Episode# 013: Our Birth Story (That Every Entrepreneur Should Hear)
This episode is a little different from what you've gotten from me so far on scaling up. I'm getting super personal,pretty vulnerable in sharing my third babies birth story. And it's not what you might think you'd hear on an entrepreneurial minded podcast, but I felt like it really applied to our listeners.
Avellina is three weeks old today as of this recording and this third baby experience and everything from the pregnancy to the delivery to the recovery have been so different than my first two. And I've seen so many parallels between this particular experience and our lives as entrepreneurs and as a business owner. And since I've gotten so many questions of curiosity and really request to hear the birth story, I decided that I would share it. I felt compelled to share it and to me this is something so private and sacred and I've never shared my past to birth stories with the public before because I love cherishing that as our own, but here’s our story:)
Leading up to labor…
for some reason I had, I had anxiety around it and I was not looking forward to the actual laboring part of the process and I was kind of dreading the thought of another marathon labor. My previous Labor has went really long, like almost a full day from when my water broke to when I delivered the baby and I just was feeling really tired at the end of this pregnancy.
Probably chasing around two toddlers didn't help. But I just remember thinking going, you know, progressing in my pregnancy, feeling like, oh my gosh, how am I going to have the energy to do this?! So I want to talk about some of the things that I did to prepare for labor this time that I felt were helpful that I think maybe you know, you could apply to your own pregnancy or future pregnancies. But truthfully I didn't do all that much because as my due date was approaching, when most women are doing everything in their power to induce labor because they are so done being pregnant, I went into the stage of yes I was nesting like so many women do. But I was so happy being present with my two kids and my husband. I felt like it was our opportunity to soak up our last bit of time as a family of four. And I also was dreading labor enough that I didn't want to be the one to induce it. I didn't want to get into, so I was in this pickle of not knowing what the heck I want it, but some of the things I did to prepare, I started drinking red raspberry leaf tea.
Red RASPBERRY Leaf Tea & Prayer
Now I don't know if any of this stuff works. So how did, how do you get data sets on this stuff? You really can't. But I will soon tell you about the actual labor and I am convinced this stuff worked. So I started drinking red, red raspberry leaf tea at least three times a day starting at about, I dunno, 37 weeks maybe. I also was meditating every single night just to keep myself calm to help with my sleep and I have a really strong faith. So I felt like my prayer life really got enhanced at the end of my pregnancy and I started to pray about those anxieties I was having about labor and just seeking peace and to trust in the Lord that he would guide me through this. So I wasn't necessarily ready are raring to get myself to go into labor. I was soaking up spending time with the kids and being really present. I also had really, really bad pelvic pain, pretty much the second half of my pregnancy, both this time, the previous time. And at the end of my first pregnancy and it was something that I wanted to be done with but not enough to want to go into labor this time. And about a week ahead of when I actually did go into labor, I started to have contractions pretty regularly, actually two weeks ahead and then one week ahead. It was like pretty consistent contractions but they would just come and go and they wouldn't get really strong and they weren't super, super painful. But I had a lot of back pain so I assumed things were going to start. But with both of my other babies and I thought maybe that this is just how my body does things.
Once you've experienced something twice, you start to assume that this is just how it is. My water broke with both my other babies and I didn't go into labor. My contractions just didn't start. And when your water breaks and you're having a hospital birth, they're really anxious to get you in there like right away. So with my first baby with Jack, I did what I was told cause I didn't know any better. My water broke and we pretty much went right to the hospital. And you know, I ended up having to get induced and get pitocin, which in retrospect and with everything I researched, I really didn't want to have to do that with my second baby. But my water broke again and my labor didn't start, but I knew enough to not call the hospital right away and I tried to get things started at home so that I, cause I really wanted the ability to labor at home.
Hypnobirthing
I didn't want it to be like the first time where I had to be in a hospital room, hooked up to stuff for like 24 hours, feeling like I was in a fishbowl, being watched by all these people and I just wanted to be able to labor at home and I didn't get that opportunity my second time either with Marie, I, you know, was able to keep the hospital and my doctor is at bay for a good, I don't know, almost 12 hours, but then they wanted me to come in and I ended up having to get induced again. I also read Hypnobirthing. No, I've never taken the classes I really wanted to, but with our moves it just never worked out. With the timing of stuff. I moved in my first day and my third pregnancies and it just didn't work out. But it did help me get into the right frame of mind and have an understanding of how to cope with certain things.
