Gina’s Birth Stories: 4 Unique Journeys, From Hospital Birth to Empowering Home Births

[00:01:04] Gina: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. In this episode, I’m gonna be sharing all four of my birth stories.

[00:01:11] Gina: Super condensed. Super quick, to share how they influenced one another. Because in hindsight, looking back on my experiences, I really could see how each of them really influenced the other.

[00:01:24] Gina: And so I’ve had four babies. One was, my first was in the hospital. I had an epidural. And the next three were all home births, which were obviously unmedicated ’cause I was at home.

[00:01:33] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:01:33] Gina: And so I wanna share how they all kind of influence each other, MamasteFit’s birth, and yeah, all the way from A to Z- ’cause my first child’s name is Adeline and my last is Zoe. If I have an accidental fifth or a is, there a better word?

[00:01:48] Roxanne: Unplanned.

[00:01:50] Gina: Unplanned fifth baby. I’ll have to figure something out.

[00:01:53] Roxanne: They’re gonna be a number.

[00:01:57] Gina: Two Z’s in it.

[00:01:59] Roxanne: Wait, just do another Z, I guess.

[00:02:00] Gina: Yeah. Two. Two Z’s.

[00:02:05] Gina: So my first baby was born in 2017, and this was pre MamasteFit, pre knowing anything. Going into pregnancy, I did not know very much about birth, which I think most people do not. I had no experience with it, had never seen anyone else give birth, had really limited anything about pregnancy or birth. Like even interacting with like pregnant women or people was not a very common thing for me. And so I just assumed you just go to the hospital, they just tell you what to do, you get an epidural and then your baby’s born.

[00:02:44] Roxanne: Which is the case for most people.

[00:02:45] Gina: Yeah. And that’s, that was just my initial plan. I also was absolutely terrified of childbirth. Because my, I felt like my whole like childhood, you’re just told that childbirth is the curse that God has put on us as women, and it’s gonna be painful. And I’m like, “That sounds awful. I would like to not.” And so I was like very scared of childbirth as well. I was like, “Oh my God. I feel like I’ve been told that contractions are the worst thing ever, like the worst pain. I don’t know if I want that.”

[00:03:20] Gina: And so I would say like over half of my pregnancy I was just, “Whatever. Like I just show up and they just do whatever they want and it’ll be fine.” And then about like halfway through, I started to realize that there was other options available to us. And I was like, “Huh, people don’t give birth with epidurals? That’s something that people do. That’s weird. Like why would you? Why would you want to experience the pain?” And so I started to learn more about like why different people chose to not get an epidural and how it can be a very empowering experience to like feel what was happening. And then I started to view it as like a challenge where I was like, “I’m like really physically fit and I like challenging activities. Like I’ll just do that. That sounds great. I’m just gonna see if I can do it.” that was kinda like my thing was like, “I’m gonna see if I can do it,” with not a whole lot of preparation.

[00:04:12] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:04:12] Gina: Involved. And so I took a childbirth education course that ended up just scaring me into believing that hospitals were evil. Like, Pitocin was bad, if you get an epidural you’re gonna hurt your baby. And so then I became very fearful of my medical team and I also switched teams like at the very end of my pregnancy ’cause I was located in Georgia and my husband was here in North Carolina. And so I came here to give birth in North Carolina.

[00:04:38] Gina: So I switched to a new provider at 36 weeks pregnant. And they were like, the appointments were very rushed- they were in Georgia as well, but I felt like even more anxiety about like the quickness of the appointments and just being told things. And I was like, “Wait, we’re supposed to discuss stuff and have informed consent, so I’m confused!” And I also watched The Business of Being Born, which I think is a very like, enlightening documentary, but it’s also very terrifying.

[00:05:06] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:05:07] Gina: Because it’s like, “Hospitals, like, medicine, is a business,” and there’s validity to that, but there was no like other option. It was go to the hospital and be taken advantage of, or give birth at home. And I was like, “I don’t even know how to find a home birth midwife.” And so I toyed with the idea of just like giving birth at home, but I didn’t have a provider at home and I didn’t even know how to go about that. So I was like, “I’ll just stick with the hospital. It’s just what we got. Like we’ll just go with it.” And because I was active duty military at the time, I could only give birth at this one specific hospital, otherwise I’d have to go through like this whole process to try to get referrals to go outsource. So I was like, “You know what? We’re just gonna give birth here. It’ll be fine, it’ll be okay.”

[00:05:49] Gina: So the end of that pregnancy, I hit my due date, and then I continued to be pregnant after my due date and was very anxious about it because I didn’t wanna be induced. And at my 40 week appointment, the nurse practitioner who was not, she didn’t actually support births and I don’t like her to this day, she was just like, “All right, you’re 40 weeks. We have scheduled your induction for 10 days from now when you’re 41 and three, and so if you’re still pregnant, we’ll just see you then. Any questions?” And I was like, “What?!” And I was expecting there to be like a conversation on like why we were recommending induction. Is this something that you wanna do? And so I felt very anxious about it because I didn’t feel like there was anything wrong with my pregnancy to where like we needed to induce other than that I was just “too pregnant.” And even at that time, like I was 40 weeks at this time and I’m like, “We don’t even know if there’s an issue at 10 days from now. Like why should I get induced? Is it just because I’m 10 days from now?” This is not a conversation that I actually had with them. This is what I mentally spiraled with.

[00:06:50] Gina: And at the beginning of my pregnancy, my due date had been changed pretty significantly ’cause I ovulated late and so it was different from the ultrasound versus my last menstrual cycle. And so I was like, “If I had kept my original due date, I would be induced today. And I’m actually just at my due date. And so this is fake! It’s arbitrary! It’s made up spiraling!” And so I felt like there wasn’t a conversation. I felt like there was no like medical reason to be induced other than I was super pregnant, but I didn’t know how to have the conversation. I didn’t know what to do to be a more active part of that decision. And so I essentially spent the next 10 days spiraling and panicking that I wasn’t in labor yet. And every day I would wake up and I’d be like, “Oh my God, I’m still pregnant.” And then I would go to sleep and I’d wake up and I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m still pregnant and I’m not in labor.”

[00:07:40] Gina: And then 41 weeks came and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m still pregnant.” And this entire time everyone around me, when I was like, “I don’t wanna be induced,” were all like, “What’s the big deal? Pitocin isn’t that bad. Like, it’s just an induction. Like, just get an epidural. What’s the big deal?” But for me, I was like, I have this like vision of what I want my birth to look like. I wanna go to the hospital in labor, I wanna labor unmedicated, I wanna give birth, and I wanna have this empowering unmedicated experience.” But I understood at this time that Pitocin would make that really challenging and I did not want that. It’s not that I wanted the “easy” way, but I felt like Pitocin would make it harder.

[00:08:28] Gina: And so instead of having a provider or Roxanne be like, “Hey, I know that you’re really anxious about the Pitocin. It seems really scary for you because you have this vision of what you want in your birth to look like, and you view Pitocin as ruining that dream of yours. This is different ways that they can administer Pitocin, but when you get induced, that’s not the only way that they induce you. Sometimes there’s other things that we can utilize first to help get things going, and then you may not even need Pitocin, or if you need Pitocin, this is how it can be administered to make it more tolerable for you.” And so I didn’t have anyone that kind of talked me off the ledge. Everyone was either not having a conversation with me, with my providers or people I was interacting with were just like very dismissive of this is bringing me a lot of anxiety, to include Roxanne, which, hindsight could have been better about that conversation, but it was also like new for her of like, “Why would you not?”

[00:09:27] Roxanne: Yeah, I had been a labor nurse for like just over two years where everyone, like very rarely did we have people that come in labor and don’t get Pitocin. So it’s just oh, Pitocin is like a tool and it’s not scary at all. What do you mean that you’re scared of Pitocin? So not ideal. I was also like in the process of moving, so also very stressed, so I’m just like, “Gina, it’s whatever. Just get induced. It’s totally fine.”

[00:09:52] Gina: Yeah. And so everyone was very dismissive of me, and I felt like I wasn’t being listened to by my medical team.

[00:09:58] Gina: And so when I did go into labor, I actually did go into spontaneous labor at 41 and two. I was so anxious that entire day trying to get my labor to progress faster because I was so concerned about being induced the next day, ’cause I didn’t want it to stop. I was like, “If it stops, I have to get induced. I do not wanna get induced. This labor’s gonna continue.” And so I started timing my contractions. They got to the point where they’re about four minutes apart. I was like breathing a little bit through them, ’cause all I saw in the Facebook groups was, “If you have to stop walking and talking, you’re in active labor.” And I was like, “That’s happening!” I like call my doula, I call Roxanne. I’m like, “Hey, I’m having a harder time walking and talking through these. I’m gonna go to the hospital ’cause I am in active labor!”

[00:10:43] Roxanne: And I was like, “Gina, stay home. What are you doing?”

[00:10:45] Gina: Both of them were like, “You are not. Stop.” And I was like, “You don’t know anything!”

[00:10:51] Roxanne: You’re like, “I’m gonna have this baby, so I need to go to the hospital now.”

