Breastfeeding Struggles + 3rd Degree Tear | Katie’s Birth Stories

Meet Katie

But I go, “babe, something's happening with my crotch”. What? Like, “either I peed my pants or my water broke”. So, that was my big, beautiful, I'm in labor moment: “something's happening with my crotch”.

Hey, y'all, welcome to The Labor Line, a mom-to-be's authentic look into the birth experiences of her mom friends. I'm your host, Emily, and, ooh, you guys, how are we doing? Are you all doing okay? I, I don't know, I just feel like it's been a wild couple of weeks, and so I just wanted to say, if you're feeling a little overwhelmed, you are not alone. And I'm positive that my pregnancy hormones are not helping the situation either. I've always been a crier, but y'all, I have crossed some sort of threshold that I cannot come back from. I am just crying all of the time. And it's really, it's honestly really hindered being an adult in a lot of ways. Like, I have this insurance situation I have to figure out, and it literally does not matter how nice the person is on the other end of the line, okay? I've been very fortunate to have some very tender people help me out. But the minute they start using big insurance words, and then telling me that I need to re-state said big insurance words to doctors and the likes, I start to feel overwhelmed, and then I start to tear up. And then I have to start just using these monosyllabic responses like, yep, mm-hmm, oh, mm-hmm, sure, yeah. So that I don't just start full on sobbing to these people that are just giving me very straightforward information. So that's great. And then I think my algorithm is literally out to get me because I keep getting shown all these freaking animal shelter pages, okay? And y'all, I am going to report a hate crime. It is a hate crime to show a pregnant woman videos of a dog behind a gate, like just wanting some pets, and the caption being like, Bilbo wagons. Dreams of a day where there won't be bars separating him from the love of a family. Cut the cameras. I'm done, okay? I am done. It is not fair. And honestly, thank heavens, Nate is allergic to most dogs, because otherwise, I would have my own commune of all these little senior dogs that come across my feed. Oh, okay. Sorry, that went off the rails a little bit.

 In light of my fragile state, and just kind of the overall craziness that the world's been giving off recently, today's episode is light, okay? It's just fun. It's full of hilarious moments, because today, I am joined by my friend Katie. Katie was literally the second friend I made after moving back to Texas. And I know she was the second because my first friend, Amanda, introduced me to her. Shout out, Amanda. So it was literally the first Sunday that I went to this new church, and I met Amanda, and she introduced me to Katie. And within minutes of meeting her, Katie asked if we had anything planned for that night. And then about three milliseconds later, she had planned an impromptu dinner consisting of just like the random stuff that we all had in our fridge at home, and then a game night to follow with us and Amanda and her husband. And that is just Katie in a nutshell. She is someone who treats you like an old friend the minute you meet her. She is one of the most genuine, fun, self-assured people I know, and her home was just this beautiful gathering place for all of us. And I say was because sadly for us, but not sadly for her, she moved back to her beloved Oregon over the summer. That's where she's from. And it's like the perfect place for her and her family, so I guess we have to be happy for them. But her absence is felt for sure. So it seriously was extra sweet to just get to catch up with her and talk about how she brought her two super cute girls into the world. Katie's experiences include a long, difficult labor that resulted in a third degree tear that took almost a year to recover from. That came with lots of hemorrhoids, and her baby struggled to breastfeed, and therefore struggled to sleep. And then with her second, she experienced some gender disappointment, but luckily she had a better delivery and postpartum experience because of what she learned from her first. And, you know, because it's Katie, she's going to share all this with a great sense of humor. She has some great insights, and truly I've just been super excited to share this episode with y'all. So enough chitchat, let's just get right to it. Welcome to the podcast, Katie. Thanks so much for being here today. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you and your cute family's up to.

Katie with Emma & Isla

Thanks, Emily. So we just moved back to Oregon. We were in Texas for three years. My girls are eight and five. They're both in school now, so I've been figuring out how to spend all my free time, but mostly we're just settling back into that great Oregon life.

That's awesome. That's so fun. I know that you have family nearby. Are they, are any of them like your kids' ages? Like, are they going to school with cousins?

They're not going to school with cousins. They are going to my husband's old school.

That's so cute.

Which is so fun and cute. But they have a lot of cousins, their age, but they're all like an hour-ish away. Like, we're close to family, but we're not super, super close. We're not in the neighborhood.

That's honestly kind of ideal though, too.

It's kind of perfect.

Yeah. Like, I have a brother that lives in San Antonio. It's like an hour away, and then brother lives in Waco. So like two hours away, and it's perfect because you can get together for the important stuff, and you can have your own life. And yeah, I'm so glad. Like, it feels right that y'all are back in Oregon. I mean, in some ways, like you just fit in so well, but also if there's like this gaping hole in our lives, so we're just trying to like get over it, but it's fine.

It's fine. It's fine.