I've never been one of those lucky women and if you're one of them, I would love to hear from you cause I would just love to hear your story. I would, I've never been one of those people who could just breathe the baby down with no pain. Like when I hear those stories I find them so hard to believe. I know it's possible, but for me the pain is so incredibly existent and I, even though I couldn't get into like a hip, no birds state, I found that book to be incredibly helpful and informative as to why I wanted a more natural labor versus being induced versus an epidural or pain medication or anything like that. The biggest differences going into labor this time versus the previous times was I had made a decision during this pregnancy that when the time came I would not use the word can't.
Never use the word “can’t”
And that's something that we've started doing with our kids is teaching them to not say I can't. If they need help with something, they can ask for help. If they need a new way of doing something, they can, you know, ask for guidance in that, but they don't come to the table. Having tried something once and say I can't. So I kind of wanted to channel that into my labor this time and it made a huge difference because when I was in labor with Marie and it was a natural labor and it was long and it was excruciating. I remember saying over and over to Michael, I can't do this. Like I don't think I can do this anymore. I can't keep going. One. That's simply not true. I can, it just sucks. And too, every time I was telling myself that narrative, it was becoming truth to me.
Like I was actually starting to believe that I couldn't do it, that I needed an epidural, that I needed the doctors to somehow magically get this baby out without me having to do it. So going into this labor, this time I knew that can't wasn't an option. I see I could do this, this was going to be really hard. And so instead I was saying things like I can push through this challenge and my body is made for this and just different things that would wrap my brain around a narrative that was positive and that was going to get me to the end result that we wanted, which was this baby being born naturally. So eliminating can't from my vocabulary and like I said, eliminating that, the option for that patrol, like that wasn't in my brain and option. So that really helped me continue to keep going and quite literally keep pushing through the Labor.
LIst of preferences instead of a ‘birthing plan’
And the last thing, kind of leading up to my labor, I'm not the birth plan type. I'm not the like I want this playlist on, I want these pictures in front of me. But this time what he did do differently is I did have a sheet of paper that I scribbled some stuff down on just so that my doctors and my team and my people, cause we were going to, we were delivering in a hospital. Again just knew my non-negotiables and my standards like absolutely no on these things. These are my preferences and this is how I'd like things to operate. Not so much like this plan because you just don't know how things are going to go. And I'm also just not the plan type. So that was the stuff I did to prep.
Let's get to the night of the action…
So we went to bed on Tuesday night and I had been like crampy and just kind of feeling stuff for a while now over a week. So I wasn't really thinking much of anything. And we had a major snow storm coming. We had a blizzard coming through Wisconsin and went to bed that night and it started snowing. And with Murray with my second baby, my doctor had warned me it was in the winter and he's like, there's a snow storm coming, so be prepared. That's when a lot of women have their water break because of the change in pressure. So, and it did. And I had Marie, we had to drive to the hospital in a snow storm. Now back when we lived out east, we were 10 minutes from our hospital and it was all back roads out here. We're a good 45 minutes away from our hospital and that's without snow on the roads.
MY WATER BROKE
So at 1:40 in the morning when I got up to pee for like probably my fourth time already that night I was coming back to bed and was standing at the edge of the bed yanking on the cover as to pull them back to my side because every time I get up to go pee somehow my husband rolls over with all the blankets. I have to pull them back and my water broke. So I debated waking Michael up because I was thinking, okay, it's 1:40 in the morning, it's a snow storm. We have like a quarter mile long driveway so he's going to have to go out and snow, blow this whole thing. So he kind of needs some sleep. He's got to get us to the hospital and my labor is never start right away. So I should probably get back into bed and go back to bed too because I know my contractions are going to start cause it's never happened on its own.
So I get into bed and I laid down and thinking, okay, I'm going to go back to bed now. And I have my first contraction and it's not like killer buckled over in pain contraction. But it was certainly more intentional than anything I had had previously leading up to that moment. And my doctor had told me, we asked her, you know, when should we come in this time because we're, you know, 45 to 50 minutes away from the hospital. And she's like, honestly, it's your third baby. You never know. And being that distance, just play it safe. Come in 7 to 10 minutes apart. Well I had another contraction and I wake back up. I tell him my water broke and of course he can't sleep after that cause he's so excited. He hops up, he starts getting everything ready and within a half an hour my contractions were so intense and two minutes apart and I was tracking them.