[00:10:53] Gina: I walked so much on that treadmill. I went for tons of walks. So I woke up at 6:00 AM having some contractions. They’re very mild. And by like noon, I was like, “This is active labor. This baby is coming so fast,” because I didn’t want to be in the car for more labor.

[00:11:11] Roxanne: Our mom also like gaslit herself, her entire labor. So she was like, “Yeah, my labors were all really quick!” So Gina was like, “Same!”

[00:11:20] Gina: ” Same. That’s me.”

[00:11:22] Gina: So we went to the hospital against everybody’s recommendations and I was two centimeters.

[00:11:29] Roxanne: But, she was two centimeters!

[00:11:30] Gina: So I was not in active labor. They were like, “Just go walk and come back when you’re in actual labor.”

[00:11:37] Roxanne: So Gina took that literally, and went walking.

[00:11:39] Gina: So I, instead of driving home and just laboring at home, which is what I should have done, because I was very anxious about things not progressing, we went to the track and we walked around that thing for two hours.

[00:11:51] Roxanne: And didn’t drink very much water.

[00:11:52] Gina: And I did not drink any water. And so my contractions were picking up, they were getting more intense, like I was progressing in my labor, but I was not pushing a baby out yet. And so I was very anxious, ’cause again, I did not wanna be induced even though I was in active, well, even though I was in labor, I was still very anxious about things stopping and I didn’t wanna not do things to help it progress.

[00:12:14] Gina: And so like we went to get some food and then things like started to really pick up for me and I was like, “Wow, I did not feel… like these are much harder.” Like I couldn’t even sit in the chair anymore, like in the car. So we go back, I’m like, “I for sure, like I have to be, like, much further.” I was still two centimeters, and I was like, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

[00:12:33] Gina: So I was, at this point, just like, “I am so concerned about being induced,” and then for whatever reason- and this is where a lot of just like lack of communication just really like highlights that whole first birth experience- they decided to admit me, but they weren’t gonna admit me at that time. I was gonna have to wait for a bed to be available, but I didn’t know why they were admitting me ’cause I was only two centimeters. And so I don’t know, I have no idea what the conversation was. And so they were like, “We’re gonna admit you.”

[00:13:03] Roxanne: No one had a conversation with Gina.

[00:13:05] Gina: Nobody talked to me about what was going on. So it was just me and my husband and we’re just like, “What?”

[00:13:10] Gina: So they’re like, “You’re two centimeters. We’re gonna admit you though. But you have to go walk around for a few hours and we’re gonna start Pitocin when you come back in.” And I was like, “Wait, why?” And I still do not know why they were starting Pitocin.

[00:13:24] Roxanne: Yeah, I have suspicions that… So, Gina sent me a picture, I actually found it a couple weeks ago ’cause I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna find this picture,” she sent me a picture of the baby monitor of her in labor ’cause I think I asked her husband, so I think it was Barron that had sent it to me. And Baby’s heart was fine, but hers was like 120 BPM.

[00:13:45] Gina: Mine?

[00:13:45] Roxanne: Your heart rate was elevated, which then caused baby’s to be a little bit higher. I think it was like high 160’s, still within a normal range, but like…

[00:13:52] Gina: Why would I be stressed?!

[00:13:53] Roxanne: …higher than normal. So baby’s heart rate was higher and then your heart was higher, probably because you were super dehydrated. You hadn’t drank water for 12 hours because you were stressed out. Also, walking the track for a while. Well, the blood pressure would, if you were stressed, like the blood pressure would be high, but your blood pressure was fine. But yours and baby’s heart rates were elevated, so they would not have wanted to send you home with an elevated heart rate in you and baby for like safety reasons. But also you were an induction the next day, you were already there, might as well just keep you and induce you, and then they can take a induction off the next day.

[00:14:32] Roxanne: In hindsight, they were so busy, Gina was not getting called on her induction.

[00:14:38] Gina: But we didn’t know this. Nobody explained this to me.

[00:14:41] Roxanne: And I don’t think anyone explained it either, that there is a priority of inductions. Medical inductions, top priority post dates inductions, which is what Gina was, lowest priority. Gina probably would not have been called for some time. And I did not communicate this to her either. In my head I was like, “She’s probably not gonna get called. They’re super busy, like she’ll be fine.” But again, I did not communicate this.

[00:15:05] Gina: No. Gina was very stressed.

[00:15:06] Roxanne: And no one was doing good communication, to include the hospital staff, not telling her why she was being admitted and me not telling her that her induction likely was not gonna happen.

[00:15:15] Gina: So I didn’t know why they were like, “We’re gonna give you Pitocin,” ’cause I was having contractions, so I was like, “What? I already have the thing that Pitocin causes, like, I think we’re past that at this point,” but I think because I was still at two centimeters after all that time, they’re like, “You’re not progressing. We need to make your contractions stronger with Pitocin.” And so I immediately start to panic because I’m like, “I wanna have an unmedicated birth, but if I get Pitocin, I’m not gonna be able to do that. What other options are available to me?” And the midwife, who was not a friendly person, was like, “We can give you IV pain meds.” And I was like, “What’s that? Okay, I guess. It’t not an epidural, I guess that’s fine.”

[00:15:51] Gina: So we hung out on the labor floor, not in a room for a few hours, and then at probably at 2:00 AM we finally get put into a room, and at this point we had probably been wandering around the hallways for three hours.

[00:16:03] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:16:04] Gina: It was a good period of time.

[00:16:04] Roxanne: This is when my mom and me arrived, probably a little bit before you got admitted.

[00:16:10] Gina: So we go into the labor room, they start the Pitocin. I’m already like really anxious at this point. They give me the IV pain meds, but they don’t give it to me correctly. There’s two things that are supposed to be given together.

[00:16:23] Roxanne: Optimally, they didn’t give it optimally, yes.

[00:16:25] Gina: And so the desired effect did not occur for me. I just felt like I was drunk and like delusional, and I did not enjoy the experience. I did get like a mini nap in, but when that wore off and the Pitocin was still on, I was like, “I would like this to not be on anymore because I feel like I have some good contractions.” And so I asked the nurse to come in. I was like, “Can you turn it off?” and she essentially laughed in my face. She didn’t do it, but she was, that’s essentially what happened.

[00:16:52] Roxanne: So she was like, “We can’t turn it off.”

[00:16:54] Gina: She’s just like, “You stupid, stupid woman. No.” That’s essentially what it felt like she said to me. So she calls the midwife in.

[00:17:00] Roxanne: She just said, “No.”

[00:17:01] Gina: The midwife came in with her arms crossed and was like, “I heard you wanna talk to me.” And I was like, “Nope. I do not wanna talk to you. I do not wanna talk to you. I would like to talk to somebody else,” but I didn’t say that. I just said, “Nope, I don’t wanna talk to you.”

[00:17:12] Gina: At this point would’ve been a good time for me to have said, “I would like a different provider. You seem like a bitch and I don’t want you. I don’t know what I did to offend you. I’m just in labor, just trying to have a baby. But you seem like a bitch, and I do not wanna interact with you anymore.” Like I should have asked for a new nurse and a new midwife, but I didn’t know that you can do that.

[00:17:32] Roxanne: So this was also like 5:00, 6:00 AM.

[00:17:34] Gina: I was also in labor, and not in a good place.

[00:17:37] Gina: And so we, I think we made it to the room about 1:00 or 2:00 AM, this is now like 5:00 or 6:00 AM, and I am just like, “Both of you seem like not nice people.” And so I am just like mentally spiraling at this point.

[00:17:52] Gina: And because I’m spiraling, my contractions are not great. They are not, I’m not having a good time with them. I don’t know if it was because of the Pitocin, probably more so that I was in a high state of anxiety and stress. And so I’m like, “Fuck, both of you. I would like an epidural.” And my doula, my husband, my mom, Roxanne, were all like, “No! We wanna support you!” and I was just like, “Fuck you all.”

[00:18:17] Gina: So my doula did get me to go to the bathroom and like labor on the toilet for a little bit. And there’s a photo of me just like, “I hate everything.” And then after about, I think maybe like another half hour or so of that, I was like, “Fuck this, I’m getting an epidural. I need you all to shut the fuck up. I am done with this experience.” What I didn’t know was the shift was changing, and if I had just waited like another hour, I would’ve had a different midwife and nurse and maybe would’ve completely changed my experience. But I didn’t know that. I also didn’t know that I was progressing probably very quickly at this point.

[00:18:51] Gina: So when I, before I got an epidural, my doula was like, “Do you wanna get checked? What if you’re like 10 centimeters?” And I was just like, “Fine. If I’m fucking 10 centimeters….” No. I was four. I was like, “All right, in the past eight hours I’ve progressed two centimeters. Fuck you all.” In hindsight…

[00:19:10] Roxanne: In actuality, they had checked you before they started the Pitocin, you were three.

[00:19:16] Gina: Oh, they did?

[00:19:16] Roxanne: And then they checked you after however many hours, and you were four and so that’s actually pretty good. I just remembered this fact now.

[00:19:23] Gina: Yeah. But I didn’t know all this stuff.

[00:19:25] Roxanne: But, in hindsight. At the moment, you were like, “Fuck all of you.”