Well, I'm so excited to have you on today. We were talking just before this, and for how much we got to know each other in the like 10 months that we lived together, lived in the same neighborhood, I like don't know anything about your birth experiences. So I'm super excited. I also mentioned on this most recent episode that I worked with the Children's Organization at Church, and so Katie's daughters are so freaking precious, and so I'm like extra excited just to kind of know more of their lore. So if you're ready, I'd love to jump in and talk about your first experience.

1st Pregnancy: 6 Months of Trying + Weight Gain Comments 

Okay, so my husband, Mitchell, and I, we got married very young. I was 20 when we got married, and I always wanted a big family. I grew up in a big family, and Mitchell grew up in a big family. So I wanted that same experience. I want to have lots of babies. And so I knew I wanted four to six kids, and Mitchell wanted two to four. So we're like, okay, we'll do four. Perfect. That was our number. So then we started trying a year after we got married, which in hindsight was very fast, especially for how young we were when we got married. But it took us about six months to get pregnant the first time. And I know now that that's fairly common, but it felt like so long. And it was hard getting those negative pregnancy tests, and then having to show up at school, and work like nothing was wrong.

Oh, yeah.

And my periods had never been very regular. So testing was always kind of weird for me. I didn't know when I should test. And then sometimes I would go two months with no period. Sometimes I would just be spotting all the time. And I remember at one point, it had been like three months with no period. And I had tested once or twice within that time, and they were negative. So I decided I was going to take one more test, and then if it was negative, I was going to call the doctor and be like, hey, what's going on with me? So I was fully expecting that test to be negative, like every other test, and it was positive. So I think we were home for Christmas. I was taking the test in my in-law's bathroom, and I walk out to Mitchell and I'm like crying, like, it's positive. Oh. So that was right around Christmas. So we told my family right away and his family, I cannot keep a secret. Well, I can keep secrets. If you tell me a secret, I'll keep your secret, but I cannot keep my own. I cannot keep surprises.

I feel that so deeply.

I was just too excited. And I also, I kept telling myself that even if I did miss Carrie, I still wanted to be able to celebrate the little life for however long we had it.

Yeah.

And that might have been just me justifying that I couldn't keep a surprise. But that's what I told myself and that's what I went with. And so, yeah, we told everyone. And we weren't sure how far along I was because I'd gone so long without a period. So like normally, your due date is based off of your last period, but mine was way off. So like I could have been 12 weeks or yeah, 12 weeks along at that point. So I set up an appointment for an ultrasound, like the normal, it would have been an eight-week ultrasound. And I was only seven weeks along. So they had to like adjust my due date a bit, but they saw a heartbeat and everything was great. I didn't have really hardly any pregnancy symptoms other than being really tired. I always get car sick. If I'm in a car, I have to drive or I have to look straight at the windshield or I get sick. I can't look at my phone. So when I was pregnant, I could easily tell I got car sick way easier, like even if I was looking at the windshield, if I wasn't driving. Sometimes I think even if I was driving, I was like a little bit. But it wasn't, I mean, compared to everyone else, it was like, yeah, I'll take this. I wasn't throwing up. I think I threw up a total of two times in both my pregnancies.

That is awesome.

And both of them were after I took pain meds without eating food. So I had a great time. I didn't have a great time. I had an easy time being pregnant. Actually, now, I think I did have a great time. I love being pregnant. I, like, because I'm not feeling sick, like, I feel so beautiful. Like, oh, yeah, I'm growing a human.

That's so awesome.

My mom and sister both had similar pregnancies. They told me that they didn't get sick. So I think it just runs in the family. Good luck. Good genes.

That's so great.

And then I didn't have any complications for with Emma. My doctor made a couple of comments about me gaining weight fast. And it wasn't a lot of weight, but I had started out overweight. So in theory, I was supposed to gain less over the span of my pregnancy. So then after that, her biggest complaint was that I wasn't drinking enough water, which was true because every day I had an appointment, I would eat and drink as little as possible because I didn't want any comments about my weight gain. No!

My gosh!

That was silly on my end, but I was 21. I was so young and entrenched in diet culture. I was like, I'd rather get scolded for being dehydrated than weigh two more pounds.

Oh my gosh. That's horrible that they made you feel that way.

And I'm sure it was the smallest comment. I'm sure I over blew it in my head. But don't be like me, eat the food, drink the water. Don't feel guilty for gaining weight when you're growing a human.

That is such good advice, honestly. Like your body just, it's doing stuff, it's doing very important stuff. And so let it just be that's, I appreciate that too, that reminder.

And then nothing really happened, nothing exciting happened during my pregnancy, which is good. I'd rather be boring than stressed out, I guess.

Yeah.