CONTRACTIONS ALREADY 2 MINUTES APART
I was tracking them on my phone and it was like clockwork, two minutes apart, two minutes apart, two minutes apart. So I was like, okay, this is, this is happening. And I thought maybe they'd space back out cause that's what had happened to me in my prior experiences where they'd start to gear up but then they'd go away. Well No, they intensified. So I decided I wanted to take a shower and I was laboring in the shower and it was just, they were still coming. So I hopped out. Now my mother in law's a little over two hours away. Keep in mind there's a big snow storm happening at that moment. We had someone local, a good friend of ours who was going to kind of fill in the gap if she needed to and we called her and it was, I swear to God she must have been waiting in her car or something.
She'd been dying for me to go into labor. She was here so fast and I had told Michael, I'm like, okay, I think we should call Gina. And he's like, ah, Yup, I'll, you know I'm going to get some more stuff ready, get some stuff in the car and then I'll call her. I'm like, nope, you got to call her now. I could just tell something was happening. So she got here really fast and as I'm getting ready at this point like I can't move or talk when these contractions are happening, I'm, I have to bend totally forward. That's how it felt better. Like lean on the edge of the counter in our bathroom and just get through that moment before I get to talk. Michael was asking me questions and doing stuff around, I don't think he realized it because at that point in labor before it gets to like high gear for me.
I go silent when my contractions happen. When I was in labor with Jack, I remember my mom asking, she came in after to see the baby and she asked how was it? Like how did it go? And I remember Michael saying like, yeah, I don't think they can, the contractions weren't that bad. And I looked at him with daggers, like I was going to murder him because they were the worst thing ever. But I kind of go inward when I'm in excruciating pain, so I go silent. So the same thing was happening at home and I wasn't at a point in labor where I'm like grunting, yelling, moaning, whatever. I was totally silent. So I had to kind of remind him like, nope, this is happening. We've got to go. One thing I knew I really wanted and I prayed for was the ability to go in labor by myself.
I did not want to have to be induced this time. And we had talked with my doctor about an induction date about a week out because she didn't want me to go too far past 42 weeks and I'd been going in for the non-stress test and everything looked okay. But I was praying that my body would go into labor and I absolutely got the wish this time. And one thing I knew being a third time mom was how to advocate for myself every appointment. You know, I'm meeting with my OB who was awesome. I really, really liked her but she's still an OB. She still does stuff her way. And I had learned so much about natural childbirth and natural pregnancy that it kind of conflicted with some of the things she did. Like I didn't do the gestational diabetes test the way that she normally did it cause I didn't want to drink that drink.
That has a lot of stuff in it. Chemicals and toxins in it. And you know, she didn't love that, but she was willing to respect my wishes and I don't get certain shots during my pregnancy and just different things that don't follow the medical plan. So I knew how to advocate for myself and I knew how to advocate for our baby based on what we research and what we wanted and what I didn't know when I was pregnant with marine and it went into the hospital and I was more educated than I was with my first pregnancy. And I knew I wanted to try to avoid being induced. I kept asking them, give me a little more time, see if my body goes into labor. We had learned different acupressure points that I had Michael working on trying to get me to go into labor.
Um, nothing was really working. And they came to me. This was when I was out east living out east and they said, okay, no, you don't want pitocin, but we have a way more mild way to see if we can jump-start labor and see if it works. It's just this dissolvable pill. We put it on your tongue and it'll help soften the cervix and get things going hopefully, and if not, then we'll lean towards pitocin when we need to. And they made it sound like such a mild, noninvasive no risk kind of thing. They never told me the name of it. And here's the thing, I was at a point in my labor or at the point like in the process, I didn't think to ask what the name of it was, what the risks were, what the side effects could be, because I just wasn't thinking I was trusting them and how they presented it to me.
I come to find out after the fact that they'd given me Cytotec. Cytotec is not an FDA approved drug for pregnant women. In fact, it says on the packaging that it's not intended for use for pregnant women and it's also not intended for use to induce labor yet it's used all the time because it's really cheap. Hospitals love to use it, but there are huge risks with it and it does cross the placenta so it can affect the baby. And the difference between something like Pitocin and Cytotec is once the Cytotec is in your system, it can't be taken out. But Pitocin can kind of be monitored since it's their dosing it to you, but the Cytotec wants in your system, it can cause uterine rupture. There are so many risks associated with, I didn't know that. Thank God I didn't have any of the potential risk didn't happen to me in that second pregnancy and labor, but I didn't know.
