The Labor Line

This week, we are AGAIN joined by my friend Tessa, a mom of five! In this episode, we are wrapping up her story by walking through her last 2 birth experiences. While pregnant with her fourth child, Tessa developed a kidney stone so large that she was unable to pass it!! She had to wear a urostomy bag to drain her kidneys until she was 6 weeks postpartum. This physically complex pregnancy caused h...

This week I’m joined by my friend Tessa, a mom of five! In this episode, we walk through her first three birth stories, and next week she’ll be back to share the final two. Tessa’s journey started on what she calls a medical conveyor belt, where she didn’t feel like she had much say in her own birth experience. Fortunately, for her next two babies, she was able to connect with a wonderful communit...

This week I’m joined by my friend Natasha, who had to overcome some fears about labor and motherhood before she felt ready to become a parent. After a positive pregnancy and a long labor that included forceps after 4 hours of pushing (!!), she once again had to learn to trust herself and God to manage her postpartum anxiety. Although her mental health has continued to play a role in her experience...

This week I’m joined by my friend Summer, who gave birth standing up and caught her own baby! Summer takes us through how she prepared for her positive, unmedicated hospital birth, both physically and spiritually. She also gets real about the pain of back labor and how that affected some of her coping mechanisms, as well as the unexpected curve balls of postpartum, including recovering from a tear...

This week I’m joined by my friend Allie, who endured passing a kidney stone while in her 3rd trimester!! Truly chilling stuff. But, beyond that, Allie shares her experience with high blood pressure near the end of both of her pregnancies that ultimately resulted in two positive, epidural-less inductions that she takes us through beat-by-beat. She also opens up about the difficulty of having a baby...

Today I am joined by me, myself, and I as I recap my 2nd trimester experiences. Y’all sent in questions to guide today’s conversation, and I loved the opportunity to look back on a truly transformative time. We talk about all things cravings, left-field symptoms, baby showers, nursery prep, and where I’m at with my birth plan. It’s such a privilege to deep dive into my journey through motherhood w...

This week, I’m joined by my friend Emma, who prepared for an unmedicated birth that actually didn’t come to fruition because her baby was breech. After trying everything in the Spinning Babies handbook, she decided to pivot and use the very same mental coping techniques that she had learned for her natural birth to prepare for an ultimately positive C-section birth.  She shares beautiful memo...

This week, I’m joined by my friend Lauren, whose epidural worked a little too well to the point that she broke her pubic bone without even realizing it! In this episode, Lauren walks us through her 3 pitocin & cervidil inductions and 2 failed inductions. She also experienced preeclampsia with all 3 of her pregnancies, but gradually learned how to manage her symptoms and advocate for proper car...

This week, I’m joined by my sister-friend, Rachel, who is the third and final of my sisters-in-laws to share her story with us! Rachel went through quite the journey to bring her two daughters into the world. Starting with endometriosis-related fertility struggles, followed by hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) and severe preeclampsia that led to one daughter being born at 30 weeks and the other at 33 we...

This week I’m joined by my new friend Kyla, who learned how to differentiate between what was in her control and what wasn’t early on in her motherhood journey. This distinction helped her achieve a positive, unmedicated hospital birth with the help of a doula, even through 12 hours of labor, 2 hours of pushing, and an episiotomy!  Kyla truly loved her birth experience and just being a mom ov...

This week, we are joined AGAIN by my friend Ashley, who is a mom to six kids! In this episode, we are wrapping up her story by walking through her last three birth experiences. Ashley shares how the precipitous, unmedicated delivery of her third baby (which we ended on last week) brought a lot of anxiety into the medicated delivery of her fourth. She also remarks on how different it felt going bac...

This week I’m joined by my friend Ashley, a mom of six!! In this episode, we walk through her first three birth stories, and next week she’ll be back to share the final three. Ashley’s journey starts with two smooth pregnancies that resulted in almost identical deliveries (seriously—same birth weight and everything!). But her third baby threw her for a loop, from taking longer to conceive to a lab...

This week, we’re talking about the stories YOU shared about the nicest things someone did for you postpartum. Y’all gave me all the insider secrets about what your postpartum friends ACTUALLY need. We talk about meal train etiquette, C-section postpartum hacks, and ways dads can help lighten the load.  This episode is packed with ideas and insights that I had never even considered before! Per...