[00:19:28] Gina: So I get the epidural, I sleep for an hour, and then I’m 10 centimeters. Like I, it was not a very long period of time from when… or I got checked, I was like nine. And they were like, “You have a bulging bag. If we break this bag, your baby’s just gonna fall out!” and at that moment, like I think back to this moment, and I just remember feeling so defeated, where I was just like, “Man, everything that I was hoping for, not necessarily that I prepared for, ’cause I don’t think I prepared very well, but everything that I was hoping for that I feel like is reasonable- I want to be communicated to, I want my provider and my medical team to treat me with respect, to treat me like a person who is like going through a very like scary experience- both of those things were like unreasonable, it felt. And so when the… and it was a really nice midwife. I did like her a lot. She’s like, “Oh, like you’re almost 10 centimeters! We break your water, your baby’s just gonna fall right out!” And I was like, “Whatever. Sure.” Like at this point, what else can you do? Like I’ve, this experience has already been ruined for me, just fucking do it. And I just remember feeling so defeated in that moment. And when I see that in my doula clients, I’m just like, “God damnit. I didn’t help you not have that, too,” but there’s really only so much that you can do sometimes.

[00:20:51] Gina: So they broke my water. I think this was like, maybe like 9:00. So I got my epidural probably like right around shift change, maybe even right after shift change, it might’ve been like 7, 7:30 ish. They checked me at I think 8:30 or 9, so it was like a little bit less…. it was a really short period of time from when I started pushing, ’cause Adeline was born just before noon, and I pushed for two and a half hours. So the time, so it was 9:30, I was complete and started pushing. I got my epidural probably at 7, 7:30, within two hours I was complete, because we progressed very fast once we’re an active labor.

[00:21:29] Roxanne: It could have been the epidural allowed you to rest, ’cause were really tired too.

[00:21:33] Gina: I think at the time that I started asking for an epidural, I was probably in active labor, but because I was in a heightened level of stress, things were much, much more challenging for me at that point. Maybe I was starting to shift and transition, I don’t know. I was progressing very quickly at that point, but I didn’t know that ’cause I didn’t like my midwife. And you know what? I don’t wanna have my baby with her anyways.

[00:21:55] Gina: So she was born at, just before noon, after about two and a half hours of pushing. And there was a doctor in the room who was like at the foot of the bed- the room, first of all was filled with people.

[00:22:07] Roxanne: And I had not started working at this hospital, so I had no idea who any of these people are.

[00:22:12] Gina: At about an hour in, I’m just butt ass naked on this table, like spread eagle. I look around and I’m just like, “Who are all these people?” And I look at my nurse and I’m like, “Who are these people?!” And she’s like,”Well, I’m your nurse. My name is…” I forgot what her name was, like, Susan.

[00:22:26] Roxanne: Susan, yeah. It was Susan.

[00:22:27] Gina: “…Susan. This is your baby nurse. This is a student that’s training with the baby nurse. That’s NICU. This is the attending. I don’t know who the fuck those people are. Like this is cord blood. That’s your midwife.”

[00:22:39] Roxanne: I think there was a resident.

[00:22:40] Gina: There was just a bunch of people in the room, for whatever reason. I think my baby’s heart rate was like going all over the place.

[00:22:47] Roxanne: Gina was having, her baby was having variable decels every time she would push.

[00:22:51] Gina: She had her hand by her eye.

[00:22:52] Roxanne: So her heart rate was dropping to like the fifties and sixties every time she would push. But it was a sudden drop, rather than a gradual drop sometimes that we’ll have as her head’s getting squished. So, because she was pushing for so long, everyone came in just to make sure the baby was okay when they were born.

[00:23:10] Gina: So we had a lot of people in the room.

[00:23:11] Roxanne: So there was a big birthday party, when we really didn’t want a big birthday party..

[00:23:15] Gina: The attending, who was not getting ready to catch my baby, just casually observing, was talking about a vacuum, and I didn’t know what a vacuum was, but I could hear him. I don’t know if people in the medical field don’t think that their patients can hear them speaking very loudly in the same room that they’re located in….

[00:23:32] Roxanne: Or they don’t realize that they could whisper, or that they’re not whispering.

[00:23:38] Gina: Or just talk to me, just talk to me as the person that’s giving birth!

[00:23:42] Gina: So he kept talking about vacuum. I didn’t know what that was. I was thinking like a Dyson, like you clean your house vacuum, suck your baby out, kind of thing. And I was like, “That seems weird. I don’t think I like that.” And so anytime he came a little bit closer, I would just

[00:23:54] Roxanne: Stare him down.

[00:23:54] Gina: “Looking at you.”

[00:23:56] Gina: I didn’t need a vacuum. I did need a episiotomy though. And so they, she asked me if I wanted any episiotomy. I was like, “At this point, whatever.” My mom was like, “They cut me once and the baby just came right out!” and I was like, “Sounds good to me at this point. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

[00:24:10] Roxanne: I feel like she had been crowning for a little while at this point.

[00:24:12] Gina: Yeah. So they cut and episiotomy and she came out pretty quickly from there. She was like screaming when she was born, like her head came out and she was like, “Ah!” And then they like immediately cut the cord and took her to the warmer. I think I like touched her and then they like swooped her away and I was like, “Why?”

[00:24:27] Roxanne: I didn’t, I don’t know why.

[00:24:29] Gina: I don’t know why they did that either. There’s a lot of things that I’m just like, I don’t really understand.

[00:24:32] Roxanne: I don’t know why.

[00:24:33] Gina: My husband said he felt like he was watching a fight because he didn’t feel like he got to be a part of it. Like he was just like on the outskirts…

[00:24:41] Roxanne: There’s too many people.

[00:24:42] Gina: …of the bed, and he just, he’s like, “I felt like I was watching a fight in high school where I was just like, ‘Good job, Gina!’ Like from the outside.” And he’s like, “I don’t feel like I got to be a part of that,” which is also very sad.

[00:24:53] Gina: And so her overall birth experience was like very traumatic for me and not a good experience at all. And I feel bad because she’s gonna ask me more in depth one day, like what her birth was like and I’m gonna be like, “It sucked, but I love you.” And so that was something that I was really conflicted with after that birth was, how do I get over the fact that was not what I wanted at all? Like it was not a good experience. Like I can find some silver linings of, “That was a good learning experience,” but it still sucked. Like I only get to experience this four times in my life and one of those four times was awful. Like the midwife sucked. That nurse sucked. Like, my experience with the nurse practitioner was not good. That whole just experience- outside of the midwife that came, the midwife and nurse from day shift were really nice, I did like them a lot- but that whole initial experience really was just like awful for me.

[00:25:52] Gina: And it really impacted my confidence going into motherhood, too, where I was like, I thought that I wanted all of these things. I thought that I could give birth unmedicated and then I didn’t, and I proved all those people right that kept telling me like, “Oh, you’re so dumb for doing that.” And so then I go into motherhood and I’m like, “Everything that I thought I wanted was wrong and I shouldn’t have done that,” and so now I’m like, “what do I do now? I don’t know.” So that postpartum was also very challenging, trying to figure out my confidence, and then also process that wasn’t the birth that I wanted, while also being very excited that my baby was here. So there was a lot of conflicting emotions that were really hard to navigate, ’cause I felt like if I wasn’t excited about my birth story and my birth experience, it somehow meant that I loved my baby less. And so that was something that was like very challenging to begin to work through.

[00:26:39] Gina: And so I looked at my son’s birth as my redemptive experience. It was like, “Okay, this time I’m gonna have that hospital birth and I’m gonna NOT get an epidural. And I know how to advocate for myself. I know what my options are, like, I’m more educated.” And I feel like that’s really common, where folks will have their first like traumatic experience and then they’re like, “I’m more prepared the second time though, I’m gonna do all the things that I didn’t do the first time around.”

[00:27:08] Gina: And so we were preparing to have another hospital birth in the same hospital, which was probably not a good choice of mine, but whatever. But, I was having a much better experience with my prenatal care. I had a midwife that I was working with, I was doing centering, so it was the same midwife at the appointment and we had an opportunity to really get to know one another. And then Covid hit, and there was no more prenatal appointments, which I was like, I’m like, “How are you gonna check on my baby virtually?”

[00:27:38] Roxanne: Oh yeah, let’s not, we’ll not even get into that.

[00:27:41] Gina: They were like…

[00:27:41] Roxanne: Hot mess.

[00:27:42] Gina: So I had a phone appointment for my prenatal. I was like, “How are you gonna listen to my baby?” And so they had a drive by prenatal care where you can drive up in front of the hospital, they’ll check on your baby and take your blood pressure and then you drive away was like the option. And so I was like, “I would like a referral to have a home birth. They’re gonna give me prenatal care if you’re not gonna gimme care.”

[00:28:04] Gina: And so we began at that point to shift to deciding to have a home birth instead, which I think I wanted all along, but I was like scared to do it ’cause I was like, “What if I can’t?” ’cause I thought I could do it the first time, but… And I also didn’t really know how to find a midwife at that point.