So I've learned that you have to be your own advocate. You have to educate yourself for the sake of your body, your health and your baby and how that looks for you might be different than how it looks for me. But I remember being devastated when I learned after the fact that my doctor had done that, had given me that without giving me all the information. And then I realized that I had to take ownership for that too. I didn't ask the questions. So this time I was so grateful that my body was going into labor, but I always also a little nervous because we live far away from the hospital and there was a fricken blizzard happening outside and we had to go because for bout two hours at that point I had been about two to three minutes apart in my contractions and they were intense and I was also feeling a lot of pressure.
The feeling of needing to push
And if you've gone through labor and you're starting to feel that pressure, you know what I'm talking about, you know what's coming, which is that feeling that you have to push. Truthfully, I was pretty nervous to leave the house not knowing if this baby was going to make her appearance in the car and I don't think Michael fully understood how much I thought that was a possibility at the time. So as we're about to get in the car, he's pretty calm and I'm not anything but going through my contractions, but between contractions as he's about to get in the car, I'm like, okay, I'm going to need you to go get blankets and a few towels. He's like, why are you called? No, I have no idea what these roads are going to be like. We are going to the hospital in a snow storm and my contractions are two minutes apart and have been for two hours and I'm feeling pressure, so go get blankets.
So he loaded the car with blankets, uh, which I think totally freaked him out once I asked him to do that. And when we got on the road, they were bad. The roads hadn't been plowed everywhere. Our street is a gravel road. Our driveway hadn't been plowed out yet, so we were kind of pushing through the snow and then got onto the main road, which our country highways around here and there two lanes on each side and it's like a plow had come down the middle of the two lanes. So we were kind of just driving down the middle of the road and there was sleet and snow kicking up at us and it ended up taking a good hour to get there. Maybe a little bit more, I'm not quite sure. It's a little blurry to me, but that was a kind of a scary part of the drive, not knowing and then arriving at the hospital and being super grateful that the baby was still in my belly at that point.
Arrived at the hospital
So we get to the hospital and I couldn't, I couldn't walk through the contractions at this point, so I had to keep stopping in the hallway, let the contraction come and then keep walking to get to our room. And I was so happy when I got to our room because our hospital, I can't say enough about what an incredible experience I had there. They were so good at it. Didn't feel like a hospital. It felt like a birthing center. They did a really good job. Like when we came in, instead of having those big, it was the middle of the night around between 4 and 5:00 AM when we got in. Instead of having those big neon lights on over our head, they had a couple of really nice lamps that you would have in your home on dem in the room. So like we came into a nice calming room. We didn't get a barrage of, you know, we've got a registry, you, we need your ID, we need this, we need that. I just had my list of my non-negotiables and the things that we really wanted. So I was able to give them that. But it was also nice to kind of validate that list by telling them and letting them know the things I want and letting them know I want and fully plan on having a natural labor, so please don't offer me any epidural or medication because trust me, when you feel like your body is being sawed in half and someone says, would you like an epidural? It will make all of this go away. You're like, well hell yeah. But I knew in my heart that wasn’t the right thing for me.
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I can remember those moments in labor when I was having Jack and when I was having every contraction my body would tense up so tightly that I would be like a pretzel. Like I was in so much pain and I was gritting my teeth and squeezing my hands and pulling my shoulders up to my ears and groaning in pain and focusing on nothing but the pain. And this time I had made a decision that with each contraction I was going to focus on something. Now I like to close my eyes with each contraction. So it wasn't about focusing on, uh, an image or a picture or anything like that. But it was about focusing on, on a thought in my mind. So it was different each time. I didn't have it all planned out ahead of time or anything like that, but I knew that with each contraction I was going to put my energy into focusing either on that contraction, being productive, like allowing it to do what it was supposed to do, move my baby down to get ready to birth the baby.
6 to 7 CM Dilated
And when I did that, it was amazing. I, someone had told me, if you keep your jaw loose, like our natural inclination is to tighten our job when we're in pain. If you can let your lower jaw fall and keep your jaw loose. Some people say that that helps you keep your abdominal area loose as well and your cervix will be loose and it will allow the baby to move down more easily. So in the Times that I was in that six to seven centimeter range in very, very active labor, I would focus on keeping my job loose, keeping my face not too tight. And the only things I would squeeze where be Michael's hands and I would squeeze his hands, but I was trying to keep my shoulders loose and relaxed my belly, which was a really hard thing to do when it's physically contracting, like a contraction is actually your muscles totally tightening up in your, you know, your abdominal area.
