E254: My Birth Story - TELL ALL

It took me almost seven months to share this experience here on the podcast. But my body and my heart needed more time to heal. I’m finally ready to share my birth story with you, and I am not leaving anything out…

All right. All right. All right. Wow. It feels so good. Good to be back. My gosh, I missed you heaps since we've had such a long break from our last episode. I'm calling everything from this episode that you're listening to right now onward. I'm calling it season two of the women's empowerment podcast and girl.

I am excited about it. First of all, thank you so much for being here. Whether you are an OG listener or new, hi, welcome. I appreciate you. My name is Valerie and I am the creator, producer, and host of the women's empowerment podcast. And I am also a Pilates teacher and reformer studio co owner. And my newest, I guess you could call it a title is that I'm a new mom.

When I started this podcast years ago, I had just come back from a solo trip through Central America and Mexico and It changed my life and over the years, I was so grateful and so blessed to have been able to interview different women from my travels, most of them being solo entrepreneurs or other small business owners, just figuring out their own journeys.

Now I'm back on the show. And I'm back from another very big life change. It's an adventure unlike any other that I've ever been on. I am a new mom. And maybe you were following along with my journey on Instagram and saw some bits and pieces of how I was preparing for our little babe to arrive. Or maybe you saw the stories that I shared after the heartbreaking experience that I had.

Well, today. I'm getting vulnerable by sharing my birth story with you. And it's something that I've been wanting to do for a while. And it's taken me a little over six months because the little baby is almost seven months. But it's taken me over six months to actually sit. Down and share this with you.

And I wanted to share this for a few reasons. The first being that it's really helpful to hear the experiences of other women to help you either prepare for or heal from your birth experience. And the second reason is because it's helping me to heal from my experience as well. So if you haven't. If you haven't already shared your birth story, I highly recommend it.

It doesn't have to be on a podcast or publicly. It could just be that you write it down in a private journal or you share it with a close friend or family member. It's very healing. Okay. If you haven't already, settle in. We're going to be here for a little bit. Get comfy, grab a blanket or a beverage. I'm picturing us just like curled up on the couch together with our babies in our laps, and we're exchanging our birth stories, holding space for each other. I'll go first.

New Year’s Surprise

I feel that it's important to take you back to January, 2023. It was around New Year's Day or New Year's Eve and I was feeling all kinds of weird. I was confused and emotional and I was telling my boyfriend that I think we should break up and we got in a fight because we couldn't agree on what restaurant to eat at and it was very upsetting to me at the time.

The next morning, I decided, hmm, you know what, I'm going to take a pregnancy test. My period was late, I was feeling weird, and yep, there it was, the blue plus sign. I remember looking at it and feeling like my whole world was spinning. I started laughing and crying at the same time, and part of me was like, Oh, okay.

This is why I've been acting so crazy. I don't actually want to break up with Craig. It's the hormones, duh. And the other part of me was like, hold on, we are not in a position to be having a baby right now. The ducks are not in their row. Fast forward to a week later. Craig and I are on this family ski snowboard trip in the French Alps.

I am very newly pregnant, so we decided not to tell anybody yet. But there were lots of suspicions. When I didn't finish my champagne that first night. My first ride down the mountain, I took a horrible tumble. I knocked the wind out of myself, my ribs were all mangled, and immediately I'm crying. And fearing that the worst has happened, the stretcher then takes me down the rest of the way down the mountain.

And while I didn't snowboard the rest of the trip, I still had a really great time. Other than my ribs feeling really bruised, not cracked, but like they weren't in the right position is how it felt. Honestly, it was I was really lucky that I was only in, you know, some mild pain considering that the tumble was like, it was quite intense.

So when I got home, my osteo helps me with my ribs. My doctor gives me the requisition for the blood work for my pregnancy and things are starting to move forward.

A few more days go by and some light spotting on a Wednesday morning turns into heavy bleeding and terrible stomach pain on Thursday midday. There's no baby anymore. I just know it. I left work early that day and I ugly cried the entire drive home. I felt my heart shatter into a million little pieces that day.

The pain, the bleeding, it continued and I noticed more symptoms. So my Google search told me to go to the emergency room. It was there that I received my first ultrasound for that particular pregnancy. And it was the ultrasound that was telling me that there was no baby. They couldn't see a baby. The ER doctor sent me home with my blood test to show my doctor.