[00:28:22] Gina: And so during that second pregnancy, one of my friends, or one of my doula clients, I guess she’s a friend too, gave birth at home with a midwife that I had heard about a lot. And I was like, “Oh, I would love to work with her.” And this was like December. And so I had thought about asking her if she had availability in June, in December, but I was like, “I don’t know. She’s busy right now. I’ll wait, like, it’s fine. Like she’s probably super booked.” And so I didn’t say anything. And then March hit, COVID happened and the world shut down. And it turns out in June she normally has a vacation, and so she would not have been available for my due date.

[00:29:03] Gina: And so I, in March, reached out to her again and was like, “Hey, I’m not receiving any prenatal care. I don’t wanna give birth in the hospital because I don’t know who’s gonna be there,” because there was a lot of restrictions at this point on who can support your birth? Like you could have your partner. I was hearing stories out of New York City that partners couldn’t even go to the birth. And I’m like, “I’m not giving birth alone. Absolutely not. Like I will not be by myself.”

[00:29:26] Roxanne: I would’ve been there ’cause I worked at that hospital. I was like, I will be in that room regardless.

[00:29:30] Gina: But I would like the father of my child to be at his kid’s birth. I knew that you would have to go into triage by yourself and I’m like, “I would like to not labor alone at any point during my labor. And I would like to think by June things will be better!” Spoiler, they were not.

[00:29:46] Gina: And so that was a big concern for me. I wanted to dictate who was gonna be at my labor and I knew I didn’t have that power in a hospital setting.

[00:29:53] Roxanne: And we had a birth photographer.

[00:29:54] Gina: I did have a birth photographer, too! I’m like, “I paid a lot of money for this person to come take photos! I would like her to be there. I don’t want newborn photos. I want the birth ones!”

[00:30:04] Gina: So she happened to cancel her vacation that was in June.

[00:30:09] Roxanne: She had to cancel it because of Covid!

[00:30:11] Gina: She suddenly had a lot of availability and so she was like, “Yeah, for sure. I’ll take you on.” And I was like, “Cool.”

[00:30:18] Gina: So we transitioned to home birth at this point, and I started to receive prenatal care again, which was really nice. And I could still go for my big appointments in the hospital, so any ultrasounds, like labs, I can still do. And then I think eventually we had a, “Are you okay?” like appointment and then that was it.

[00:30:40] Roxanne: Oh, I thought you were gonna start coughing.

[00:30:41] Gina: Oh, no, it was that they have their mask on and they’re like, “You look fine to me.”

[00:30:48] Roxanne: So stupid.

[00:30:49] Gina: Which is ridiculous.

[00:30:51] Gina: So we transitioned to home birth at this point, and once we like officially switched over and like we got the referral approved, I just felt so much more relaxed and like prepared for this birth. But I was still anxious on what to expect. I was like, “I just remember it being like really difficult last time and I am concerned that it’s gonna be the same for me this time.” And I was like, maybe it’s because I was super stressed and that’s why things felt more difficult.

[00:31:21] Gina: And so I hit my due date and I was still pregnant and I was just like, “Like, why?! Like I’m not stressed this time!” And then the next day I went to labor. And it was the same as with my daughter, where I woke up, I had my contractions.

[00:31:36] Roxanne: You did wake up later. It was like 7, 8:00 AM when you woke up.

[00:31:39] Gina: Yeah, like I woke up with contractions, was like, “Oh, this is it!” I’m excited, I told everybody about it. My midwife came over in the morning to do like a labor check, like she does a really good job of checking in pretty frequently during labors. I think at this point I was like three centimeters or so, which I was like, “Cool. I was hoping I was at least nine, but…” I was like, “Alright, three’s pretty good! I’m good with three. That sounds great to me.”

[00:32:07] Gina: And we just continued about our day. Everything that I had planned for my labor and envisioned for it happened, which was really cool. My friend came over and gave me a massage. Then we went to a walk as I transitioned into active labor, like had the midwife come back with her birth assistant. Just continued to labor at this point. And then I was like, I was on all fours in the bedroom with a birth ball, I think my husband was like shaking my hips or you were, somebody was squeezing my hips at some point, and I remember looking up at my TV that has a clock and it said 8:30 at this point. So at this point it had been like 12 or 13 hours since labor started. And I was just like, “Huh, who knows how much longer I have. Maybe, not that much longer. I don’t know.”

[00:32:53] Gina: And so I started to feel like a little bit more anxious at this point. I was like, “I just wanna get in like the shower.” And so I get in the shower and I feel myself start doing these little, mini squats and I’m starting to feel like this weird sensation in my vagina. And I was like, “What is that? Like that feels like pressure, but I don’t know. It’s kinda weird.” And I was doing the little squats and I think at one point Roxanne asked me like, “What do you wanna do?” And I was like, “I don’t know. That’s… I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!” And during this time I may have said it out loud where I was like, “We’re done. We’re having two children and that is it.”

[00:33:29] Roxanne: Gina says this every labor.

[00:33:31] Gina: We are never having any more children. This is it. I am done.” And then I get out the shower and I had my birth pool set up in like our kitchen, ’cause it was closest to our laundry room where the hose was attached. But I was laboring in the bedroom, which is not that far, but it was far enough to where once I got outta the shower, I hit our bed and I was like, “Ugh!” and I was like, “Mmm-mmm. We ain’t making it to that pool.”

[00:33:57] Roxanne: I had asked at one point, I was like, “Do you wanna go to the tub?” And you’re like, “Nope!”

[00:34:02] Gina: We are doing this right here. At some point during pushing, I didn’t push for very long, a light bulb exploded in the bathroom.

[00:34:10] Roxanne: Just right as she started pushing, a light bulb exploded.

[00:34:12] Gina: It just exploded out of nowhere. ‘Cause that’s how much power and out of body experience I felt with pushing.

[00:34:19] Gina: At some point I did make it to the other side of the bed, and so I pushed like one time on one side of the bed, or maybe once or twice, and then I walked over to the other side, maybe pushed once there. And then I was like, “I cannot relax in the upright position.” So I got down, I laid down in the bed. It was like in a side lying, supine position. I think I did one push there and I felt my bag bulging. And I was like, “If this breaks, my baby will come.” And so I’m just like clawing at it, and I like asked my midwife, “Can you please just break this? ‘Cause I know he’s gonna come as soon as this thick amniotic fluid sac breaks.” And so she breaks it, and then the next push, he just like rockets outta my body. It was like head, body, and we were like, “Oh!” And so my husband got to catch him and bring him to my chest. We actually did not get a photo of him actually catching him because he flew out so fast!

[00:35:16] Gina: And yeah! And then he started crying and it was like the dream birth, like everything that I wanted to happen happened.

[00:35:23] Roxanne: Adeline was there.

[00:35:24] Gina: Adeline was there. When I was pushing, I was like, “Where’s Adeline?!” and so Roxanne’s like sprinting out of the room, ’cause my mom and her were upstairs, like sleeping.

[00:35:35] Roxanne: She was, our mom was with both girls.

[00:35:38] Gina: Drags them both downstairs, like, the next push. And she looks at me and she’s like, “My baby brother’s coming to play with me!” And I was just like, “Oh! This is adorable!”

[00:35:49] Roxanne: No one got it on video.

[00:35:51] Gina: I know. We did do a lot of prep with her during pregnancy so that she was prepared for labor. And so she was there, she met him when he was born. My husband got to catch him, which was like super special. Like my husband didn’t grow up with his father and actually didn’t meet him until he was like 10 or 11, and so it was like really special to us that the very first person that got to hold and touch our son was my husband as this like special bond for the two of them. I don’t know if they feel it, but they have a special bond.

[00:36:20] Roxanne: Hopefully. The special-est!

[00:36:22] Gina: He came right to my chest and then he just stayed there until… I think we weighed him and stuff, because like I was like, “I would like to get up and get cleaned off. Can we weigh him? I would like to know how much he weighs.” And so he was about a pound bigger than Adeline. She was like 6lb 13oz, and he was 7lb 11oz. She did have her hand by her face, he did not, which made it much easier for him to come out. He was also like my chillest baby in utero and continues to be my chillest baby outside of utero.

[00:36:51] Gina: But it was like a dream birth and very healing for me, which I hate saying because I don’t want… I don’t wanna put that pressure on this baby and this experience to be what I need to heal. There has to be other ways that we can heal from traumatic birth experiences. But for me it was very like full circle and healing for me where I was like, “This is what I’m supposed to feel like when my baby is born,” and that was how I was supposed to feel during my pregnancy and during my labor. That was how people are supposed to treat me. And I’m sad that in order for me to have that, I needed to give birth at home. Like I couldn’t do that with that staff that I had in my first labor.

[00:37:33] Gina: In between that time I also became a doula, and so I saw how different hospitals, like, the vibes were. And like there are definitely really good providers out there and very good nurses and medical teams, but I felt like there was a little bit more like randomness, or like roulette that came with who you got that day, who was on call.

[00:37:54] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:37:54] Gina: What nurse got to be there. And because there was so many restrictions on who could be at my labor.

