My Birth Stories

Trigger warning: I share traumatic details of my birth story. If you’re heading into your own birth soon, you may want to skip parts of this episode.

I’ve been nervous to record this because these stories still feel so close. After my conversation with Illiyin Morrison in Episode 15, I finally felt permission to stop minimizing what I went through and to share the births that shaped me and my postpartum experiences.

I start with Audrey’s story. I had gestational hypertension with all three pregnancies, so I was induced at 37 weeks. Labor was long and slow, and once my water broke, the pitocin hit hard. When it came time to push, everything changed. Audrey became stuck, had shoulder dystocia which was something I didn’t understand until later. My OB hit the emergency button the moment she was born, and the room filled instantly. I then began to hemorrhage, and everything went blurry fast.

I woke up hours later without my baby and with no idea where she was. The NICU was closed, so I couldn’t see her. Those hours were some of the darkest of my life, and I’m certain that moment was the beginning of my postpartum anxiety. I felt like I had failed her before I even held her.

When Audrey turned one, we got pregnant with Livvy. Because of the shoulder dystocia, a C-section was always on the table, but my OB encouraged me to try for another vaginal birth. Liv’s birth became the healing experience I desperately needed. It helped rebuild trust in my body after so much fear and trauma.

Toward the end of the episode, I also share a story I’ve never talked about publicly — one that still brings up big emotions. Each of my births was different, challenging, and beautiful in its own way. And somehow, even after everything childbirth puts us through, we still find ourselves willing to do it again.