I did have to miss out on a family trip and a wedding that were happening in the last couple months of my pregnancy. So that was a big bummer. Like I said, I love hanging out with my family, but my doctor advised against it. Also the total solar eclipse that happened in 2017 was three days before I was due, and we lived in the path of totality. So we knew our town was gonna be flooded with people coming to see the eclipse, and there would be people stopping in the streets to watch it. And so I was so stressed, like, what if I go to Labor and can't go to the hospital? There's gonna be people in the street. But luckily and unluckily, really, I was four days overdue, so I didn't have to work out the eclipse. And four days also felt like forever when you're at the end of your pregnancy. And at that point, my hospital bag had been ready for weeks.

Good on you.

I mean, I was an anxious first-time mom.

Sure.

1st Labor: Broken Water, Lack of Sleep, & Almost 3 Hours of Pushing

Yeah, I gotta be ready for anything. And then she waited a long time. I had gone to bed one night, and everything had been totally normal. I wasn't having any contractions, no brachyloid headaches. I had no reason to think I was ever gonna have this baby anytime soon. And then after we'd gone to bed, I felt this kind of, I don't even know how to describe it, like a burst or a pop. I don't know, but I go “babe, something's happening with my crotch”. What? Like “either I peed my pants or my water broke”. So that was my big beautiful, I mean labor moment: “something's happening with my crotch.”

That is the best! That is so good!

So that we cleaned that up, and I learned over the course of my pregnancy that having your water break at home is actually not very common. It's frequency is definitely exaggerated in movies and TV, so I was really shocked. I was also grateful though, because I knew that if I had to decide for myself when it was time to go to the hospital, I 100% would have gone too early, and they would have sent me home. But when your water breaks, they want you to go in right away so that you don't get an infection. So because it was late, it was like 11 o'clock at night, we had to go to the ER, and then someone from the ER wheeled me up to Labor and Delivery. And that man took his job very seriously. He didn't matter that I was not in an emergency. He had other emergencies to get to, so he was rafing us through those halls. It was so funny. And then it was like a fun little roller coaster into triage. And we got to triage. They had to verify that it was, in fact, amniotic fluid and that I did not pee my pants. So after they figured that out, then they let me go to the actual lay window of ray. And then we settled in for what would turn out to be another like 21 hours before baby arrived.

Oh my gosh.

Because like I said, I hadn't had any contractions. I was not dilated. So there was a lot of waiting around. I could do the blood pressure checks and the heart rate checks for baby. And my contractions eventually had gotten pretty regular, but they weren't doing anything. So they gave me pitocin and I waited a long time. Well, I don't know how long it actually was. But I remember telling myself I was going to wait a long time to get an epidural. Because I don't know if they still say this, but I had been told that it could slow down your labor if you get it too soon. So I was nervous about that. So when I got my epidural, I threw up when I got it, which is so hard because when you wait to get it, your contractions are getting closer and closer together. So you're getting... It takes long enough, the process of getting the epidural, that you're likely to be having a contraction while you're getting a needle put in your back.

You have to be so still. You have to stay so still. I don't want to be paralyzed for the rest of my life.

A lot of people throw up in the very cold.

Oh my gosh.

Super fun. But then after that, things were amazing. I finally got some sleep. I had been awake at that point for 36 hours because...

Oh my gosh.

We went in at night and then they were checking me all night, which doesn't leave a lot of energy for pushing. So then, it was time to push, and I pushed for two and a half hours.

Oh my gosh, Katie. And you're so tired.

I'm so tired. All I remember, it was a total blur. Mostly, I remember wanting to give up. I was so tired and feeling like my pushes weren't doing anything, which is probably true. It took her a while to come out. So my regular doctor had gone home. Her shift was up, because I had been there forever. So a different doctor delivered Emma. He was great. And it was just me and Mitchell in our room with the hospital crew. My parents and Mitchell's parents were in the waiting room, as well as my friend Mandy, who we've been friends since middle school. And she lived in the area. And bless her heart, she waited with my parents for two and a half hours.

That's so sweet.

1st Postpartum: 3rd Degree Tear, Breastfeeding Struggles, & Co-Sleeping 

And then Emma finally arrived. She had a huge cone head, because she'd been in the birth canal for so long. Oh, that's right. It rounded up beautifully. She was perfect. I actually got comments all the time about how perfect her head was, which I thought was very strange.

Yeah.

I could never think to comment on the shape. Like, sure, if a baby has a weird shape head, you think it to yourself, but why would I care to think about a perfectly shaped head? I don't know.

Yeah, no. Now, I'm going to be on the lookout of like, okay, who has the most spherical head? Like, is that what makes it perfect? Spherical? I don't know.

And then Mitchell was holding her. He's actually very squeamish, so he cut the cord. I don't think he had any problems with that. He was holding her and he was crying, which was very unusual for Mitchell. He doesn't cry much at all. He's very emotionally fine, but just not a crier.

He's not damaged or anything.