So trying to not add to that tightness. And when I would do that, I swear to you, I could feel the baby moving down. I felt like I could feel changes happening and my body preparing for birth. And that was a huge confidence booster for me because even though it was excruciating, it felt so productive. It felt like every contraction had purpose behind it and then when I started to transition into that phase of labor, that was like all bets are off. My head spinning around like the exorcist, I don't know if I can do this anymore. There were other things I was thinking about, so it wasn't enough for me anymore to focus on each contraction, being productive. I had to take my mind to a different level and this was huge for me. Every contraction I thought about someone in my life that has been through something far harder than I was going through in that moment and I focused on their face in my mind and I thought about the pain that they've experienced in their life and it makes me want to cry even thinking about it because it was such a powerful thing for me to take myself out of my own body and shift my heart to someone else and what they've gone through.
Contractions with a purpose
I thought about those last 56 days of my grandmother's life and sitting by her bedside every single day with my two little babies holding her hand and the pain she was in. And it took me out of my own pain and out of my own body and it made me grateful for her and it made me realize that if she can suffer through that kind of pain so much deeper than mine, I can get through this little contraction. And I thought about the people I knew in my life who had suffered losses. Maybe their pain wasn't physical but it was emotional. And just for those, that minute of that contraction, I put all of my energy and my focus into that other person. Did it make my pain go away? Absolutely not. But it gave me something to focus on and I was able to say the littlest prayer in my head cause that's all I could muster up for that person.
And it also gave every contractions such great purpose for me towards the end of my labor when it was really intense, my contractions started coupling. So I stopped getting breaks between my contractions. I don't know why my body does that. I don't know what that was about. It was exhausting and it was incredibly tough mindset wise because there was no break, there was no opportunity for me to regroup, catch my breath and say I can do this next one. I just have to do this next one. It was like continuous. Every once in a while I'd get like a 22 second break, a 32 second break. But for the most part they were just coupling. They were, they were kind of attached to each other, these contractions and they wouldn't slow down. So that's where Michael was like a godsend. There was one point where a nurse asked him to get something and he was away from me for one of my contractions and the nurse stepped in so I could hold her hand and I was like, felt it.
I felt the difference I needed to know he was next to me and I'm not the type of person that, I don't want to be coached through it. I don't want someone in my face, I don't need to be told how to do it. But knowing that my husband was right there with me, he was doing his job and it was perfect and until it was time to, to push and he really had to do a job, that was exactly what I needed him to do. And because I didn't want to get checked at the end because I knew that if I got checked and I wasn't at nine 10 centimeters, it would mess with my mindset. And so much of this labor for me was mindset. When you're, when you choose a natural labor and you're going through all of that, you need your head to stay in the game.
“You’ll know when you’re at 10 cm and it’s time to push”
And the last thing I needed, because I experienced it last time when I was in labor with Marie getting checked in them saying, okay, you're an eight and just, oh, it's like defeating because you think you're at the end. So one thing that really helped me was I had a Doula and I had nurses in the room who just kept telling me, you know your body, you've been through this before, you'll know when you're 10 centimeters, you'll know when it's time to push. And I kept feeling the pressure that I knew would be there when it was time to push. I knew it and they checked me. I was 10 centimeters and it was go time for some reason I think because the baby was facing up, pushing this time was very challenging for me and the last two times it wasn't.
45 Minutes of Pushing
So it took about 45 minutes and pushing, which I know in the grand scheme of things is not a lot, especially for some women. I've heard stories of ours, but for me that wasn't the norm and I felt like since my contractions were coupling, I wasn't getting the breaks I needed in between to kind of catch my breath. So I had to get oxygen, which is not a big deal because I was getting really dizzy and I was having a hard time pushing and keeping my energy up. But ultimately, you know, my husband was there helping me and I loved how my old B helped me through the pushing phase. I had never experienced this before. I'd actually never had my own ob deliver the baby cause they weren't on call when I went into labor. But this time she was there and she turned into like a football coach.
It was amazing and I didn't think I would like that. But during the pushing phase, because it is such an athletic moment, like all of your strength and all of your energy and all of your focus and you're in pain and you don't want to do it, but you're at the end and you just have to get to that finish line. I put all my focus on holding this beautiful baby. Like I just couldn't wait to have the baby on my chest. I just kept thinking of that moment and picturing that moment. But my ob was actually yelling at me and it was awesome. She was coaching me, cheering for me loud, like telling me, okay, that's no, that's not good about, you have to push harder or hold it right there. You're doing great. And just coaching me and encouraging me. And that absolutely helped me and I was really surprised by that.
