What You Didn't Expect in Fertility, Pregnancy & Birth: Real Stories & Expert Insights

Today's guest walked into pregnancy with an expectation that the process would be as smooth for her as it had been for her mother, as it was for the farm animals she'd been surrounded by for her whole life, as it was from 50,000 feet: civilization depends on this process and women's bodies were made for this project. Although the pregnancy part was relatively straightforward, the ways in which her first birth unfolded deviated profoundly from her expectation. In this first part of our conversation we'll hear how she processed that first experience, and how she used what she learned in this experience to alter the births that followed. 

for extended show notes, see: http://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Today we pick up the second half of Melissa's story. At the end of last week's episode Melissa was on bedrest, she has to leave her job and be home with a four year old and a husband who worked full time, in a town in which she didn't have a strong support network because she'd moved there relatively recently. To remind us where she was emotionally, I'm going to share an excerpt from Melissa's writing--this is a sneak preview of her book...in this excerpt she is describing the experience of being told about the prospect of a too early birth.  To listen to the excerpt, press play; to read it, go to http://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Today's guest is a clinical psychologist, whose mother passed away a few years before she had any direct experience of pregnancy. She encounters recurrent miscarriage, three in the first trimester, and then a pregnancy that progresses past the first trimester, only to be threatened with prematurity early in the third trimester and experience all of these challenging and transformative events are harder to manage without her mother. Now she's focused on helping women who are going through or have gone through these major life events without their mothers. What follows is the first part of our conversation. Next Friday. We'll hear the rest. Let's get to her inspiring story.

for extended show notes, see: http://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Today's guest had a number of challenges with the physical aspects of pregnancy--she and her partner had trouble getting pregnant initially, and her third child was born in June of 2020, very much in the heart of covid, which invited it's own challenges; but what really surprised her was the loss of the person she used to be.  She found motherhood to be both beautiful and completely overwhelming and had to work hard to reestablish her boundaries and her life after kids.  Her experience becomes the motivation for a new company in an effort to help other mom's navigate this enormous transition a little bit easier.

For extended show notes, see: http://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Today we hear the second half of Eileen's story about her experience with pregnancy. Last week we heard about some of the challenges associated with her miscarriages. But when we left Eileen, she was about to deliver her first baby, having christened the hospital elevator when her water broke on the way up to a birthing room. we'll pick up her story when she's on the way to the hospital for her first birth.

For more extensive show notes, see: https://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

 In today's episode, my guests challenge is with miscarriage. She has two miscarriages both at the end of the first trimester, and then uses IVF (despite the fact that getting pregnant isn't the issue)...and get's pregnant, and has a miscarriage....eventually she becomes the mother of two girls, but that's later in the story. She is a writer, and in one of her pieces about this topic  called On Fertility in The Toast she writes: When you give birth, you do it with others. When you miscarry, you do it alone. Even if doctors and nurses are present, numbing you, holding your hand, giving gentle instructions, they’re not with you, because what’s happening is both too awful, and too common, to be shared. Nobody wants co-ownership of the failed human. Many don’t even consider it human.

Even if your father is driving you to the hospital in his buttery yellow Lincoln, or even if your mother is riding in the ambulance with you, or even if you husband and sister are outside the procedure room waiting, you’re still alone. There was a person/being/cluster of cells that was alive inside you, and now it’s not. Times three. It happened when I was 31, 33, and 38.

I'll stop reading there and you can hear my guest describe her experience...our conversation is broken into two parts. In this first part I also spoke with a doctor whose specialty is recurrent miscarriage and he shares insights from his own research and experience.

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Today we hear the second half of my conversation with Kristine. Last week we heard about her first pregnancy that ended in a stillbirth. She just started talking about her second pregnancy, which was looking and feeling too much like the first one for her comfort. And she's gone into the hospital at 27 weeks to get checked out. Near the end of our conversation, when reflecting on her experiences with pregnancy and delivery, Kristine wonders again about the possible impact that trauma could have on her pregnancies. To give us a sense of prevalent issue.

I spoke with a clinical psychologist who studies trauma and pregnancy. Her conversation is included.

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Being able to create a new life inside your body is both an awesome feat and one fraught with the real possibility of death. Once you really hone in on the millions of things that have to go right in the just right way to make a baby, it's a wonder anyone is born ever. Today's guest spends time on both sides of this line. Her first pregnancy ends at the beginning of her third trimester in a stillbirth. Although the exact cause of her son's death is not definitively found, my guest suspects that the proximate cause may have been a placental abruption which may reflect her past history of trauma. Given this experience, she was on high alert for the second pregnancy, which also ended early, at the start of the third trimester, but this time her daughter survived.  

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Few of us enter pregnancy and delivery with a crystal clear picture of what the experience will be like the first time.  In some ways, this makes sense, given that everyone's experience will be unique in certain ways, depending on their health, their age, their partner, their history...but the distance between the narrative today's guest received from her mother and her actual experience can only be measured in lightyears....to be fair to her mother who gave birth in the 50s, it was a very different time in maternal care...but carrying this version of the story among others can have real consequence, if not for how her own delivery developed, it has the potential to affect how she understood her own experience. 

For more show notes, see: http://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.

Today we hear from two women, one’s an author and generally in the book world and the other is an author, grief counsel and  therapist. Individually, these women encountered challenges with their own pregnancies. They’ve come together to write a book that helps women to process the events of their pregnancies and birth by writing about it.

For extended show notes, see: http://warstoriesfromthewomb.com/

This is a weekly show that highlights real pregnancy, birth & postpartum stories.