There's nothing wrong with him. Okay. I was crying. I was so shocked. And he was just like, he did it. Like he was so, he was crying for me. He was crying for the LOs here. He's the best. And then he would change diapers. So many diapers.

What a king.

Get your husband to change the diapers, you guys. But for real, for real. Then I had to get stitched up. I had a third degree tear. Oh my gosh. So if you don't know, they go up to four. Four is tearing all the way through your anal wall. So I didn't have that, but I did tear to my anal wall.

Oh my gosh.

And then my epidural had been wearing off because when you're toward the end of pushing, like you don't really need to be pushing the medicine button. So I could feel them stitching me up. And it was awful. And then the tearing would later cause me excruciating pain for months, which I was not expecting.

Oh my gosh.

Because my body produces a lot of scar tissue. And so in that case, I don't know why, but it was really painful. So it was healed, but the scar was still painful. For close to like a year after Emma was born, I couldn't sit down for long, I couldn't stand for very long, even like laying down certain ways, I couldn't do. So they gave me a steroid cream after a long time, and I was supposed to like rub it in, but I couldn't bring myself to do it because it hurt too bad, so it was just like my really rough year. I've had really bad hemorrhoids from pushing for so long, but I didn't really even know what hemorrhoids were. I had not been prepared for that. So when I would be using the bathroom, I thought my stitches were being ripped out. I just had no clue. And I told my doctor and she checked the stitches and she said, Oh yeah, they're fine. You're probably just feeling your hemorrhoids. I'm like, what? Tell me more.

Sorry, what? This seems important information that I haven't been given yet.

Yeah, rough, rough recovery. And then on top of that, Emma was a really hard baby. Right from the start in the hospital, she was screaming a lot. And the nurses were like, She probably just has a headache from being in the birth canal for so long. So either they were wrong or her headache never went away. Oh, no. I have a video of her first bath in the hospital. And it's like three minutes long, and she's just screaming through the whole thing. And I see videos of other people's babies having their first bath, and they're all relaxed by the nice running water. And that was not Emma.

No.

She wanted to be held constantly, constantly, and she needed it to be me. She would do fine with Mitchell most of the time, but mostly she wanted me. And it was probably just because she wanted to nurse all the time. One of my friends in Texas actually jokes that she makes skim milk, and I think that was also me. Like, I didn't make much. Like, when I tried to pump, I would get maybe an ounce, which the small baby bottles are four ounces. And so, I would get maybe an ounce, and it was so painful when I did do that. I would try all the different sizes of nipple shields, and it didn't help. And I had so much pressure from myself and also outside sources to exclusively breastfeed. And I don't know if that's gotten better in the last eight or nine years, but it felt like I had to breastfeed. And looking back, I think I was so hard on mine and Emma's bonding. Like anytime she would cry, I knew that the only way to calm her down was for me to feed her. Like she wouldn't take a binky. So I was just kind of filled with dread. And I didn't have post-partum depression, which I'm so thankful for because like things could have gotten so much worse. And looking back, we should have gone to a lactation consultant. But I was young, I didn't know how to advocate for myself. And she was gaining weight, so her pre-nutrition wasn't worried about her. But she was gaining weight because she was nursing like all day every day.

Like these little snacks every hour or whatever.

Mom, let's hang out. But yeah, the reason I would get comments on her perfectly shaped head was because she was never put down. She never had the chance to get a flat head. She would not lie down. And then we co-slept because I was against it. I did not want to co-sleep. But the only way to get her to fall asleep was by nursing her or in the car, which even in the car, she would scream her head off for a long time. Like I had really bad shoulder pain for a long time because I would reach behind me in the car trying to hold her hand or something. But then even if she did fall asleep, she wouldn't ever transfer to a crib. And my parents bought this thing from Shark Tank. It's like a vibrating mat that you would put in their crib. And it had tons of great reviews. Like, oh, this worked on every single baby. And it did not work for him. So she didn't sleep in a crib until she was eight months old. And even that was only for like a couple of hours. And I was looking back at my old post and like whatever I was telling my friends at the time. She didn't sleep for more than two hours in one stretch until she was almost nine months old. And even then, it wasn't common. Like, she could not get herself over. You know that our sleep cycles, we like wake up every hour, but we're not really awake awake?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She like couldn't get over that hump. Couldn't put herself back to sleep.

Sweet girl. Which means you didn't sleep for over two hours. For nine... Oh, my gosh. And was was Mitchell, like, what was his parental leave situation? Like, how did y'all have to balance, like, trying to sleep for life versus, like, being with his baby?

We had been living in my parents' guest house when I was pregnant and when I delivered. And he was working somewhere that I think they maybe gave him a week of paternity leave. Like, he was fresh out of college, but then he was laid off.

Oh, man.