And we were going to compare that blood work that I had done a few days before. So, we were looking for the pregnancy hormones. If they were going up or down. Down meant I had a miscarriage and my body would just know what to do next. If the hormones, however, were going up, I needed to go back to the ER right away.

Optimists would call this the best worst case scenario because the hormones were going down. I bled for about two weeks. I cried every single day. I was scared. I felt broken. I felt isolated. And I realized that I was a lot more ready for. that baby and excited for it than I thought that I was when we originally found out we were pregnant.

A little over a month later, I got my period back, and I felt desperate to try again for another baby, although most medical professionals would advise against this so soon after miscarriage. I was disappointed when I got my period again the next month, and since the miscarriage, I was doing just about everything that I could think of to help me heal my heart.

I was journaling, I got an aura reading, resting, walking, crying, meditating, I even wrote a poem. It was I called it Fifty Shades of Red, a love story. All of those things helped, all of those things helped me heal, but my body, my mind, and my heart needed more time about a month after that, my OURA ring that I wear every day and night was telling me that I might be getting sick and my heart rate and body temperature were increasing.

It was very early. I think I wasn't even due to get my period for like another two days. I took the pregnancy test anyways, and it was a very faint positive. But to be honest, I didn't need the test to know that I was pregnant again. I could just tell. I was so happy and also really scared at the same time.

Pregnancy After Loss: The First Trimester

It was such a strange time because when you get pregnant again after a loss, You're cautiously optimistic. You are fearful that you are going to get too excited because you know how hard it hurts to lose a baby already. I wanted to tell everybody I wanted to tell everyone the news, but I was also worried that I'd have another miscarriage and be heartbroken all over again.

I remember thinking that I wouldn't wish that heartache on my worst enemy. The first trimester was an emotional rollercoaster. I am not a crier and I was getting overwhelmed by everything, TV shows this little bird that was building a nest outside our house. And if you know me, you know that I'm not a fan of birds.

So when I was crying because this little bird lost one of its eggs. One of its eggs came out out of the nest. I was beside myself. It was very emotional. People were also very suspicious. Like, why is this girl crying about birds? She does not like birds. I have a soul. Yeah, everything, videos on Instagram, you name it.

I was also very nauseous, I lost my appetite for just about everything.

Pretty early on, I was repulsed by coffee, cigarette smoke, and the smell of garbage. I couldn't stand it. We did tell a few people about the news of the baby, but I kept things pretty quiet online, which I didn't expect. At the time, I felt that the pregnancy was really sacred and really personal, and I wanted it to be something that Craig and I could enjoy in our little love bubble.

I'm really glad that I made that decision and followed that instinct because if there's one thing about people knowing that you're pregnant, it's the unsolicited advice that everyone seems to have for you. But some of it is good advice. It's one of those things where now, if someone asks me, I will answer, but I am not gonna just throw my thoughts and my own experiences at somebody.

Climbing Mountains: The Second Trimester

By the second trimester in that pregnancy, I was starting to get my energy back and my appetite back. I even had one or two coffees in the second trimester. We traveled to B. C. to tell my sister about the pregnancy and

We traveled to BC where my sister lives and I got to tell her in person about the pregnancy, which was so awesome because she was very surprised and excited for us. And on the same trip, Craig and I climbed this big mountain called the chief. And I was pleasantly surprised that I actually made it to the peak and back at, I think I was 12 or 13 weeks pregnant at the time.

So I think it was like, Moving into the second trimester at that time, the third trimester wasn't too bad. I feel like there were a lot of highs and a lot of lows because I continued to grow and I started telling more people about the news and then the heartburn kicked in and I definitely struggled with that.

Heartburn Sucks: The Third Trimester

It sucked. I actually forgot about the heartburn for a few weeks after giving birth and then someone asked me about heartburn. I was like, Oh my God, I had that. It was horrible. But you do kind of forget it. There's other things that you have to deal with after. Yeah, heartburn was very uncomfortable by the end.

I just was, in general, very uncomfortable by the end. The baby grew and kicked my ribs and I was finding it a lot harder to sleep. His head was pushing on my left hip, causing me some back pain. While I had a pretty healthy pregnancy, I still felt nervous and pressured by the people around me to do certain things that I wasn't necessarily comfortable with.