[00:38:00] Gina: For me, the biggest thing that impacted a negative experience for my first birth was the fact that I didn’t get to choose the midwife, I didn’t get to choose the nurse, and they were both bitches to me. And if I had different people supporting me, it would have been a very different experience. And so that’s how much power our medical providers can have over us, which is very frustrating. And so I knew I needed to be able to have control on who was in my space. I didn’t want 15 people surrounding me as I was pushing, butt ass naked on a bed. Like I did not enjoy that. I know some people are like, “In the moment you don’t care,” I’m like, “Yeah, ’cause I didn’t have a choice at that point.” I couldn’t be like, “Hello, all of you. I know I am naked here. Can you leave?” I’m already like in an awkward position at this point.

[00:38:44] Gina: And so I knew how important it was to control who was in my space for me mentally. And that made a huge difference to have who I wanted to be there and to know that the person that I had chosen to support my birth as my medical provider respected me and that we had established a relationship. Like that was what made the biggest difference for me between my first and my second birth.

[00:39:07] Gina: And then when it came to the third and the fourth, for my third, I didn’t get a water birth with my second. I was like, “Oh, I really wanted a water birth, so I have to have a third baby.” That wasn’t the only reason that we had a third! But in between my second and my third, Roxanne had her son and she had this serene, beautiful, breathe her baby out as angels sang, and it was like very peaceful.

[00:39:33] Roxanne: No one was singing.

[00:39:34] Gina: A peaceful experience. And I was like, “I could do that.”

[00:39:38] Roxanne: It was in the afternoon and the sun was shining through the window.

[00:39:41] Gina: It was like 11:00 AM or whatever time it was, I don’t remember.

[00:39:43] Roxanne: 11:44.

[00:39:44] Gina: It was like very peaceful. And I was like, “I could do that.” Because I felt really out of body during my pushing phase. Like I was like, “I am not in this body anymore. I am just along for the ride. I am just a passenger on this pushing train.” And so I was like, I can have that this time. And the reason why my first labor was so hard was because, and I was pregnant for so long, was because I was so stressed.

[00:40:11] Gina: And so I had a little bit of… I felt like I was getting ready to put on a performance during the labor, ’cause this was also, I think one of the first times that we were very like public with our pregnancy experience and our preparation for birth. And so I almost felt like I was putting on a show, like I had to show what it could be like. So, I was putting a lot of weird pressure on myself because of that.

[00:40:38] Gina: And so when I came to the end of my pregnancy, I was like, “I’m gonna have this serene birth. Like, I’m gonna be like 40 weeks. Like, it’s gonna be just like magical experience.” And then I was 40 weeks… And then I was 41 weeks… And I was like, “What? No, I’m like really relaxed and calm, guys. I’m super chill. I am super chill. What do you mean I’m still pregnant?!” And so I was like really confused as to why I was still pregnant, but then I also started to feel a little bit more anxious because in order for me to give birth at home, I needed to be less than 42 weeks. I could not go past 42 weeks.

[00:41:16] Gina: And so I started doing my NST and the biophysical profiles to check on baby, which caused me some anxiety ’cause I was like, “What if something’s wrong? I have to go to the hospital,” and my husband was like, “If something is wrong, we will go to the hospital, Gina!”

[00:41:30] Roxanne: “You will get this ultrasound!”

[00:41:31] Gina: “It’s not home birth, or bust.” And I was like, “You’re right, I’m sorry. I just, I really just wanna have another home birth.” And so he talked me off the ledge for a moment there where I was like, what if something’s wrong? But we actually didn’t even get the results of the NST until after I gave birth, so.

[00:41:48] Roxanne: Well I mean, they had the results. They knew nothing was wrong.

[00:41:51] Gina: Yeah. It’s like, like, “All right, that was helpful…”

[00:41:54] Gina: So at 41 and two, again, I went into labor and I was like, “Thank God!”

[00:42:01] Roxanne: There was also a hurricane in North Carolina.

[00:42:03] Gina: There also was a hurricane. So I woke up in labor and I was like, “Oh man, this is it.” But then there was a hurricane and so whenever the hurricane storm picked up, my contractions would pick up, and then they would relax and my contractions would relax. And so…

[00:42:22] Roxanne: Gina brought on the hurricane, obviously.

[00:42:23] Gina: I did. You’re welcome. And so all morning things were like, again, not, they were progressing, but they weren’t like progressing very quickly. Like I wanted to already be in active laborer and like on my way to having a baby. ‘Cause with my son’s pregnancy, I woke up by 2, 3:00 PM, I was transitioning into active labor, and then he was born at 9:00. And it was like 2, 3:00 PM and nothing was happening, I was still just in this early labor. And I was like, “Oh my God, my labor’s gonna stop and I’m gonna have to be induced.” and so it became like a really similar like spiral that I had with my first, where I was very concerned about things not progressing anymore.

[00:43:04] Gina: Midwife decided that she was gonna head over, even though things were still early because the storm was picking up and we did not want anyone driving in the middle of the night with like down trees and stuff. So they came over before the sunset, so it was probably like five-ish. And at this point things did start to progress. So before she showed up, I did the Mile Circuit. I did one of the inversions ’cause maybe her head’s a little bit off and that’s why things are not progressing. And then I ate some spicy soup- I don’t think that helped, but it just happened to be what I ate. And things started to progress from that point. I also started like nipple simulation with a breast pump, and that really brought things a lot closer together. And so by the time she showed up, it was starting to shift for me into active labor.

[00:43:46] Gina: And so I was laboring, and then it came time for pushing. At some point the power went out and I was like very concerned ’cause I really liked using the shower and the tub, and I was like, “What if we don’t have hot water?” and my husband was like, “We have a gigantic water tank.”

[00:44:01] Roxanne: Oh, it’s huge.

[00:44:01] Gina: It’ll be okay. And then my sweet midwife was like, “It’s okay. Thousands of women have given birth without hot water,” and I’m like, “Nancy, I live in 2022! I like modern luxury! I want hot water for my labor!” But it was fine. The power turned back on, and it came time to start pushing. And I was like, all right, when I start pushing it’s gonna be this. “Ugh!” It was not serene at all. I was…

[00:44:30] Roxanne: We did have the pool.

[00:44:31] Gina: I did get in the water.

[00:44:32] Roxanne: We had to switch out the water though.

[00:44:34] Gina: Oh, I forgot about that.

[00:44:36] Roxanne: Yeah, so Gina was starting to hit transition and we’re, and she’s like, “I think I wanna get back in the tub.” So me and her husband go over to take, he had put over it this, like, blanket.

[00:44:47] Gina: A hypothermia blanket, which we were all like, “It’s a great idea!”

[00:44:49] Roxanne: “That’s so smart to keep the water warm!” We took it off and there was some sort of lining on it that is like the inside of a diaper, which is why it stays, that’s how it stays hot, but it got into the water in the tub, so it was like a diaper had exploded, like chemicals, like all these things.

[00:45:07] Gina: I remember standing over the pool looking.

[00:45:09] Roxanne: Like we, I literally had a sifter, and I just scooped it and it was just full of this gelatinous kind of stuff.

[00:45:16] Gina: At that moment, I think at first, Emma, the birth assistant, was like, “We can just scoop it out!” And then as she scooped it, it just kinda…

[00:45:22] Roxanne: It just kept coming.

[00:45:23] Gina: It seeped through her fingers.

[00:45:24] Roxanne: It just kept coming out. So then we had to, we’re like, we’re gonna empty the tub really quickly. Me and Emma were like, “Gina’s gonna start pushing before this tub is empty.” Gina was like, “I’m waiting for this tub.”

[00:45:36] Gina: So I like stop my labor and I just lay down on the bed and there’s like a photo of me just lounged on the bed.

[00:45:44] Roxanne: And her son, Eoghan, was sitting next to her.

[00:45:45] Gina: And I’m just like, “I am not gonna labor. I will wait for this pool.”

[00:45:50] Roxanne: It’s 11:00 PM.

[00:45:51] Gina: So my contractions spaced out, and I just kinda took like a mini nap where I was like…

[00:45:55] Roxanne: As we emptied, panic emptied this pool, washed it out, and then refilled it, and Gina was then able to get back in the tub.

[00:46:04] Gina: Yeah, that was like a panicked hour.

[00:46:09] Gina: So, my, we had a weird date thing with our family.

[00:46:12] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:46:13] Gina: Where it’s like my mom’s birthday, and then four days later is my dad’s birthday, and then four days later is their anniversary, and then four days later is Roxanne’s husband’s birthday.

[00:46:20] Roxanne: No, it’s our mom’s birthday and our dad’s birthday is…

[00:46:25] Gina: Oh, yeah.

[00:46:25] Roxanne: Is 12 days apart, or whatever, 16 days apart. And in between their two birthdays is their anniversary. And that in between my parents’ anniversary and my dad’s birthday is my husband’s birthday. And so we need someone…

[00:46:44] Gina: We needed someone on September 30th.

[00:46:46] Roxanne: And now you can to use the math to figure out all of these birthdays.

[00:46:49] Gina: She as in the middle, so it was like every four days. So it was like my mom, we needed that baby to be born, then their anniversary, her husband’s birthday and my dad’s birthday. So we just thought this would be a really fun pattern. And my dad like kept bringing it up my whole pregnancy. He’s like “September 30th!” Which was like 10 days after my due date, and I was like, “Sir, you need to shut up. I do not wanna be in labor, or, still pregnant 10 days after my due date.”