And so, I mean, it worked out actually kind of perfectly because Emma was a nightmare, and we weren't paying rent or anything. So, I was like, it was really kind of a godsend. But he was laid off because I needed his help. I, like I said, I couldn't pump, and we weren't really doing formula, but he would do all the nighttime diaper changes. He was doing everything he could as far as what Emma would let him do. So, bless him. This is part of him so much.

Yeah. Y'all have such a great, like, side note. I mean, I know this will come later, but y'all have such a great system down with your girls. Nate and I, we loved going to y'all's house, too, because when you have friends with kids, obviously, they have to take care of their kids first, obviously, before playing games or whatever. But y'all just, it was like watching a tennis team just go back and forth perfect. And Nate and I, the first time we went to your house, we're like, they've got that down, you know? And so we're like, taking notes and everything. And so it's so sweet that like, I mean, I'm not surprised, but it's really sweet that that was kind of from the start, like, you know, just this like, we're in this together. And even if Emma's not accepting a ton of help from him, like, he's going to help in any way he can. So that's awesome.

Yeah, he's really great. Definitely recommend having babies with great men.

Um, yes, concur that. I can concur. We don't need to be reproducing losers over here, okay? Only the cream of the crop.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, Emma was just hard. And everyone always told me, like, the first one's always hard. But my mom had six kids. And she would tell me, no, Emma's a hard baby. Like, don't let people get to you.

Yeah.

And like, she would, when Mitchell was still working, she would come over while he was at work so that I could sleep or I actually couldn't sleep because I would be screaming. But I could shower and I could just hear Emma screaming at my mom.

You're not my mom!

My sweet mother, she came and held her anyway.

That's so validating, though, too, for her to be like, even though I did this, like, this is hard. And I feel like that, I am so grateful that you had that. Just, I don't know, sometimes, like, I do this all the time. I do this to Nate all the time, where I'm like, but it's fine. Here's the good things. Like, sometimes you just got to, it's like the most helpful thing to hear that, like, no, this is a hard baby, you know? And like, just accepting that and then going forward, you know?

For sure, for sure. But yeah, she's the sweetest big girl. She has big feelings still, but she's brilliant and she's beautiful. We love her to death. And she's a great big sister to Isla.

Yes. Oh, so perfect. Well, I loved, I loved getting to, you know, like I said, know more about her lore, her beginnings and everything. And I'm glad that you had a positive pregnancy experience and then, you know, for nine months of just not sleeping at all. Was, did there, did it feel like there was a turning point where it was like, oh, okay, now we're getting a rhythm or whatever? Or was it like you were kind of fighting for it to be three hours and then four hours until she was bigger?

It definitely did not come quickly. I think it was definitely like, oh, tonight she slept three hours, like, woohoo.

Yeah.

Or even just like she would do more than a single stretch in her crib. It was definitely small, incremental changes, but it took way longer than we ever thought it could possibly take.

Yeah.

She has a cousin that was born a few months before her, and they lived just a few hours away, and I was pretty close with her mom. And so I was talking to her a lot, and that baby was an easy, easy baby. She slept through the night so fast. And then Emma came along, and I was just like, when is my baby ever going to sleep? Am I ever going to sleep again? But...

That would be hard.

It was so hard. And I think, I think I still, I never needed a lot of sleep. That might not be true.

You can just gaslight yourself during that time.

I'm just adapted to not sleeping. Like, and you know what? I can do a lot of things on a very little sleep.

Yes, you're like, I learned that about myself. I don't even remember if I used to like to sleep or just here. Yeah, and that's, I'm glad that y'all can be close to family, too, especially, like, you were 21 when she was born. Yeah, so, so, like, yeah, I mean, amazing and wonderful, but that's a lot. Like, that's a, that is a big transition. Yeah, so, yeah. Well, I'm curious. So, with her being, like, a more difficult introduction, maybe, into motherhood, how do you think that affected y'all's decision to try to get pregnant again and, like, your plans for your family?

2nd Pregnancy: Positive Pregnancy + Mild Gender Disappointment 

Yeah, so, like I said, before I had Emma, we thought we were going to have four kids. But after Emma, that number plummeted, and it's wild that you can love a kid so much and still accept the fact that they have changed you and your perception of how your family is going to look. So we waited a little longer than I had originally wanted to to start trying for a second. I had wanted my babies to be pretty close together, and they're by no means far apart now. They're two and a half years apart. But I would have loved, before having Emma, to have them within a couple years of each other. But we knew, since it took us a while to get pregnant with Emma, that it could take that long again. So we kind of started trying a little bit earlier than we were kind of ready for. We knew we were like almost ready, but we're like, it'll probably take a while, so we can just let them. And then we were very shocked. It only took us two or three months to get pregnant. And we're like, oh, are we ready for this? I don't know.

Like, here we go.