Things like extra ultrasounds and the gestational diabetes test. Looking back, I wish I had more confidence to use my autonomy. The glucose test was pretty much the beginning of that or one of the smaller points of that. But if you didn't already know, there is a recommended glucose test that is taken between week 24 and 28.

The test is you drink a bottle of syrup water and the nurse takes your blood an hour later to measure your response. To the sugar and how you digest that sugar, how quickly you digest it. I tried to avoid this test and I eventually caved into my midwives. The morning of the test, I woke up from this dream about my baby.

I like to think of myself as someone who is practical and spiritual. Well, this is my woo coming out. I had a dream that I was in the nursery of our new home and Craig came home with our baby boy. He brought him in, in this car seat and he was the absolute most adorable little baby you had ever seen. He had these bright blue eyes and he was smiling and so happy.

And in the dream, I was thrilled obviously to be meeting our little baby boy and also feeling very confused about how he got there into our home because in the dream I didn't give birth. He just appeared. At the same time, I took that dream as a sign that my baby was a very healthy and happy. And I also recognize that giving birth and going through labor was something that I was really looking forward to in the whole pregnancy experience.

Now, Craig has hazel eyes and I have brown eyes. So. When I saw this, these mesmerizing blue eyes of this little baby in the dream, it sort of threw me off a bit. And I actually thought I was seeing the appearance of this baby because one of my friends who gave birth like six months before me, her baby kind of looked like the baby in my dream, like the blue eyes and everything.

So, this threw me off and I kind of ignored my intuition in the pregnancy again. I fell into fear, even though my little baby came to me in my dream to tell me he was happy and healthy, I still went ahead with the glucose test. Unfortunately for me, I borderline failed the test and the midwives made me.

I'm going to do air quotes, they made me retake the test. They encouraged me greatly. was again, drinking an even worse syrup water because the second test is different. Then I had to wait multiple hours with multiple blood tests instead of just the one. hour and the one blood test. Came home from the clinic and I threw up immediately.

I also passed the test. Thank goodness. Cause I was not interested in having gestational diabetes, even though if I did. Have gestational diabetes, they would have told me to do certain things for my lifestyle and my eating habits, which I was already eating and exercising in the way that they would have told me to, which is very annoying.

And I know there are people listening who are probably thinking, well, yeah, but there's so much more, there's more monitoring and then you need to do this. And I can't anyway, the point is. You do not have to do anything you do not want to do during your pregnancy, including all of the tests. I know this is a controversial topic and it's okay if you have a different opinion than me, I am not saying this to argue.

I'm saying this because women need to know. They need to know that you can say yes, and you can say no, you are not a bad mother if you say no, you are also not a bad mother if you say yes. To those tests, as the pregnancy continued, I became more uncomfortable. Our baby boy was due January 4th and I was ready for him.

Nesting

Weeks before that I prepared soups, stews, snacks, had them all in the freezer. I set up the nursery, the diapers, the postpartum healing products. Everything was ready. When we went past the arbitrary. Date, they call it due date. Did you know that only 5 percent of babies are actually born on their due date?

And that 81 percent of first babies arrive after their due date. Well, our baby was one of the 81%. I guess he was cozy in my uterus because he did not want to come out. Midwives did more tests on me, everything was fine and yet they were encouraging again on induction and induction is when a medical team uses interventions to induce or we'll call it provoke the body into labor. Guess what? Inductions also do induction stress the mother and the baby. And guess what a stressed out mother and or baby in labor means.

It means things aren't going well, and guess what happens when things aren't going well in labor? More medical intervention, more stress. I didn't want to be induced, but I was scared, I was uncomfortable, I was afraid of people thinking that I was a bad mom, and I didn't even have my baby earth side yet, and I was afraid of these things. You don't get a medal for having an unmedicated birth, people would tell me. I feel like I heard it all from both sides. The modern medical world shouts one thing, the holistic community shouts another. In the end, everyone is shouting and it makes it more difficult for the mother to listen to her own intuition.

