chapter in your life? 

It often seems like in our society, we are all anticipation of the baby and its health that we forget the impact the experience is having on the mother, the father, and even siblings and grandparents. In my experience, midwives can step into the breech.

We talked to Barri Malek and Kristen Leonard, the home birth midwives who helped Lizzie through her pregnancies with her 3rd and 4th babies about why maternity care matters for everyone—in hospitals, at home, for mothers and fathers, and for our society as a whole.

In this week’s mini episode JoAnna reads her essay about her baby Levi, who, after being diagnosed with trisomy-13 at 18 weeks, beat the odds and was born alive at 35 weeks gestation. Levi may have lead a tiny and quiet life, but his existence was like a firework that bursts onto the scene leaving wonder and beauty in its wake.

You can read the full text of the episode here.

Bente kept a journal when she was growing up in which she wrote that she would have 12 kids: 2 boys, then 2 girls, then 2 boys, and on and on. A couple of decades later we meet up with her and find that things went surprisingly well for her.

Not only did she surpass her childhood expectations as far as number of children, she nailed her calling in life. Motherhood is where she feels most real, most fulfilled, and most whole.

We talk with Bente about how she came to this decision, what the hardest parts have been, and what she expects from her children.

“At some point, every woman needs to make peace with her uterus.”

So says Liz Ostler, who has known since she was a child that she would be a mother. It was the fact she based many of her life decisions around, the hope that caused her to hold on to flagging relationships . . . and the thing that made her—again, her own words—”a crazy person.”

Here Liz, single and nearly 40, opens up about why motherhood was and is so important to her and how she did “the work” to loosen her grip on that hope. And while she acknowledges that the circumstances of life may not always align just right for every woman who wants to be a mom to be one, she also knows that there are ways to create and grow and build life even without giving birth.

Before Nicole even had a chance to take a pregnancy test, her body was reacting strongly to the baby that had just begun to develop. She had a severe case of pregnancy sickness called hyperemesis gravidarum—which is definitely NOT morning sickness—that left her feeling like a shell of a person for virtually her entire pregnancy. Actually, both of her pregnancies.

Why some women get so severely sick during pregnancy is a mystery. Another mystery: why our society is so slow to recognize that someone as sick as Nicole was—no matter the cause—needs help and support. Nicole says she felt that because her sickness was caused by pregnancy, people were less sympathetic than they would have been for other types of incapacitating illness.

In fact, in some ways it seems important to separate the illness from the pregnancy, and the pregnancy from the motherhood, because hyperemesis definitely messes with society’s ideals and expectations of what pregnancy should be. And those, like Nicole, who fall on the outside of those ideals are left out in the cold when it comes to talking about the joys of becoming a mom. Not only that, they are often unfairly asked to compare the hell of their sickness with the joy of having a child: “Wasn’t it worth it?” is a common question that really doesn’t have an answer.

Although Nicole felt isolated and unsure of what was happening to her throughout her pregnancy, she did find helpful information through the website pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk. She urges anyone who experiences severe illness while pregnant to check it out to find resources and support.

Today’s episode is an essay written and read by Lizzie Heiselt. It takes on the “all that matters is that you have a healthy baby” idea. For anyone who’s been told this, you know there’s not really a response to that. On some level, it’s true. Having a baby—let alone a healthy one—is something to be grateful for. But it doesn’t mean that sometimes there isn’t something to mourn, that there isn’t a sense of loss. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not entitled to feel those feelings.

Lizzie takes one angle on that—gender, specifically—and, in conversation mentioned that it’s not exactly a “you get what you get and you don’t get upset” kind of situation . . . more like a “love the one you’re with” sort of deal. And of course you will love the one you’re with. Even as you mourn what might have been.

In the days after Gina gave birth to her stillborn son, James, she wrote a record of the event on her blog. It was a beginning of her mourning and rebuilding process and captures both the grief she was feeling at the time and the hope that she had that her life would be made better by James and her relationship with him—as brief as it was.

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The full human experience includes this: pregnancy, birth, life, death. And if all goes well and normally, the pregnancy is 9 months, the birth takes a day or so, the life is decades long, and the death neither sneaks up nor hovers for too long.

But the normal order is sometimes confused. The pregnancy is too short. The birthing process is unusually long. The death casts a shadow for months and even years. And sometimes, things happen in the wrong order. Death skips ahead and takes a life before it has even had a chance to be born.

Gina tells us what it was like for her to be a mother in that situation, in having to say goodbye to her son before she really got to say hello. Spoiler alert: it’s pretty painful. Physically, emotionally, spiritually—lots of hurt all over. The interesting thing about Gina, however, is that she accepted that pain was part of the experience. Not something to hide from, not something to push away—something to notice and feel and walk with throughout her ordeal.

Surprisingly—or maybe not—Gina found that pain and beauty, sorrow and joy, go hand in hand. Life is fuller when we embrace all the feelings it brings.

“Winter Fear” by Kay Ryan

Is it just Winter

or is this worse.

Is this the year

when outer damp

obscures a deeper curse

that spring can’t fix,

when gears that

turn the earth

won’t shift the view

when clouds won’t lift

though all the skies

go blue.

There is an expectation with pregnancy that growing a life leads to glowing. The question, “How are you feeling?” is supposed to elicit maybe some talk about morning sickness, followed quickly by, “But we’re so excited.” The words “prenatal depression” are rarely heard, even in the rare case they are acknowledged by the expectant mom.

Because if you don’t feel excited, well, then who are you?

You’re could be one of the many, many women whose pregnancy experience—whose symptoms—include antenatal or prenatal depression, post-partum depression’s lesser known sister. It can be incredibly isolating to feel so sad at a time when you are expected to feel joy, to feel like the bleak midwinter has descended when everyone else is basking in sunny spring. It can feel like there is no space, no place for you and for your feelings.

So when someone asks, “But honestly, how are you feeling?” be open to sharing, and hearing, an honest answer.

In this episode we talk to a woman who, though excited about becoming a mom and enduring a difficult road to a healthy pregnancy, nonetheless found herself feeling that maybe every decision she had made to get this point was the wrong one. She walks us through her experience realizing that what she was feeling was serious, how she decided to get help, and how she—and Valerie—realized that maybe the best thing to do in this kind of situation is to tell people the truth when they ask how you are feeling.

You may find yourself in good company.