SHE ARRIVED!
I didn't expect it. So our beautiful baby came out, we saw she was a girl, another miracle and our nurse right in that moment comes over. They now I'll walk you through all the things we do with baby. We mean Michael and I that we wanted to do right off the bat and and things that we've learned that have been really beneficial for the baby and for mom. But I wanted the baby right on my chest right away. So they put her immediately on me and the nurse right away I was at, in retrospect, I was thinking, I dunno, like was this a good thing that she did this or not? But I was so grateful she did. She came over and really quietly held up the cord that was still attached because we delayed cord cutting and she showed me a knot in the cord and she said, you see this?
This is a knot in her cord. And she said about one out of every hundred babies might have some kind of knot in their cord and this is a pretty tight not but not tight enough to cut off her supply. This is often what can lead to a stillbirth. And you wouldn't know. There's no way we can tell until it's too late. So kiss that baby and be so grateful. And it was such an emotional moment. Our baby was totally fine. It wasn't clamp tight, but it can happen. And just made me realize the miracle I was holding on my chest and it made me so grateful for my children and for my healthy pregnancies and something that I don't take for granted.
And that was an incredible reminder of that. So some of the things that we did, we knew ahead of time that we wanted to do with the baby to kind of help with the health of the baby and just help ease her into this world because she just went through this crazy trauma of birth. I mean the labor and the delivery is traumatic for the mom. But think about what the baby goes through and the fact that the baby's coming out of this really warm, cozy, safe place. The only place it's ever known, dark and all of that into this bright, cold, loud space. So we knew we wanted to do skin to skin right away, which we've done with all of our kids. So right when the baby's born, I don't want a nurse taking the baby. I don't want the doctor taking the baby.
I want her right me. And so we do that. And then because we do that, we delay everything else. That's where I asked them to turn down the lights. I send people out of the room minus the people who have to be there. And I want time with our baby, just Michael and I within reason, I mean there are still kind of people bopping around the room taking care of things, taking care of me, but our focus is on the baby. So we also delay the cord cutting a little bit. And that means we're delaying things like weighing and measuring. Oftentimes they'll just kinda like scooped the baby and take them off and put them on the scale to be weighed and measured. And that's fine, but it's cold and it's away from the mother and the first few moments, and for us first two hours, we want baby right there with us so we make sure everything's okay.
DELAYED BATH
Obviously the doctor checks baby, but then babies with me and Michael's right there too, so we dim the lights, we delay all that stuff and I've always nursed within the first few minutes of having the baby. It's absolutely miraculous how the baby just knows. I mean sometimes my baby's thankfully have known and so we nurse right away and we actually delay the bath. Now oftentimes they'll do a bath right away and you see the baby comes out with all this white Vernac see stuff that is actually like loaded with nutrients for the baby that if you leave it on, it might look a little funny in the beginning. It absorbs back into their skin and it's super, super good for their delicate, sweet little baby skin. So we delayed, you can delay one to two weeks, you can delay wanted two days, one day, however long you want.
Placenta encapsulation
But we didn't do any bath in the hospital and we wanted to give her her first bath at home too. And we wanted to involve the kids and stop, which was total chaos. It's a complete circus in our house, but we're learning to embrace it. I also did placenta encapsulation. Now this was as weird to me as it may sound to you, but I researched it and I wanted to explore it and it's something I decided to do and you know, it's hard to report back on that cause it's another one. I've experienced postpartum depression before. I absolutely, thankfully didn't have any of this time. And I can't say, you know, it's absolutely the, the placenta encapsulation because I don't know, I didn't have it last time either and I didn't encapsulate my placenta. So who the heck knows? You know? But I felt like if it gives me some kind of leg up on my hormones, which always go crazy after pregnancy, why not?
Hibernation
The other thing we did, we're always do, especially in the winter, but even when we had jack and May, we kind of go into hibernation because the way nature intended it is for those first few weeks after this baby is born, they are with their mother and their father and maybe their siblings, whoever like would be in direct contact with them. So we just, we don't leave the house except what's necessary. At least meet the baby and I don't. So I really wanted her to get her first chiropractic adjustment. I was adjusted within my first 24 hours of birth. My uncle is a chiropractor and he came to the hospital and gave me my adjustment when I was born and I wanted her, you know, they go through this birth canal and they go through this really traumatic and twisty process and they've been like all bound up in your belly and now they're stretching out.