So looking back now, I wonder if I got pregnant faster because of the birth control that I had been on. Because when you're breastfeeding, it limits the types of birth control you can take. So the common one is, they call it the mini pill. It's just progesterone only. But the grace period for the time of day you have to take it is 15 minutes. And I knew I could not manage that. Like, there is zero chance. So I got Nexplodon, and then once I got that taken out, we got pregnant pretty soon. I think Mitchell had wanted a boy, typical, a father wants his son. And I didn't realize until we were getting my ultrasound for Isla, that I also wanted a boy. And then they told us a girl, or that she was a girl, and had this tiny pang of sadness. But I got over that really fast, and Mitchell got over it, and he's such a great girl dad. Like, he's just treating them like they're his sons. Like, not like his sons, but like he's raising them to be so strong, and like you can do anything a boy can do. And I love him so much.

Yes, no, I love that. Well, I also think he's a great girl dad, because he commits to the bit. Like, my first, like one of my first memories is we moved in in October, and we had a big ol Halloween party, and y'all did Aladdin, and he shaved his head. Did he shave his goatee as well? No, no, he grew a goatee or something.

He, I think we colored it blue, and then like drew in the goatee.

Yes, he was blue head to toe, y'all. I was like, that is dad of the year right there. Like so committed to the bit. And so I love that it's, I mean, I'm not surprised again, but I love it's both things, right? Like just leaning in to the fun part of like having girls and dressing up, but also like empowering them the way that all girls need to be empowered. It's just awesome.

Yeah. So let's see. My first sign that I had been pregnant was that I was super tired. Like because I knew that I had that with Emma, and I didn't have any morning sickness, but I was just out of this world tired. So, and it's different because I had a toddler. So Emma watched a lot of TV while I was pregnant with Isla. Just like I was on the couch, passed out, and that's all I could do.

It works, right? She's not going to remember it.

She's fine. She watched a lot of Daniel Tiger. I feel like it helps regulate her emotions a little bit.

Yes, exactly.

And then I had made a big batch of cookies. There's a copycat recipe from Levain Bakery in New York, and they were big, and they're beautiful. And they came out of the oven, and I looked at them, and I was like, I don't want to eat that.

No.

I think that was my only aversion I had for both either of my pregnancies was just I couldn't eat rich sweet foods with Isla, which was a huge bummer. I love my sweets.

Yes. I'm experiencing similarly, where I normally have the biggest sweet tooth ever, and I've just been like, I don't want to do anything, which is good. It's good, I guess, in some ways, regulate my sugars or whatever, but it's like, but this is like my chance just to go crazy. Yeah.

So then I had another routine, super routine pregnancy. Between having Emma and getting pregnant with Isla, I'd become a lot more active. I was working out with my sister three days a week, we're like 15 weeks, and I was going on lots of walks. And I kept that up throughout my whole pregnancy. I actually worked out half my due date, which I felt like such a bad A for.

Yes, 100 percent.

And then I don't know if it was the strength training or just the fact that she was the second kid. It was probably both. But my delivery with Isla was world apart from my delivery with Emma, which is amazing. I think I earned that.

Totally.

2nd Labor: Fainting Husband, Quick Labor, Out in 3 Pushes 

Yes. My doctor and I had talked about an induction. I don't really remember why it came up. It could have just been because Emma came past my due date. So we're just kind of open to the possibility of eventually need to be induced. Also, my parents had scheduled a trip with my mom's siblings. And so we wanted them to be around. So we were trying to work around that. But I think I was going to have to make that happen. I would have had to go in a week early to work with my doctor schedule. And so I didn't really want to do that. But we scheduled my induction for the night of February 13th. And then she was born on Valentine's Day. Our little Valentine's Day, baby.

So, so sweet.

So we took... I went to my sister's house to spend the night. The night that I took in, we took in like seven o'clock. And they didn't start me on pitocin right away. They just gave me the cervical softener. And they wanted me to have that for a few hours through the night and get some rest. And then they were going to start me on pitocin later. And then things progressed pretty well. And I decided to wait again to get my epidural. And I remember mentioning that to my nurse and her being like, sweetie, if you need the epidural, just get the epidural. I was like, okay, I'm ready. So it was time for me to get the epidural. And I had no problems getting it with Emma. I did throw up, but I mean, it all went fine. So I should say Mitchell had no problems when I got it with Emma. But that was not the case with Isla. So I'm sitting there at like mid contraction, everything, and I feel Mitchell's hands, like relaxed in my hands, and they get kind of heavy. And then I see his head kind of bobbed down, and I'm like, babe, babe. He had popped out just from thinking about me getting it. He wasn't even watching. He was just thinking about me.

Oh my gosh.

So I'm getting a needle put in my back. I'm trying not to freak out. And like the nurse takes over for him as my support person or whatever. And she's getting other people to rush in and wheel him out of there. And he's gone for a long time while I'm getting my epidural. And I will never let him live that down. The poor guy.