This week I’m joined by my new friend Katie, whose journey to motherhood has many twists and turns. Her story includes a hurricane that influenced her decision to discontinue her birth control (yes, really), a snafu between two medical offices that resulted in her missing 17 weeks' worth of OBGYN visits, and an unintentionally unmedicated birth after she missed the window of opportunity to get an...

This week I’m joined by my friend Sydney, whose C-section incision site reopened a few days after birth. Her journey to motherhood also includes IUI fertility treatments, advocating for herself when signs of preeclampsia appeared in the third trimester, and an emergency, traumatic C-section that led to a blood transfusion. We also talk about the grief of unmet expectations, body image struggles, a...

This week I’m joined by my amazing friend Meredith, who is a type 1 diabetic mom who breastfed three babies (one of them not even her own!) for over six months! What makes that even more incredible is that she once wasn’t sure if she’d be able to have children at all. In this episode, Meredith opens up about how diabetes has shaped her motherhood journey, her difficult first delivery that led to h...

This week I’m joined by my friend Jessica, who pushed both of her babies out in only two pushes!! Her experiences include first-trimester nausea (particularly in the car), a negative reaction to IV pain medication, and pubic symphysis dysfunction, which was especially difficult because she’s a dancer. She also talks about her experience with a velcro baby who wouldn’t sleep without her, breastfeed...

This week I’m joined by my friend Katie, who thought she wanted a large family until she had a bumpy start to motherhood with her first. Her experiences include a long, difficult labor that resulted in a 3rd degree tear that took almost a year to recover from, and a baby who struggled to breastfeed and therefore struggled to sleep. Luckily, her second brought a better delivery and postpartum exper...

This week, I’m joined by my friend Malloree, who once dilated from a 5 to a 10 in just 15 minutes, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Her 3 birth experiences include a one-push wonder baby, Group B Strep (GBS) for all 3 births, and a failed epidural that resulted in a multi-day-long allergic reaction. She has also run the gamut of postpartum mental health experiences, from postpartum depressi...

This week, I am joined by my friend Hannah, who went from not knowing how an epidural worked to delivering her third without her husband while he was at military training! Her experiences include (but aren’t limited to) pre-eclampsia, severe postpartum depression, the emotional impact of 2 miscarriages,  and joyfully welcoming their son with Down syndrome.    In this episode:&n...

This week, I am joined by my sister-friend, Jorden, who is my incredible sister-in-law, who is due just 2 days after I am! She has had 3 previous birth experiences that included 3 pitocin inductions, adjusting to breastfeeding, and the exhilarating experience of pushing one of her babies out in 2 pushes!  In this episode:  Positive pregnancy experiences  The anticipation of a schedu...

You read that right! I’m having a baby!! Today, I give you all the deets from before we even knew we were pregnant to our recent struggle to find out the gender of our baby and everything in between! It is such a joy and a privilege to share the beginnings of my motherhood story with y’all. And fair warning, you may need a tissue or two today, I know I did. 🩷 Full episode transcript available at...

On the 10th episode of The Labor Line, I’m joined by my friend Valeria, who had only ever held one baby before she had her own! From finding the right circle of friends that helped her feel confident enough to become a mom to utilizing all the tools offered to her from a local pregnancy help center, Valeria went from being a newborn novice to a birthing boss!  In this episode:  Positive...

This week on The Labor Line, I’m joined by my friend Madeline, whose twin pregnancy was as surprising as it was thrilling! From working with a midwife at a birth center to mitigate fearmongering common with a twin pregnancy, to being lifeflighted (!!) to an unfamiliar hospital, only to be discharged a few days later, and ultimately having a C-section at 32 weeks, Madeline’s story is a wonderful ex...

This week on The Labor Line, I’m joined by my lifelong friend Lauren, who had 3 unique birth experiences that all informed one another. From a positive introduction into motherhood with her first, to a mentally difficult postpartum experience with her second, followed by a diagnosis of ICP (intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy) with her third, Lauren’s story reminds us that no two births are alik...