[00:47:11] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:47:12] Gina: And so September 30th, I’m in labor, but then the pool needs to be refilled at 11:00 PM. And so I stopped my labor.

[00:47:21] Roxanne: Had the pool and not needed to be refilled, we probably would’ve had a September 30th baby.

[00:47:27] Gina: So they refill the pool, and I’m like, “All right, let’s do this.” Restart my labor. And I am like, “I will for sure have that serene birth.” I did not. I did not. I was again, outta control. At some point, baby’s heart rate was dipping a lot during contractions, I think.

[00:47:44] Roxanne: While she was pushing.

[00:47:45] Gina: And so my midwife asked me to get out of the pool to be on the bed.

[00:47:48] Roxanne: All of her kids are already in the pool.

[00:47:51] Gina: Yeah. And yeah, so I also was like, “oh, my children are going to help me catch the baby!” I had this whole vision in my head.

[00:47:57] Roxanne: Her oldest was gonna catch this baby! Unrealistic.

[00:48:01] Gina: I also forced my husband to squeeze it into this tiny corner! So earlier in my labor- there’s a whole of fun things that are like popping up as I tell this story- so earlier in my labor, my husband was squeezing my hips and he like made a comment about his chest was tired.

[00:48:19] Roxanne: He’s like, “How much longer?!”

[00:48:21] Gina: And I was like, “I will murder you and be a single parent if you speak again. Like, how dare you? And” he was like, “Zip! I will not complain again.”

[00:48:32] Gina: So we, when he initially filled up the pool, it was the perfect space between the corner and the edge of the pool for him to fit in it.

[00:48:40] Roxanne: Comfortably.

[00:48:41] Gina: But we, when we emptied it and refilled it, it got pushed all the way into the corner.

[00:48:45] Roxanne: Gina did not explain this important plan.

[00:48:47] Gina: I did explain to everybody the vision of the image that I wanted to be photographed. I wanted it to be me catching my baby, my husband is behind me and the photo to be like to me, was the vision of the photo that I wanted. And so I wanted him to be in that corner, but there was no space anymore. And my husband is like 250 pounds. Like he’s a big man. And so he is squished in this corner. At one point Roxanne was like, “Barron, would you like to move?” And he was like, “Nope, I do not wanna move.”

[00:49:22] Roxanne: His face of pain. He is just like (eyes closed, shaking head).

[00:49:25] Gina: “I will be here, I will just be right here.” But then when I had to get outta the pool, he was able to move from that tiny corner and onto the bed with me.

[00:49:35] Gina: So then I finished pushing my baby’s head out, which I was like, “Where’s the rest of the baby? Why is the rest of the baby not coming out yet?” and then her shoulders rotated and then she came out. But it was like much slower than my son’s pushing phase. Not by that much though. I think Eoghan was maybe like 10 minutes of pushing, like Sophie was like seven minutes of pushing. Like it wasn’t anything long by any point.

[00:50:00] Gina: But I didn’t get to have my water birth again, and it was definitely not a serene, peaceful birth. And I look back on that birth and that like kind of the end of that pregnancy and I was like, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform, to have this specific vision in my head. Like I wanted something very specific for myself for whatever reason and it just, it wasn’t what I needed and it wasn’t what happened. And that was like- I was really happy with the experience, like it was still a very positive experience for me- but looking back on it, I was like, it would have been a much less stressful, like end timeframe for me if I had just surrendered to whatever needed to happen, if it was like, “Oh, if I have a water birth, I do. If I don’t, whatever.”

[00:50:42] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:50:44] Gina: And so I, I think I had convinced myself if I prepare in a certain way, I’ll have a very specific birth and because I had like exactly what I wanted with my son’s birth, and that was not what I had with Sophie’s birth. And her birth was still very positive- I had the same midwife, I had the same birth team, like I still felt very supported through the whole experience. But I needed to surrender more to it. I needed to just let it happen. And I still felt like a lot of pressure and anxiety during it to perform.

[00:51:14] Gina: And so when it came to my fourth baby, I found that I was much more like reclusive when it came to my labor. Like I wanted to be more alone during it, as opposed to like having all these people around me and like letting everyone be a part of the experience. Like Sophie’s birth, I felt like I wanted a party. Like I want everyone to be here. I want everyone to come hang out. But it also added to my stress because I was like, everyone’s waiting on me to go into labor ’cause the hurricane came, I wanted them all to be there when they were safe. I was like, now they’re all just like waiting on me to hurry up and have a baby. Our birth photographer just had a baby like only two weeks before me know.

[00:51:52] Roxanne: She was like six weeks postpartum.

[00:51:53] Gina: And I was like, “This poor woman has been like sitting here for 10 hours and nothing is happening. I’m so sorry.” So there was like just a lot of pressure for me with that.

[00:52:02] Gina: And so when it came to preparing for my fourth pregnancy, I just convinced myself, you know what? I’m gonna be 41 weeks. Like just, that is just how I stay pregnant. It’s okay. Like I’ll be 41 weeks. Just accept that. It’s totally fine. Then my midwife would ask me like, “Do you want a water birth? What are you wanting for your birth?” I’m like, “I’m just gonna, if I get a water birth, that’s great. If I don’t, it’s okay. I’m cool with pushing wherever I need to push. Like I know it’s gonna be an out-of-body experience, so if I could somehow catch my baby, cool, if not, whatever.” ‘Cause with Sophie’s, I was like, “I’m gonna catch my baby.” And so my husband was like, “Okay, if you say so,” so he was just like, ready to let me catch the baby. And then when I didn’t, he was like, “Is something wrong? Is everything okay? Like, why is Gina not catching the baby? No one’s telling me to catch the baby, so something must be wrong.” So he was, he said he was anxious with that. And so I, I just decided that, I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna, whatever needs to happen is what’s gonna happen during their birth.” And I was still very, I shared a lot with my pregnancy, shared a lot of the preparation that I was doing.

[00:53:09] Gina: But when it came to the actual labor, I was much more like relaxed with whatever needs to happen, is gonna happen. And I’m like, “If I’m 38 weeks, if I’m 41 weeks, like it’s okay. I’m excited for whatever occurs.” I knew it was gonna be a long early labor, like all of my labors had been, and I knew once like things picked up, it was gonna be much quicker from there.

[00:53:32] Gina: And so I had all my like, mental strategies that I was gonna utilize to help me navigate my contractions. My husband was preparing, he was like lifting a lot towards the end of the pregnancy, especially for really focusing on like chest so that he would not complain during hip squeezes. We were reviewing like stuff around the house, like making sure things were prepared and so we felt really relaxed for it. And then at 39 and five I went into labor and I was like, “What do you mean?” Prior to going into labor, I did have some prodromal labor where I was like, is this it? I don’t know. ‘Cause they were, they felt wavelike, they were coming like in a certain frequency, but it felt like my whole belly was like contracting. And so that was different. And I think I knew it was not labor, but it felt like a wave and it felt like it was coming in a frequency, I was timing them. But then after about an hour or two, it would fizzle off. And so it was always in the evening. And so I would text my midwife and be like, “Hey, I think I might be feeling something, but I’ll keep you posted.” And then the next morning I would still be pregnant. And I was like, “Oh, I don’t wanna stay up and try to get things to go ’cause if they do, then I’m just gonna be tired,” and she’s like, “You’re so wise.” And I’m like, “Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. I am wise.”

[00:54:44] Roxanne: Verbal praise.

[00:54:47] Gina: And so I had about two, two spurts of prodromal labor that felt very different from when labor began.

[00:54:55] Gina: So when labor began, I was like, “This is labor. I’m confident that this is labor.” Most of the morning it stayed the same, like timing, like every 10 to 15 minutes, like very spaced out. But every time I was like, “Yep, that’s a labor contraction. That’s a labor contraction.” But it just didn’t feel like it was like going anywhere. And I was like, “Come on, let’s go!”

[00:55:20] Gina: But, in hindsight it was because nobody was there yet. Like my husband had to go to work for a little bit in the morning, like they had a range that they were doing, but the range was really close to our house. And so he is like, ” If you need me, just tell me to come back.” He did ask me like, “Do you want me to just stay?” And I was like, “No, it’s really spaced out.” And so it was just me with my kids all morning and Roxanne was doing stuff for her kid she had like kindergarten orientation.

[00:55:45] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:55:46] Gina: And like my mom was like finishing up some stuff, so everyone was busy, like tying up their loose ends. And so I was just laboring by myself at home, getting like my space all set up. I think I did a little workout and for some reason I was surprised that my labor wasn’t progressing when I had nobody there.

[00:56:01] Roxanne: Then Gina went and got a massage.

[00:56:03] Gina: Nobody to watch my kids. And so, I was feeling frustrated that things were not progressing at the rate that I felt like they should for a fourth baby. Again, I had some expectations that I needed to just let go of.