The Induction

I fell into fear again, I booked the induction date. Was 41 weeks and five days into my pregnancy, barely slept the night before the induction. We arrived at the hospital and my midwives were not there. What the actual fork, a different midwife from another team was there since our midwife had been up all night with another birth.

She had to sleep before she could come in to see us. I understand the rules. I understand why this boundary or this policy is in place. I get that. So the new midwife said, I read your file, but tell me about you since I'm just meeting you now for the first time. I looked her straight in the eyes and I said, “Well, my goal is to have a vaginal unmedicated birth.

I want the least medical intervention and I don't want to be induced. “ Right then and there, she closed this big folder in front of her, this big binder, I guess it had my information in it. She closed this big binder in front of her and said,” okay, do you know that you do not have to do this today?" You do not have to go through with this induction.”

It was the first time in my whole pregnancy that I felt seen or heard by someone in this medical space. Without judgment, because there were times where I felt seen and heard, but judged. Anyway, it was the first time, and even though it was exactly what I needed to hear, it was too late. Fear had already won.

I had already decided that I was going to try the most low intervention induction possible. Within a few minutes, the OB GYN was administering a gel that was meant to ripen my cervix and, encourage contractions or start contractions. They inject this gel and you are monitored at the hospital for about an hour.

If all looks good, you go home and then you come back to the hospital six hours later to see where the cervix has progressed. But if after 60 minutes, the monitor shows signs of stress, nobody's going home. The gel stressed our baby. His heart rate wasn't coming back up fast enough during the bigger contractions.

I was barely in labor. Yes, I had contractions that were bigger than Braxton Hicks. They were the pre labor contractions. My cervix? Not ripe. Before the midwives told me what was happening, I felt the energy in the room change. Different people were coming in and out, people I didn't know, people that were not part of my birth plan.

The midwife looked at me in the eyes, you And shared her concerns. She said that she would need to consult with the OB, but at this time, the baby was too stressed and he needed to come out right away. The only way to do this was via cesarean.

My Worst Nightmare Came True

My heart shattered into a million pieces all over again. This was the exact opposite of the birth that I prepared for. All the meditations. Hypnobirth, recordings, exercises, stretches, all the books I read, all the concoctions I drank to naturally induce or ripen my cervix, all the dates that I ate, I did so much to prepare for this, and I blamed myself immediately.

It was all my fault that I agreed to this induction.

The OB came in right away and said, Valerie, you are going to have a c section. I burst into tears. She asked me if I needed a minute and I nodded and I sobbed. Yes, everyone but Craig cleared the room. I was devastated I could barely speak. I was crying so hard I'm actually not sure how long we were in the room for how long we were alone there But I'm not sure if more or less time would have mattered much what I do know was that the fact that they allowed us to have a minute or two made me realize that The baby wasn't in enough distress for them to say, no, you can't, there's no time, there's no time to be had.

We have to do this now. So, I don't see it as an emergency C section, but an unplanned C section instead, and unwanted. Once we officially agreed to the C section, everything moved very quickly. More people entered the room than before there were documents that needed to be filled out and signed I had to consent to a bunch of things Of course it's now that I choose to ask all the questions and refuse this or that and at one point it was just the Midwife and I in the room and she was helping me into my gown for surgery.

I couldn't stop crying or shaking. I just Can barely remember what things looked like. I was crying so hard. It was such a strange experience because part of me remembers these little details. And I also don't remember a lot of it. And then there were times where I felt like I was completely out of my body watching the whole scenario play out.

To describe the feeling of your abdomen getting cut open and stretched by hand in layers is beyond my vocabulary. I had no control in what was happening. And when I tell you that I could feel the cuts, the pulls, the manipulation of my organs, that I could feel them take the baby out of my body. The feeling of them sewing each layer in my body, thrashing with each pull of the stitches.

I'm not sure if I'll ever forget it.

Our baby boy was born screaming, which is a good sign. He was healthy and he pretty much stopped crying when they put him on my chest. I tried to stop my own sad tears when the midwife was taking pictures.

When I look back on those photos, I feel my heart break slowly. There's a deep pain in my eyes in the photos.

No one said anything about it, but everyone in the room knew that I was heartbroken, and that I did not want that C section. And it makes me wonder how many times that happens. Emergency C sections, unplanned C sections, they're all really scary, but how many of those women don't want that for themselves or their babies?