Yes.

He went and he got some water and some snacks and he got some rest. And they brought him back. Oh my gosh. Hi. Great.

Was he standing? Did you have to help him not fall or was he sitting?

I actually don't remember. I think he was sitting. I think he was sitting because I remember nurse saying, yeah, that's why we have them sit because this kind of happens sometimes.

That is classic. That's amazing.

Like I said, he is a very, he's a queasy guy. He doesn't do well with blood. One time when we were newlyweds, he sliced his thumb, and he almost passed out from that. I was surprised that he had even cut an umbilical cord, but he did fine with that. Anyway, so then at that point, we were just hanging out, waiting for time to push. And I think I must have progressed pretty quickly because my doctor came in to check me, like how far I was dilated, and I think she wasn't expecting me to be ready. And suddenly she was like, oh well, we're going to need to get some more people in here. Who's time to push? Are you ready? No, I'm not ready. Like mentally, I'm not there yet. I think we even got started so fast that I had already pushed once before. I was like, wait, we should probably turn the TV off. Like I love Friends, but I don't want my baby to be born to Friends. I only pushed three times. I think she was out in five minutes.

2nd Postpartum: Learning from Last Time + Formula Supplementation

Oh my gosh.

So yeah, way different from Emma's. And she was here. She had a short umbilical cord, which I didn't know was a thing. So usually, after they come out, they put them up on your chest and you snuggle. She was just like hanging out on my stomach. And then I felt so good. I have this photo of me and I love right after she was born. And she's like still covered in gook and stuff. And I feel like a total model when I look at it. And that woman did not just have a baby, like total glamour shot. I'll send it to you. But also I feel like it or not, because my photos of after I had Emma looked like I had been in labor for 22 hours and not sleeping. It was really cute. However, I was quickly humbled because all day after I had her, I had been smelling this smell. And I kept wondering, like, oh, maybe Ila pooped or maybe she's gaspy. I have no idea. And then hours later, when it's finally my time to shower, I get to the bathroom and I look in the mirror and there's poop all up my back.

No, Katie!

I had been in this bed all day, like, I'm adjusting, you know, you move around. Nobody told me that I had pooped while I was pushing. And it's a very normal thing, but you hope you're not the one to do it. So I asked Mitchell if he knew and he was like, Oh, yeah, the doctor told me to look when she was crowning and you'd poop. Okay. So, yeah, I was officially humbled, but just know it could happen to you. And it's actually, it's a sign that you're pushing well. Just make sure whoever's in charge knows that they need to do a better job of cleaning you up.

Seriously, that's crazy that they like, because I mean, I've heard, I mean, I've heard like most people do, like most people do, like it's the same muscles, so much is happening down there. But for them to like, not have, holy.

I'm sure they tried.

You're like, I gotta take this glam shot, don't wait. That's hilarious. Well, so did you, did you tear this time? Because she was so fast.

I just had like a first degree tear.

Okay.

Like compared to Emma's, I was like, that's nothing.

That's good. Okay. Because then also like the, I was going to say if you were tearing a ton, I think they should have double check to make sure. Do you feel like, so, you know, like your scar tissue with Emma was really, really rough for a while. Did it like affect how it felt pushing out Isla? I mean, I knew, I know you had a epidural, but.

Yeah, I don't think so. I think, I think it was fine. And then I don't even really remember the stitches or like thinking about my stitches for my recovery with Isla. Like my hemorrhoids came back, but they didn't last nearly as long. Yeah, everything was just way easier after Isla. We even, we went home early because I was feeling great. And normally with insurance, they'll let you stay for like two nights in the hospital after baby's born. And after one night, I was feeling great, and I asked if I could go home. And then within the week, we had, we went golfing, we went on a date, we went to the zoo. Like it was just so different.

That's so good. I'm so glad, honestly. Like that was feeding better for her.

So I knew after my experience with Emma, I didn't want to put so much pressure on myself with Isla. I did mostly breastfeed her, but from the day she came home from the hospital, I gave her a bottle of formula. And I gave her one every day. Usually it was the last feeding of the day, so to try to get her to sleep longer at night. But like if we were going out with someone and she was with my sister or my parents, whatever, we would give her a bottle. And it was so much better for me to not have that stress of if I don't feed her or if I can't pump, my baby's not going to eat. So I'm really grateful that I changed my perspective on that. But yeah, and then she was born February 2020, and when a month later, we got COVID. We didn't get COVID. The world got COVID. And we got to enjoy our time at home with our newborn. Mitchell was working from home. Yeah, that was perfect. Yeah, too, like on the outside perspective, negative things happening made it so that Mitchell could be home with our babies all the time.

That's so special, especially, you know, like he's such a hands-on dad too. Like I'm sure it would have been so hard if it was like, okay, you got to go back to work. Don't stay. That's so hard. Well, I'm glad. And so did she sleep for you better because she was fed or just not very sleepy girls?