CHIROPRACTOR
So it's so good to get their spine rail line and just checked out and their hips, make sure they're in the right placement and it helps with so many different things. So our chiropractor out here was so kind to come to our house so we didn't have to take our baby out of the house, which was so great. So it allowed us to just be home as a family. And honestly, I've left the house twice in three weeks and it's been for a doctor's appointment for the baby and our third chiropractic appointment was out of the house at the chiropractor's office and that's it. We just hunkered down and spend time as a family. I also breastfeed on demand with the baby for the first few weeks. I don't worry about how much I'm awake. I don't worry how much I'm breastfeeding, I'm just feeding, feeding, feeding, and thankfully she's a great eater and gaining, gaining, gaining, no problem.
Supplementation and natural diapers
They actually are wondering what the heck I'm doing to make her gain so much weight. I use proper supplementation. We use all natural diapers right from the get go. I like Bambo (the brand) because it's their sweet little skin and to so many diapers you might not know it or realize it, but they have fragrance in them or chemicals in them or toxins in them that's absorbing right into the baby. So that's something that we do right from the get go. We bring them to the hospital so that they're not putting the name brand diapers on them right in the beginning. And I am not going into an opening up the can of worms of vaccinations. I, I get the question all the time. What we do for vaccination, it's a personal choice. Do your research, get really well educated on it. Don't just join a bandwagon. That's my best advice.
HER NAME- avellina elizabeth
We named our sweet little girl Avellina Elizabeth, and it's a funny story about her name. So we're awful at naming our babies. All three of our kids have gone until the last possible day in the hospital before we fill out the birth certificate. And this time we kind of, we're revisiting our old list of names from the other kids and seeing what we want to name them. We couldn't decide.
The nurses kept asking, do you have a name yet? Do you have a name yet? We finally told them, please don't ask if we have a name, we will tell you when she has a name. We're kind of sick of fielding the questions. So the story of her name Avalina is that in 2007 I lived in Italy and I went to this beautiful little province in Italy called Avellino and I have family from that area and I fell madly in love with it. I loved everything about it. And I said to one of my friends who came with me, I'll name a daughter, I have a Lena someday. I love that. I just love this place so much. So 10 years pass and Michael and I about 10 years past, we go for our one year anniversary and I take them to Avellino and we see our family and everything out there and he loves it there too.
So come the birth of this baby. We didn't use the name for the other two obviously and we couldn't decide. And I go to bed on the last night in the hospital and I say a little prayer and I just say, okay Lord, send me her name and a dream and I'll trust you completely. That's it. Whatever you send me, you send me Glockenspiel the kid's name will be Glockenspiel just send it to me and I will trust you completely. So I go to bed that night and I wake up in the morning, kind of bummed out that I didn't have a dream about a name and I roll over right after our kind of realizing I didn't have a dream about it. And I pick up my phone and I see a text message from my, one of my best friends, and it just says Avellina Elizabeth Hartke. And I said, Huh, I like that.
What, what made you send that text? She said, I don't know. I, she knew I loved the name Avellina so it's not like jeep pulled that out of thin air. She said, I don't know. I dreamt it last night and I had to send it to you before I forgot. So I realized that I did not specify to God who to send the dream too, but he sent it to my friend Emily, and she sent it to me and I told Michael and he said, it's funny. Avellina was on my heart last night, you know, I just, I feel like that's her name. And Elizabeth was never on the table, but that's a family name. That was my great grandmother's name. Oh, my name. And now it's our daughter's middle name. And I actually didn't want it as the middle name, but I said, I told God I would trust in him completely if he sent it to me.
In a dream and he did. So let's fill out this birth certificate. So that's how she got her name. I know this birth story isn't super exciting. It's not a really eventful story. I, from the time my water broke to when I birthed the baby was about seven hours from the time I got to the hospital to when she was born was a little over three hours. She was born at eight 30 in the morning, eight 28 and there were no complications. Thank God she got a little stuck when I was trying to push her out. There was a knot in her cord, but nothing came of it, thank God. But I do feel like my mindset going into it, the things I did to prepare my nutrition during my pregnancy, my fitness during my pregnancy, they all prepared me for a healthy labor and I think they also really prepared my body for my healing experience.
