Thanks for a great 2015 of The Birth Hour and Happy New Year! Today is my daughter's birthday so last night my husband and I recorded her birth story in honor of her special day. For her birth we planned a home birth attended by an amazing midwife and my husband and I reminisce about everything from finding out we were expected to how the birth affected our relationship as parents and as a couple.
Kathleen shares the stories of her two children's births. Her daughter was born via emergency c section and although Kathleen was trying for a VBAC with her son he was also born via c section in an even more emergency situation. These experiences left Kathleen feeling like something was missing from her motherhood journey and she talks about working through that in this episode. You can connect with Kathleen at Kapachino or on Instagram.
Kellie was planning a hospital birth with an OBGYN until 35 weeks pregnant when she switched doctors so she could give birth at a hospital that had better outcomes for mom's who want a natural birth. It also had a significantly lower C section rate. Listen to Kellie tell her birth story, in her own words.
Jessica is a mom to four boys living in Corona California. She writes about her family's adventures on House Inhabit and has an Etsy shop that sells adorable prints, tees and teepees!
Today she shares the stories of her pregnancies and births. Jessica had a great first pregnancy and birth experience. Her first birth was very fast with her son being born within 1 hour of arriving at the hospital! With her second pregnancy, Jessica experienced pre-term labor and had a cervical cerclage placed. She ended up carrying to term and had a cerclage placed as a precaution in subsequent pregnancies. Her biggest advice to pregnant women is to surround yourselves with positivity and she also also recommends waiting to find out the gender as that's been one of her favorite parts about her births.
Michelle tells the story of her empowering and inspirational VBA2C. She is a mum to 3 boys. Her first two children were born via EMCS (emergency c section), and her third was a vaginal birth that left her feeling so strong. She had always been fascinated by birth but the experience left her fascinated not only by birth but by its unspoken power and left her completely in awe. Giving birth ignited a passion within Michelle too strong to ignore. She now campaigns for women to be given the unbiased information needed to make informed choices throughout their maternity experience and to have their rights respected.
Blythe's episode is pretty light hearted and will definitely make you laugh but I also think it's so valuable in that she wasn't afraid to trust her gut and go for the type of birth she wanted even though she had done things very differently the first FIVE times! I love how Blythe and her husband tease each other about how funny the hospital birth experience is after having so many homebirths. These two obviously really know each other on all sorts of levels and make an awesome birthing team.
Kacie tells the stories of her two homebirths.
For this episode, I got to record my first in person birth story interview with the beautiful, talented and sweet Kacie Case. Kacie is a mama to two boys named Eddy and Rocky and lives with her husband and kiddos in Austin, TX (hey that's where I live too!). Kacie is also a small business owner and makes adorable printed tees for babies, toddlers and kids atmamacase prints.
Kacie and I poured some wine and got right down to talking about her two beautiful and empowering homebirths. I love that Kacie attended her two brother's homebirths when she was growing up and had the honor of cutting their umbilical cords. Pretty much from that moment, Kacie was destined to have some kickass homebirths of her own.
Bailey Gaddis tells the story of her hypnobirthing hospital birth. She ended up uses the same visualization throughout the entire birth and sitting completely still and cross legged in the hospital bed which really surprised her since she'd imagined she'd be moving around a lot during labor.