[00:56:14] Gina: So my husband came home and I was like, “I’m getting a massage. I’ll see you later.” I just happened to have a massage scheduled this day. So I went to the massage and things were about like 10 minutes apart at this point, so still very spaced out. And during the massage I had a few like really strong ones, and I was like, “All right, all right,” and then on my drive home, I was like making noise with the four contractions that I had on that 10 minute drive, and I was like. “Uh oh….”

[00:56:41] Gina: So I make it home. Things are definitely starting to pick up, and I’m like, okay, we need to get everybody here. And so I panic Roxanne, who’s freaking out.

[00:56:51] Roxanne: I was eatings cupcakes with my daughter. We, Gina was like, “Ah, they’re like super far apart,” so after orientation, I took her to get cupcakes to celebrate kindergarten. We’re sitting there eating them and Gina’s like, “COME NOW!” and I was like, “Oh no!”

[00:57:05] Gina: Yeah.

[00:57:06] Roxanne: I threw her over my shoulder and ran back like a half mile to my car, ’cause I decided to walk to the cupcake shop.

[00:57:13] Gina: Yeah. So things escalated a little bit there. But then they didn’t, they didn’t go very quick after that.

[00:57:20] Gina: So I like alerted my whole team. I had everybody rush there and then my contractions were like eight minutes apart all of a sudden. And I was like, “Sorry guys.”

[00:57:28] Roxanne: Because everyone was talking to her really loud.

[00:57:30] Gina: And so yeah, everyone came into the room and was just like talking to me. I was just like, “Shut the fuck up,” but I was talking back and so then they were like continuing to talk and then I would realize that because they were engaging with me, I was not able to get into labor land. And so I started getting frustrated at them for talking to me, like, “How dare you talk to me when I was talking back to you!” And so then I like said something to Roxanne. I was like, “Everyone keeps talking to me and it’s distracting me and it’s starting to piss me off ’cause I just wanna be in labor already.”

[00:58:04] Roxanne: So then we all left.

[00:58:05] Gina: So then I decided to go for a walk with just my husband and Eoghan, my son, wanted to come too. I thought he was going to be much more like attentive to me during this labor because during my last one with Sophie, he was like my mini doula. Like he was like right next to me, like rubbing my belly, holding my legs. There’s videos and pictures of him like holding my hand during contractions. Like at the birth, him and Adeline were like right there, and I was like, “He’s for sure…” he did not care.

[00:58:33] Roxanne: No,

[00:58:33] Gina: He like peeked in was like,

[00:58:34] Roxanne: Which is similar to what Adeline was like with your last, with Sophie’s labor.

[00:58:38] Gina: Yeah. Adeline would just pop in and be like, is the baby coming? No.

[00:58:42] Roxanne: “Can the midwife pull her out? No. Okay. Goodbye.”

[00:58:44] Gina: Yeah. I do have one picture of him, like sitting on like the bed with his iPad, like eating some donuts, like some mini of powder donuts. Just like, “Are you? No. Okay.” They all just wanted to play in the pool and so they kept waiting for the pool to be filled.

[00:58:57] Gina: So once the pool filled, like the kids started playing in it, and I started choosing activities, or, laboring spots that I felt like I could be more alone, where people would stop talking to me. So we went for a walk and things felt like they were picking up during the walk. And then I came back and I got in the shower. I tried to do nipple stimulation with the breast pump, but that wasn’t really doing anything this time for me. And I was like, “Man, that really helped me last time. It’s not doing shit this time.” So I was just like, whatever with the pump. And I just kept telling everybody, ’cause everyone was here and I was like, “Sorry guys, you just get to hang out with me,” I was like, “once the sun sets things are gonna pick up, once the sun sets.”

[00:59:41] Roxanne: Which is true.

[00:59:41] Gina: I’m gonna go into active labor once the sun sets. And I just kept saying that. I’m like, “I’m sorry that you’re all already here,” and so there was still a little bit of like performance anxiety for me. I was like, all these people are waiting on me to have a baby. Like, nobody cared.

[00:59:58] Gina: And so I just, I’d go for a walk. I’d get in the shower. I did not like the toilet, so I would not laboring on the toilet, but I was primarily like in the shower that was my thing.

[01:00:06] Roxanne: But she wouldn’t pee in the shower or the tub. She would only pee on the toilet.

[01:00:10] Gina: On the toilet.

[01:00:10] Roxanne: And then hated it every second.

[01:00:11] Gina: I would pee only on the toilet. So the reason why I don’t like to pee in the shower is ’cause one time I peed in the shower during one of my pregnancies and I had the worst back cramp, to where I was like vomiting, and I was in so much pain. So I’m like traumatized from wanting to pee in the shower.

[01:00:30] Roxanne: What about the tub?

[01:00:32] Gina: I don’t know. I just cannot relax. I was like, I need to just be on the toilet. ‘Cause I, I have like anxiety because that cramp was so painful, it traumatized me. So I will not pee, I do not pee in the shower, not because I’m against it. I’m not against it. I just, it scares the shit out of me ’cause of that one time. And like every time I’ve tried to pee after that, like I start to feel it and I’m like, “Nope, nope, we’re not doing that!” So I’d only pee on the toilet.

[01:01:00] Gina: So I would just kinda alternate between the pool and the shower, not just going between the two, especially once it started getting like a little bit darker and then saying, “Once the sun sets. Once the sun sets, the labor’s gonna start. Once the sun sets.” And then the sun set, and labor really kicked on from there. So it was like, probably like 8, 8:30 ish, things started to really shift for me into more of an active labor. I was like really vocalizing with everything, I was doing a lot of hip shifting movements ’cause I found that really helped to relax my pelvic floor.

[01:01:29] Gina: But I was having a really hard time using my mental strategies, where I was like, “Man, gaslighting myself is not working,” ’cause I used to just do, “Okay, the peak of my contraction is my contraction. Everything else is fake.” And I was like, “Okay, just let it build, peak release, and then let go.” And I, and all I really had to do was like the peak of my contraction was what I had to really focus on relaxing. This labor, the entire contraction, I had to focus on relaxing. I couldn’t, I, I’m like “I, the, it’s starting now, like this, the contraction’s here now and there’s no gaslighting, there’s no pretending that it its 10 seconds, it’s a minute long!” And I was like, “This is very intense. This is a lot more than the previous ones.” I was still able to somewhat relax with them, but it just felt much harder. And I was like, “How long has it been,” like, “Oh man!” Because typically my active labors are three to four hours long and the baby’s born. And that’s been the trend with the previous three, so I was like, “All right, it’s like 8, 8:30… so my labor started, so I should have a baby by midnight. The baby’s gonna be born today. It’s like 9:00…. okay. We got a little bit of time to go. I’m feeling a little bit more anxious though. But, it’s fine. It’s fine.”

[01:02:47] Gina: And so I go to the bathroom and I’m like, “I feel like I have to pee,” and then I start sobbing in the bathroom, just “Help me! I don’t know how to do this” like just sobbing. And I’m like, “…it might be transition.” And at some point in the shower, I can’t remember if I went to the shower first or the toilet, I said, “I feel like the baby’s gotta come soon,” and I was like, “but it just hasn’t been long enough so I don’t think that’s true, but I feel like the baby’s coming soon.” And I said this to my husband, he was like, “Do you wanna get in the pool?” and I was like, “No, it’s not time yet.” And I was like, “I have to pee.” And Roxanne’s like, “Gina, if you wanna have a water birth, we need to get in the pool!” And I was like, “It’s fine.” And my husband was like, “I will literally just carry her and throw her in the pool.

[01:03:36] Roxanne: I know we, we had a game plan. He was gonna carry the upper body.

[01:03:38] Gina: She will have a water birth!

[01:03:39] Roxanne: And I was gonna carry her legs.

[01:03:40] Gina: She WILL have the opportunity for a water birth, it’ll be fine.

[01:03:43] Gina: And so I’m like, “I feel like I have to, I need to pee. I need to pee right now.” It wasn’t like I had to poo. I was like, “I need to pee.” So my midwife’s walking in with her little tray, “Okay, we’re gonna do this on the toilet.”

[01:03:54] Roxanne: No. Turn around.

[01:03:56] Gina: And I peed. I sobbed. And I was like, “I’m gonna go to the pool. I’m gonna go back to the pool now. Like I, I would like to go to the pool.” And so I labor in the pool for not too much longer, and then I started, “I need to push. We’re gonna just do that right now.” So my three children are surrounding me in this pool. I have, my husband is like in front of me, Roxanne, like everyone is like around me in the pool. I see nobody because it’s dark and I’m just like, “La, la, la, la.”

[01:04:27] Roxanne: She’s closing her eyes.

[01:04:28] Gina: And I feel that like first urge to push, and it’s like a really weird sensation where you just, there was no conscious like, “Time to push,” it was just like, “this is happening now.”

[01:04:40] Gina: And so I start pushing and I’m very loud with it. And at some point Roxanne is like, “Why don’t you stand up and maybe this will make your water break and then everything could progress?” And I was like, “I would like to not do that. But I will do it because I believe you,” and I stand up, and nothing. I have more contractions, but nothing, there is no water breaking. And I’m like,

[01:05:01] Roxanne: But, baby probably descended.