I wonder.

Postpartum, Post-Opp

Tried to focus on our little baby boy. He was so cute, there is so much that happens to your body within the hours. And days of giving birth and even more when you throw in major abdominal surgery into that mix, the hormone dump, the newborn baby, the sleepless nights, the pain, the blood, the thirst, and the hunger, the emotional processing of what has just happened.

And everyone wants to see you and your baby, but you can barely walk and you're in pain in every single way, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual. Because of the c section, it is advised to stay at the hospital for 48 hours. We weren't prepared to stay that long because we were not expecting to have a c section.

The nurses actually scolded us for not being more prepared. I had one nurse tell me that it was time for mommy to stop crying now because it was time to bond with baby. I just stared at her. All I could think of was, let's see you have unwanted and unplanned major abdominal surgery and not cry afterwards.

What the heck? Who says that? That is so insensitive.

Our first night in our own home, Was a total blur. No one slept. It took us the entire sleepless night to realize that maybe the baby was too cold. So we put another layer on him for sleep. The next night I went to bed early. My sister came over to help us out and she and Craig and the baby were all together while I slept. When the baby was hungry, Craig came to wake me up. It was around 10 p. m. I said, let me pee before I feed him and Craig asked if I wanted help going to the bathroom, which even though I didn't really need the help, I took it.

Complications

I started to pull my pants down and I gasped and burst into tears at the sight of bright red blood all over my incision, my underwear, my sweat pants. I told Craig to take a picture and text some advice right away. Her reply said, go to the ER. We had barely unpacked our hospital bags, so we grabbed those and we went back to the hospital.

We were in the ER for 11 hours before they sent us home. It was another night that no one slept. My milk had come in and it was just pouring out of me. I went through three gowns. At the hospital, you could wring out the milk that was in my sweater.

At one point, I stood up and I said, Let's just go home. The nurse that saw me ran up to me. She knew I was upset. And I said to her, “Well, I haven't bled out by now, so I might as well just go home.” The ER doctor finally came to see me. She said that she consulted with the OB on call and that the blood was likely from a hematoma and needed to leave the body So it did that through my incision.

The blood tests that they had done showed that my human Hemoglobin levels were normal for someone who had just had major abdominal surgery a few days before Cool, I'm being sarcastic. I'm rolling my eyes.

Healing from Heartbreak

Pregnancy, the birth experience and motherhood are such vastly different experiences for every woman. What I've learned after my own experience and listening to the stories of other women who have been so generous to share their stories with me is that women are powerful beings. No matter what your own experience, you come out the other side as the most raw, real vulnerable and strong version of yourself that you've ever met.

No matter how broken or defeated you feel, there is a strength that builds from this deep unconditional love for your child. And my best advice for any new or seasoned mother. Is that you take that deep, unconditional love that you have for your child or your children, and you give some of that to yourself too this whole experience I've had so far has changed me in many ways.

And I'm excited to say that one of the things that has inspired this new direction for the podcast is this experience. This new season of my life has inspired this new season of the podcast. And this is season two, a dedication to supporting and empowering mindful mothers in their pursuit to love their families and themselves.

I'm on a journey to being the best version of myself as a woman, a mother, a friend, a partner, a business owner. Part of my journey is dedicating time to healing physically as well as mentally and emotionally. And understanding women's health and hormones on this deeper level and empowering women to trust their intuition, no matter what noise is around them, no matter what fear presents itself to them.

New Season

I'm excited to share that we're welcoming new experts in women's health to the show for the season with a focus on the small steps and changes we can make today to support us as women leaders with all the goodness that we have coming.

I recommend subscribing to the empowered email list. I'll send you behind the scenes access to the show, discount codes, bonus content, and some personal life updates. You can use the show notes to find the link or head over to valerielavignelife.com/subscribe to get on that list. Thank you so much again for holding space for me to share my birth story.

Again, if you haven't already done this, I invite you to share your story, whether that be publicly, privately, in a way that it's in your own words and If you need to cry, cry, remember, it's just the two of us. Our babies are on our laps. We're holding space for one another to share our stories. Thank you for allowing me to go first in sharing mine.

I'm excited for this adventure with you to go on this journey with you. Of healing, of growth, of self love.

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!