These few weeks have been so focused on baby and healing and it's been a blissful time for a family of five with two toddlers at home. There is a sense of peace here and I think the perspective that I have this time around has helped in my healing. It's like this embracing of the truth of this too shall pass. There is nothing that we've encountered so far in this postpartum journey or even in the Labor that felt like it was kind of last forever. Like I remember my kids crying in the middle of the night when they were newborns and wanting to eat nonstop and cluster feed and just being stressed and like, oh, when is this going to change? One of this is going to stop and reaching out to my friends who are moms and saying, how do you know?
How do I fix this? Like what am I doing wrong or should I be trying this instead of just slowing down, taking a breath and embracing the journey as it is. And this has been so calm and stressless for us. Yeah, because we've done it a few times now, but also because we haven't embraced that, that truth. Like I am up most of the night and that's okay. Like I'm enjoying those moments with her versus dressing about them. Sure. I wish I was getting a little more sleep, but I know it'll get better soon and I know that you know, will adjust and she'll adjust and it's okay and it's not about always trying to fix everything. It's just that lack of stress has really helped with the healing process. It also helped that I didn't need stitches this time. Highly recommend that if you can avoid the stitches, the healing is so much better and I sing, I asked for 24 hours after she was born and they'll give you one ice pack and say, you know, nothing from here forward is going to help keep icing.
It makes a huge difference. I had almost no swelling and I felt great. I almost didn't feel like I had a baby within a week of having her and I'm already, you know, in the two week mark was doing yoga and able to move my body again and just feeling good. And I think all the, I think so many people during pregnancy say, oh, after pregnancy is when I'll start working out and start eating healthy. No, if you can before pregnancy and absolutely during pregnancy, that's when it's the best time to practice mobility and be moving and get the proper nutrition and prepare your body for this athletic event it's going to go through. And then the healing that has to come after. And one big thing that I'm doing this time that I didn't do previously was when I would nurse before I would, you know, and you're nursing all the time.
If you're breastfeeding, I'd pick up my phone every time and just kind of scroll mindlessly. And this time I'm either in prayer or in thought or I'm reading something positive or I'm listening to something positive instead of just losing time on my phone. And that's helped my mind stay in a good place. And I'm actually not even napping during the day, which is great because it means I can be productive, she naps or I can just rest and heal and not be worried about it. And I'm so grateful that I've set up a business and a life that allows for that kind of freedom that allows for my family to be fully taken care of. Whether or not I'm working in this moment and to have a career that I love so much that three weeks into it I want to be in here recording this podcast and I want to check in with some of my clients, not because I have to, not because I need money, but because I love what I do.
I absolutely love what I do and I've crafted this business and this life and an episode two, when I talk about casting that vision, it was this for me. This is what I pictured, this is what I worked for. And it's simple and it's not glamorous, but it's exactly what I prayed for. And I cultivated a business around how I wanted to be able to live. And that's one of the things that kept coming up over these last few weeks when I was debating, okay, am I going to share this story? Am I going to share any of this publicly? And it was this truth of like, I have to share this because they're going to be women and people who have babies and bring their babies into the world and don't get to have this stress free experience. They don't take care of their body during the pregnancy because they don't know any better.
They don't build a business that allows them freedom. Moving forward and in sharing this story and talking about kind of the reverse engineering of being able to get it to this place, maybe someone will take that leap of faith and start that journey for themselves now. So come that time. They are actually living the life of their dreams versus dreaming about the life they want to live. For all you mamas out there, I give you all the credit in the world. It is not easy to bring that baby into the world. It is not easy to juggle entrepreneurship and motherhood, but you can do it and you can do it with grace. It doesn't have to be about balance. I don't feel like my life is in balance right now. I don't seek balance right now. I want my life to be out of balance.
I want more of my life to be focused on my new baby and my new family of five versus my work. But I'm able to trickle a little bits of work in there because sanity, because it is my sanity and I love it and it provides for my family and it allows us to live this life of freedom and fulfillment. But you don't have to seek balance. Give yourself the space to feel what you're feeling and move through it and focus on what you ultimately want to be doing and how you want to be living. And thanks for listening. This was a different kind of episode for me and it felt a little vulnerable and I'm sorry there was nothing dramatic, but I'm grateful there was nothing dramatic because this was our birth story. This is the story of how we brought our sweet little Avellina into the world and there is nothing I want more than a drama free birth.
Yes there was pain and yelling and crazy, but it was natural and beautiful and exactly as we prayed for it and I hope you have the opportunity to have that, to have that something that you're seeking.