[01:05:02] Gina: Son of a bitch. But at this point I am like, scream, not screaming like I am yelling, roaring with it, it’s a very deep, like, guttural noise that is coming outta my mouth. And my poor toddler begins to, sob because she is scared!

[01:05:21] Roxanne: She runs out.

[01:05:23] Gina: She’s like, she’s looking at me like, crying. Adeline, my oldest is also like, “What the…?” I’m like, “You’ve seen two of these before!” So my mom like scoops the kids up and takes them out of the room, and I’m sure my son is just like…

[01:05:37] Roxanne: Eating donuts, honestly.

[01:05:38] Gina: Just like, “Whatever.” He, when I asked him about it, he’s like, “I wasn’t scared. It was fine.” And I’m like, “I believe you actually, you’re probably just okay, the baby’s coming soon,” while my two girls are just like, traumatized.

[01:05:50] Gina: So they, they all get rushed outta the room. I sit back down, so this is now contraction, like number three, or push three. So I sit down back into the water and I am like, “Once this water breaks, this baby is coming.” And so I decide that I’m going to break my water and every push the bag bulges and I’m just like clawing at it. “Please break, please break, please break!” And there’s even a video of me who’s like, “Please break. Please break!” Very sadly, it did not. But then the next push it did, it did break with my clawing. And so I think this is like push number four at this point.

[01:06:28] Gina: I’m like in between pushes, or, I am finishing up what was a very intense push, or I’m still in it, at some point Roxanne’s like, “Gina, just relax, take a deep breath,” thinking that I’m in between contractions, but I broke my bag of water. I felt the baby’s head come down and I was like, “Oh, she’s coming. I need to focus.” And so Roxanne thought that I was like, really tense.

[01:06:54] Roxanne: I mean, you were.

[01:06:55] Gina: I was. But she thought that I was like in between contractions and still trying to recover. She’s like, “Gina, just relax. Take a deep breath,” and I was like, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” because my baby’s head was being born. And I’m like, “I do need to relax as her head is being born. Good idea, Roxanne!” who had no idea that this was happening.

[01:07:11] Roxanne: No, none.

[01:07:11] Gina: And so I like whispered to my husband, “The head is coming,” and I like get super focused, and I’m like, “Okay, her head is coming. I can feel it. I need to ease it out ’cause I don’t wanna tear. Okay. Her head’s out.” And then I’m like, “Head’s out, heads out.” And my husband’s like, “Cool,” and my midwife is like, “Good job!” and everyone else is like, “What?” And then I’m like, “What do I do? What do I do now? Like I… the head was born, what do I do?” Because I’m like, I’m in like a weird kneeling position, or I guess not weird, but I just, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do at this point ’cause the contraction was over. And then I actually felt Zoe like rotate, which I was like, “Well that was interesting,” and I remember in my head being like, “That’s cool.” And then I was like, “Nancy, what do I do now?” And so at that point she started to guide me, “Okay, just push like a little bit more.”

[01:08:07] Gina: And then she was born, I brought her to my chest and I leaned back and I was like, “Cool. Did that. Thank God she’s out.” My kids came back in at this point, and then I just had my last baby on my chest and it just felt like a really good conclusion to all of my births. I had this first very traumatic experience where the biggest issues, the biggest things that contributed towards that being a really negative experience for me was feeling like I didn’t have a provider that wanted to listen or take me, as a person, into consideration. I’m sure she’s a really nice lady, but she was very mean to me in that moment. And I, the things I know now, I wish I could go and tell Gina in 2017 ’cause that would’ve made my experience so much better if I understood that Pitocin was not evil or bad, that you could still have an unmedicated birth with Pitocin. If I understood more about how it was administered, if I understood more about the induction process and felt confident to have a conversation with that nurse practitioner about my preferences for my labor. I didn’t know how to initiate the conversation. I was like scared to try to talk about it. I didn’t know how to talk to the midwife when she came in very aggressively to speak with me. I didn’t know how to engage with that nurse. If I had known I could fire them ’cause they had four other people available to support my birth, I should have, but I didn’t know and. Had I done those things, it may have made that experience much different for me.

[01:09:36] Gina: And so when it came to preparing for my next births, the biggest factor that I understood contributed towards a negative experience, regardless of if I prepared or not, like at the minimum, I feel like it’s reasonable to expect to be treated with respect and to have my opinions taken into consideration. Like I feel like that’s a reasonable thing for someone to expect. And so for me, I, the biggest factor that contributed towards that negative experience was the provider and not feeling respected by that provider. And so for my next three births, the thing that contributed towards that negative experience, I took the most control over. I was like, all right, I would like a provider that I know that I trust to help me navigate hard situations, that I know is gonna have a conversation with me, that’s gonna respect me as a person. And so I’m gonna choose that provider and make sure that they’re gonna be at my birth. And so having control on who was in my space was really, important, which is probably what contributed most towards a really positive experience with my son and to the most like stress relief where I could just be in labor and be okay with being in a vulnerable place during his labor. But then I built my confidence and I was like, “Okay, I can do it. Now I’m gonna do it in a certain way,” with my third birth. And I really just needed to learn how to surrender and just be okay with labor being whatever it needs to be. It doesn’t have to be this performance. I don’t have to be in the pool. It doesn’t have to be at 40 weeks. It, it. It’s just whatever it needs to be. And surrendering to that was like really important to me. And then coming into my fourth birth where I was just like, “Yeah, if I have water birth, that’d be really nice. If I don’t, it just will not be something that I experience in this lifetime and that’s okay.” And so I felt like I surrendered a lot more to it, just understood things a little bit better. It was my fastest active laborer, by far, I felt it, that it was much faster. From active labor to baby being born was like an hour and a half, which was probably why my contractions felt very intense and I couldn’t gaslight myself with them at all. so it was my fastest labor. It was my only water birth, the only birth that I caught my own baby, and was able to come into myself to do that, which felt really awesome. And so it just felt like a perfect conclusion to this entire birth journey of mine.

[01:11:58] Gina: And I am sad that I don’t get to experience that again. I mean I guess not that sad, that last one was rough! They were all really great experiences and I think giving birth unmedicated was something that was very powerful for me, something that was very like empowering and special to me. Like I, it’s something that I am glad that I did. But I am also okay with not doing it again. ‘Cause that last time was really intense.

[01:12:30] Gina: But I feel very complete with my family and I am excited to be able to share what I’ve learned from my own personal experiences and my professional experience supporting birth because the way that I was treated in my different labors really impacts how I approach birth as a professional and how I share about it. Because I don’t want people to have that first traumatic experience. I want everyone to have those really empowering experiences, regardless of where they give birth. Like you shouldn’t have to give birth at home to be respected and to feel good in your experience. And I know that you don’t have to give birth at home to have that. Like you can absolutely have that in a hospital setting. Like certain providers, you need to be willing to have more of the conversation with them, but ultimately finding a provider that you feel like is on your side, that’s a part of your team that you can fully trust is really, important. And so that’s the goal that we have with MamasteFit. And I feel like those are things that I have learned from my own personal experiences and then watching and being able to witness other people’s experiences as well.

[01:13:36] Gina: So those are all my birth stories for all four of my children. Hopefully there’s no other birth stories.

[01:13:42] Roxanne: I know.

[01:13:42] Gina: But you never know.

[01:13:43] Roxanne: You never know.

[01:13:44] Gina: We did do a star chart reading and she said there’d be a fifth baby when I’m 40, which I don’t know about that.

[01:13:51] Roxanne: So star charts are not the future, they’re just potential future.

[01:13:57] Gina: But she did say that child would be like, a really…

[01:14:01] Roxanne: A Doctor. Cure Cancer.

[01:14:02] Gina: Cure Cancer, Nobel Prize winner. Do I wanna keep that child from the world? I don’t know. We’ll see.

[01:14:07] Roxanne: Yes. Yes. Her husband says yes.

[01:14:10] Gina: My husband’s like, “I don’t care.”

[01:14:13] Gina: Thank you so much for listening to my, all my birth stories, combined in one. I know this was a longer episode than they normally are.

[01:14:21] Gina: But if you want more support throughout your pregnancy because we, we’ve had our own personal experiences and we want to support you because we want you to have an empowered experience. There’s no reason why we need to be traumatized, our first labor, by any means, or any of our labors or pregnancies. And so if you want more support during your pregnancy, we offer online prenatal fitness programs and Childbirth Education course to help you move confidently throughout your pregnancy to help you prepare to plan for your birth, to move through your labor. And you can check out on our website at mamastefit.com and use code STORY10 to get 10% off any of our online offerings.

[01:14:55] Gina: And you can bundle prenatal fitness and childbirth ed together to save 15% off, or you can grab our ultimate bundles, which bundles prenatal fitness, postpartum fitness, yoga, childbirth education, birth prep, on demand program, postpartum ed, pelvic floor, just combined into one gigantic bundle for 15% off also.

[01:15:16] Gina: So thank you so much for listening to the MamasteFit Podcast. If you loved this episode,

[01:15:21] Roxanne: Please like and subscribe to our podcast.

[01:15:22] Gina: Tell me that you loved it. But be sure to like and subscribe to our channel so you get notified whenever we release new episodes. And thanks for tuning in.