So when I was pregnant with Isla, people would ask me like, so are you going to try for more after her? I would always tell them, Isla would have to be a perfect baby for me to want more babies after this. And now I just like tell them she was a very average baby. She wasn't great. She slept some, she slept okay, but like she's probably pretty average.

Yeah.

Which was still a lot better than him.

Like I'll take it at this point. I'll take it. Yeah. Good. Well, I'm so glad that I could end on an average note or therefore a high note. That's so good. That's awesome. And so y'all moved to Texas pretty soon after that. Is that right?

She was two.

Oh, okay. Okay.

Yeah. A little, a little babe.

So sweet. Well, thank you for sharing those experiences. It's always it's so interesting with siblings to see how one affects the other. And, you know, they do not happen in vacuum chambers. They absolutely are life changing in lots of different ways. So I'm glad that pregnancy seemed to be positive for both too. That's that is huge.

Yeah.

That's so good. Perfect. Well, as you know, I always do love to ask if you could go back and tell your pre mom self something, what would you tell her?

To My Pre-Mom Self…

I would tell her don't let what's right for someone else and their baby dictate what's right for you and your baby, or even what's right with one of your babies to be what's right for the next one. Emma and I have a wonderful attachment, but I could have had so much more joy during her baby phase if I had given myself some grace and said, you know what, maybe breastfeeding isn't actually what's right for us, then that's okay. Because I have so many friends who say, oh, I love the newborn stage. And I'm just like, I hate it. I can't do it. So yeah, I think don't let what's right for someone else be what you make right for yourself.

I love that. I think that is so important, especially. I mean, I'll just talk from my experience so far, right? Like, especially on social media, there's all these things of like, this is the one way to do this thing. And if you don't do this, then your baby's not going to ever love you. Yes, exactly. And people are just so different. And like you said, babies are so different. Even your own babies are so different. And so just like remaining present and like checking in with yourself, that is such a good reminder. Like I really appreciate that because it's hard, especially like if you don't know what you're doing, what else are you going to do other than base it off of other people or what you've seen work for other people? And so to like offer that grounding counter thought of like, okay, yes, like other people will have helpful things, but they are not you, their baby is not your baby. So I love that.

Thank you so much for having me, Emily. This is amazing, and you're amazing, and you're gonna be the best mom.

Oh my gosh, whatever. You're so freaking sweet. Thank you so much. That's so sweet. It was so fun. I like part of what started this idea for this podcast was moving in to Texas with all these great women friends. Y'all just had such a great group that you just let me in to so kindly. And I'm like, all these women are goddesses, and they have such interesting stories and perspectives. And so I've been wanting to hear your perspective for a really long time. And then I told you, the podcast happened right as I got pregnant, right as y'all moved. And so it's been a long time coming. So I'm grateful. So thank you so much for being on today, truly. It was so great.

Thank you.

All right, y'all. I loved that episode. And I didn't even realize until listening to it again, how similar the vibes were between her story and Mallory's story last week. Like, obviously, the vibes of just like how they shared their story, you know, in just such a fun way and bringing so much humor to it. But I also think that both of their answers to what they would tell their pre-mom selves are similar to. They both shared about learning to be confident in their own tuition, trusting their gut over what other people, you know, might feel is helpful to share, but not necessarily the best thing for their baby. And honestly, as their friend, it's really inspiring to me because on the outside looking in, I would say that they're both people I look up to as far as being self-confident and like not caring a ton about what other people think about them. So it is super powerful to hear that that confidence was a choice for them at one point. Like, they had to cultivate that skill just like any other. And it makes me feel like it's possible for me to gain that strength, even if it may feel like a weakness right now. So if you're like me and you struggle to feel confident trusting your gut, I hope this episode helped you feel empowered to start strengthening that muscle as well. So seriously, just a huge thanks to Katie for being on the podcast today. And a huge thanks to you for listening. I seriously appreciate y'all so much. I really do just love getting to have these moments with my friends, and y'all keep me motivated to keep curating stories week after week. Speaking of which, I want to reiterate that I'm always looking for more stories to be shared on the podcast. So if you or someone you know has a birth experience that they want to share, please reach out. The best way to do that is through the Share Your Story tab on my website. But you can always just send me a DM as well if that's more comfortable for you. And seriously, I hope by now that you can see that every single story is worth sharing. Every single story adds an irreplaceable perspective. That can help someone else feel more seen. And honestly, just adds more awareness to the all-encompassing, amazing psycho thing that it is to bring little humans into the world. So please, please, even if you have been thinking about it and we're on the edge, this is your sign to come share your story with us. Okay? Y'all are amazing. I love you so much. Thank you for being here. And that's all I have for today. So, will I see you same time next week? 

K, love you, bye!